Politics arise in relationships between groups and individuals, not fully grown from a repertoire of types.
A. Smith 2003, 101-2
The aim of this work is to present how archaeologists have reconstructed ancient Maya politics during the Classic period, the apogee of this most celebrated pre-Hispanic civilization. I hope that my summary of the various epistemological approaches and bodies of knowledge about this civilization has provided the foundation for further studies and discussions.
Just as political anthropologists have shifted their stance from sociocultural evolution and political economy, to processual-action models that focus on human actors, so archaeologists have moved to considerations of the fluidity of political power, the heterogeneity and conflictive nature of political institutions and factions, the importance of ideational strategies for negotiating conflicts, and the relational nature of power. Four recent archaeological projects in the Near East, North America, and Central America were used to illustrate the trends in how archaeologists theorize about political power, structure, and dynamics. An important lesson to be drawn from these studies is that we need to consider in more detail the manifestations of political power in the material world of archaeology at all levels of society, including the individual and the household, the village or local community, and the district or larger communal hinterland, not just the interactions between polities and suprapolities.
An archaeology of power (Stein 1998; A. Smith 2003) can be pursued by integrating these multiple scales with two types of analysis: 1) a regional analysis that examines “variation in ‘nodes of [political, economic or religious] power’ . . . [and] . . . in patterns of production, exchange, and consumption of different goods or forms of value (such as labor)” across the landscape of each polity (Stein 1998, 26-27) (in other words, what people do); and 2) an analysis that examines all lines of evidence of competing claims to political power and authority by different groups, factions, power blocs, or institutions in art or ritual (in other words, what people “say”). To accomplish this goal, I looked at how the macro-scale analysis of political power was distributed across interregional and regional landscapes. This was followed by a middle-scale study of internal institutions and dynamics at the intrapolity level and a micro-scale exploration of the claims to power and the flow of power among different factions, including commoners, royal and secondary elites, political-ecclesiastical officials, warriors, and courtiers.
To understand Maya political dynamics, we have to envision a plurality of political forms during pre-Hispanic times, and indeed, we have evidence of this plurality from Preclassic through Postclassic times. It is thus unnecessary to ask whether the Maya “state” was centralized or decentralized, even though this debate has influenced our research over the last thirty years. We now need to comprehend the nature and degree of variation among Maya polities. To understand Maya politics and dynamics, each Maya polity has to be studied on its own so that we can reconstruct its size and population, the nature of its administration and of the sources of power of the ruling elites, the number of political factions in the polity and the competing claims of such factions to legitimacy and power. The comparative approach I used in this book highlighted differences between Maya polities, and these differences are important aspects of political dynamics. At the same time, I drew upon my own research at Motul de San Jose, Guatemala.
Because the Classic period encompassed a variety of polities that ranged in size from as small as 150 square kilometers to a possible maximum of around 11,000 square kilometers, the political landscape must have been highly volatile. Smaller polities such as Motul de San Jose (which reached at most 150 square kilometers and encompassed at most 27,000 people) must have experienced intense pressures from larger and more powerful neigh-bors.1 Tokovinine and Zender (2012) and Reents-Budet et al. (2012) reconstruct this volatility from the epigraphic records of Motul (fragmentary as they are), which document its alliances or wars with Tikal, Dos Pilas, La Florida (ancient Namaan), Zapote Bobal/El Pajarral/La Joyanca (ancient Hix Witz), and Yaxchilan. Although alliances tied the Motul dynasts with Yaxchilan, Tikal, Dos Pilas, and possibly the Caracol area (as shown in the celebration of marriages between the sites or in the gifting of Ik’ Style pottery to the Petexbatun elites), these connections did not preclude conflicts within a few years after the formation of alliances or as soon as new dynasts acceded to the throne. However, Tokovinine and Zender (2012) remark that Motul had enduring amicable relations with the nearby small states of Namaan and Hix Witz, both of which were located to the west along the River San Pedro Martir (the tributaries of that river reach all the way to Motul). The reasons behind these enduring alliances remain opaque, but they may have included the need for assistance in conflicts with more powerful neighbors or the desire to control the trade that moved along the river into the Lakes region and then north and east (Tokovinine and Ze-nder 2012). The enduring alliance between Motul and its western neighbors Namaan and Hix Witz reminds me of the alliances formed by the Mexicas of Tenochtitlan with Texcoco and Tacuba in their rebellion against their overlords, the Tepanecs. This alliance, of course, became the Triple Alliance or the Aztec Empire (Conrad and Demarest 1984). In its early history, the Roman city-state also relied on alliances with other neighboring Latin city-states (forming the Latin League) to defend itself against enemies, such as the Gauls and other Etruscan kingdoms (Raaflaub 1996). Could it be that Motul was also involved in some kind of league with its neighbors Namaan and Hix Witz?
The rapidly changing relations between Motul and the more powerful Maya states suggest a multipolar and dynamic international system (see Kaufman 1997 and Doyle 1986 for a discussion of international systems). This international system was overshadowed at times by a bipolar system that involved the archrivals Tikal and Calakmul (Martin and Grube 1995, 2000).
We also find evidence of the political volatility of the Maya lowlands in the multiple types of arrangements that existed within hegemonies (or multistate networks) like the ones dominated by Tikal, Calakmul, Caracol, and Naranjo (to name the best-known cases). Connections between the paramount state and the smaller subsidiary polities included loose patron-client relationships, tighter alliances (in which the smaller states were independent or dependent vassals), and direct incorporation with major reorganization of the dominated polities. Despite these political arrangements, some scholars champion the dominated polities as the critical forces (or actors) in the rise and fall cycles of Maya geopolitics (Marcus 1993, 1998).
The Motul de San Jose Archaeological Project has provided a glimpse into the internal political dynamics of one of these subsidiary polities because Motul was a vassal of Tikal off and on during the Late Classic. Although I have not dwelled much on the importance of the environment in this work, those who wish to reconstruct ancient Maya political dynamics must be able to understand the relationships of humans with their environment. However, that is for another book. Here, I only want to mention two elements that had an impact on the political history of Motul de San Jose in the Classic period. Based on climatic studies in nearby regions (Vilma Fialko, personal communication, 2000; Scarborough, Valdez, and Dunning 2003; Scarborough and Valdez 2003) and commentaries from local informants, we suspect that this zone was more humid during the Late Classic period and was crossed by flowing rivers, including the Riachuelo K’ante’t’u’ul, which probably drained into the Akte River, which then connected into the west-flowing San Pedro Martir River (Figure 4.3; see Moriarty 2004a; Foias and Emery 2012). Water transportation may have connected Motul with areas far removed in the west toward Yaxchilan and in the east to northeast toward Tikal and Belize. We suspect this because hieroglyphic texts on monuments and polychrome vessels at those sites mention the Ik’ polity (Tokovinine and Zender 2012; Reents-Budet et al. 2012). Water transportation routes may have led to the use of Motul de San Jose and its principal port Trinidad as centers of trade, and preliminary studies suggest that both had marketplaces (Dahlin et al. 2009; Bair and Terry 2012; Halperin et al. 2009). Ecological studies within the Motul zone have indicated that human settlement correlated with fertile soils on high plateaus or hillocks, but these soils were vulnerable to rapid loss of nutrients if they weren’t fertilized (Jensen et al. 2007; Webb et al. 2007; Webb and Schwarcz 2012). Geochemical studies of the regional soils have found that little agriculture was taking place in Motul proper, even though the soils there were the most fertile in the zone (Webb et al. 2007; Jensen et al. 2007; Webb and Schwarcz 2012; see also Emery and Foias 2012). The capital center, therefore, was either a garden “city” (with fruit trees among the residences) or a natural forest preserve (Richard Terry, personal communication, 2009) or a combination of the two. This ecological evidence from Motul suggests that its power was founded less on agricultural wealth and more on political power and possibly trade.
We have gained insights into the political structure of this small polity through settlement pattern surveys, excavations, and decipherments of hieroglyphic texts. We have identified subsidiary centers, each with one or several pyramids between two and five kilometers away from Motul, that may have been occupied by subsidiary elites who had political administrative functions (Moriarty 2004a, 2004b; Moriarty 2012; Yorgey and Moriarty 2012). The evidence of religious or economic specialization at some of these minor centers implies that the political hierarchy was not identical to the economic hierarchy or the religious hierarchy. For example, Motul had no ball court, but there was one at Trinidad, the second largest center in the polity. Buenavista-Nuevo San Jose, La Estrella-Nuevo San Jose, and Trinidad, all of which are located along the north shore of Lake Peten Itza, were situated close to chert sources and appear to have specialized in the production of chert blanks and tools. In contrast, little chert tool production occurred at Motul de San Jose. Preliminary soil carbon isotope studies at Chachaklu’um suggest that this secondary center located approximately five kilometers east of Motul may have specialized in nonagricultural pursuits, such as the cultivation of fruit trees (Bair and Terry 2012). These signs of specialization imply that a system of integration was in place. On the economic level, markets could have provided the mechanism of integration where goods produced in different sites could be exchanged. As already mentioned, the identification of possible marketplaces in Plaza II at Motul and in Plaza V at Trinidad suggest that both the political capital and the port had such economic functions (Bair and Terry 2012; Dahlin et al. 2009; Moriarty 2012). On the religious plane, we can imagine that religious ceremonies would have taken polity elites to the different sites, including the ball court at Trinidad, and that this mobility could have integrated the population of the peripheries. The occurrence of large politico-ritual ceremonies, presumably under the direction of Motul’s royalty and elite, at peripheral sites within the Motul polity is supported by Moriarty’s (2012) discovery of rich middens next to the Trinidad ball court that may represent the remains of periodic feasts for large numbers of people.
Although some scholars argue that Classic Maya political administrations were bureaucratic, a comparison of Classic Maya officialdom with early to modern bureaucracies found few similarities. Three critical features characterize Classic Maya administration: 1) Maya officials were political-ecclesiastical or noble priests who were promoted to increasingly higher levels of political office during their lifetimes; 2) the system was hierarchical with two to four levels of elite officials, including the divine ruler (the k’uhul ajaw), the ti’sakhuun, the sajal, the ajk’uhuun, the yajawk’ahk’, the lakam (the only possibly non-elite post); and 3) the system was intensely personal; superior elite sponsors or patrons “owned” lower officials or priests even after the sponsors had died.2
Epigraphy provides details about differences in Classic political administration among lowland polities. Several polychrome vases depict divine lords of Motul with two ajk’uhuuns, one shows a divine lord with a sajal, and another shows a divine lord with three lakams. In contrast, Palenque texts record not only that the k’uhul ajaw had a ti’sakhuun, several sajals, and multiple ajk’uhuuns but also that sajals could have several ajk’uhuuns under their control (Zender 2004). The reconstruction at Palenque suggests parallel and noncentralized administrative hierarchies. In contrast, at Motul de San Jose, we have no such statements of hierarchy among the ajk’uhuuns, sajals, and lakams, and they may have all been directly under the supervision of the divine ruler. Lakams may have been found only within the large settlements, such as Motul de San Jose, because we believe they were district or neighborhood officials in charge of levying taxes (Lacadena 2008). In contrast to the situation at Motul, the lakam title does not appear at Palenque. The ajk’uhuuns may have been the divine lord’s “prime ministers” because they are the most visible on polychrome vessels, especially on Ik’ Style vessels (Coe and Kerr 1997; Tokovinine and Zender 2012). As such, they may have resided within the royal courts, such as in the Acropolis of Motul. In contrast, the sajals (which have been interpreted as governors of secondary centers) may have been located in subsidiary centers such as Trinidad, Kante’t’u’ul, Buenavista-Nuevo San Jose, and Chako-kot within the Motul polity, either as full - or part-time residents. However, further investigation is needed to answer the question of whether sajals, ajk’uhuuns, or other types of officials lived in secondary centers.
Two major institutions supported Classic Maya political administration: the oikoi, or great royal households, which varied in composition and size in each polity; and the tribute-tax system, which consisted of goods levied from commoners as tax and items (probably social valuables) extracted from conquered polities as tribute.
Archaeological evidence from Motul de San Jose uncovered further details of the oikos and of the tribute-tax economies. We have found evidence that members of three social ranks lived in the capital based on an analysis of architectural volume: Rank 1 royal elites, Rank 2 secondary elites, and Rank 3 commoners (Foias et al. 2012). A number of ritual economic activities took place in all households, but evidence of ritual activity was especially prominent in the royal houses (Rank 1). Members of these royal oikoi generally produced social valuables, and they obtained staples (such as corn flour and wild animal meat) through taxation of the commoner stratum (Foias et al. 2012; Emery 2012). The tax system is revealed in a low density of grinding tools in the royal and secondary-elite households at Motul and a higher density at commoner plaza groups (Foias et al. 2012). This suggests that taxes in Motul consisted at least in part of ground corn or cornmeal that passed from low-level households to royal compounds. A similar pattern suggests that commoners hunted wild animals and paid tax in meat to the royal households (Emery 2012). In contrast, cloth production at Motul was more common in the royal and secondary-elite groups than in lower-rank ones, supporting the importance of the palace economy in which royal ladies, ladies-in-waiting, kin members, or attached individuals would create wealth in cloth for the ruling and elite households (Halperin 2008; Emery 2012).
Instead of being static and timeless, ancient political institutions were built on contestations and compromises between different competitors and factions. Some Classic polities, such as Copan and Chichen Itza may have had councils, and these councils may have formed another power bloc in addition to the k’uhul ajaw and his royal household, the political-ecclesiastical administration (where the concerns of the priesthood might have been foremost), and the warriors and courtiers who were also of aristocratic rank. Contention among these power blocs might have affected the success of polities during the Classic period.
Public performances were especially important to ancient Maya politics because, as Inomata (2006) writes, the state was what was visible in “the tangible images of the ruler’s body, state buildings, and collective acts” (805). Significant competition within the Late Classic aristocracy reinforced the need for public performance to sustain claims to power. The Classic Maya did not leave a complete record in their writings or art of the types or nature of political ceremonies. Public stone monuments rarely show more than one main figure (the divine ruler), so we are left with only fragmentary scenes painted on polychrome vases like the Ik’ Style vessels produced at Motul de San Jose and the (still-unique) palace murals from Bonampak. Only certain ceremonies are recorded on the polychrome vases: dances, presentations and/or sacrifices of captives, small court reunions, adornment ceremonies (in preparation for dance, war, or other state ritual), and tribute offerings. These present a narrow range of concerns and claims to power of Classic Maya elites (see Reents-Budet, Ball, and Kerr 1994; Reents-Budet et al. 2012; Halperin and Foias 2010). Religious themes dominate this art, while captive presentation and tribute presentation are secondary concerns. However, there may be a fine line between the latter two; in one case, the warriors’ regalia are placed on the throne in front of the victorious k’uhul ajaw.
More important, Ik’ Style vessels were used as a strategy to form an elite group identity; the ruler is depicted in much more equal terms with his courtiers than in stone monuments. The ruler is portrayed in simple attire, often sitting or standing on the same level with the members of his court. This visual relative equality served a double purpose. First, it understated the political, economic, and social differences between the royal figure and the rest of the nobles, thus creating a unity and a recognition of the high status of elites. Second, it tied the nobles to the king because they may have competed for the recognition and honor of being seen and painted with the divine ruler (see also Foias 2007). This understatement of the political, economic, and social power of the ruler in the Ik’ Style vases stands in stark contrast to the great wealth controlled by Motul’s royals that has been uncovered in our excavations (Foias et al. 2012).
Performances and discourses recorded in Classic Maya art media, including large stone monuments, small polychrome painted vases, and tiny figurines, provide evidence of political maneuvering through slightly different claims to power. Tiny figurines found in many Motul households display many different animals and supernaturals that are generally distinct from those identified in stone monuments (Halperin 2007). Often, these figurines immortalize nonroyal women (and to a lesser extent nonroyal men) from different walks of life. The two most common female figurine types at Motul portray a woman wearing a broad-brimmed hat characteristic of traders and pilgrims or a woman holding a basket/bowl of tamales. The figure of the k’uhul ajaw is also present, but it is not dominant. In contrast to these figurines, Ik’ Style polychromes depict the elite “class” on more equal terms with the divine king. Finally, the “public transcript” of stone monuments is almost exclusively about the k’uhul ajaw and his religious power. But ritual themes appear in all three media. Although themes representing state ideology occur in household art, they are not the only ones seen there. The different themes found in stone monuments, polychrome vessels, and figurines lead us to conclude that Classic Maya society at Motul de San Jose was partly, but unevenly, integrated. Differences between the themes in figurines and polychrome pottery excavated at different sites are also worthy of notice. For example, at Aguateca, a Petexbatun site that was burned and abandoned in the ninth century AD, male warrior imagery is the most common theme of household figurines (Triadan 2007), which may suggest that conflict was of great concern to everyone, not just the ruler and the state.
Commoners are generally not viewed as being central to the political process, but recent research has brought to light a variety of types of commoner households and communities and the different degrees of involvement of these groups with other political entities. If the lowest political position of lakam was indeed non-elite, as Lacadena (2008) suggests, then some commoners were formally included in the political process. Councils and assemblies were a common feature of Postclassic Maya kingdoms, and they may also have existed during the Classic period; the possible council house at Copan provides intriguing evidence of this. Councils may have included commoner representatives who had a voice in the political process. However, regardless of whether non-elite administrative positions or commoner assemblies existed, archaeological evidence shows that commoners had political power through their control over a majority of agricultural land (Pyburn et al. 1998) and over a large portion of the manufacture of daily items (Foias 2002, 2004; McAnany 2010). Even more important, the distribution of ritual objects among commoner households at Copan and at other Maya sites intimates that some non-elite had a modicum of ritual power, which possibly could be translated into political power (Gonlin 2007; Blackmore 2011). Other evidence of the political power of commoner communities is provided by settlements such as Barton Ramie, which had the capacity to survive for long periods after breaking off from more dominant sites (Yaeger 2003b). Another line of inquiry into the political power of commoners considers signs of resistance from low-status groups during the transition from the Classic to the Postclassic (Joyce, Bustamente, and Levine 2001; Joyce and Weller 2007). A final thread looks at commoner mobility (their power to vote with their feet) during the Classic period as another form of political power (Inomata 2004). In light of this recent research, the interconnections between commoners and political institutions deserve a great deal more attention in the future.
Although it is quite likely that the political life of the ancient Maya was much more rich and colorful than the picture I have painted in this book, I hope that I have been able to at least impart two points: the archaeological, epigraphic, and ethnohistorical records are full of political evidence and archaeologists can reconstruct a great deal from that evidence, although much remains to be discovered.
Archaeology is the only social science that can provide direct evidence for long-term processes of change in noncapitalist societies for which few or no written documents have survived. No other area of the world has the richness of data that is available for the Classic Maya, and this affords us a unique opportunity to reconstruct the details and dynamics of the politics of different Classic kingdoms along multiple scales, from the micro scale of commoner individuals and households to the macro scale of polity and suprapolity interactions.
What have we learned about the Classic Maya? We know that both cooperation and competition were at work, paralleling what political anthropologists call “power to” and “power over.” Although the Late Classic political history of the southern Maya lowlands was volatile, long-term patterns of cooperation also existed. For example, over several generations Motul de San Jose allied itself with nearby polities along the San Pedro Martir River. But the conflicts that Classic stone monuments chronicle illuminate competition between the royal families of different polities and fierce competition among secondary elites within some (if not all) polities. Such competition led to the creation of the elaborate and beautiful Ik’ Style polychromes in the Motul de San Jose realm. These vases depicted the involvement of a variety of nonroyal aristocrats with Motul’s dynasts. The heavy concentration of Classic Maya artistic and textual records on rituals brings to the forefront not only efforts of active political power blocs to legitimize their power through persuasion but also the fractures among these power blocs: the state ideology promoted in stone monuments referred mostly to different gods from those immortalized in either the Ik’ Style polychromes or Motul’s figurines.
Ancient Maya elites used a number of strategies to achieve their political goals. Some of these were more successful than others, and these variable degrees of success are responsible for the dynamics of the Classic period. Although the religious foundations of divine kingship were quite strong, Maya rulers also relied on economic and military sources of power. Their control of segments of the economy gave Maya rulers and/or elites access to a fund that could be used to pursue more political power or centralize their power. Polities and aristocrats were involved in the economy in various ways, for example through the landed estates they controlled, through the tax-tribute system, or through the sponsoring of master artist-scribes who produced highly charged and hypertrophic valuables (e. g., Ik’ Style polychromes). And of course rulers and elites had varying degrees of access to each of these avenues to power. Although we do not know how Maya armies were organized during the Classic period, military power is relevant because many monuments show rulers standing over captives or capturing the enemy. Nevertheless, the low impact of war during the Classic period and the ability of Maya commoners to vote with their feet hint that military power was not as important as religious prowess. Just as important, Maya dynasts gained power through their control over an administrative cadre of officials that probably varied in size and structure from state to state and over time within the same state. The ability to maintain such control also varied by rulers and over time.
Although the latest models of Maya dynamics envision political history as cycling between fragmentation and unification (e. g., Marcus 1993), the present study shows that different sizes and different kinds of states coexisted in the Classic period and probably also in the preceding Preclassic and subsequent Postclassic periods. All in all, the present study makes clear that the political power of the Classic Maya was precarious and fragile because so many political actors were involved, and the dynamics of political power in this period were shaped by this fragility. Political power emerged from the practices of individuals and groups, rather than from “a repertoire of [fully grown] types” (A. Smith 2003, 101-2). Examining political power at different scales—from the micro scale of individuals, households, communities to the middle scale of power blocs, administrations, tax-tribute systems, and palace economies to the macro scale of the polity itself and its relations with other similar entities—can illuminate the complexities and intricacies of political power, and the contention for power between different individuals, factions, and institutions in each Maya state of the Classic period. Although many questions remain, I hope this work opens the door to further study of an archaeology of power.
Notes
1. It is possible that the size of the Motul polity fluctuated, contracting and expanding with the successes and failures of its Late Classic rulers, whose feats are described in detail by Tokovinine and Zender (2012) and Reents-Budet et al. (2012).
2. Tokovinine and Zender (2012) also remark that each new ruler probably named his own ajk’uhuuns, so the entire top administration at Motul de San Jose changed with each ruler.
World History
