The first volume to focus on the Early Classic context (A.D. 400-650) of the Maya city of CopAn combines and synthesizes many different research methods and disciplines, interpreting data that contradict, enhance, and supplement previous work. Its methods are conjunctive, including and integrating research in archaeological surveys and excavations with studies in art, hieroglyphics, history, forensic/biological anthropology, and chemical analyses of teeth, bones, and other materials. The book is not just multidisciplinary but interdisciplinary, linking, for example, the architecture of monuments with epigraphy, language concepts, and human events.

Until recently, scholars speculated as to whether K'inich Yax K'uk' Mo' was an alleged or fictitious founding father of the CopAn dynasty. This work presents new information on him and his accomplishments, showing how we almost certainly now have his skeleton with its parry fractures from the battlefield or the ball court, along with abundant descriptions of this and other burials.