Classic Maya Polities of the Southern Lowlands

Integration, Interaction, Dissolution

Damien B. Marken, James L. Fitzsimmons, Damien B. Marken, James L. Fitzsimmons

• Publisher: University Press of Colorado
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781607324133
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

Classic Maya Polities of the Southern Lowlands investigates Maya political and social structure in the southern lowlands, assessing, comparing, and interpreting the wide variation in Classic period Maya polity and city composition, development, and integration. Traditionally, discussions of Classic Maya political organization have been dominated by the debate over whether Maya polities were centralized or decentralized. With new, largely unpublished data from several recent archaeological projects, this book examines the premises, strengths, and weaknesses of these two perspectives before moving beyond this long-standing debate and into different territory.

The volume examines the articulations of the various social and spatial components of Maya polity—the relationships, strategies, and practices that bound households, communities, institutions, and dynasties into enduring (or short-lived) political entities. By emphasizing the internal negotiation of polity, the contributions provide an important foundation for a more holistic understanding of how political organization functioned in the Classic period.Contributors includeFrancisco Estrada Belli, James L. Fitzsimmons, Sarah E. Jackson, Caleb Kestle, Brigitte Kovacevich, Allan Maca, Damien B. Marken, James Meierhoff, Timothy Murtha, Cynthia Robin, Alexandre Tokovinine, and Andrew Wyatt.

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Introducing Maya Polities

Models and Definitions

DAMIEN B. MARKEN AND JAMES L. FITZSIMMONS

Problems relating to the size, juxtaposition, and boundedness of social integration in the eastern lowlands remind us that the social scientist must be theoretically and empirically equipped to deal systematically with scale factors. He or she must be able to detect relationships among variables operating at the household level, through the local and regional levels, up to the 250,000 km² macroregion, and in Mesoamerica as a whole. One must see how actions at one level might accumulate into stresses that are dealt (or not) at the next level. One must be able to specify how many households, over what area, were altered [if at all] because of higher-level changes. (Blanton et al. 1981:178)

For nearly a century, discussions of Classic Maya political organization have been dominated by various forms of the same debate: to what degree were Maya polities centralized or decentralized? The collected authors examine the premises, strengths, and weaknesses of these two perspectives while strongly advocating a move beyond this largely sterile debate. The relatively recent proliferation of archaeological investigation into the functional makeup of preindustrial states and complex polities has increasingly demonstrated the highly dynamic and variable nature of these ancient political and social units (e.g., Bernbeck 2008; Campbell 2009; Glatz 2009; Janusek 2008; Pauketat 2001; Smith 2005).

Despite the advance in our understanding of Classic Maya political interaction gained by the decipherment of the hieroglyphic record, scholars remain largely unsuccessful in describing and modeling what a Classic Maya polity actually looked like on the ground. This volume is the outgrowth of a roundtable held in the fall of 2009 at Dumbarton Oaks in Washington, DC. Both the roundtable and the volume bring together a group of younger scholars actively investigating Maya political and social structure in the southern lowlands to assess, compare, and interpret the wide variation in Classic period Maya polity and city composition, development, and integration. Focusing on convergences (and divergences) among household, settlement, and epigraphic data in various areas of the Maya world, the chapters in this volume explore several avenues contributing to a more complete comprehension of what constituted Classic Maya political units. Recurring themes discussed range from internal polity identities and organization to polity boundaries and larger extra-polity networks. From this fundamental starting point, the ways political interactions between polities were structured—including their social and historical consequences—can be more accurately studied. Until we better understand how the internal building blocks of polity articulated, interpretations of larger-scale political interaction will remained flawed. The chapters in this volume represent a significant step in that direction.

Theorizing Polity

So how exactly is the term polity to be defined? At its simplest, “polity” can be defined as an autonomous, although not necessarily independent, political unit with some form of a spatially centralized authority structure. In recent years, many social scientists have adopted a similarly broad definition as a more neutral and less loaded alternative to “the state.” Few archaeologists would deny guilt at having employed the term polity in conversations of ancient statecraft. We feel, however, that the theoretical concept of polity has more to offer archaeological reconstructions of sociopolitical change than simply an alternate signifier for “the state.” More specifically, cross-cultural comparison of a wide variety of political formations can help model a continuum of Classic Maya polity size, form, organization, and history.

In the social sciences, the term polity is originally...