Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Contributors
- List of Figures
- List of Tables
- 1 The Ancient Maya of Mexico: Reinterpreting the Past of the Northern Maya Lowlands
- Part I THE PRECLASSIC PERIOD
- 2 The Origins of the Mesoamerican Ballgame: A New Perspective from the Northern Maya Lowlands
- 3 The Architecture of Power and Sociopolitical Complexity in Northwestern Yucatan during the Preclassic Period
- 4 Maya Political Cycling and the Story of the Kaan Polity
- Part II THE EARLY AND LATE CLASSIC PERIODS
- Part III THE TERMINAL CLASSIC AND EARLY POSTCLASSIC PERIODS
- Part IV THE LATE POSTCLASSIC TO HISTORICAL PERIODS
- Part V CONCLUSIONS
- Index
4 - Maya Political Cycling and the Story of the Kaan Polity
from Part I - THE PRECLASSIC PERIOD
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Contributors
- List of Figures
- List of Tables
- 1 The Ancient Maya of Mexico: Reinterpreting the Past of the Northern Maya Lowlands
- Part I THE PRECLASSIC PERIOD
- 2 The Origins of the Mesoamerican Ballgame: A New Perspective from the Northern Maya Lowlands
- 3 The Architecture of Power and Sociopolitical Complexity in Northwestern Yucatan during the Preclassic Period
- 4 Maya Political Cycling and the Story of the Kaan Polity
- Part II THE EARLY AND LATE CLASSIC PERIODS
- Part III THE TERMINAL CLASSIC AND EARLY POSTCLASSIC PERIODS
- Part IV THE LATE POSTCLASSIC TO HISTORICAL PERIODS
- Part V CONCLUSIONS
- Index
Summary
Abstract
By combining two frameworks (the Dynamic Model and that of political cycling), I use both textual and archaeological evidence to document the origins of the Maya state. The geographic focus is the base of the Yucatan Peninsula, focusing special attention on sites in Quintana Roo, Campeche, and the Mirador Basin. I examine several eras that witnessed a series of major oscillations, with huge centers taking their turn at the top of the administrative hierarchy. I document the shift from flamboyant rank society to initial state, a shift back to flamboyant rank society, and then the rise of a much larger expansionist Maya state.
In this paper I seek both to honor the career of E. Wyllys Andrews and to address a long-standing archaeological question. The question is one that I began asking myself before the ink was dry on my doctoral dissertation: “If the Snake Head refers to Calakmul, why does that emblem glyph appear so late in the archaeological sequence, especially since Calakmul was an important place even during the Middle and Late Preclassic?” Only after I began utilizing a framework that combined both the Dynamic Model (Marcus 1992, 1993) and the notion of political cycling (Anderson 1990; Wright 1984) did I see some of the ways that one might explain the distribution of the Kaan, or Snake Head, emblem glyph (Figure 4.1).
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- Information
- The Ancient Maya of MexicoReinterpreting the Past of the Northern Maya Lowlands, pp. 88 - 116Publisher: Acumen PublishingPrint publication year: 2012