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Clashing Maya Superpowers Emerge from a New Analysis

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Clashing Maya Superpowers Emerge from a New Analysis RESEARCH NEWSs ARCHAEOLOGY dealt with hieroglyphicsas if they were re- ferringmostly to local events,"he explains, but by relating wars and marriagesto a Clashing Maya Superpowers largerpattern of alliancebuilding and super- power rivalry, Martin and Grube have Emerge From a New Analysis openedthe wayto readingthe Mayatexts as a singlehistory. Other scholarsremain less enthusiastic. The Mayaachieved the high point of their Martinand Grube also drawmore modem One is epigrapherStephen Houston of Brig- civilizationmore than a thousandyears ago parallels.Like NATO and the WarsawPact, ham Young University in Provo, Utah. in the remotejungles of Mexicoand Central each alliancewas led by a dominantpower: Houstonthinks Martin and Grube greatly ex- America,but with every passingyear their the greatcity of Tikal in Guatemalaand an aggeratethe authorityof their"superpowers." society is looking more and more like ours. even larger(though less well-known) me- Still, he concedesthat "there'sno doubtthat As recentlyas 30 yearsago, many archaeolo- tropolis at the base of the Yucatancalled [their model] is useful"for understanding gists imagined the Maya as peaceful mys- Calakmul.These powers fought wars through Mayapolitical life. tics, their lives centeredon statelyceremo- proxystates and preservedthe allegianceof The fact that Mayanistsare now arguing nial centerswhere astronomer-priests inter- their "vassal"city-states through force and about the nature and importanceof large pretedthe stars.But that picturefaded in the intermarriage. politicalstructures-not aboutwhether they 1960s and '70s as a breedof anthropologists And drawingan eerieparallel to the fallof existed-shows how muchthe consensushas known as epigrapherscracked the complex the Soviet Union, the researchersspeculate shiftedin the lastyear or two, as Martinand hieroglyphicsystem of Maya writing. The that the collapse of one great alliance- Grube'sideas made the rounds.Previously, glyphstold a lively storyof politicsand war- Calakmul's-in the middle of the eighth says archaeologist Arthur Demarest of fare, and the ceremonial centers became centurycould have contributedto the politi- VanderbiltUniversity in Nashville,Tennes- quarrelsomecity-states. Now, with a new cal fragmentationand widespreadwarfare see, leaderof an importantproject centered on the site at Dos Pilasin Guate- mala,most scholars saw Maya po- litical organizationas a mosaicof weak city-states"no more than a day'swalk in radius." That idea was one of the first legacies of the deciphermentof Maya script. Epigraphersrecog- nizedcertain glyphs as royal titles, and they foundthat each of these "emblemglyphs" appeared most often in inscriptionsfrom a small regioncentered on a particularcity. "Everycity seemedto have its own king,"says Grube, with no indica- tion of any higherauthority. A few Mayanistshad advo- cated the ideaof largerstates, but they made little headwayagainst this dominantview. One such re- searcher,Richard Adams of the University of Texas, San Anto- nio, arguedin 1985 that the great disparityin size amongthe Maya Spheresof influence. The map, whichis an enlargementof the shaded area (inset)including parts of the centers marked some of them, YucatAn,Guatemala, and Belize, shows the politicalalignments of Mayastates at about A.D. 680. While such as Tikal, as capitalsof larger Calakmulthen held sway over more areas (orange)than Tikal,it wouldeventually fall to its rival. regions.By tracingsimilarities in potterystyle and architecturebe- readingof texts from sites throughoutthe that followed.If they are right, Martinand yond individualsites, he says,he wasable to Mayaheartland in Mexico,Guatemala, and Grube will have shed light on one of the drawthe boundariesof five or six well-de- Belize, the Maya have taken another step enduringmysteries of ClassicMaya civiliza- fined states. But without the force of the towardmodernity. tion: its collapsein aboutA.D. 800. texts behind his interpretation,it failed to In their as-yet-unpublishedanalysis of Many of Martinand Grube'scolleagues convince manyof his colleagues. these texts, Mayaepigraphers Simon Mar- say that as they learnedof the proposalat Troublingclues. Still, scholarsdecipher- tin of University College, London, and conferencesand in the letters and manu- ing the historiesrecorded on the carvedstone Nikolai Grubeof the Universityof Bonn in script draftsthe two have circulated,they slabscalled stelae and on templereliefs were Germanysee many of the individualcity- realizedit makessense of previouslymysteri- awarethat some city-stateshad strongerties states tied in two large, durablealliances. ous clues in the Mayatexts. "Iregard it as a to others than the picture of independent Eachone, they say,resembles the loose-knit seminal paper-a watershedeffort in our city-statesseemed to allow."These things on "empires"documented among the Aztecs field," says archaeologistDavid Freidel of the monumentswere troubling," says Dema- and other Mesoamericanpeoples by 16th- SouthernMethodist University, who plans rest, "butwe sort of ignoredthem." In in- centurySpanish and native chroniclers.But to collaboratewith Grube."Up to now we've scriptionsfrom Dos Pilas, he says, "there's SCIENCE * VOL. 266 * 4 NOVEMBER1994 733 This content downloaded from 129.252.86.83 on Fri, 06 Nov 2015 05:15:16 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions alwaysa presenceof Calakmul." processtraced by other researchers,emblem And other researchershad seen glyphs proliferatedthrough the Maya low- hints that Calakmulenlisted al- lands, indicatingthe rise of scoresof small lies in its warsagainst Tikal. But city-statesclaiming independence. With the mostMaya scholars saw these links fragmentationcame violence and social as temporarystrategic alliances- breakdown. By the eighth century, says not lasting political formations. Demarest,the Dos Pilasregion had become "Whenyou study just one city,you "a Road Warriorlandscape," with villages don'tget the pattern,"says Grube. transformedinto fortressesand a precipitous "We took data fromall the Maya dropin population. lowlandsand put them together." In Dos Pilas,at least,Grube may be on the An earlyclue that moreformal right track,says Demarest. "It could be that associationsexisted came in the the power and prestigeof the king of Dos late 1980s from a glyph that had Pilasdepended on the powerand prestigeof been translatedroughly as "bythe tL~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~LCalakmul,"he says. But Grubeand Martin doing of." While working inde- agree with other Maya scholars that the pendently, Martin and Grube breakupof the alliancesmay not have been spotted this "agency"glyph in the only factor-or even the primaryone- texts fromseveral cities, implying in the collapseof classic Mayacivilization. that key events there had been As NormanHammond of BostonUniversity broughtabout by outside agents. puts it, the political collapse may be just a Forexample, Martin found that it manifestationof "alonger term malaise con- linkedthe accessionof a rulerof El nectedto an overstressedenvironment and a Peru,a city in Guatemala,to the burgeoningpopulation." emblemglyph of Calakmul.And Indeed, some Maya scholarssay Martin in earlyClassic texts fromCaracol and Grube-like Calakmulwhen it went for in Belize, Grube saw much the a regional synthesis-have overextended same pattern:agency glyphs im- themselves."There's no questionthat there plying, he says, that "the first weresome overarching hierarchies in the po- kings of Caracol acceded under litical organizationof the Maya,"says Hous- the auspicesof Tikal." .50 M ton, who addsthat for severalyears, he and Then,about 3 yearsago, Martin I I Stuarthave been seeing some of the same O and Grubejoined forcesand wid- Spoils of war. This carved wooden lintelfrom Tikal rec- patterns, although they never published ened theirstudy, finding evidence ords a key victoryover its rivalCalakmul and captureof their observations."Sites like Tikal and of Calakmuland Tikal'spre-emi- Calakmul's"giant jaguar" war deity. Calakmulwere enormouslyinfluential. ... nence throughout the lowland But I don't believe that all dynasticinterac- Maya region. Much of it rests on another states' relationswith one another. A stela tions-marriage,warfare, and so on-can be glyph, which means "the lord of." One ex- from Caracol, for example, tells how that reducedto [superpowerrelations]." ample is a hieroglyphicstairway from Dos city's forces overthrewSmoking Squirrel's Stuartadds that Martinand Grubemay Pilas, which Houston, epigrapherDavid predecessorat Naranjo,apparently at Calak- be taking the texts too literally."The texts Stuartof HarvardUniversity, and others had mul'sbehest. The war,Martin and Grube sug- always leave some room for play-they're deciphered.It identifiesthe rulerof Calakmul gest,was a proxycampaign launched by Calak- not terriblyexplicit about these relation- as lord of the local king, known as ruler 1. mul becausethe Naranjoruler had tried to ships."A text might declarethat one lord Another comes from the city of Naranjo:a switchhis allegianceto Tikal. was seated on his throne "bythe doing"of stela that namesCalakmul's ruler as the lord Throughsuch maneuvers, say Martin and another."But does this reflecta lot of reality of the Naranjoking, SmokingSquirrel. "We Grube,Calakmul held the upperhand over on the ground?"It's possible, he says,that the had reallyfigured out that this patternwas Tikal for more than 150 years, from the apparentlysubordinate ruler was simplytry- importantin 1992,"recalls Grube. middleof the sixth centurythrough
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