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The Dynamics of Maya State Process: An Integrated Perspective from the San Lucas Neighborhood of Copán, Honduras
Author(s) -
Landau Kristin V.
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
american anthropologist
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.51
H-Index - 85
eISSN - 1548-1433
pISSN - 0002-7294
DOI - 10.1111/aman.13514
Subject(s) - maya , politics , state formation , urbanism , power (physics) , state (computer science) , perspective (graphical) , sociology , geography , political economy , history , political science , archaeology , law , art , architecture , mathematics , algorithm , physics , quantum mechanics , visual arts
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 ]