Charles Golden

Piedras Negras and Yaxchilan: Divergent Political Trajectories in Adjacent Maya Polities

espanolEn este articulo presentamos la vision sintetica y los resultados de los analices preliminares de los datos recolectados por los miembros del Proyecto Arqueologico Sierra del Lacandon (PRASL) durante los cuatro temporadas de campo, desde 2003 a 2007. Discutimos el crecimiento, el desarrollo, y la transformacion de las entidades politicas mayas del periodo Clasico de Piedras Negras, Guatemala y Yaxchilan, Mexico, ambos ubicados en la cuenca media del Rio Usumacinta. Utilizamos un metodo conjuntivo, que incluye los analisis de iconografia, epigrafia, patrones de asentamiento, la ceramica, patrones funerarios, y estilos arquitectonicos. Durante el periodo Preclasico (c. 250 a.C. � d.C. 350) los asentamientos fueron ubicados en un gran parte de la region del estudio, y Piedras Negras y Yaxchilan constituyeron solamente dos sitios entre varias comunidades Preclasicos sin una jerarquia politica entre ellos. Durante el periodo Clasico temprano (c. d.C. 350--600) las dinastias reales fueron establecidos en Piedras Negras y Yaxchilan, y las poblaciones regionales abandonaron el gran parte del paisaje y se concentraron dentro de nucleos y los alrededores del los dos sitios. Durante el periodo Clasico tardio (c. d.C. 600--810) el limite politico entre los reinos fue reocupado y transformado, volviendolo una zona fronteriza contestada. La expansion territorial culmino en guerra endemica en el siglo octavo y noveno, lo cual formo parte de la destruccion de ambas entidades politicas. EnglishIn this article we present a synthetic overview and preliminary analysis of the data collected by members of the Sierra del Lacandon Regional Archaeology Project (SLRAP) during four field seasons of research from 2003 to 2007. We examine the growth, development, and transformation of the Classic Maya polities of Piedras Negras, Guatemala, and Yaxchilan, Mexico, located in the Middle Usumacinta Basin. This analysis uses a conjunctive approach, incorporating analyses of iconography, epigraphy, settlement patterns, ceramics, mortuary patterns, and architectural styles. During the Late Preclassic period (c. 250 B.C.�A.D. 350) settlement was scattered widely across the study region and Piedras Negras and Yaxchilan were only two of a number of other equally powerful Preclassic communities. In the Early Classic period (c. A.D. 350--600) royal dynasties were established at both Piedras Negras and Yaxchilan and the population of the region became concentrated at these two sites. During the Late Classic period (c. A.D. 600--810) the political frontier between Piedras Negras and Yaxchilan was repopulated and transformed into a contested border zone surrounding a political boundary. This territorial expansion culminated in endemic warfare by the eighth century A.D., which may have ultimately led to the demise of these two Maya polities

Tecolote, Guatemala: Archaeological Evidence for a Fortified Late Classic Maya Political Border

Abstract A newly discovered system of fortifications at Tecolote, Guatemala, a Late Classic period (A.D. 600–900) Maya secondary center in the Yaxchilan polity, consists of a series of stone walls and hilltop watchtowers. The stone walls appear to have been used as foundations to secure wooden palisades, as suggested previously for other Classic Maya sites, and were used in concert with strategic settlement at the site to maximize overall defensibility. We interpret the site core of Tecolote together with its associated walls and watchtowers as part of an integrated polity-wide system of defense meant to protect the kingdom of Yaxchilan against attack from the polity of Piedras Negras. Furthermore, Tecolote and other sites along Yaxchilans northern border were used as staging grounds for attacks into the Piedras Negras kingdom. We use epigraphic and archaeological data to discuss the significance of this new find for understanding 8th-century geopolitics in the western Maya lowlands and the role of regional warfare and fortification systems in the expansion and demise of Classic polities of this region. Our analysis seeks to develop models for ancient warfare beyond the basic assessment of site-based defense.

Territory, Trust, Growth, and Collapse in Classic Period Maya Kingdoms

Drawing on theoretical understandings of the relationship between civil society and the state, the authors argue that the collapse of the kingdoms of Piedras Negras and Yaxchilan in the ninth century AD resulted from the same political processes that permitted the expansion of dynastic power in preceding centuries. Populations initially clustered around the dynastic capitals of these kingdoms, where daily spheres of interaction facilitated trust building among its residents. The image and performance of the polity was focused on the monarch, and participation in communal efforts, such as construction, warfare, and feasting, nurtured generalized trust within society as a whole, strengthening the polity. As populations expanded over the course of the Classic period and polities grew in territorial extent, spheres of interaction were more diffuse and trust-building efforts were increasingly focused on activities and individuals outside of the king and his court. The result was a breakdown of uniform trust across the kingdom and the failure of dynastic polities. Beyond a study of historical particularities in two kingdoms, this article is intended to suggest ways to more broadly frame interpretations of political processes in Maya polities within the broader context of ancient and modern complex societies worldwide. The model may also be applicable in other cultural contexts where emergent states contended with the challenges of maintaining coherency across an expanding territory.

FRAYED AT THE EDGES: COLLECTIVE MEMORY AND HISTORY ON THE BORDERS OF CLASSIC MAYA POLITIES

Abstract This article explores social memory and history as they pertain particularly to secondary political centers on the edges of the Classic Maya kingdoms of Piedras Negras and Yaxchilan. Over the course of the Late Classic period (a.d. 600–900) the rulers of Maya polities in the Usumacinta River basin increasingly relied on the subordinate lords who governed these secondary centers to patrol and control the boundaries of their territories. For the rulers of any state, formulating an appropriate and coherent history to guide social memory is a critical political act for maintaining the cohesion of the political community. But as the Classic period progressed, client lords were increasingly permitted a formerly royal prerogative; they were accorded their own inscribed monuments. The monuments, together with associated ritual performances, were an integral part of the construction of history and collective memory in local communities and allowed secondary nobles to restructure social memory for their own interests. This trend, in turn, increased the potential for royal history and authority to be contested throughout the kingdom. Through several case studies this paper examines the ways that subordinate nobles could contest social memory and history sanctioned by primary rulers and the ways in which kings acted to maintain the reins of history and memory.

Danse Macabre: Death, Community, and Kingdom at El Kinel, Guatemala

We explore the inhumation (and occasional exhumation) of the dead within the framework of ritual practice at El Kinel, Guatemala. Over the course of this chapter, we argue that mortuary rites served to both (re)constitute society at El Kinel and reified that community’s participation within the greater Yaxchilan polity of the eighth century AD. To make our case, we reconstruct the ideology of these mortuary practices through the study of 12 burials from El Kinel. In our analysis, we draw on data from archaeology, osteology, taphonomy, iconography, ethnohistory, and ethnography. Although the veneration of ancestors and perhaps the validation of lineage are evident in our analysis, more salient in our results is a ritual tradition that reflected localized (at the level of kingdom) interpretations of pan-Maya beliefs regarding the treatment of the dead. We conclude that in the eighth century AD, funerary rites served as an integrative mechanism within the Yaxchilan kingdom, uniting king and commoner through shared ritual practice.

INTRODUCTION: MAYA ARCHAEOLOGY AND SOCIAL MEMORY

The past decade or so has witnessed a burgeoning of studies on memory, collective memory, and social memory in the humanities and social sciences (Climo and Cattell 2002; Klein 2000; Olick and Robbins 1998). Berliner (2005) employs the phrases “memory boom,” “memory craze,” and “obsession with memory” to describe the current state of affairs of social memory studies in anthropology and history. Archaeology joined in this trend, and about ten years ago many citations to the foundational literature in social memory studies (Assmann 1995; Connerton 1989; Halbwachs 1980, 1992; LeGoff 1992; Nora 1996) started to appear in connection with archaeological research on historic and prehistoric societies (Golden 2005). Studies of intersubjective personal memory and social memory as a process in ancient Mesoamerica, however, have been a bit slow to develop compared to some other contemporary topics such as landscape, materiality, embodiment, spatiality, and temporality which are entangled with memory and which can (or must) be linked in any archaeological study of social memory. Even at sites with no written texts, such as some of those treated in the present collection, this conceptual entanglement allows a reading of social memory from settlement patterns, architecture, monuments, burials, votive caches, and portable material culture (Bradley 2002; Chesson 2001; Hodder and Cessford 2004; Holtorf 1997, 2001; Van Dyke and Alcock 2003; Williams 2003). With specific regard to past Mesoamerican societies, several recent studies have begun to explore the importance of history and social memory in the everyday lives and affairs of individuals, social groups, and communities (Clark and Colman 2008; Hendon 2010; Joyce 2003; Megged 2010; Schortman and Urban 2011; Stanton and Magnoni 2008). These publications demonstrate that studies of social memory have reached a vigorous stage of development in Mesoamerican archaeology and ethnohistory, if indeed a young stage in which a coherent methodological and theoretical framework is lacking (Golden 2005:273). In this Special Section we offer a collection of papers on social memory among the ancient Lowland Maya of southeastern Mexico and northern Central America that continue this trend and will perhaps stimulate further debate with regard to methodological and theoretical elaboration. In the first paper, Miranda Stockett advocates a view of archaeological sites as spaces where human dramas unfold, stages for the enactment of power and processes of social memory through the “making, altering, and remaking” of important places during the Late to Terminal Classic transition (A.D. 650-900) in southeastern Mesoamerica, and specifically the site of Las Canoas, Honduras. She argues that this making, altering, and remaking of places in the past reflect the dynamics of the manipulation of memory for political strategy. Sonja A. Schwake and Gyles Ianonne, in the second paper, discuss ritual remains and collective memory from the Late Classic sites of Minanha and Zubin, in west-central Belize. While the former is a medium-sized major center, the latter is a minor center; both provide intriguing archaeological evidence of ritual commemorative events spanning several generations. In the third paper, Lisa J. LeCount offers a bottom-up approach to the formation of community identity and social memory at Xunantunich, in the upper Belize River valley. With a primary emphasis on domestic foodways, LeCount argues that a distinctive type of common vessel for cooking and serving became a collective symbol of social identity for the people of the Xunantunich region in the Late Classic period. These foodways, she argues, served as a powerful source of collective memory that reinforced group identity. Gyles Iannone follows with his examination of the role that collective memory plays in defining territorial boundaries and in producing and reproducing frontier identities, from the perspective of the case study of the Late Classic Minanha site in Belize. In the fifth paper, Charles Golden also examines borders, social memory, and history with reference to the peripheries of the Classic Maya kingdoms of Piedras Negras, Guatemala, and Yaxchilan, Mexico. Greg Borstede follows with an examination of social memory and sacred sites in the western Maya highlands region with examples from Jacaltenango, Guatemala. In the penultimate paper, Matthew Restall presents a historiographic essay on the politics of social memory, the writing of history of the non-Hispanic inhabitants of Yucatan, the Maya mystique, Afro-Yucatecan invisibility, and the need to bridge the social distance created by temporal and culural gaps within and between these two groups. Finally, Susan Gillespie presents a most perceptive critical overview of the contributions. We strongly agree with her that these papers demonstrate the great potential for anthropologically oriented social memory studies in Maya archaeology.

The Promise and Problem of Modeling Viewsheds in the Western Maya Lowlands

This paper addresses the benefits and challenges of modeling viewsheds with ASTER, SRTM, and AirSAR DEMs as they relate to human scale behaviors through a case study that examines the cultural and political significance of viewsheds for Precolumbian Maya rulers. The goal of this chapter is twofold: to illustrate the dramatic differences in currently available datasets for calculating viewsheds and to reflect on the implications indigenous concepts of vision and intervisibility hold for the reconstruction of ancient vistas. We conclude that movement through and vistas across the landscape participated in the construction of political power and authority in Classic period (c. 250–900 C.E.) Maya kingdoms, but that to achieve a reasonable quantitative model of these vistas the parameters of datasets available to most archaeologists are insufficient. Coarse-resolution DEMs used to model viewsheds vastly overstate the perceptible area, yet may conversely obscure areas that would otherwise be visible to a human observer. Visibility analyses have become a part of archaeological standard practice without due consideration of the cultural context of perception, or the resolution of data approximating human scales.