Frayed at the Edges: Insights into Classic Period (250–900 CE) Maya Political Organization from the Southeast Maya Kingdom of Copan, Honduras

Summary

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

While ongoing research has clarified much about the strategies Classic period (250–900 CE) Maya rulers used to establish, integrate, and administer their Lowland Maya kingdoms, studies of frontier zones, such as the southeast edge of the Maya area, both provide insights into Maya political organization and highlight local challenges not faced by rulers in the Maya heartland. We draw on this diversity and its implications to explore the internal organization, geographical limits, and multiethnic composition of Copan, Honduras. Investigations of regional centers, including settlements in the El Paraíso Valley, the Cucuyagua Valley, the Naco and Cacaulapa valleys, and the La Entrada region, suggest that Copan rulers faced unique challenges that demanded a wide variety of fluid and shifting administrative strategies to integrate a vast and heterogeneous hinterland. These insights, and the diversity of administrative strategies documented within a single polity, productively inform similar investigations in the Maya Lowlands where boundaries are not as clearly marked and administrative practices appear more uniform. This study supports the growing body of evidence that Maya administrative strategies were more varied and contingent than previously thought.

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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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 36124.0