Terminal Classic residential histories, migration, and foreigners at the Maya site of Ucanal, Petén, Guatemala
Introduction
The Terminal Classic period (ca. AD 810-950/1000) is often recognized as a period of tremendous political and social change as many royal dynasties across the Southern Maya Lowlands collapsed and many cities and smaller settlements underwent substantial population reductions. Despite these patterns, some Southern Maya Lowland settlements continued to be occupied, and in some cases prospered during this time (Aimers, 2007, Rice and Rice, 2018b, Zralka and Hermes, 2012). In particular, scholars have noted substantial changes in the form and style of stone monuments, epigraphic texts, architecture, and material culture at many of these sites. Some of the earliest studies attributed these new practices, objects, and buildings to foreigners from either the Gulf Coast region or northern Yucatan who invaded or migrated to these Southern Lowland sites (Adams, 1971, Chase and Chase, 1982, Culbert, 1988, Sabloff et al., 1967, Thompson, 1970). Subsequent archaeological research, however, has found little evidence of foreign invasions or large-scale population replacements, and many have suggested that local populations began to adopt new cultural and political expressions that replaced the traditional alliances, symbols, and structures of political-economic power from the Classic period (Bazy and Inomata, 2017, Demarest, 1997, Foias and Bishop, 2005, Tourtellot and González, 2004).
The stone monuments from the archaeological site of Ucanal, located in eastern Petén, Guatemala, exhibit many of the foreign-affiliated attributes noted by some of the earliest scholars, but it is only recently that the site has been systematically excavated. This paper presents newly documented settlement data from the city’s residences as well as stable and radiogenic isotopic data from human teeth and fauna from the region to provide a more comprehensive examination of the changes that occurred at the end of the Classic period. The isotopic data provide a baseline chemical signature for the Ucanal region as well as initial insights into population mobility from a sample of residential burials and human teeth from ritual contexts (n = 17). Despite the small sample size of the human remains, the combined perspectives from the residential histories and isotopic analyses underscore that major population replacements by an invading group were not likely to have occurred. We argue that while the site maintained a high degree of stability over the course of the Late Classic to Terminal Classic periods, it was also a heterogenous city that incorporated new inhabitants and influences from different Maya regions. We suggest that a more flexible and dynamic understanding of “the foreign” and foreigners are needed to better characterize the archaeological data at Ucanal and elsewhere in the Maya area.
Section snippets
Foreigners
Foreign identities have the potential to be overlapping, situational, unstable states of being, and as such are challenging to identify archaeologically. In the case of ancient Maya peoples, it is highly unlikely that foreign identities fell along the lines created by contemporary anthropologists who have designated a seemingly bounded “Maya area” based on linguistic group affiliations at the point of Western contact. Substantial ethnohistoric and epigraphic evidence suggests that ancient
Residential settlement histories
The site of Ucanal, referred to as K’anwitznal or “Yellow Hill Place” in Classic period texts, is located in the Mopan River Valley in eastern Petén. Excavations by the Proyecto Atlas Arqueológico de Guatemala, directed by Juan Pedro Laporte, first began in 1997 and continued until 2000 and focused on the test-pitting of 15 architectural groups (5 of which were monumental, public plaza zones) (Laporte et al., 2002, Laporte and Mejía, 2002a, Laporte and Escobedo, 2002b, Corzo et al., 1998,
Methods
Human teeth analyzed for strontium and oxygen isotopes consisted of 17 samples including 8 that were deposited within new Terminal Classic residential architectural configurations (Plaza Plan 4) (Table 2). In addition to the human remains, 17 modern faunal samples were collected in the Mopan River Valley to establish a local strontium isotope baseline for the region (Table 3). Although there is no single way to differentiate local from non-local populations, our assessment focused on
Discussion
The settlement and isotope analyses from recent investigations at the site of Ucanal reveal that the Terminal Classic K’anwitznal capital was indeed a diverse place occupied by both local and non-local inhabitants and also challenge the simplicity of the Putun/Chontal invasion model as an explanation for changes in material culture and monumental expressions during the Terminal Classic period. Firstly, the settlement patterns identified thus far underscore a general paucity of major settlement
Conclusion
The foreign invasion hypothesis as a way to explain Terminal Classic changes at the site of Ucanal – or in the Southern Maya Lowlands in general – is too reductive to fully capture the complex dynamics, multi-directional movements, and pluralistic influences of this time period. Settlement and isotopic analyses reveal that Ucanal was a heterogenous city during this time with connections to multiple regions and peoples from the Maya area and likely even beyond. Inhabitants expressed an openness
CRediT authorship contribution statement
Christina T. Halperin: Conceptualization, Resources, Investigation, Writing - original draft, Visualization, Project administration, Funding acquisition. Yasmine Flynn-Arajdal: Investigation, Formal analysis, Writing - review & editing. Katherine A. Miller Wolf: Investigation, Formal analysis, Writing - review & editing. Carolyn Freiwald: Investigation, Formal analysis, Visualization, Writing - original draft, Writing - review & editing.
Declaration of Competing Interest
The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.
Acknowledgements
Research by the Proyecto Arquólogico Ucanal was funded by grants from the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC/CRSH), the National Geographic Society Waitt Foundation, Fonds de Recherche du Québec—Société et Culture (FRQSC), San Diego Mesa College, Indiana University East, University of Mississippi, and Université de Montréal. We thank our project excavators and personnel from San José, Barrio Nuevo San José, La Blanca, and Pichelito II for their expertise and
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