![]() ![]() ![]() Proskouriakoff's treatment of early Tikal history remains one of the most compelling, despite being originally conceived nearly thirty years ago. Stela 32, also found in the Tikal North Acropolis, shows a highland warrior wearing a so-called "tassel headdress" and is in even more direct Teotihuacan style. Most striking of all evidences was the discovery of sculptured monuments bearing portraits of "Mexican" individuals, such as Stela 31 at Tikal with its image of a warrior in Teotihuacan dress grasping a rectangular shield and atlatl spearthrower. Although this concept would later pervade Mesoamerica through many so-called "Tollans", I will suggest that Teotihuacan was the archetype, having played a direct and active role in founding political orders within the Maya area.Ī Teotihuacan presence in the Maya lowlands was evident from an early date. I will confirm and elaborate on the antiquity of what might be called the "Tollan paradigm" of Mesoamerican political power and self-representation. This discussion will be based in large part on my earlier decipherment of the Classic Maya name for Teotihuacan, "Place of Cattails," (equivalent to Nahuatl Tollan) and the implications that this has presented for Mesoamerican studies. I will argue that Maya rulers kept open a claim to this earlier history, evoking Teotihuacan as both a place and an idea of political origin. It is therefore in the latter part of the Classic period, after the collapse of Teotihuacan, that the less direct "internalist" model comes into play. In addition to the historical details surrounding this highland-lowland encounter, Classic Maya inscriptions and iconography allow us to perceive how the Maya consciousness of Teotihuacan changed and developed over the course of four centuries, melding the formidable power and memory of that foreign city with their own political symbolism and ideology. As we shall see, such sources strongly support a more "externalist" view that Teotihuacan played a very direct and even disruptive role in the political history of Maya kingdoms. I argue in this essay that the hieroglyphic texts at Tikal, Copan and other Maya sites offer insights into Maya perceptions of a dynamic and often changing relationship with central Mexico. With the exception of Proskouriakoff, most epigraphic work on central Peten history has assumed a more "internalist" perspective, often ignoring the Teotihuacan issue altogether. The potential importance of the hieroglyphic texts is clear, but it is surprising how seldom they have been used to clarify the history underlying Teotihuacan-Maya interactions. Advancing the discussion and debate requires a more detailed historical context that can only be provided from an analysis of the preserved hieroglyphic texts at Tikal, Copan and other Maya centers. Where, then, does this leave our debate? In my view, traditional lines of archaeological evidence are limited in their capacity to provide an explanatory context for the sort of intensive culture contact so evident at Tikal and Copan. Rather than insist on a dichotomous either-or-model, it is possible that both the "externalist" models and "internalist" models outlined above have merit and explanatory power when applied at different times in Classic history. We know that Mesoamerican political interactions, alliances and hierarchies could shift and realign themselves with surprising speed, sometimes within a generation or two. To complicate matters even more, the political and economic ties that existed between Teotihuacan and Maya polities presumably changed over the centuries as fortunes and societies on both ends shifted in their own localized way. The second suggests that Teotihuacan styles and material remains in the Maya area might better be seen as a local appropriation of prestigious or legitimating symbolism and its associated militaristic ideology. The first posits an overt and disruptive Teotihuacan presence in the Maya lowlands in the late fourth century A.D., associated with military incursions if not political domination. Scholarship is polarized around two different propositions. This paper revisits a much-debated topic in Mesoamerican archaeology: the nature and scope of the political interaction between the highlands of central Mexico and the Maya lowlands during the Classic period (ca. ![]() Extract of a paper presented at Princeton University ![]()
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