Tangled Web: Political Pragmatics in the Mopan River Valley

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Regimes of the Ancient Maya" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

We explore the pragmatics of Classic Maya politics in the Mopan River valley of western Belize during the Classic period. Drawing on Okoshi-Harada’s (2012) reconstruction of sixteenth-century Maya political dynamics and Inomata’s (2006) view of polities created through the interaction among social agents in specific historical and spatial contexts, we see Classic Maya political dynamics as anchored less in territorial control than power over people, as established through face-to-face interactions, public performances, and coercive strong-arm tactics. Rather than a contiguous zone of control, polities were demarcated by a ruler’s jurisdictional power over allied or subjugated headmen who had direct control over land and people. Because Maya politics were personal, the ways in which authority was communicated and demands were made to headmen differed, both through time and, at any given time, space. Using data from the closely spaced centers of Xunantunich, Actuncan, and Buenavista del Cayo, we argue that the rulers of Xunantunich—as proxy for the larger kingdom of Naranjo—employed political theater and threat of warfare to become locally dominant early in the Late Classic period. Their control was never complete, however, and within a few generations, older polities centered at Actuncan and Buenavista del Cayo regained independence.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Regimes of the Ancient Maya   •
• Society for American Archaeology 88th Annual Meeting, Portland, OR (2023)

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Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 35780.0