The centralized (or strongly centralized) and decentralized (or weakly centralized) models provide an entry into the points of contention surrounding ancient Maya politics. Toward the decentralist end of the spectrum lie various applications of cross-cultural political models, such as the peer-polity model (Renfrew 1982; Renfrew and Cherry 1986; Freidel 1986; Sabl-off 1986), the segmentary state (Southall 1988; Fox 1987; Fox et al. 1996), the “theater state” (Geertz 1980; Demarest 1992; Hammond 1991a), the “galactic polity” (Tambiah 1976, 1977; Demarest 1992; Houston 1993; Hammond 1991a), the regal-ritual centers model (Fox 1977; Ball and Taschek 1991; Ball 1993), and the city-state model (Grube 2000). Although they vary in detail, all these constructs relate to a model that sees the state as weakly centralized. The main features of such a state are: 1) the polity consists of a capital city and its hinterland, which includes weakly controlled secondary and tertiary centers where the structures and functions found in the primary center are clearly replicated; 2) the power of the ruler is predicated on his personal charisma and his success in warfare, rituals, and marriage alliances that enhance his prestige; 3) a general lack of economic control by the state government that underscores its ritual legitimation (Demarest 1992; Iannone 2002; Rice 2004). These authors pay little attention to the smaller settlements on the lower levels of the political hierarchy beyond noting that they replicate the functions and structures of the capital. But these middle-size centers would have been important in the extraction of resources and the management of conflict within the polity (Stein 1994; Marcus 1993; Py-burn 1997; Iannone and Connell 2003).
At the other end of the spectrum, the centralized state model (A. Chase and D. Chase 1996; Marcus 1993; Adams 1986; Haviland 1992, 1997; Chase, Chase, and Haviland 1990; Rice 2009) proposes that the largest Maya cit-ies—Tikal, Calakmul, and Caracol (and possibly others)—were characterized by rulers who were able to amass considerable political power, as reflected in their ability to construct massive nonritual public works such as the extensive causeways and standardized terrace systems at Caracol (A. Chase and D. Chase 1996; Chase, Chase, and Haviland 1990) and the water catchment reservoirs and possible bajos drainage systems at Tikal (Havi-land 1997; Culbert 1992; Chase, Chase, and Haviland 1990; Vilma Fialko, personal communication, 2000; Scarborough 2003; Lucero 2006). Centralized states are thus seen as able to control economic systems to a great degree or completely. Supporters of this model also argue that the middle and lower centers in the political hierarchy were tightly controlled and integrated with the capitals because some of the middle-rank centers that have been excavated, such as the causeway termini complexes at Caracol, replicated neither the structure nor functions of the capital (A. Chase and D. Chase 1996; Iannone 2002). The centralized state model also presupposes a much more complex social system based on differentiated socioeconomic classes (and not exclusively on kinship) and an extensive middle class, as is evidenced at Caracol (Chase and Chase 2003). Nevertheless, the “centralists” do not present a well-articulated model for the structure of these polities beyond assuming the presence of a well-developed bureaucracy (see the excellent discussion and historical overview in Runggaldier and Hammond in press).
More recent scholarship has seen this dichotomy between centralized and decentralized power as false or nonexistent. For example, Arens and Karp (1989) write: “The key question is not how power is centralized; it isn’t. The key question is how the illusion that power organizes a social formation composed of a center and periphery emerges and acts in society” (xvi).
Another critique by Elizabeth Graham (2012) contrasts modern states with the Maya polities and shows how even modern states that are often seen as centralized are not. Even though modern states do not control the economy completely, wealth accumulates to an incredible degree among a small group of elites. This doesn’t deny that modern states have economic power, because all of them have central laws and regulations that pertain to the economy and to the (sometimes massive) budgets of the central government.
The postmodernist and post-processual schools in archaeology and more generally in the social sciences also question the dichotomy between centralized and decentralized polities because these are static models and power is not static. It is continuously reproduced, resisted, or changed through the actions of humans and institutions. Marcus (1993, 1998) has been the champion of this perspective through her “dynamic model” that argues that pre-Hispanic Maya civilization, like many other ancient societies, vacillated between periods of empire building and periods of political fragmentation (see an early intimation of this theory in Sharer 1991). Demarest (1996a) and Lucero (1999a) have also pointed to the “noticeable amount of variability that existed” (ibid., 211) among the Classic Maya states and to the need to understand this variability.
Nevertheless, some important points of contention have emerged from
This “old” debate, and these appear as threads in models that have been used in recent scholarship to portray the variability that existed among Classic Maya polities. These include the scale or size of political units (states, polities) during the Classic period; the degree of intensification of agricultural, craft, and exchange systems in Classic Maya polities; the nature of Maya urbanism; the differences in the functions of smaller subsidiary centers and the dominant major centers; and the size, organization, and nature (bureaucratic or not) of the administration of each polity.
In this chapter and the next, I explore these points of contention and the methods and evidence through which archaeologists have attempted to reconstruct Classic polities. Finally, I will consider how these questions are actually answered by specific archaeological projects, including studies of the Greater Rosario polities in Chiapas, Mexico; the Xunantunich state of central Belize; and the Classic Maya polity centered on Motul de San Jose in northern Guatemala. This chapter is dedicated to the macro-scale analysis of Classic Maya polities, from relationships between states to the extent and scale of these kingdoms to the general pattern of their settlements, forms of subsistence, and administrations. Because of the nature of the case studies, I also examine other aspects beyond the macro scale.
World History
