In recent years, Mesoamerican anthropologists have been shifting the focus of their research from structural-functional analyses of small communities to studies of communities as the products of the interaction of microsocial and macrosocial processes. Greater attention is being given to relationships between ecology and society; between state power and local community culture; and among world economics, regional politics, and subregional sociocultural patterns. Forest Society examines the social history of Peten, in the lowlands of Northern Guatemala, in the context of these...