Agency in Ancient Writing

8. Structuration of the Conjuncture: Agency in Classic Maya Iconography and Texts

185 In recent years, archaeologists have incorporated the concept of agency into their analyses and reconstructions of past social behaviors . A focus on the intentions behind and consequences of individual action has flourished, despite some confusion as to what agency is or should be (Dobres and Robb 2000, 9; Dornan 2002; Robb 2001, 2010). In this chapter, I employ an agency approach to examine textual and iconographic evidence regarding the much disputed Teotihuacán “arrival” in the Maya lowlands in AD 378, an event known as the entrada (Bove 1991; Braswell 2003a, 2003b; Englehardt 2005; Stuart 2000). I am interested in the objective strategies of the social actors involved in this historical event as well as the structural effects of their actions, intentional or otherwise. Although the textual evidence at my disposal allows for the identification of historical individuals and illuminates elite political strategies, it also permits an appreciation of the social structures that provide a framework for the cultural meaning of individual action. Moreover, the textual data are an excellent means through which to gauge the potentiality for human action to stimulate structural transformations. The evidence surrounding the entrada thus permits a combination of two traditional approaches to the agency concept: individual elite strategy and E i g h t Structuration of the Conjuncture Agency in Classic Maya Iconography and Texts Joshua Englehardt DOI: 10.5876/9781607321996.c08 186 Joshua Englehardt the role of social actors in the structure-event dialectic. I seek to illustrate how a text-based perspective on agency, using these specific data and in this particular historical context, has the potential to inform interpretations of both the intentions and motivations behind individual social practices in the past, as well as the sociostructural consequences of those actions. I first briefly explore the rationale behind the text-based theoretical approach to agency that I utilize. I then outline the structural-historical context of the entrada and examine the individuals involved in the event itself at Tikal. In the discussion that follows, I argue that the social actors or agents described in Classic Maya texts at Tikal and elsewhere wielded symbolic as much as coercive power. These texts thus provide a window into the strategic intentionality behind the actions of certain Maya elites within a particular historical context . Acting with historically specific intentions and motivated by calculated self-interest, the individuals involved in the entrada and its aftermath manipulated both symbolic representations and the content of the texts themselves to establish and maintain sociopolitical power within the changing structural dynamics of the Early Classic period Maya lowlands. In doing so, these agents fused conflicting ritual and sociopolitical roles, renegotiating their identities, the cultural meanings of the artifacts themselves, and the dynamics of lowland Maya sociopolitical power. As a result, agents transformed social realities, playing integral, albeit somewhat unconscious roles in structural change. At the same time, shifting structural contexts that sprang from material cultural and representative negotiations of the entrada itself altered the ways in which Early Classic period lowland Maya social actors presented themselves and attributed cultural meaning to their actions. Analyzing the iconographic and written texts associated with the entrada from a structural-historicist perspective (Kirch and Sahlins 1992; Sahlins 1989, 1995) provides a more nuanced understanding of the event and its consequences by explaining the intentions and motivations of human agents—as well as the consequences of their actions, intended or otherwise—in terms of a conjunctive renegotiation of history and re-creation of social reality through opposed Teotihuacán and lowland Maya cultural projects. An agency approach thus permits additional avenues of analysis for a singularly important event in lowland Maya political history. In addition, the textual evidence under consideration illuminates debate surrounding the concept of social agency and its utility in archaeological and epigraphic inquiry, ultimately offering a deeper elucidation of agency theory itself. In this case, recognizing agency more precisely situates individual actions within larger sociohistorical contexts of interaction, domination , and factional competition (Brumfiel 2003; Joyce 2000, 83; Pauketat 2000, 2001; Silliman 2001), thus adding to our understanding of the historically particular subjectivities of past social actors. 187 Structuration of the Conjuncture AGeNcY IN INteNtIONaLItY, SYMBOLIc POweR, aND SOcIaL RepRODUctION I employ an approach to the agency concept that stems from practice theory (Bourdieu 1977, 1989; Giddens 1979, 1984) and structural historicism (Sahlins 1989, 1995; cf. Wang, this volume; Nakassis, this volume). Agency approaches based on practice theory stem from...