The Xajil Chronicle of the Kaqchikel Maya of Guatemala is topically the most diverse, lengthy, and organizationally complex of the surviving highland-Maya historical texts that were first recorded alphabetically in the colonial period. In this monograph, the author demonstrates that much of the Chronicle was redacted from preconquest pictographic documents, documents that now are lost.

Both the organization and topical coverage allow the author to identify the specific genres of the pictographic originals and to characterize the content of preconquest historical “archives,” as well as gauge the amount of information contained in such documents would necessarily have been committed to memory by indigenous historians.

Robert M. Hill II is Professor of Anthropology at Tulane University. His research, carried out mostly in the highland regions of Guatemala, has refined understanding of how the ancient Maya became the modern Maya. He is the author of several articles and books, including Colonial Cakchiquels: Highland Maya Adaptations to Spanish Rule, 1600–1700 (1992) and, with Judith Maxwell, Kaqchikel Chronicles (2006).