Statecraft, Politics, and Kingship in the Northern Maya Lowlands, with a Focus on the Puuc Region

Summary

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

This paper examines the nature of northern Maya lowland statecraft, politics, and kingship and how they differ and parallel that of the southern lowlands. In keeping with the goal of the symposium this paper focuses on the concept of “regime” recognizing the Maya, especially when considering the northern and southern areas, created distinct political organizations. The northern Maya lowlands regimes evolved differently from their southern cousins in language, literacy, elite material culture, royal authority, and political structure. This paper gives special attention to the long history of the Maya in the Puuc region, considering the development of the Puuc Maya regime and those of the larger northern Maya lowlands through the organizers’ lens of “citizenry” (social practices resulting in a shared political identity). Puuc “citizenry” is defined and interpreted by the use of archaeological site data as well as lidar data, focusing on regional questions of settlement. The regime is not based on a single site or a single line of evidence. We think this provides a more accurate understanding of what went on regarding the evolution of a northern regime and how it can be understood in terms of Maya citizens in other regimes.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

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

Keywords

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 36533.0