Reorienting Frontiers and Borderlands: Recent Research on the Usumacinta River

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Frontiers and borderlands are often conceptualized as places of precarity, where uncertainty characterizes communities outside the purview of authority. In contrast, borders evoke the presence of a reinforced authority where physical and political structures have been put in place to fortify a territory. However, these approaches often simplify or distill complex social realities which focus on inside-out perspectives of state authority and political structures in the ancient past.

This paper explores frontiers and borders as places for the production and expansion of community, identity, and interaction. Foregrounding the frontier as an active place of political agency this paper asks how we may reorient our interpretations of ancient territorial polities and their dominions. Investigating the interstices of Lacanja Tzeltal and Piedras Negras along the Usumacinta River provides a unique opportunity to contrast the effects of conflict and political machinations among Ancient Maya Royal courts on the countrysides, frontiers, and borders of their territories.

Drawing from archaeological excavation, survey, and Lidar derived landscape modelling this discussion posits how we may investigate variation in settlement pattering and material culture in the interstices of Lacanja Tzeltal and El Cayo, Chiapas, Mexico, two of the region’s major antagonists in the ancient past.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts   •
• Society for American Archaeology 88th Annual Meeting, Portland, OR (2023)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 37517.0