The Dynamics of Maya State Process: An Integrated Perspective from the San Lucas Neighborhood of Copán, Honduras

Recognized as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, the city of Copán was a major center of Maya culture during the Classic Period (AD 250–900). While archaeologists have been traditionally concerned with the top‐down despotic power of Maya rulers, I show how infrastructural power—the ability of the state to affect the everyday lives of its residents—waxed and waned. As a representative subset of the city at large, the intermediate scale of neighborhoods best reveals effects of and reactions to state power. I focus on politcal dynamics at six households within the San Lucas neighorbood, attending to episodes of landscape engineering, architectural construction, and artifactual trends. I consider these changes together with political events recorded in hieroglyphic inscriptions at Copán Center. This correlation shows whether and how state policies altered the daily lives of residents. Incorporating a bottom‐up perspective from the intermediate scale of neighborhoods enables an integrated assessment of citywide political dynamics. [ political dynamics, collective action theory, urbanism, neighborhoods, Maya ]