The Southern Maya in the Late Preclassic: The Rise and Fall of an Early Mesoamerican Civilization - Hardcover

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1607320924 ISBN 13: 9781607320920

Publisher: University Press of Colorado, 2011

Synopsis

From 400 BC to AD 250, the southern Maya region was one of the most remarkable civilizations of the ancient Americas. Filled with great cities linked by flourishing long-distance trade, shared elite ideologies, and a vibrant material culture, this region was pivotal not only for the Maya but for Mesoamerica as a whole. Although it has been of great interest to scholars, gaps in the knowledge have led to debate on the most vital questions about the southern region.

Recent research has provided a wealth of broadly based new data that have expanded the understanding of this region and its influence on greater Mesoamerica. In The Southern Maya in the Late Preclassic, prominent contributors debate whether the southern region was indeed "Maya" or instead a region of intense multiethnic interaction, with speakers of many languages and many sources of identity. The chapters address a host of advanced developments to which this area can lay claim--urbanism and city-states, the earliest Maya writing, and the origin of the Maya calendar--as well as additional issues including the construction of social and cultural identities, economic networks of early complex societies, relationships between the Maya and the Olmec, and a comprehensive discussion of the ancient city of Kaminaljuyu and its relationship to other cities in the region.

About this title

About the Author

Michael Love is a professor of anthropology at California State University, Northridge. Jonathan Kaplan is the director of Proyecto Arqueológico Chocolá and research associate at both the University of Pennsylvania and the Museum of New Mexico.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

The Southern Maya

The Rise and Fall of an Early Mesoamerican Civilization in the Late Preclassic

By Michael Love, Jonathan Kaplan

University Press of Colorado

Copyright © 2011 University Press of Colorado
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-60732-092-0

Contents

List of Figures, 
List of Tables, 
List of Contributors, 
Preface, 
PART 1: PATTERNS OF INTERACTION, 
1. Critical Issues in the Southern Maya Region and the Late Preclassic Period Michael Love, 
2. Revisiting the Mixe-Zoque: A Brief History of the Preclassic Peoples of Chiapas John E. Clark and Mary E. Pye, 
3. Cities, States, and City-State Culture in the Late Preclassic Southern Maya Region Michael Love, 
4. The People with No Name: Some Observations about the Plain Stelae of Pacific Guatemala, El Salvador, and Chiapas with Respect to Issues of Ethnicity and Rulership Frederick J. Bove, 
5. Signifying Late Preclassic Rulership: Patterns of Continuity from the Southern Maya Zone Julia Guernsey, 
PART 2: LANGUAGES AND TEXTS, 
6. Languages of the Preclassic Period along the Pacific Coastal Plains of Southeastern Mesoamerica J. Kathryn Josserand, 
7. Late Preclassic Texts from Mexico and Guatemala with Reference to Southern Guatemala Martha J. Macri, 
PART 3: KAMINALJUYU AND ITS NEIGHBORS, 
8. Late Preclassic Developments at Takalik Abaj Marion Popenoe de Hatch, Christa Schieber de Lavarreda, and Miguel Orrego Corzo, 
9. Miraflores Kaminaljuyu: Corpse and Corpus Delicti Jonathan Kaplan, 
10. The Eastern Caqchiquel Highlands during the Preclassic Period: Interaction, Growth, and Depopulation Geoffrey E. Braswell and Eugenia J. Robinson, 
11. Before the Classic in the Southeastern Area: Issues of Organizational and Ethnic Diversity in the Copan Region, Western Honduras Robert J. Sharer, Marcello A. Canuto, and Ellen E. Bell, 
PART 4: SYNTHESIS AND CONCLUSIONS, 
12. The Political, Economic, and Cultural Correlates of Late Preclassic Southern Highland Material Culture: Evidence, Analyses, and Controversies Arthur A. Demarest, 
13. Conclusion: The Southern Maya Region and the Problem of Unities Jonathan Kaplan, 
References Cited, 
Index, 

CHAPTER 1

Michael Love

Critical Issues in the Southern Maya Region and the Late Preclassic Period

The Southern Maya Region, including the highlands and Pacific coastal plain of southern Mesoamerica, was home to one of the most remarkable civilizations of the ancient Americas during the Late Preclassic period (400 BC–AD 250). For this brief period the region was filled with great cities linked by flourishing trade, shared elite ideologies, and a vibrant material culture. The early development of social complexity, monumental architecture, dynamic art, and writing should make the region a prominent case study for scholars around the world who are interested in the origins of early civilization and the state. Yet it remains poorly known even to many working in nearby parts of Mesoamerica, including archaeologists of the Maya lowlands. The present volume aims to heighten awareness of this key time and place and to make the data from recent investigations accessible to a broader audience than the small number of experts who work in the region. A further ambition is to emphasize the vast potential for research in the region and to stimulate further inquiry.

The Southern Maya Region has attracted the attention of scholars and the lay public since the very beginnings of Mesoamerican archaeology, yet it remains, to borrow Winston Churchill's aphorism about Soviet Russia, "a riddle wrapped inside a mystery, inside an enigma." We do not know what to make of the great florescence of the Southern Highlands and Coast, either its origins or its overall impact on Mesoamerican civilization. Uncertain dating of many ceramic complexes and sculptural styles, along with geographic gaps in our knowledge, provide sufficient room to accommodate diverse points of view on even the most vital questions regarding the Southern Region. Are the roots of Maya civilization to be found here, or is it independent of, and merely peripheral to, Classic Maya civilization in the lowlands? Was it heir to the Olmec civilization and a conduit for cultural transmission to the Maya lowlands? Do the many Cycle 7 Long Count dates indicate that calendrics and writing developed here before they appeared in the Maya lowlands? What was the language of the early texts? Why did the magnificent manifestation of Preclassic civilization in the Southern Region disappear so quickly with the onset of the Classic period?

The use of the moniker "Southern Maya Region" for the highlands and Pacific Coast of Chiapas, Guatemala, and El Salvador is based on the dominance of Mayan speakers in the region in historic times. As will be seen throughout this volume, the label may be less accurate for the Preclassic period, as the modern distribution of Mayan speakers may not reflect the situation in earlier times and the "Mayaness" of many cultural traits is debatable. Nonetheless, it is the apparently or putatively Maya elements that are among the most spectacular features of the region during the Late Preclassic period, especially the carved stelae and hieroglyphic texts. Many of those same traits were shared with the Maya lowlands, making the role of Mayan speakers in the Southern Region and links to lowlands important and legitimate avenues for investigation. The title of the volume, therefore, expresses the centrality of issues regarding the Maya and "Mayaness" to understanding the Late Preclassic period in the Southern Highlands and Pacific Coast.

Defining the region as Maya, however, risks casting it in a subordinate role to the Maya lowlands in the minds of many. Lacking the romance of the lowland tropical forests, having monumental pyramids of earth rather than stone, and without great tourist Meccas, the Southern Region is often labeled as peripheral, both to the Maya lowlands and to the rest of Mesoamerica (Parsons 1969). To be sure, there have been many voices that declared the Southern Region to be the hearth of Maya civilization and extolled the density and size of its ruins or the early appearance of many traits perhaps not found in the Maya lowlands until the Classic period. Debate about the supposed precociousness of the region has only heightened in recent years as evidence for early cities in the Maya lowlands has grown (Estrada Belli 2010).

One reason for the supposed peripheral nature of the Southern Region is undoubtedly that of chronology. Until recently, Mesoamerican civilization was thought to be purely a Classic period phenomenon, and the undeniably Preclassic apogee of the Southern Region automatically placed it in an epoch of development prior to urbanism, the state, and true civilization in traditional models. Even though the Southern Region has at times been viewed as the source of many aspects of Maya civilization, those traits were interpreted as mere precursors to their fully developed forms during the glory of the Classic period.

Paradoxically, recently accumulated evidence for the early development of lowland Maya cities, complex political systems, and monumental architecture during the Preclassic has only served to reinforce, in many minds, the marginality of the Southern Region. Investigations in the past twenty years have revealed a sophisticated lowland civilization during the Late Preclassic, ca. 400 BC–AD 250, with large centers such as Cerros, Cival, El Mirador, Lamanai, Nachtuun, and Uaxactun. At least one of those centers, El Mirador, was an urban settlement that matched or surpassed lowland Classic period cities in scale (R. Hansen 2001, n.d.). Far from representing the humble beginnings of Classic Maya civilization, the Late Preclassic was a dynamic period when an ideology of divine kingship spread and great art was produced that included carved stelae, murals, and stucco masks. Economic intensification supported dense populations and provided surpluses to finance both public works and the elite consumption of prestige goods.

The splendor of El Mirador and the beauty of the San Bartolo murals have convinced most scholars of the sophistication and complexity of Preclassic developments, and additional evidence of a complex Preclassic lowland civilization appears almost daily. Many scholars now cite these findings as evidence of the independent development of lowland Maya civilization and not only deny the contributions of earlier cultures, such as the Olmec, to lowland Maya civilization but also negate the role of other parts of the Maya world, such as the highlands and Pacific Coast (Estrada Belli 2010; R. Hansen 2005). A more balanced perspective, however, may come once the thrill of fresh discovery has had time to mellow and the hyperbole of the press release has yielded to critical review.

NEW PERSPECTIVES ON THE SOUTHERN MAYA REGION

The purpose of this volume is not to force the pendulum of interpretation toward the highlands and to propose the Southern Region as the source of all things bright and beautiful in Classic Maya civilization. Rather, one of the myriad goals of the book is to assert that the Late Preclassic florescence in the Southern Region is worth understanding, whether the area was occupied by speakers of Mayan, Mixe, Zoque, Xinca, Lenca, or some other language group. The relationship between the Southern Region and the Maya lowlands is important and interesting, but it is not the only, or even the most important, issue to be discussed.

The Southern Region undoubtedly contains many sites and monuments important to understanding early Maya civilization, writing, and art, but it is also crucial to understanding more broadly the nature of pan-Mesoamerican civilization in the Preclassic period. No region of Mesoamerica developed in isolation, and to speak of a purely Maya civilization or Zapotec civilization in isolation from the rest of Mesoamerica smacks of ethnic essentialism and chauvinism. The important role of the Southern Highlands and the Pacific Coast in the development of Mesoamerican civilization may stem not from its Mayaness, or lack thereof, but from its multiethnic composition. Its principal scholarly value may lie in its ability to inform us about the importance of interactions among ethnic groups, and other types of groups, in the development of early civilizations.

Given the long-debated role of the Southern Maya Region and its importance in the Late Preclassic, it is surprising that no previous attempt has been made to examine the region and the time period comprehensively to assess what we know and to shape future research by clarifying what we do not know. The present volume fills the void by providing an account of substantial new data along with some interpretations that all the contributors hope will stimulate major new research programs befitting such an important time and place in prehistory.

Recent research has provided a wealth of broadly based new data that have expanded — transformed may not be too strong a word — our understanding of the Southern Region. These data are not widely disseminated, however, and largely remain unsynthesized. Indeed, we could say that the Southern Region lacks any general conceptual scheme that might allow these data to be integrated, as illustrated in the very distinct approaches taken in the concluding overviews to this volume by Arthur Demarest (Chapter 12) and Jonathan Kaplan (Chapter 13). The time is long overdue to examine the data both old and new, propose paradigms, integrate those paradigms with older research, and discuss the implications that emerge. The chapters in this book shed new light on this time and place while also establishing the critical importance of the region to understanding early civilizations in Mesoamerica, including that of the Maya.

DEFINING THE SOUTHERN MAYA REGION

A Complex Cultural Geography

The gloss of "Southern Maya Region" conceals the linguistic and cultural diversity of the highlands and Pacific coastal plain that was, in fact, a zone of intensive interaction between peoples of different linguistic affiliations and cultural backgrounds, including many distinct groups that too often are lumped together as "the Maya." A neutral geographic moniker may in fact be more apt, but the parsimonious elegance of the term "Southern Maya Region," as well as historical precedent, contributes to its continued use here.

Geographically, the Southern Maya Region (Figure 0.1) encompasses the highlands, piedmont, and Pacific coastal plain of Chiapas, Guatemala, and El Salvador (Sharer and Traxler 2006a). The Pacific coastal plain lies south and west of the tall peaks of the southern Sierra Madre and are extremely fertile, composed of material recently eroded from volcanic parent material. In Chiapas, the coastal plain is divided into the Despoblado to the west and the Soconusco to the east (Clark 1994a), with the latter reaching into what is now Guatemala (M. Coe 1961; Voorhies 1989; Voorhies and Gasco 2004). In Guatemala, the coastal plain is divided into three sections: "La Costa Cuca," from the Mexican border to the beginning of its widening arc near modern Mazatenango; "La Costa Grande," or the widest part of the coast centered on the Department of Escuintla; and "La Costa de Guazacapan," the narrow eastern portion encompassing the Departments of Jutiapa and Santa Rosa (McBryde 1947: 5). The coast of El Salvador marks the eastern limit of the plain.

The terrain is relatively flat for short but variable distances across the coastal plain, transitions more quickly to 1000 meters through the piedmont rainbelt, and then climbs dramatically to high mountain ranges topped by the tallest peaks in Central America and southern Mexico. The major highland river drainages create physiographic divisions: the Grijalva drains the Central Chiapas Depression and the Chiapas Highlands, the Río Chixoy/Negro drains the western Guatemalan Highlands, and the Motagua drains the central Guatemalan Highlands. These great rivers all course east and north of the continental divide, while those flowing south and west in the Pacific versant are smaller but more numerous as the flat and narrow plain provides little space for them to merge into larger courses.

The compact spacing of the coastal plain, piedmont, and highlands produces a natural economic interdependence based on ecological complementarity, which makes the southern coast, rather than the lowlands to the north, the natural trading partner for the highlands. In the Postclassic period the major polities of the highlands extended their territories to the piedmont and coast by conquest or colonization to control the economic products of all three zones (Carmack 1981; M. Coe 1961; Voorhies 1989). The piedmont region was famous for cacao production at the time of European contact (Lowe, Lee, and Martínez 1982; Orellana 1995), but the less ostentatious products of the coastal plain and estuaries, such as cotton, fish, and salt, also were important economic resources for both subsistence and trade.

Local exchange was undoubtedly stimulated by the closely spaced altitudinal gradient, running north to south, but the major long-distance trade routes ran largely east to west (Lee and Navarrete 1978 passim; Parsons and Price 1971; Sharer 1974), and during the Preclassic period these were the major trade corridors between Central America and Central Mexico. There were distinct routes passing through the highlands (Clark and Lee 2007; Love 2004), the piedmont (Popenoe de Hatch 1998; Popenoe de Hatch and Shook 1999; Sharer 1974), and the coastal plain, including an "inland waterway" of estuaries and streams (M. Coe 1961; Navarrete 1978). Less investigated in this time period are the north-south corridors through the highlands into the Maya lowlands. Kaminaljuyu undoubtedly derived a large amount of its wealth from its position at the junction of two important lanes of travel: the Amatitlán/Palin pass to the Pacific Coast and the Motagua river drainage to the Caribbean. The Río Chixoy/Usumacinta route probably also was intensively used, but it is poorly known for the Preclassic period.

While emphasis on theories of population movement and foreign influence often comes at the cost of ignoring local trajectories of change and enduring social and cultural identities, one must appreciate that the corridor of the coastal plain was not just a trade route but also a channel for migration. The documented movements of Pipil speakers from Mexico to Guatemala, El Salvador, and beyond have given rise to models of earlier migrations (Bove, Genovéz, and Batres n.d.; Fowler 1989, 1999), perhaps beginning in the Early Preclassic (Cheetham 2006a, 2006b). Such movements of people through the Pacific corridor, whether through trade or through migration, seem to have been characteristic of the zone's entire history.

THE LATE PRECLASSIC IN PERSPECTIVE

The Late Preclassic period in the southern zone represents the culmination of processes begun at the end of the Archaic period with the transition to agriculture and sedentism (Arroyo, Neff, and Feathers 2002; Clark and Pye, Chapter 2; Neff, Arroyo, et al. 2001;Neff, Pearsall, et al. 2006a, 2006b). The general trend toward greater complexity is evident throughout the Southern Maya Region, climaxing in the development of state-level societies by the Late Preclassic period. Chronological periods and estimated dates for the region are shown in Figure 0.2. A fuller discussion of the entire Preclassic sequence is presented by Love (2007) and summarized here.

Social complexity appeared in the Southern Highlands and Pacific Coast as early as anywhere else in Mesoamerica, if not earlier. A simple chiefdom or incipient complex society was present in the Mazatán region of Chiapas by the Locona phase, ca. 1500 BC, which gave way to more complex, possibly Olmec-related, centers at Cantón Corralito and Ojo de Agua in the latter half of the Early Preclassic. By about 900 BC the focus of economic and political power on the western Pacific Coast shifted from the Mazatán region to the eastern side of the Río Suchiate, the modern border between Mexico and Guatemala. Two sites dominated the western Guatemalan coast at this time: Takalik Abaj and La Blanca. Izapa, nearby, also may have begun to be a major force (Lowe, Lee, and Martínez 1982).

The corpus of Takalik Abaj sculpture is among the largest collections of Olmec-style sculpture outside the Gulf of Mexico(Graham, Heizer, and Shook 1978; Orrego 1998; Orrego and Schieber de Lavarreda 2001; Schieber de Lavarreda and Orrego 2002), but little more is known about the site's size and internal organization in the first part of the Middle Preclassic, although the construction of public architecture almost certainly began by this time (Crasborn and Marroquin 2006; Schieber de Lavarreda 1994a, 1994b).

Data from the Río Naranjo zone of the western coast give a more complete view of sociopolitical change during the Middle Preclassic (Love 2002a). By 900 BC there was a dramatic growth in population and the development of a regional system that was much larger and hierarchically more structured than seen previously, punctuated by the rise of La Blanca as a city and regional paramount. La Blanca was one of Mesoamerica's largest settlements during the Middle Preclassic, with some of the most impressive early architecture in southern Mesoamerica, Olmec-style sculpture, and elite residences with pottery decorated with ideologically charged motifs. La Blanca covered nearly 300 hectares with a polity that extended over 300 square kilometers, including more than seventy settlements and a multitiered settlement hierarchy.

(Continues...)

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Edition details

• Publisher: University Press of Colorado
• Publication date: 2011
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1607320924
• ISBN 13: 9781607320920
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 528
• Editor: Love Michael, Kaplan Jonathan