Political Regimes at Calakmul

Summary

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

The history of the Kanu’l dynasty and their Late Classic regime at Calakmul has been researched extensively since the 1990s. The most recent insights into the earlier episodes of Kanu’l politics have emphasized that their seat of power during the Early Classic was Dzibanche and that it was a powerful faction that took power in Calakmul in the early seventh century AD. The Kanu’l may have been in close contact with local political entities for quite some time before their formal establishment at Calakmul, steadily building an exhaustive network of allies in the central Peten. Settlement data from Calakmul’s center favors a model of multiple powerful social units cohabiting in the site during the Kanu’l’s heyday. Several large residential compounds with palace-like features surround the city’s principal administrative and religious precinct and may indicate a multi-factional political system during the Late Classic. Some of those factions may have been related to groups mentioned in pre-Kanu’l texts at Calakmul and other sites in the region, or Late Classic foreign allies who sent representatives to live close to the Kanu’l court.

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): 37191.0