Chapter 12

Competitive versus Peaceful Interaction

Joyce Marcus

Interaction comes in many forms: long-distance versus local, peaceful versus hostile, direct versus indirect, long-term versus short-term, multidirectional versus unidirectional, and transformative versus nontransformative. Long-distance exchange and unidirectional interaction have so far attracted most of our attention. Some archaeologists regard long-distance exchange as the key ingredient in their models of state formation (e.g., Kidder et al. 1946; Rathje 1971, 1972; Sanders 1974, 1977). Others think that the impact of long-distance exchange has been overstated, usually at the expense of local exchange (Braswell 2003; Demarest and Foias 1993; Drennan 1984a, 1984b, 1985; Foias 1987; Iglesias Ponce de León 2003; Johnson 1973, 1975; Marcus 1983, 2003; Pendergast 2003; Sharer 2003). And as we shall see in this chapter, competitive interaction on a local level can be more transformative than peaceful long-distance interaction.

Local Exchange

The Yucatán Peninsula (figure 12.1) provides abundant evidence for the importance of local exchange. When the Spaniards arrived in the Yucatán, they encountered more than sixteen autonomous polities (cuchcabaloob) actively moving a wide array of local products by barter and tribute. Exchange occurred within and between polities (Roys 1957, 1965, 1972). Perishable items included cotton cloth, henequen fiber, salt, fish, cuttlefish, cuttlefish eggs, turtles, turtle eggs, crabs, honey, beeswax, maize, beans, squash, cacao, chiles, copal, mats, and wood (Andrews 1984; Andrews and Mock 2002; Relaciones de Yucatán 1898, 1900; Roys 1972; Tozzer 1941). Nonperishable items such as flint and pottery were also exchanged.

From 1549 to 1561 the principal tribute item was the cotton manta, which consisted of 10 yd² of cloth divided into four piernas, or “breadths” (Roys et al. 1959:206). Every man was required to pay one manta a year. In 1561, tribute demands were adjusted so that every four months each married couple was expected to deliver one pierna of cloth, 1 lb. of beeswax, one turkey hen, and half a fanega of maize. (1 fanega = 1.6 bus.; Roys [1972:196] gives 1 fanega = 1.6 or 2 bus. in Spain and 2.56 bus. in Mexico. Cooper Clark [1938:1:64] and Roys [1957:170] indicate that 1 fanega = 1.6 bus.)

The volume of perishable items moving within and between polities was impressive in the sixteenth century and probably equally impressive in the prehispanic era, even though it is impossible to specify the amount of each perishable item (Drennan 1984a:28). Cloth and food were particularly important in prehispanic exchanges, as shown by scenes painted on Maya vessels of local lords receiving cloth bundles and food such as tamales and cacao beverages (Marcus 2000:fig. 7; Reents-Budet 1994:26, 76, 120, 131, 258, 262).

Trade between polities on the Yucatán Peninsula, however, could be interrupted by war (Roys 1972:53). Sixteenth-century documents reveal that such wars were usually motivated by a desire to acquire slaves and gain access to scarce or highly valued goods such as salt, shells, or cacao. When high-status individuals were captured, they were sacrificed. In contrast, commoners were spared and became the slaves of their captors (Relaciones de Yucatán 1898, 1900:11:149).

Given that coastal polities had a near monopoly over the salt beds, people from interior provinces often tried to gather salt on their own. Roys (1972:47) says that these interior peoples often had to be driven away from the salt beds. Some provinces, in fact, refused to exchange salt and fish: “The Chels would not sell salt and fish to the people of Sotuta, and in retaliation the latter refused to sell fruit and game to Ah Kin Chel” (Roys 1972:53).

Such interpolity refusal to maintain the flow of goods could lead to conflict unless a centralized government emerged. While Mayapán (ca. AD 1200–1450) was the capital of the peninsula, much of this interpolity conflict was suppressed and the lords from each polity were required to reside in the capital (Chi 1941:230–231; López de Cogolludo [1688] 1867–1868; Means 1917; Pollock et al. 1962; Roys 1962; Tozzer 1941).

What, then, were the respective roles of local exchange and long-distance exchange? Was the state more affected by local exchange, as Johnson (1973, 1975) argued for southwestern Iran, or by long-distance exchange, as Rathje (1971) and Sanders (1974) argued for the Maya?

Overreliance on Unidirectional Models

Historically, we have given greater weight to long-distance exchange than to local exchange. Two prominent examples involve Teotihuacan and its presumed unidirectional impact on two Maya cities: Kaminaljuyú and Tikal. Those who argue (based on hieroglyphic texts) that Teotihuacan took over Tikal’s government (see, e.g., Stuart 2000) are forced to ignore an archaeological record showing very few items at Tikal that were actually of central Mexican origin (Borowicz 2003; Iglesias Ponce de León 2003; Laporte 1989, 2003). As one anonymous reviewer noted, “the crucial point that hieroglyphic inscriptions are not always reliable records of ‘what happened’ appears too rarely in discussions about the Classic Maya, especially regarding Teotihuacan and Tikal.”

For the very century during which a “new Teotihuacan world order” was allegedly imposed on the Tikal region (AD 378–478), María Josefa Iglesias Ponce de León (2003:180) has shown that Tikal’s burials and ritual deposits reveal no evidence of Teotihuacan impact, neither ceramic nor architectural. In one Tikal deposit (PNT-21) she found only four sherds out of 167,338 that could have been imported from central Mexico (and all four were Thin Orange, manufactured in Puebla).

In a similar vein, only 16 of the 340 vessels from the elite burials in Mounds A and B of Kaminaljuyú were imported from central Mexico and they, too, were of Thin Orange. In fact, at this time sites all over Mesoamerica (including Teotihuacan itself) were importing Thin Orange from Puebla (Rattray 1990a, 1990b; Rattray and Harbottle 1992). Thin Orange ware and Pachuca obsidian reached Guatemala’s Pacific piedmont, but the excavators there say: “We concluded that the Teotihuacan presence, at least in the Balberta zone, was minimal. As a result, we became increasingly skeptical of claims of military conquest or colonization on the Pacific Coast” (Bove and Medrano Busto 2003:53).

Today we know that the iconic tombs in Mounds A and B at Kaminaljuyú—once thought to contain Teotihuacanos—actually contain more items from the Gulf Coast, northern Guatemala, and Chiapas than from Teotihuacan (Braswell 2003; Demarest and Foias 1993). In addition, isotopic data from the skeletons of the principal seated occupants of each tomb have proven that they were not Teotihuacanos (White et al. 2000). The exotic tomb offerings might have reached Kaminaljuyú either through an extensive network of multiple trading partners, or via mourners from diverse regions who left behind vessels after attending the funerals (Marcus 2003).

Foreign offerings at Altun Ha and Becan provide additional examples of interaction that is no longer thought to explain the rise and development of Maya civilization (Pendergast 2003:236). Inside Tomb F-8/1 at Altun Ha, there were no central Mexican items. To be sure, left above the roof of that tomb were more than 248 pieces of Pachuca obsidian; the daggers and prismatic blades (some of which were reworked into human figures) date to AD 150–250.

Along with the Pachuca obsidian above the roof there were twenty-three nonlocal pottery vessels, some of which do suggest highland Mexican styles. Pendergast (2003:246), however, asked himself two questions: “What lasting impact did the Teotihuacan-Altun Ha link have at the site, and what conclusions can we draw from the material regarding the importance of Teotihuacan in early southern Maya lowlands development?” His answer to both questions was “none.”

My own view is that these imports may either have been brought to Altun Ha as gifts from those attending the funeral, or obtained through middlemen and stored until needed to celebrate the interment of a ruler. The Altun Ha Maya maintained their cultural substrate and local traditions while exchanging items with other societies throughout the Maya region and well beyond. The Maya imported, borrowed, copied, adapted, and manipulated nonlocal items to meet their needs (Schele and Freidel 1990), but such items explain little about the rise of Maya kingship and state institutions.

All exchanges are worth documenting. It continues to be a challenge, however, to assess the importance of local, regional, and interregional exchanges of ideas, objects, and styles. It is not foreign political systems that are borrowed, only selected sumptuary goods and exotic products. The most we can say is that such exchange can be considered a form of social relations.

Competitive Interaction Can Be Transformative

We now have a number of cases in which hostile interaction was more politically transformative than friendly long-distance trade. In both the Valley of Oaxaca and the El Mirador region, intense political and military competition seems to have been one of the engines that drove state formation to completion. We will now look at two case studies that show how competitive interaction can transform society.

I. A Case Study from the Valley of Oaxaca

Between 1800 and 1300 BC, egalitarian village societies emerged throughout central and southern Mexico. From 1500 to 1200 BC the villages of highland Oaxaca tended to be small (usually 1–3 ha in size), with only a few villages reaching 10 ha. Houses were rectangular, built of wattle and daub, and sometimes whitewashed with lime. No true temples were known at this time, but at the large village of San José Mogote there were small public buildings that served as men’s houses (Marcus and Flannery 1996). These men’s houses were plastered with lime and oriented 8 degrees north of east, perhaps to face the rising sun at the equinox. No convincing evidence of social inequality exists at this early time, but Oaxaca as well as much of Mesoamerica would soon reveal disparities in political hierarchy and village size.

By 1100 BC these egalitarian societies were changing. Two of the larger villages were San José Mogote in the Valley of Oaxaca (Flannery and Marcus 2003, 2005, 2015; Marcus and Flannery 1996) and Santa Cruz Tayata in the Valley of Huamelulpan (Kowalewski et al. 2009:174–177, 287–289). Both San José Mogote and Santa Cruz Tayata became chiefly centers for multivillage societies with hereditary inequality. In the Basin of Mexico, Tlapacoya and Tlatilco also became large chiefly centers. In contrast to the Valley of Oaxaca and the Basin of Mexico, the Tehuacán Valley had only small villages.

At 1000 BC San José Mogote was divided into wards or barrios. Each ward had its own men’s house that served as a meeting place for the barrio’s initiated men. In addition to barrio-level ritual buildings, San José Mogote began to build larger public buildings to serve the whole community. The platforms for these larger buildings were built of circular plano-convex adobes, for which broken jars served as molds (Flannery and Marcus 2005, 2015). Set in the walls of one stone platform were carved stones representing a feline and a raptorial bird. Some stones used to build these platforms were brought from 5 km away, even though tons of volcanic tuff were readily available right at San José Mogote. Heavy blocks of limestone were brought from Rancho Matadamas, 5 km to the west. From the east came travertine, also 5 km away (Marcus and Flannery 1996:125).

The construction of large public buildings utilizing limestone and travertine suggests that San José Mogote was now the head of a chiefly society, whose chief had the power to require satellite villages to contribute stone for public constructions at his chiefly center (figure 12.2). Requiring building material from subordinate villages was a form of corvée labor or service to a higher-order site. In addition to commanding the delivery of stones from satellite villages, the chief might send high-status women from his paramount center to marry men at those satellites.

Evidence for this marriage strategy occurs at the satellite village of Fábrica San José, where the most elite burials were those of women whose cranial deformation (Burial 25) and sumptuary goods (Burial 39) suggested that they were hypogamous brides from the chiefly center of San José Mogote (Drennan 1976; Marcus and Flannery 1996:113). The woman in Burial 39, for example, was associated with four vessels, one of which was a Delia White cylinder she was grasping in both hands; she had more than fifty beads in her mouth (Drennan 1976:248). Burial 54 was associated with seven vessels, a shell, and a clay hollow doll near her right shoulder.

The elite at higher-order centers wanted to display prestige goods, so they had their craftsmen polish greenstone (serpentinite or jadeite), magnetite, and hematite; cut mica plates of various shapes; and convert marine shells from the Pacific Ocean and freshwater mussels from the Gulf of Mexico into necklaces and ear ornaments. San José Mogote and many other highland societies developed a keen interest in importing products that could be imbued with ritual and prestige value.

Exchange—much of it between elites—characterized the period from 1200 to 900 BC. Elite trade items of this period include mirrors made of magnetite and ilmeno-magnetite. Artisans at San José Mogote obtained these ores from sources six to 33 km away—near Tenango, San Jerónimo Tititlán, Arrazola, and Cacaotepec. Two mirrors from the Cacaotepec source were traded to San Lorenzo in Veracruz. A mirror from the Tititlán source was traded to Etlatongo in the Mixteca. An unworked lump from the Tenango source was traded to La Juana–San Pablo in Morelos.

The emergence of hereditary rank was a crucial turning point in social evolution. Egalitarian societies (in which prestige was based on achievement) were replaced by societies with hereditary rank (in which status and privileges were inherited). One line of archaeological evidence for hereditary rank is the production of ornaments whose use was manipulated by the elite. Unfortunately for archaeologists, egalitarian societies can also accumulate exotic goods through bride-price. Given that fact, archaeologists interested in showing that rank was inherited have had to pay special attention to items buried with infants or children. Since those children were too young to have achieved the right to possess such things, they probably inherited their rank.

Archaeologists working in Oaxaca have assembled ten lines of evidence to infer the emergence of rank (Marcus and Flannery 1996:93–110), and among those are deliberate cranial deformation of elite children, differential access to jade ornaments and iron-ore mirrors, differential access to venison, use of mother-of-pearl and Spondylus shell ornaments, a dichotomy between seated (elite) burials and prone (lower-status) burials, clay figurines depicting individuals in contrasting positions of authority and obeisance, and four-legged stools resembling those carried by chiefly attendants in rank societies.

From 850 to 500 BC political changes were occurring in both the highlands and lowlands. In the Valley of Oaxaca, rival centers rose to challenge the authority of San José Mogote. Evidence for competitive interaction can be documented in a variety of ways—in the burning of houses and temples, in the construction of defensive palisades, in the taking of human crania as trophies, and in the presence of skeletons showing healed fractures from multiple violent encounters (Flannery and Marcus 2003, 2012). This kind of competitive interaction was the social engine that led to the loss of community autonomy and the emergence of administrative hierarchies (Flannery and Marcus 2012; Marcus 2006, 2012; Redmond and Spencer 2012; Spencer and Redmond 2003, 2006).

The Zapotec state emerged in the context of fierce intravalley competition. From 700 to 500 BC one polity of 2,000 people occupied the Etla subvalley, with its chiefly center at San José Mogote. Another polity of 1,000 persons occupied the Tlacolula subvalley, with its chiefly center at Yegüih. A third polity of 1,000 persons lay in the Valle Grande, with its chiefly center at San Martín Tilcajete. For centuries these three societies competed with each other for followers, land, and resources (see figure 12.2). San José Mogote was attacked and its major temple deliberately burned; it built a new temple and carved a monument depicting the sacrificed corpse of an elite enemy (figure 12.3; Marcus and Flannery 1996:129).

By 500 BC the leaders of San José Mogote realized that their valley-floor location was indefensible. With 2,000 of their followers, they moved to a defensible location—the summit of a 400-m-high mountain—where they began to build 3 km of defensive wall. This fortified center became Monte Albán.

The early residents at Monte Albán had the support of the northern and central valleys, the region from which their founders had come. A few hours’ walk to the south lay Tilcajete, an unyielding rival. Tilcajete’s response to the founding of Monte Albán was to get bigger. Tilcajete’s elite laid out a plaza with an astronomical orientation deliberately chosen to contrast with Monte Albán’s. At 330 BC Monte Albán attacked Tilcajete, burning some of its major buildings. Tilcajete refused to capitulate; instead, it drew in more supporters and doubled its population. Tilcajete’s leaders moved their public buildings to a more defensible ridge, defiantly retaining the same astronomical orientation and erecting defensive walls (Spencer and Redmond 2003, 2006).

Monte Albán readied itself for a long campaign by concentrating thousands of farmers, artisans, and warriors in 155 nearby villages. At 30 BC Monte Albán attacked Tilcajete again, burning the ruler’s palace and a nearby temple. Tilcajete did not recover from this attack and was abandoned. On a mountaintop nearby, the victorious rulers of Monte Albán created a new administrative center (Elson 2007).

What resulted from this act of subjugation—as well as many other military victories—was a unified Zapotec state with a 2150 km² heartland. Monte Albán came to be a central place with palaces, royal tombs, standardized two-room temples, and hieroglyphic references to places over which Monte Albán claimed hegemony (Marcus and Flannery 1996:198).

The emergence of a new higher-order capital, occupying the top of the political hierarchy, was the outcome of five centuries of intense political competition. The Valley of Oaxaca did not develop a state as the result of trade with some distant area it longed to emulate. Competition drove a number of rival polities to grow, defend themselves, consolidate power, and attempt to subdue each other, until one of their number emerged victorious. The victors’ leaders then controlled so large an area that it required new political institutions to administer.

The Oaxaca case shows how competition with one’s neighbors can lead to the emergence of additional hierarchical levels, and new institutions such as monarchy. Unable to reach the boundaries of their new polity in a day’s travel, they divided it into provinces ruled by secondary centers. These secondary centers lay equidistant from Monte Albán (Marcus and Flannery 1996:175).

II. A Maya Case Study

Another region that affords us the opportunity to study competitive interaction and the rise of complexity straddles the border separating northern Guatemala from Mexico. That region witnessed a series of oscillations in which four rival centers (Nakbe, El Mirador, Dzibanche, and Calakmul) competed for positions in the political and administrative hierarchy (figure 12.4). The result could be vertical moves in the site hierarchy (from village to town to capital city) or horizontal moves (from an ally of Site A to an ally of Site B).

Our Maya evidence suggests that local competition was a catalyst for the emergence of complexity. Without multiple leaders vying for control, certain political strategies might never have emerged. Perhaps the most intriguing unanswered question is how the El Mirador region managed to achieve such a head start on monumentality and political complexity, compared to other lowland Maya regions. Was that head start related to the unusual density of sites, the proximity of rival cities, or the ability of competing actors to find new ways to attract more followers?

We have learned how to use Maya hieroglyphic texts to identify primary, secondary, and tertiary centers in a political hierarchy, but we certainly need follow-up excavation to confirm that lower-order centers were required to deliver goods and labor to higher-order centers (Flannery and Marcus 2012; Marcus 1973, 1992, 1993). Hieroglyphic texts alone do not provide evidence that a particular higher-order center was calling up men from its subordinate sites to defend it when attacked, nor do they provide the date when the first royal palace appeared at each center.

Some of the key Maya sites in northern Guatemala and southern Yucatán were Balakbal, Calakmul, Naachtun, El Mirador, La Corona, La Muralla, Nakbe, Oxpemul, Uxul, Los Alacranes, Altar de los Reyes, and Altamira. Among the largest were Nakbe, El Mirador, and Calakmul, and their importance is evident both in the extent of each site and the monumentality of its individual structures. Nakbe was a day’s walk from El Mirador. El Mirador was a day’s walk from Calakmul. The clustering of three huge sites—Nakbe, El Mirador, and Calakmul—created a competitive situation, because each site wanted to attract more followers than the others.

While there were many sites of this period in Belize, they tended to lack the enormous pyramids known from northern Guatemala. The monumental sites of the Mirador region can be seen as the centers of flamboyant chiefdoms, both because they invested so much labor in creating monumental structures and because they had administrative hierarchies of at least three levels. We suspect that each paramount chief lived at the largest and best-defended site. The second-level sites were medium-sized communities, each probably led by a subchief who might be a relative of the paramount. At the third level were villages whose leaders were probably under the command of subchiefs at second-tier sites.

Given the current state of our knowledge, we can suggest that two-level chiefdoms characterized parts of Belize while three-level chiefdoms characterized the El Mirador region. By the Late Preclassic, the chiefly centers were building triadic temples, intrasite roads linking plaza groups, and intersite roads that linked first-tier centers to each other and to their respective second-tier centers (Folan et al. 1995a, 2001). Each huge site took its turn being the dominant center—first Nakbe (ca. 800–400 BC), then El Mirador (200 BC–AD 150), Dzibanche (AD 400–600), and finally Calakmul (AD 600–700).

Nakbe

Nakbe’s history began rather modestly during the Middle Preclassic. Its earliest buildings (1000–800 BC) had earthen floors with postholes intruding into bedrock (Hansen 1998). Nakbe likely featured an egalitarian society at this time, but by 800 BC the site had grown to cover 50 ha, with three-m-high stone platforms supporting perishable structures. Thick plaster floors appeared by 600 BC, and sometime between 600 and 400 BC Nakbe’s platforms reached 8 m in height.

At this time Nakbe’s first ballcourt was constructed, and in the site’s East Group, some structures reached more than 16 m in height. Nakbe also built an intrasite causeway that linked its West Group and East Group. It appears that the site’s labor force was used both to intensify agriculture and to build pyramids, temples, and roads. Arlen and Diane Chase (1995) have found artificial garden plots at Nakbe, delimited by stone walls and containing soil laboriously transported from nearby marshy areas. We also see water storage facilities constructed at this time, since both the garden plots and the site’s growing population would have needed water during the dry season. These investments in large-scale transport of soils, along with the development of monumental architecture, imply new strategies for organizing labor. Not surprisingly, we see many of the symbols of rulership used by later Maya kings—the headband and mat motifs—on Middle and Late Preclassic figurines at Nakbe, suggesting that these symbols of political authority were already present.

By Late Preclassic times an intersite causeway had been built, linking Nakbe’s West Group to the site of El Mirador. Nakbe’s Stela 1, found in the main plaza of the West Group, bears no hieroglyphs but does show two Maya lords facing each other (figure 12.5).

Another innovation at Nakbe was an architectural complex called an “E Group.” This complex takes its name from a similar set of buildings found in Group E at Uaxactún (Chase and Chase 1995; Ricketson and Ricketson 1937). An E Group is made up of a large pyramid constructed on the west side of a plaza so as to face a long platform on the east side that supports three structures. Blom (1924) suggested that these E Groups had astronomical significance, and that interpretation continues to find support (Chase and Chase 1995). To an observer standing on the west pyramid, the sun rises directly behind the middle temple of the three on the east side during an equinox, behind the north temple on the east side during the summer solstice, and behind the south temple on the east side during the winter solstice. Preclassic E Group plazas are currently known from Nakbe, El Mirador, Uaxactún, Wakna, Tikal, and a number of other sites (Sharer and Traxler 2006).

El Mirador

The massive site of El Mirador, which lies northwest of Nakbe, has a series of roads radiating out from it (Folan et al. 1995a). One, as mentioned, leads from Nakbe to El Mirador. Another road leads north from El Mirador to Calakmul. Our current evidence suggests that as Nakbe declined in power, El Mirador became the largest and most powerful Late Preclassic site in the region, reducing Nakbe to one of its satellites. El Mirador’s monumental architecture demonstrates that its rulers were able to attract more laborers than its rivals did and that it chose to invest its workforce in creating roads, plazas, and temples on a huge scale.

Like Nakbe, the site of El Mirador was laid out on an east-west axis. The West Group at El Mirador—linked by a causeway to the East Group—was built on a natural hill. Sharer and Traxler (2006:252) have suggested that one of the site’s monumental buildings at this time was an actual palace. We await details, since this would be the oldest Maya palace known so far.

Was El Mirador the capital of the first Maya state, or simply the final developmental stage before statehood? To answer this question, we need to determine whether El Mirador had a three-tiered or four-tiered administrative hierarchy (Wright and Johnson 1975), a genuine palace (Spencer and Redmond 2004), standardized state temples (Marcus and Flannery 1996), and genuine royal tombs such as those of Tikal and Calakmul (Folan et al. 1995b:321–22). Unfortunately, El Mirador is too early to have hieroglyphic texts that provide rulers’ names, emblem glyphs, and phrases such as “divine king.” Whatever level of complexity El Mirador achieved, it was short lived.

Calakmul

The history of Calakmul began in the Middle Preclassic, when it was still a village. By the Late Preclassic, Calakmul was using its labor force to build enormous buildings, one of which was Structure II. Calakmul’s Structure II is similar to El Tigre at El Mirador; both are huge pyramids that feature triadic temples (Folan et al. 1995b:316–317).

At this same time, Calakmul and El Mirador were already linked by a road. Once El Mirador collapsed, Calakmul went on to construct a series of additional roads that linked it to subordinate centers such as Naachtun, Oxpemul, Balakbal, and Uxul (Marcus 1973, 2004b; Robichaux and Pruett 2005; Ruppert and Denison 1943; Šprajc 2008). There appears to be a good fit between the actual location of Calakmul’s secondary centers and the predictions of Central Place Theory (Christaller 1933; Haggett 1966, 1972; Lösch 1954), which suggest that the most efficient way to administer subordinate sites is to have them spaced equidistantly from each other. Most efficient of all is when secondary centers are spaced one day’s travel from the capital (ca. 30 km), which appears to have been the case with Calakmul.

It appears that Calakmul learned something from the collapse of El Mirador, because Calakmul was able to create a first-generation state that not only endured but added more and more satellite communities over time (Marcus and Folan 1994). Calakmul came to control a large part of Campeche, from El Mirador in the southwest to Dzibanche in the northeast, and to administer a realm the hieroglyphic texts call the Kaan (or snake) Polity (figure 12.6).

The first appearance of the Kaan polity name occurs on monuments at three sites (Dzibanche, El Resbalón, and Pol Box) that lie northeast of Calakmul (Carrasco Vargas and Boucher 1987; Esparza Olguín and Pérez Gutiérrez 2009; Nalda 2004; Velásquez García 2004). Those monuments suggest that the rulers of the Kaan Polity were attempting to consolidate the core of their territory by force. One Kaan king—Yuknoom Ch’een I, who reigned from AD 500 to 520—is mentioned on a prisoner stairway at Dzibanche (figure 12.7). Another Kaan king—K’altuun Hix (AD 520–546)—was responsible for taking the prisoners depicted on the steps at El Resbalón (Carrasco Vargas and Boucher 1987).

The next Kaan king was victorious in a battle that led both to his control of Caracol and to the sacrifice of a Tikal ruler (Martin 2005b). By defeating the Tikal ruler in AD 562, Calakmul was able to expand its territory and increase the influence of the Kaan dynasty.

Although Calakmul produced the most stone monuments of any Maya site (117), all but two were commissioned by kings who ruled after AD 500. During the sixth century AD, the rulers of the Kaan polity used military conquest to extend the radius of their state. The court of the Kaan polity moved from Dzibanche to Calakmul by AD 636 (Helmke and Awe 2016; Marcus 2004b, 2012; Martin 2005a; Stuart 2012; Tokovinine 2007). Calakmul’s enormous increase in influence on far-flung polities had its roots in local conflicts within the Kaan polity (Marcus 2004b, 2012; Tokovinine 2007).

From AD 600 to 700 Calakmul maintained its ties with far-flung allies while successfully holding on to its neighboring subjects. Calakmul’s political network of allies was a mosaic, rather than a continuous bloc, with intervening gaps either where Tikal held sway, or where it was simply not worth trying to incorporate new land (Grube 2004; Marcus and Folan 1994; Martin and Grube 1995, 2008).

So extensive were Calakmul’s alliances that the Kaan emblem was mentioned more widely than the Tikal emblem glyph. This extensive distribution, combined with the fact that so many subordinate centers mentioned the Kaan emblem, was what originally led me to suggest that Calakmul might be one of the most important Maya capitals, administering a state with a multitiered hierarchy of sublords (Marcus 1973, 1993, 2004b, 2012). In retrospect, it looks as if the supremacy of a city such as Calakmul or Tikal was determined not just by its intrinsic strength but also by its ability to draw allies away from its rivals (Marcus 2004b, 2012; Martin 2001, 2005a; Martin and Grube 1995, 2000). At its peak, each city had perhaps 50,000 inhabitants and could draw on thousands of men as laborers and warriors (Folan et al. 1995b:310).

While Calakmul had the upper hand in this competition for 132 years, in AD 695 the Tikal ruler Jasaw Chan K’awiil I scored a major victory over Calakmul (Marcus 2004b; Martin and Grube 2008). The son of this victorious Tikal ruler later invested in major new constructions, one of which was Tikal’s Temple I (Trik 1963). On the wooden lintel of that temple, the son commissioned a text that recorded the victory his father had achieved over Calakmul, plus the fact that his father had captured a battle trophy—a huge effigy of one of Calakmul’s patron deities (Coe et al. 1961). Such effigies were carried onto the battlefield as sacred protectors, and the capture of Calakmul’s patron deity would have been a major coup for Tikal. At the base of Temple I the son placed Burial 116, the tomb of his father Jasaw Chan K’awiil I (Trik 1963:4).

Many of the strategies employed by the Kaan Polity were shared with early states elsewhere in the ancient world (Feinman and Marcus 1998; Marcus 1976, 1992, 1993, 2000). These strategies include the incorporation of sites by military force, the installation of allies as rulers at subordinate sites, the sending out of princesses from the capital to marry subordinate lords, and requiring rulers from subordinate sites to attend the inaugurations of rulers at the capital.

Synthesis

The political and military competition among Nakbe, El Mirador, Dzibanche, and Calakmul was the engine driving the creation of the first Maya state. Secondary states could form in even more ways (e.g., Flannery and Marcus 2012; Marcus 2004a).

Nakbe could be seen as a prototype for later Maya cities, given its causeways, stela, altar, E group plaza, ballcourt, and other impressive investments in monumentality. Nakbe collapsed without achieving statehood, however, and its population moved to El Mirador, Dzibanche, and Calakmul. I have no doubt that much of the greatness of Calakmul and Tikal resulted from the competition for more land, more allies, and more followers.

Conclusions

The engine of history is competition—especially competition among neighbors. To be sure, rulers eager for sumptuary goods engaged in long-distance trade for exotic items displaying foreign styles. But we should not use the presence of trade wares or foreign costumes as an excuse to fantasize about Teotihuacanos taking the thrones of Zapotec or Maya cities. In both Oaxaca and in the El Mirador region, state formation was the outcome of centuries of competition among local elites and does not need to be explained as the result of long-distance trade with foreign peoples.

Acknowledgments. I thank Joshua D. Englehardt for inviting me to participate in this volume and I thank Kay Clahassey and John Klausmeyer for their outstanding illustrations that add so much to every article. This chapter has benefited from the constructive comments from three anonymous reviewers; I very much appreciate the insights they offered.

References