On the basis of the foregoing summary and analysis of data, we outline the shape of an answer to the question of the nature of the Bayal “conquest” at Seibal. First, Bayal looks special in part because Tepejilote does not. Clearly, part of the answer to why Bayal stands out is that the Tepejilote-cum-Transition phases exhibit relative impoverishment in sculpture, epigraphy, architecture, ceramics, and burials; that is, Tepejilote is more “non-Classic” than Bayal in significant respects. A relatively impoverished Tepejilote seems real, witness the destruction proclaimed by Dos Pilas Ruler 3, but other contributing factors may include sampling bias and SAP reconstruction imperatives for the latest architecture.
Second, only a Late Classic Tepejilote immigration can be documented with considerable certainty. It is an initial reoccupation migration, rather than a partial (elite) or complete (replacement) migration (Snow 1997), as shown by sterile soil layers and absence of Middle Classic occupation preceding it, by the enormous amount of new construction, new house plan, rapid growth in population, and by high ceramic counts (Sabloff 1975: 234; Tourtellot 1988b: 256, 272, 392, 394, 422). Already the Late Classic Petexbatun-Seibal region was stepping away from its Tikal-centric identity and was developing along its own course of architectural, ceramic, and sculptural evolution—perhaps even the “long hair” trait— under the Petexbatun kingdom.
Third, the only provable conquest at Seibal is not Bayal, but the surprise discovery of an earlier one in a. d. 735 for which we do have broadly trumpeted events, date, actors, point source, and consequences. The later Bayal “conquest,” on the other hand, has now become more complex and less certain. We know who was probably involved (Wat’ul Chatel), and whence he may have come (Ucanal), but it is not stated that there was a war, who lost, in what kind of an event, or what happened to the loser. For a leader who publicly flaunted his personage, he is surprisingly reticent about how he might have gained the throne. This alone should make us suspicious of an armed conquest against opposition, and ready to consider alternatives. House, burial, domestic pottery, and artifact types hardly change, but closely linked sculpture and elite ceramics do, as the defining criteria.
Besides foundering on the Petexbatun data, a number of systemic problems exist within the theories that invoke long-distance migrations, whether of elite groups or whole populations. Underlying them is a degree of essentialism, as if the Classic Maya were essentially like Tikal, never mind Yaxchilan in the “west.” Nor are non-Classic foreign “sources” in turn unitary. Furthermore, many of these theories smack of unexamined biological determinism, as if Classic and non-Classic Maya cultures were carried by the biology of their origins: ethnic biology was destiny. The proposal for a new Epiclassic world-religion (Ringle et al. 1998) has in its favor the strong recognition that new ideas also moved by means other than conquest and migration.
World History
