Politics of the Borderlands: An Epigraphic History

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Making and Breaking Boundaries in the Maya Lowlands: Alliance and Conflict across the Guatemala–Belize Border" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

The region now divided by the national boundaries of Belize and Guatemala was once home to a broad range of political entities. Noticeably, large centers with monumental inscriptions in the western and southern portions contrast with smaller and far less textually verbose sites in the Belize Valley. Although this makes for a clouded and imbalanced historical context, the evidence we have for the political dynamics between these two styles of institution through the seventh, eighth, and ninth centuries can play a critical role in understanding important cultural and social developments through this time. Even if many issues remain unresolved, the key contribution of historical archaeology lies in its ability to generate new questions for each of its two component epistemologies—the textual reflecting on the material and vice versa.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)   •
• Making and Breaking Boundaries in the Maya Lowlands: Alliance and Conflict across the Guatemala–Belize Border

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Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 25519