Beyond Capitals and Kings: a Comparison of Animal Resource Use Among Ten Late Classic Maya Sites
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BEYOND CAPITALS AND KINGS: A COMPARISON OF ANIMAL RESOURCE USE AMONG TEN LATE CLASSIC MAYA SITES By ASHLEY E. SHARPE A THESIS PRESENTED TO THE GRADUATE SCHOOL OF THE UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF ARTS UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA 2011 1 © 2011 Ashley E. Sharpe 2 To my parents, Who taught me the value of curiosity 3 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I am indebted to a number of individuals for helping me finish this thesis, first and foremost among them my advisor, Dr. Kitty Emery. With her expertise and, sometimes more importantly, patience, I was able to accomplish much more with this study than I had originally anticipated. I am also grateful for her help in providing me with the original datasets of the faunal material she had analyzed from Piedras Negras and Aguateca, and for acquainting me with a number archaeologists and other individuals both directly and indirectly associated with the excavations covered in this study, all of whom were able to provide invaluable assistance in my quest to reconstruct past patterns of animal resource use. I must also thank my supervisory committee member, Dr. Susan deFrance, for helping me with some of the initial identifications for the Sierra del Lacandon material when I first began the analysis, and for urging me to look at the broader implications of some of my data. I am also grateful to my committee member, Dr. Susan Milbrath, whose passion for ancient Maya culture and mythology prompted me to explore explanations I would not otherwise have considered. Among those who were able to provide me with first-hand accounts of the excavations at the sites in this study, and who were always more than willing to answer any questions I had (even down to the provenience of a single bone), I am grateful to Dr. Charles Golden (Brandeis University) and Dr. Andrew Scherer (Brown University), the directors of the Sierra del Lacandon Regional Archaeological Project, and where the idea for this project first originated. I must thank Dr. Golden and Dr. Scherer not only for contributing their faunal assemblages to this study, but for their continued interest in the investigation and its future research applications. I am grateful as well to Dr. Bruce Bachand (Brigham Young University) and Dr. Markus Eberl (Vanderbilt University) for 4 their help providing provenience and excavation data from the sites of Punta de Chimino and Nacimiento, respectively. I must also thank Dr. Daniela Triadan and Dr. Takeshi Inomata (University of Arizona) for providing me the opportunity to visit the sites of the past Aguateca and Punta de Chimino excavations, so that I could better envision not only where faunal remains were recovered, but how social interactions may have taken place between the households and administrative centers in the communities. I also owe a favor to Coral Montero (La Trobe University), who went out of her way to hunt down and scan an original copy of Heriberto Soto-Toral’s analysis of the Yaxchilan zooarchaeological remains in Mexico City. Finally, I thank all of those at the University of Florida, particularly the researchers at the Florida Museum of Natural History, who were able to help me finish this thesis in a timely manner. Zooarchaeology Collection Manager Irvy Quitmyer provided his invaluable expertise when I needed to identify some of the more ambiguous fish elements. Mammalogy Collection Manager Candace McCaffery was also very helpful when I needed to track down comparative elements of certain rare taxa. Furthermore, none of this research would be possible without funding from a University of Florida Graduate Alumni Fellowship. Most of all, I am grateful to the support and genuine interest shown by all of those who helped me complete this project. 5 TABLE OF CONTENTS page ACKNOWLEDGMENTS .................................................................................................. 4 TABLE OF CONTENTS .................................................................................................. 6 LIST OF TABLES ............................................................................................................ 9 LIST OF FIGURES ........................................................................................................ 11 ABSTRACT ................................................................................................................... 12 CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION .................................................................................................... 14 Current Understanding of Maya Political Organization ........................................... 16 Zooarchaeology’s Contribution to Political and Economic Theory .......................... 18 The Study Areas: The Usumacinta and the Petexbatun ......................................... 19 Overview of Research Methods .............................................................................. 21 2 OVERVIEW OF MAYA POLITICAL THEORY AND ECONOMICS ......................... 26 Territorial Organization and Inter-site Hierarchies .................................................. 26 Zooarchaeology and the Political Economy of the Maya ........................................ 30 Subsistence and Trade .................................................................................... 30 Status and Power Relations ............................................................................. 34 Craft Specialization Using Animal Products ..................................................... 35 Animals in Ritual Performance ......................................................................... 36 Summary of Maya Political Structure and Economics ............................................ 37 3 BACKGROUND TO THE REGIONAL SETTINGS .................................................. 38 The Usumacinta Region and the Sierra del Lacandόn National Park ..................... 38 The Petexbatun ...................................................................................................... 44 Summary of the Regional Settings ......................................................................... 48 4 MATERIALS AND METHODS ................................................................................ 54 Excavation Methods and Artifact Acquisition .......................................................... 54 Laboratory Analysis and Identification .................................................................... 58 Principal Quantification Methods ............................................................................ 59 Other Datasets ........................................................................................................ 61 Comparative Methods ............................................................................................. 61 Species Abundance ......................................................................................... 62 6 Diversity and Equitability (Evenness) ............................................................... 63 Habitat Fidelity .................................................................................................. 65 Body Portion Distribution .................................................................................. 66 Crafting ............................................................................................................. 67 Potential Sources of Bias ........................................................................................ 67 Taphonomic Bias .............................................................................................. 68 Recovery Bias .................................................................................................. 69 Analytical Bias .................................................................................................. 70 5 RESULTS ............................................................................................................... 72 Overall Comparisons of Identified Taxa and Species Abundance .......................... 72 The Usumacinta Region ................................................................................... 73 The Yaxchilan polity ................................................................................... 73 The Piedras Negras polity .......................................................................... 78 Summary of the Usumacinta site comparisons .......................................... 79 The Petexbatun Region .................................................................................... 80 Punta de Chimino and Nacimiento ............................................................. 81 Subordinate site assemblage comparisons with Aguateca ........................ 83 Species Abundance among the Three Polities ................................................. 84 Comparisons of Taxa by Social Rank ..................................................................... 85 The Usumacinta Region ................................................................................... 86 The Petexbatun Region .................................................................................... 89 Comparisons between Polities ......................................................................... 92 Comparison of Ritual Practices ............................................................................... 93 Ritual Practices Observed in the Usumacinta .................................................. 93 Ritual Practices Observed in the Petexbatun ..................................................