Royal Courts of the Ancient Maya, Volume 1: Theory, Comparison, and Synthesis (review)

Royal Courts of the Ancient Maya, Volume 1: Theory, Comparison, and Synthesis. Edited by Takeshi Inomata and Stephen D. Houston. (Boulder, CO: Westview, 2000. xix + 292 pp., tables, illustrations, preface, obituary: Floyd Lounsbury, introduction, index. $35.00 paper.)

This volume investigates the organization of royal compounds at Maya cities and reaches well beyond the institution of kingship to provide a more robust view of modes of Classic-period governance. Provocative interpretations reveal the strengths and weaknesses of interdisciplinary data rallied in its chapters for reconstructing the workings of Maya rulership. The book goads the reader into realizing that much more work is needed to document the increasingly apparent complexity and variation in the political structure of Maya cities.

While courts are represented in the material realm in the form of architectural facilities, the authors remind us that they were composed of people—the sovereign and those who surrounded him. In addition to the king, such actors included family members, advisors, retainers, military and economic officeholders, guards, craftspeople, entertainers, and servants. The power of queens and nonregnal elites is observed in the historic records of Yaxchilan and Copan, as discussed by McAnany and Plank, Houston and Stuart, and Webster. Links between elites at different sites are documented by royal visits in the hieroglyphic record (Houston and Stuart, Martin). These authors stress that the education of young elites was an important aspect of maintaining "interkingdom diplomacy" in a dispersed regional political landscape that was fraught with the potential for conflict and dissent. Several chapters argue effectively that rising elite demography and autonomy in the Late Classic period may have contributed to the demise of Classic period royal courts.

One of the most important issues raised in this volume is the degree of bureaucratic development that existed for the Classic-period Maya. This is an issue for which the least data and the strongest opinions exist. Inomata argues that royal households performed administrative tasks on a situational basis without formal bureaucracies to enforce predetermined policies. He defines a continuum of organizational variation in courtly societies, stretching on one extreme from cases with strongly distinguished bureaucracies and royal households to cases at the other end of the spectrum where royal households governed without bureaucracies. Intermediary forms combine bureaucratic institutions with those of royal households. Inomata suggests that Classic Maya bureaucracy was undeveloped based on the lack of clear spatial distinctions in the location of administrative architecture and that of courtly households. Webster agrees with this position. Inomata argues that personal relationships among courtiers were more important than any legal jurisdictions associated with courtly titles, drawing on a Colonial-period account in which "principal men" performed administrative duties. However, additional documentary sources describe many specialized Postclassic Maya offices, including political council members, tribute collectors, war leaders, priests, and merchants. Houston and Stuart, Martin, and Reents-Budet also discuss the existence of many such titles in epigraphic texts and iconographic scenes of the Classic period. Many architectural plans presented in these chapters illustrate probable administrative buildings (such as M7–26 at Aguateca) alongside royal residential compounds that might suggest a combined bureaucratic and domestic administration. Clearly, we need to develop better archaeological criteria for the identification of forms of bureaucratic development.

Variation among royal court configurations is described in detail by Houston and Stuart, Martin, and Webster. Both Webster and Martin propose that palace or court complexes were larger than single royal compounds of ruling families and their courtiers. Instead, they include a greater majority of elite facilities at the monumental cores of the cities themselves in their definitions of these complexes. Other authors adopt a more narrow view of courts as the residential clusters of the king's family and close associates and nearby administrative, ritual, and support facilities.

Many authors stress the great variation in court architecture in the specific designs and layouts observed at different cities. On a more general level, however, important similarities are identified by...