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Classic Maya Polities of the Southern Lowlands
Integration, Interaction, Dissolution
By Damien B. Marken, James L. Fitzsimmons University Press of Colorado
Copyright © 2015 University Press of Colorado
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-60732-413-3
CHAPTER 1
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 derived from the Archaic and Classical Greek concept of polis. At times misrepresented as a unilateral equivalent to the Western concept of "city-state," the Greek polis is more accurately described as a specific form, or type, of city-state (see Hansen 2000a). Anthropologically defined as a small, self-governing (though again not necessarily independent) state composed of a capital and its surrounding hinterland, the polis has two primary, though overlapping and interrelated, meanings in Classical descriptions of Greek political geography. Mogens Hansen (2006:56) notes that in written sources a polis was simultaneously conceived as a settlement and a community, though both meanings encompassed multiple potential sub-meanings (depending on context). This duality highlights the fact that the poleis of Archaic and Classical Greece were not simply political communities but the convergence of specific forms of political, religious, economic, and social organization and integration (ibid.:115). As Hansen (ibid.:146) concludes: "The two most important aspects of the polis were its small size and the unbreakable connection between town and state. With very few possible exceptions, every polis-town with its hinterland was a polis-state, and every polis-state was centered on a polis-town. Most of the other essential features follow from these two characteristics" (emphasis added).
While there are definite similarities (particularly in size) and differences between poleis and Mesoamerican political entities, this idea of the inseparable cognitive link between place and political identification is of particular import to the present discussion (Mann 1993:56; Marcus 1983:206–8; Yaeger 2003; see also Ferguson and Mansbach 1996: 87–91, 144; Oates 1986:24). The duality of meaning Hansen identifies can be taken a step further. Ethnohistoric, archaeological, and epigraphic data from Mesoamerica suggest that emic conceptions of polity in fact encompassed three intertwined aspects of political and social integration and interaction:
1. Polity as a place, a center and its associated hinterlands, with which polity members identified
2. Polity as a community of people that included both urban and rural populations (and did not always make such a distinction)
3. Polity as a political authority (a government).
From this perspective, the fundamental physical and social features of Mesoamerican polities were the capital center, usually housing the residence of the ruler, as well as administrative and religious institutions, and the people and communities that owed political affiliation to that ruler (as well as to each other). In Postclassic Central Mexico, these political and social units manifest as the altepetl and calpolli (depending on size and location; i.e., urban or rural, neighborhood or town) (e.g., Calnek 1976; Hicks 2012; Hirth 2003; Marcus 1983; Smith 2008, 2010:147, 2011: 57–58; Smith and Novic 2012:5–7; York et al. 2011:2409). More often than not, these polities were relatively small in both physical size and population; Tenochtitlan was actually quite atypical of Aztec cities (Smith 2008:1). Moreover, Tenochtitlan was the capital of an extensive and complex network of variably sized polities bound together by alliance and conquest to form a much larger polity. Although the Aztec period altepetl was a largely self-governing entity, complete external autonomy is not an essential attribute of polity. The degree of autonomy of an individual polity can wax and wane throughout its history (e.g., Hansen 2000b; Yoffee 1988). This "nesting" of polities at multiple spatial and social scales (Ferguson and Mansbach 1996) is further elaborated below.
Returning to the Maya area, ethnographic research and the available ethnohistories that reference indigenous political organization tend to focus on people and their affiliation to place, not necessarily territory (although some of the ethnohistoric data is conflicting) (e.g., Jones 1986, 1998; McBryde 1947; Okoshi-Harada 2012:293; Roys 1957; Tokovinine 2013:123; Tozzer 1941; Vogt 1969; see also Campbell 2009; Glatz 2009; Liu and Chen 2003; Smith 2005 for comparative examples). This is not to say that boundaries and control over specific locations and resources were not central concerns, particularly at the local level (e.g., Chase and Chase 1998; Iannone 2006; Okoshi-Harada 2012:289; Roys 1957; Scherer and Golden 2009; see also Golden 2010). Ancient rulers were likely well aware of the territorial limits of their political authority; boundaries may have been unmarked, "but an incursion by a rival people beyond the accepted limits was a challenge" both sides would have recognized (Ferguson and Mansbach 1996:83). The point to stress, however, is merely that the modern conceptions of territory that accompany nation-states were largely absent in Mesoamerica until at least the colonial period (see Okoshi-Harada 2012; Smith 2005; Tokovinine 2013).
Turning to the inscriptions, the variable distribution of Emblem Glyphs and toponyms suggests that the Classic Maya did make some distinction between place and political affiliation in terms of personal identification (much like the Greek polis discussed above; see ibid.). This is evidenced by rival dynastic institutions centered at different places and toponymic references to "discrete" areas within the "domain" of specific Emblem Glyphs (Berlin 1958; Stuart and Houston 1994). Nevertheless, however political affiliation was expressed by elites across the lowlands, it seems likely that for many Classic Maya the ideas of city and state were inseparable; capitals did not exist independent of their rural populations, and hinterlands did not function as such without an urban center (or at least a complementary node of sociopolitical interaction).
Scale, Identity, and Networks of Polity
Considering the previous discussion, polities can be of variable size and complexity, not only cross-culturally but within a given region. Polities can range from chiefdoms to localized city-states and regional states to the multi-regional empires of the Inka, Vijanagara and Rome. Introducing a recent comparative volume on polity landscapes, Steven Falconer and Charles Redman distinguish between complex polities and state-level authority (Falconer and Redman 2009:4). This separation of polity, as a sociopolitical entity, from state-level authority is more forcibly echoed by Yale Ferguson and Richard Mansbach, who instead emphasize that "a polity has a distinct identity; a capacity to mobilize persons and their resources for political purposes, that is value satisfaction; and a degree of institutionalization and hierarchy" (Ferguson and Mansbach 1996:34). Their extremely broad definition, however, includes kinship and other small-scale social groups, as well as localized community and neighborhood organizations.
Despite the fact that we consider household and community — each with a rich body of theory designating its appropriate use — to be better terms at such small spatial scales, anthropological perspectives on household and community organization and integration are nevertheless fully compatible and align with the overlapping and "nested" conception of polities Ferguson and Mansbach describe (see Cohen 1985; de Montmollin 1988, 1989; Hirth 1993; Manzanilla and Chapdelaine 2009; Parkinson 2002; Smith 2010; Wilk and Ashmore 1988; Wilk and Netting 1984; Yaeger and Canuto 2000). After all, polities are composed of individuals who are generally recognized as members of a particular household(s), and that household (or its individual members) often shares communal interest(s) or commitment(s) with other households (or individuals) with whom it interacts. Household and community interests and commitments (whether based on kinship, residence, ethnicity, class, gender, religion, politics, or occupation) at times may be at odds with the goals of centralized political authority (or with each other, for that matter). As Ferguson and Mansbach (1996:13) stress: "The state is only one of many collective symbols with which people identify and to which they are loyal. Individuals are subject to ccrosscuttin pressures arising from diverse identities and loyalties. Loyalties to self and extensions of self — family, clan, caste, village, tribe, city, nation, homeland, church, political party, class, and so on — undermine the political capacity of officials and compete with loyalty to the Westphalian polity." In this sense, the integrated internal and external organization of polities closely resembles Michael Mann's (1986:16–17, 1993:56) description of societies as ever-changing, overlapping and intersecting socio-spatial networks of interaction and power while concurrently placing greater emphasis on the multi-scalar potential of individual and collective identities (Ferguson and Mansbach 1996:32). Even highly complex polities, such as empires and regional states, were invariably composed of spatially and administratively smaller political units of varying autonomy, as well as less politically defined, but nevertheless socially vital, groups and organizations (figure 1.1; e.g., Barth 2000; Cohen 1985; Doyle 1986; Emberling 1997; Smith 2003b; for the Maya, see discussions by Emery and Foias 2012 and LeCount and Yaeger 2010b). Urban and rural communities, gender and kinship networks, class affiliations, ethnic groups, and occupational and religious orders all potentially played critical roles in individual (as well as inter-) polity organization and development.
It is the socio-spatial organization of the networked relationships between the institutions of government and these "components of polity" — as well as the social webs that spawn and link (or separate) these components — that ultimately create, maintain, and negotiate polity identity and polity action through their cooperation, competition, and integration. Polities may have been ruled by kings or queens, but they were populated by groups and individuals whose personal traditions, responsibilities, and desires played a fundamental role in shaping their own identity, as well as the decisions of the various socioeconomic networks in which they participated (e.g., Barnes 2007; Yoffee 2005). By viewing Maya polities not as fixed entities but as multiple sets of dynamic and overlapping social, economic, and ideological relationships (Latour 2005), the study of Classic period political organization can avoid many of the pitfalls of static, neo-evolutionary conceptions of the "state" (Campbell 2009:823, 839; Wolf 1990:590). More important, such a network perspective reorients archaeological research to more closely track the varying recursive relationships and power differentials between the groups and institutions that make up polity, along with the multi-scalar study of their articulation and intersection. This is what Edward Schortman and Wendy Ashmore (2012:1) summarize as "the exercise of relational agency by diverse agents operating at multiple, overlapping spatial scales."
Relations of Power
Multi-scalar investigation of preindustrial sociopolitical networks requires a material framework for evaluating interactions between their socio-spatial components, as well as the cultural contexts and meanings of those interactions. The formation of group identities typically includes their juxtaposition against other groups (Insoll 2007). Negotiation or even struggles for power between these groups, with civic and non-governmental institutions, and the power relations that emerge from these interactions are "rooted deep in the social nexus, not reconstituted 'above' society as a supplementary structure" (Foucault 1983:222). Congruent with recent trends in anthropological archaeology (e.g., Brumfiel 1992; Dobres and Robb 2000; Dornan 2002; Knapp and van Dommelen2008; Pauketat 2001; Saitta 1994), many of the contributors examine the materialization of power and its enactment at or across various spatial scales.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Classic Maya Polities of the Southern Lowlands by Damien B. Marken, James L. Fitzsimmons. Copyright © 2015 University Press of Colorado. Excerpted by permission of University Press of Colorado.
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