Classic Maya Provincial Politics: Xunantunich and Its Hinterlands

13. A Community to Be Counted: Chaa Creek and the Emerging Xunantunich Polity

c h a p t e r 1 3 A Community to Be Counted Chaa Creek and the Emerging Xunantunich Polity Samuel V. Connell it has been my long-standing concern that explanations of Maya political processes, even purportedly holistic (Blanton et al. 1996) and dynamic (Marcus 1993) models, suffer from an implicit top-down paradigm (Connell 2000, 2003). Joyce Marcus’ (1993, 1998) valuable dynamic model builds on the idea that Maya political processes were dependent on the formation and disintegration of fragile alliances among an elite class of royalty or nobles who administered political centers. This paper employs a bottom-up perspective to test the proposition that people living in hinterland communities were essential players in ancient Maya integration strategies. Specifically, I look for evidence that middle-level elites living at minor centers acted as arbiters in a high-stakes negotiation process, balancing the positions of commoner households living in the hinterlands and regional elites living at political centers. Broad consideration of these middle-level elites as articulators (Iannone and Connell 2003) and intermediate elites (Elson and Covey 2006) can be found elsewhere. Here, my motive is to explore the process of integration in the material record of a hinterland community called Chaa Creek. As archaeologists, we should expect that provincial elites negotiated with hinterland communities to affect upper-level political changes. I suggest that during the process of balkanization and the subsequent reorganization of alliances that characterize the Terminal Classic period in the Maya lowlands, it was the middle-level elites who were working hard to ensure smooth transitions within outlying communities. My expectation is that the material record will reflect, at the very least, attempts by middlelevel elites to promote a new agenda within their respective communities. However, I also expect that the commoners in the rural areas would be 296 samuel v. connell the most resistant to change. What may have been a sudden change of heart on the part of middle-level elites to promote a new sovereign at Xunantunich may have been met with resistance among members of rural farmsteads who were required to pay tribute and pledge fidelity to an unknown king. Middle-level elites, therefore, played an important role in polity integration. The specific case study of polity integration addressed by this chapter is the incorporation of the hinterland community of Chaa Creek into the emerging Late Classic polity centered at Xunantunich at the beginning of the Hats’ Chaak phase (ad 670). The story of Xunantunich’s rise as a provincial capital during the Late Classic period is, in part, what makes the Xunantunich Archaeological Project (XAP) corpus of research so important to understanding the place of hinterland communities in broader political strategies. From the Samal phase to the Hats’ Chaak phase, not only did Xunantunich expand by building new monuments in Group A (LeCount et al. 2002; Leventhal and Ashmore 2004; also see Leventhal, chapter 4; Helmke, Awe, and Grube, chapter 5; Yaeger, chapter 7; Keller, chapter 9)—regional settlement also grew substantially in the periphery (Ashmore, Yaeger, and Robin 2004; Yaeger and Robin 2004; also see Neff, chapter 11). This pattern of well-documented growth in all parts of the region provides an unusual opportunity to study the processes of regional political expansion within a manageable temporal framework. This chapter focuses on minor-center elites and their relationship to commoners living around Chaa Creek, as well as Xunantunich elites during a transition in power at the provincial center. I begin with the proposition that hinterland sites, including minor centers, housemounds, and patio groups, should reflect changes taking place on the regional level. My work uses both qualitative and quantitative evidence to show that in the upper Belize River valley, the rise to power of the Xunantunich political center is marked by a dramatic shift within the community of Chaa Creek during the transition from the Samal to the Hats’ Chaak phase. This kind of investigation requires recognizable ceramic temporal diagnostics that transcend elite culture and link the timing of growth at Xunantunich to shifts occurring at hinterland sites. Lisa LeCount (1996; LeCount et al. 2002) has documented modal changes in the lip angle of the ubiquitous Mount Maloney bowl, with its black matte–slipped interior. Chaa Creek and the Xunantunich Polity 297 Mount Maloney serving bowls have become an often-used method for distinguishing different Late Classic temporal phases (LeCount 1993, 1994). Although it had been known for...