Continuities and Transformations: A Sociopolitical History of the Central E-Group of Yaxnohcah, Campeche, Mexico

Summary

This is an abstract from the "New and Emerging Perspectives on the Bajo el Laberinto Region of the Maya Lowlands, Part 2" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Archaeological investigations at the ancient Maya site of Yaxnohcah, located in the Bajo el Laberinto region of the Maya lowlands, have demonstrated that the construction, maintenance, and elaboration of its central E-Group-style plaza-pyramid complex was integral to the multimillennial development of sociopolitical complexity and urbanism at this site. Often centrally located, E-Groups were generationally altered to meet the demands of increasingly complex lowland societies. Through this process they came to embody specific generational realities and sociopolitical necessities, often reflecting larger contemporary sociocultural trends. Our research indicates that the form, alignment and possibly the function of the Yaxnohcah E-Group changed substantially through time, exemplifying the dynamic agency of the peoples of Yaxnohcah and the flexible evolution of the mental and material schemata of lowland E-Groups. This paper synthesizes two-millennia-plus (800 BCE–1250 CE) of excavation data from the central E-Group of the ancient Maya site of Yaxnohcah to identify important moments of material and sociopolitical transformation. We then analyze this sociopolitical history in relation to larger contemporaneous sociopolitical dynamics in this important region, specifically in relation to the prominent neighboring site of Calakmul.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• New and Emerging Perspectives on the Bajo el Laberinto Region of the Maya Lowlands, Part 2   •
• Society for American Archaeology 89th Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA (2024)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 40114.0