Classic Maya Provincial Politics: Xunantunich and Its Hinterlands

3. Antecedents, Allies, Antagonists: Xunantunich and Its Neighbors

c h a p t e r 3 Antecedents, Allies, Antagonists Xunantunich and Its Neighbors Wendy Ashmore in proposing a theoretical base for interpretation, Lisa LeCount and Jason Yaeger (chapter 2) focus critically on models for strategies of incorporation, outlining implications of these strategies’ application to Xunantunich. While the authors emphasize the interrelated roles of gift giving, tribute exaction, marriage alliance, warfare, and political ritual in fluctuating strategies of state building, they also underscore the need to assess how the actions taken are received at varied scales—by external friends and foes, as well as by those within this or any polity. Most directly pertinent to this chapter, they argue that “states, polities, centers, and communities should be viewed as operating within complex social, political, and economic landscapes” (chapter 15), and that “the growth of Xunantunich transformed the political hierarchy within the upper Belize River Valley” (chapter 15). In the early seventh century, Xunantunich emerged as a political center within fluid social, political, and economic milieus whose formation had begun nearly two millennia earlier. This chapter articulates local histories for the world around Xunantunich, with most detail for the seventh century through the tenth century. Consideration of nearby nodes, from Actuncan to Pacbitun, complements reflections on imposing but more distant foci, at Naranjo, Tikal, Caracol, and Calakmul, as well as on peasantry in the ambit of larger polities. An overview of cumulative evidence and recent interpretations emphasizes implications for alliance, annexation, destructuration, and other strategies, as well as for responses to these strategies. The goal is to identify potential participants in, and their varied impact on, the founding, growth, and ultimate dissolution of the Xunantunich polity. To link these histories most clearly to developments in that provincial domain, discussion follows the chronological periods Antecedents, Allies, Antagonists 47 established for Xunantunich (LeCount et al. 2002; LeCount and Yaeger, “A Brief Description of Xunantunich,” this volume). Background Conditions: Pre-Samal (Sixth Century ad and Earlier) Antecedents to the main periods of concern join together a long span of time and a complex array of events and developments. Perhaps their most important aspect is the set of precedents and foundations they established. That is, together these antecedent people, places, and customs map out founding and immigrant groups, competing and complementary interests, and initial strategies for living, for coexistence with each other and in the larger world. Within the area shown on figure 1.1, agrarian settlement was well established by the end of the second millennium bc. While individual households tended toward economic self-sufficiency, possessions and mortuary practices point to diverse social identities among members of these farming families. Ball and Taschek (2003) argue that the populace comprised at least two culturally and perhaps linguistically distinct groups. Local architectural forms materialized ritual performance among local populations of the Middle and Late Preclassic (900–100 bc), notably including a series of round platforms (Aimers, Powis, and Awe 2000). Elsewhere, seemingly isolated monumental platforms served ritual gatherings (e.g., Robin et al. 1994). Caves and other landscape features, as well, were recognized in ritual visitations marked by materials left behind (e.g., Healy, Song, and Conlon 1996; Laporte et al. 1994). That is, although neither ubiquitous nor uniform in appearance, these constructed and natural features signaled crystallizing canons for settings of social integration , plausibly involving formalized ancestor veneration in a decidedly public setting (cf. Brady 1997; Burger and Salazar-Burger 1986; McAnany 1995). Evidence for social hierarchy had emerged as an autochthonous development by at least ad 1 (e.g., Ford and Fedick 1992; Laporte and Mejía 2002; Willey et al. 1965; Yaeger 2003a), and Joseph Ball and Jennifer Taschek (2003, 2004) are among those who place this emergence as many as five hundred years earlier. By Middle and Late Preclassic times, a series of small centers had arisen across the same territory. Nearest the ridge that became Xunantunich, 48 wendy ashmore these places included Actuncan, Arenal, Blackman Eddy, Buenavista del Cayo, Cahal Pech, El Pilar, Nohoch Ek, Pacbitun, and Xunantunich itself (Awe 1992; Ball and Taschek 2003, 2004; Ford and Fedick 1992; Garber 2004; Garber, Brown, and Hartman 1996; Healy 1990; Healy and Awe 1996; McGovern 1992; Taschek and Ball 1999; Yaeger, “Landscapes of the Xunantunich Hinterlands,” this volume). Topographic locations varied from valley terraces (e.g., Actuncan, Buenavista del Cayo) to hilltops (e.g., Arenal, Blackman Eddy, Cahal Pech, Xunantunich), and the frequency of open settings suggests that defensive...