Revisiting Bird Jaguar and the Sajal of the Yaxchilan Kingdom

Summary

In "A Forest of Kings," Linda Schele and David Freidel painted a vivid picture of the lives and relationships of kings, queens and courtiers expressed in images and texts from the Yaxchilan kingdom during the 7th and 8th centuries AD. In the 25 years since that volume’s publication, refinements in epigraphic readings and archaeological research in the rural hinterlands surrounding Yaxchilan and neighboring capitals have greatly enriched our understanding of the political world of the Western Maya Lowlands. In this paper, Golden and Scherer explore changes in our interpretations of the realm of Bird Jaguar and his compatriots, and examine how these political relationships played out materially on the landscape of settlement, trade, and warfare across the Middle Usumacinta River Basin.

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This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Contextualizing Maya History and Archaeology Part II: Reflections on the 25th Anniversary of Forest of Kings   •
• Society for American Archaeology 80th Annual Meeting, San Francisco, CA (2015)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage