Resplendent in jaguar pelts, quetzal plumes, and helmets fashioned in the form of fantastic beasts, Maya warriors set out for battle on a day often ordained by the position of Venus in the predawn sky. Led by rulers dressed as gods, they sought to capture and sacrifice their enemies in a reenactment of sacred myths. According to many scholars, such religious beliefs motivated all Maya warfare. Our epigraphic research suggests that far too little attention has been paid to more pragmatic goals, that wars were also fought to conquer and control rival kingdoms.
The first clue to understanding Classic period political organization came in 1958 when Mayanist Heinrich Berlin identified what he called emblem glyphs. Found in inscriptions throughout the southern Maya Lowlands, these glyphs consist of a main sign, usually placed with the lower rigllt, attached to two smaller elements. Berlin noticed that while the smaller elements remained relatively constant, the main sign changed from site to site. Emblem glyphs from Tikal in the Peten region of northern Guatemala had a main sign representing a knot of hair, while those from Palenque in Chiapas, Mexico, were based on a highly stylized bone. Berlin proposed that the main signs identified individual cities, their ruling dynasties, or the territories they controlled. Among Berlin's more interesting discoveries were four emblem glyphs - those of Copan, Tikal, Palenque, and an unknown city represented by a snake's head grouped together in an inscription on Stela A at Copan in western Honduras. Following Berlin, both Thomas Barthel of the University of Tubingen and Joyce Marcus of the University of Michigan proposed that these cities were the capitals of four large and powerful states, each aligned with one of the cardinal directions. In search of archaeological data bearing on this interpretation, Richard E.W. Adams of the University of Texas, San Antonio, examined the relative size of cities throughout the Maya region Although many of the smaller cities had their own emblem glyphs, both Marcus and Adams concluded that they were not independent political cities but constituent provinces of larger regional states.
More recent archaeological research has recently turned up compelling evidence to support this view. Moreover, breakthroughs in the decipherment of hieroglyphs during the past decade have greatly expanded our understanding of the Maya political world, suggesting quite a different interpretation. We now know that emblem glyphs are titles of Maya kings describing each as the k'ul ahaw or "divine lord" of a kingdom whose name appears as the main sign of the glyph. By charting the distribution of emblem glyphs, Peter Mathews of the University of Calgary has created a map of the lowlands during the Classic period, revealing some 40 separate kingdoms.
Taken by themselves, emblem glyphs demonstrate that all Maya rulers laid claim to an identical political rank, regardless of the size or population of their cities. This decentralized picture has led many scholars to believe that Maya kingdoms, even major ones such as Tikal and Palenque, were fundamentally unstable entities ruled by kings who were ritually important but politically feeble. This view is comparable with the interpretation of Maya warfare as a small-scale, predominantly ritual activity. Surviving inscriptions appear to support this notion since they rarely if ever record conquests in which one state absorbs another. More evidence it would seem that Maya kingdoms were too weak to engage in territorial expansion.
Yet such reconstructions have always failed to explain why some cities are vastly larger than others. Were such disparent units really equals? The idea that central authority within larger kingdoms was ineffectual is undermined by the scale of their public works-- massive pyramids, defensive earthworks miles in length, and great networks of internal roadways which would have required centralized planning and the control of substantial manpower. But perhaps the most Compelling evidence for a higher level of political organization comes from new information we have uncovered within a body of glyphic data that has often been overlooked.
Political relationships between subordinates
and their superiors within individual kingdoms were expressed by the use
of possessive terms. Thus sahal, a rank of office held by key lieutenants
of a king, could be transformed into the possessive form u-sahal, "the
sahal of." The glyphs also tell us that the same dominant-subordinant
relationship existed between kings of different states, where the
highest rank of ahaw, "lord or ruler,'' comes into play.
By adding the prefix y, ahaw becomes , ahaw, "the lord of"
in effect "his vassal."
Further evidence for hierarchy between states is found in passages recording
the accession of kings. Some of these statements contain a secondary phrase
giving the name and emblem glyph of a foreign ruler. This phrase is introduced
by a verb clause that epigraphers have long glossed as "under the auspices
of'" though we now believe that it should be translated as u-kahiy,
literally "it was done by him."
If we combine the appearance of the y-ahaw and u-kaby phrases with Classic period texts documenting other forms of diplomatic exchange such as royal visits gift-giving, joint ritual activity, and marriage, we find that hierarchical contacts are part of relationships spanning several generations. Some kingdoms are consistently more dominant than others and seem to be manipulating the affairs of weaker ones. This analysis is supported by inscriptions describing conflicts. Wars are only rarely recorded between states that usually share political ties, and politically allied kingdoms tend to share the same adversaries. Together such patterns suggest that there were groupings of states during the Late Classic period (ca. A.D. 600-900). As the y-ahaw and u-kahiy phrases indicate, kingdoms within such groups did not share power equally, tending rather to fall under the influence of a few especially powerful states....
...The picture that is emerging is neither one of a centralized administration of regional states nor one of a political vacuum populated by weak ones. Instead it would appear that a few powerful kingdoms held lesser ones in their sway - a system not unlike others seen throughout ancient Mesoamerica. Maya kingdoms never achieved the level of centralization of the fifteenth century Aztec Empire, but their structure and political strategies offer some interesting parallels. The Aztec Empire was a loose confederation of subjugated kingdoms and smaller empires. Its conquests were not consolidated by military occupation or administered from the capital Tenochtitlan; defeated local lords were usually restored to their offices and allowed to rule their states without further hindrance. Their successors were often sanctioned by the Aztec emperor in ceremonies with the similar events of the Classic Maya. The consequences of Aztec conquest were economic. All the form of tribute payments, and political, the the tr.ansformation of local leaders into vassals of the emperor. Once their military prowess had been proved, the Aztecs were often able to intimidate other states into acquicsence without further use of force. We suspect that the Classic Maya conformed to a similar patterns with a complex environment of overlords and vassals, kingship ties and obligations, where the strong tended to dominate the weak.
