The Coming of Kings in the Belize River Valley

Summary

Twenty five years have passed since Linda Schele and David Friedel presented their thoughts on the origins and establishment of the institution of kingship in their book "A Forest of Kings." Their historical reconstruction of Cerros illustrates the steps taken by early rulers to establish and institutionalize a hierarchical social system. Through the empirical data from Cerros, they artfully illuminate how the construction and display of symbols of royal power on monumental buildings coupled with elaborate ritual displays, allowed emergent kings to solidify their newly defined role within the community. In this paper, we present data from the Belize River valley pertaining to the "Coming of Kings." We assess how emerging kings established and legitimized their authority through the construction of monumental architecture, public art, ritual deposits, elaborate burials, and symbolically charged portable objects. We then compare these data to the Cerros trajectory laid out in "A Forest of Kings."

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This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

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

Keywords

Spatial Coverage