Maya Studies Research Articles

A Solicitous Science

Three visions of anthropology collided in San Cristóbal de las Casas, Chiapas in the 1950s. Infrastructural improvements, indigenista politics, and increased US social science funding intensified research on Indigenous Chiapas. The scene drew together imperial travelers, modernist ethnographers, and Mexican development administrators. Among them was Danish explorer-archaeologist Frans Blom, who struggled to establish his estate as a reputationally redeeming fieldwork institute. This article parses how some modernist anthropologists distanced themselves from Blom’s imperial legacy, while others pressed his ideas of cultural continuity into implicit, controversial claims for their centrality to ancient and modern Maya studies writ large.

Review: A Maya Universe in Stone, edited by Stephen Houston

Review: <i>A Maya Universe in Stone</i>, edited by Stephen Houston

Maya Ruins Revisited: In the Footsteps of Teobert Maler

Maya Ruins Revisited: In the Footsteps of Teobert Maler highlights the visual record of an often-overlooked pioneer of Maya studies, the German photographer and Mayanist Teobert Maler. Maler's contributions, overshadowed by earlier Western explorers of Maya sites such as John Lloyd Stephens and Frederick Catherwood, Alfred Maudslay, and Désiré Charnay, receive their due in Maya Ruins Revisited. Undertaken with a photographer's eye for detail, William Frej visually illustrates the importance of Maler's nineteenth- and early twentieth-century photographs of cities that had been untouched for centuries. These photographs, often paired with Frej's images taken a century or more later, show over 70 Maya sites upon their rediscovery, before decades of looting or restoration altered them beyond recognition. This excellent collection of photographs and essays will delight scholars, students, and Maya enthusiasts alike.Introductory essays, most of them succinct, situate the photographs and captions within the developing field of photography, surveys of Maya sites, and advances in Mayanist scholarship from the nineteenth through the twenty-first century. Essays by Alma Durán-Merk and Stephan Merk, Tomás Gallareta Negrón, Jeremy A. Sabloff, and Khristaan D. Villela contextualize the high-quality images with a biography of Maler, a brief sketch of Frej's career, and an overview of the Maya urban life of the Classic and Postclassic periods; Frej provides an introduction as photographer. Sabloff's concise survey of Maya urbanism across several millennia distills a leading Mayanist's knowledge into ten approachable pages, accessible to nonspecialists. Its up-to-date interpretations provide a framework for the Maya architecture in Frej's photographs. Merk and Durán-Merk open a window on the somewhat reclusive figure whose photography gave many in the world their first glimpse of many Maya sites off the beaten path. The coauthors of this chapter piece together the globe-trotting life of the German photographer and former officer in Maximilian's army and his wide-ranging travels throughout the Maya world. Using source materials such Maler's papers and memoirs, Merk and Durán-Merk re-create the adventures of Maler far from his birthplace in Rome. Though Frej has lived a less sensational life, his contributions to the field of Maya studies are no less impressive, as Villela details. Finally, a “further reading” section on page 288 offers a brief list of additional sources for readers wishing to learn more.However, most of the pages are filled with Frej's high-quality photographs of Maya sites, from the best-known and most visited Maya cities such as Chichén Itzá, Tikal, and Uxmal to remote locations only accessible by dirt trails or by boat, such as Dzibiltun in Yucatan and Topoxte in Petén. In many instances, Frej paired his recent photographs with Maler's nineteenth- and early twentieth-century images of the same site, often taken from the same or a similar angle. These pairings give readers a visual guide to the looting, decay, extensive restoration, and changes to the landscapes that have occurred between when Maler captured the state of the sites in the late nineteenth century and when Frej revisited them in the early twenty-first century. Even when Maler's photographs are not included for comparison, Frej's captions describe the erosion of facades, restorations of nonoriginal materials, and disappearing plaster and pigment.Maler's nineteenth- and early twentieth-century photos contrasted with more recent images by Frej show changes to not only structures but also the surroundings. Maler's photos often contain Maya subjects in the foreground or maize fields cultivated near the sites, showing that while Maler may have been the first European to view the remains of major cities, Maya continued to live in the shadows of the lands of their ancestors. While these aspects of the photographic essay will benefit archaeologists and other Mayanists, even the casual reader will come away from reading Maya Ruins Revisited with a deeper appreciation of Maya art and architecture.Frej's diligence in compiling this outstanding book is commendable. By bringing together scholars from Germany, Mexico, and the United States to write concise introductory material, Frej has made this work accessible to readers from all levels of expertise in the Maya world. The final product is impressive, valuable, and informative and should be purchased by any Maya enthusiast or librarian who can afford to do so.

The pilgrimage to the living mountains: representationalism, animism, and the Maya

ABSTRACT In this contribution, I provide an ethnography of the Maya New Year’s pilgrimage and sacrifice ritual, in which a delicate relatedness between people and animate mountains is established, enacted, and expressed. Far from the body–spirit, object–subject, and nature–culture dualities, these mountains appear to be bodily-souled and immanent-transcendent beings that participate, together with people, in the ongoing process of shaping a single shared world. The pilgrimage, therefore, is a route along which a larger than human community is being formed and along which the world – in all its contingency, fragility, and precariousness – is continuously brought into existence. This existentially animist cosmology situates humans and nonhumans within the-world-in-formation, rather than the-world-in-representation of some pre-existent cultural and political contents. Finally, I discuss some of the recent attempts to challenge representationalist approaches in Maya studies, arguing that they have escaped the tenets of representationalism just to fall into the trap of western alternative spirituality.

THE INFLECTION POINTS IN FORMATIVE MAYA HISTORY: THE VIEW FROM CHAMPOTÓN, CAMPECHE, MEXICO

AbstractThis study evaluates the degree of correspondence between chronological frameworks implemented in Maya studies and current archaeological evidence, focusing on dynamics in the Preclassic period in the Champotón River drainage, Campeche, Mexico. The earliest ceramics documented in Champotón, dating to the early facet of the Middle Preclassic, were part of a regional tradition that shared decorative modes with contemporary complexes across Mesoamerica. The transition between the early and late facets of the Middle Preclassic was an era of abrupt change, with communities in Champotón participating in the first widespread autochthonous material culture horizon of the Maya Lowlands. The ensuing centuries would be characterized by conservatism and growth, with spatial continuity in settlement locations and homogeneity in material culture through the Late Preclassic. These historical dynamics are not unique to coastal Campeche, but were embedded within broader historical developments during the Middle Preclassic period in the Maya Lowlands. Instead of forcing new evidence into an incongruent chronological framework, this article proposes a revision to the traditional periodization used in the Maya Lowlands.

КОНЦЕПЦИЯ ТРИБУТАРНОГО СПОСОБА ПРОИЗВОДСТВА В МЕЗОАМЕРИКЕ В МЕКСИКАНСКОЙ ИСТОРИОГРАФИИ ВТОРОЙ ПОЛОВИНЫ ХХ В.

The article considers the history of the concept of the tributary mode of production in the Mexican historiography between the 1960s and the 1980s. This concept was elaborated by Ion Banu and Samir Amin as an al- ternative to the traditional “Asiatic mode of production”. It entered Mexican historiography in the late 1960s as a result of the spread of Neomarxist ideas. In the mid-1970s various scholars, including Alberto Ruz in the Maya studies and Roger Bartra and Pedro Carrasco in the Aztec studies, became interested in the concept of tributary mode of production to explain the socio-economic nature of Mesoamerican state. Analysis of the ideas of Alberto Ruz (1906– 1979) shows that his interest in tributary mode of production was the result of a search for new theoretical and methodological base and interpretation of the new materials. The problematics of the socio-economic characteristics of the Ancient Maya society became essential for Ruz in the last years of his life. His ideas could develop into an original theoretical model, which would become the basis for the consolidation of Mesoamerican studies in Mexico into a unified school. However, his death and the absence of a comparable figure among the next generation resulted in a denouement of the concept of tributary mode of production during the next decade.

Archaeology and Heritage Management in the Maya Area: History and Practice at Caracol, Belize

Archaeology and heritage management in the Maya area have developed differently in the various modern-day countries that make up ancient Mesoamerica. In the country of Belize, heritage management has been conjoined with archaeology since at least the late 1970s. Long-term projects, such as the 1985-to-present archaeological investigations at the ancient ruins that comprise the immense city of Caracol, Belize, demonstrate the evolution of heritage management. This abandoned metropolis has also been the location of concerted stabilization and conservation efforts. Research and heritage management efforts at this urban center have been coordinated and intertwined since the project’s inception. This article contextualizes the long-standing relationships between archaeology and cultural heritage as it has been practiced at Caracol, Belize within the broader field of Maya Studies.

Axis Mundi in the Tropics: Uses and Abuses of Eliade’s Phenomenology of Religion in the Schelean Maya Studies

Abstract Ever since the 1980s, the Maya Studies became seeped with influence of the theories of Mircea Eliade. The article traces the origins and contexts of this influence and evaluates both the results it yielded and the problems it brought to the discipline. First of all, it shows that the way Eliade’s influence has been brought to the Maya Studies (mainly via the Maya Cosmos monograph) is seriously problematic, since it does not discuss or even acknowledge the Eliadian origins of its main concepts. This lack of theoretical reflection opened the door to simplifications and misunderstandings, which spread through the discipline. At the same time, the fundamentally empirical character of Maya Studies practically prevented any deeper conceptual discussion of Maya religion. The article therefore calls for a much needed theoretical and methodological self-reflection of Maya Studies and its concepts related to ancient Maya spirituality.

KINGS OF THE EAST: ALTUN HA AND THE WATER SCROLL EMBLEM GLYPH

ABSTRACTThe importance of emblem glyphs to Maya studies has long been recognized. Among these are emblems that have yet to be conclusively matched to archaeological sites. The Water Scroll emblem glyph is one such example, although it appears numerous times in the Classic Maya written corpus between the sixth and the eighth centuries. These many references are found at a variety of sites across the lowlands, attesting to the importance of this ancient kingdom and the kings who carried this title. In the present paper, we review the epigraphic and archaeological evidence and propose that this may be the royal title of the kings who reigned from Altun Ha, in the east central Maya lowlands, in what is now Belize. In so doing, we also begin to reconstruct the dynastic history of the Water Scroll kings, from the vantage of both local and foreign sources.

Perspectives on the Ancient Maya of Chetumal Bay by Debra S. Walker, ed. Maya Studies Series. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2016. 380 pp.

Perspectives on the Ancient Maya of Chetumal Bay by Debra S. Walker, ed. Maya Studies Series. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2016. 380 pp.

Evaluating Shape Representations for Maya Glyph Classification

Shape representations are critical for visual analysis of cultural heritage materials. This article studies two types of shape representations in a bag-of-words-based pipeline to recognize Maya glyphs. The first is a knowledge-driven Histogram of Orientation Shape Context (HOOSC) representation, and the second is a data-driven representation obtained by applying an unsupervised Sparse Autoencoder (SA). In addition to the glyph data, the generalization ability of the descriptors is investigated on a larger-scale sketch dataset. The contributions of this article are four-fold: (1) the evaluation of the performance of a data-driven auto-encoder approach for shape representation; (2) a comparative study of hand-designed HOOSC and data-driven SA; (3) an experimental protocol to assess the effect of the different parameters of both representations; and (4) bridging humanities and computer vision/machine learning for Maya studies, specifically for visual analysis of glyphs. From our experiments, the data-driven representation performs overall in par with the hand-designed representation for similar locality sizes on which the descriptor is computed. We also observe that a larger number of hidden units, the use of average pooling, and a larger training data size in the SA representation all improved the descriptor performance. Additionally, the characteristics of the data and stroke size play an important role in the learned representation.

Place and Identity in Classic Maya Narratives by Alexandre Tokovinine

Reviewed by: Place and Identity in Classic Maya Narratives by Alexandre Tokovinine Paul Worley (bio) Place and Identity in Classic Maya Narratives By Alexandre Tokovinine. Washington, D.C.: Dumbarton Oaks, 2013. 171 pp. isbn 978-0884023920 In his recent piece “Yaan Muuk’ Ich Cha’anil/El potencial de Cha’anil: Un concepto maya para la revitalización lingüística,” Yucatec Maya anthropologist, Genner Llanes-Ortiz, presents the Maya notion of cha’anil, roughly equivalent to “performance” in English, as a concept through which Maya and non-Maya alike may rethink Maya language revitalization efforts in the Yucatán Peninsula. Given that these efforts have historically focused on the production of Maya-language literature as an end in itself, cha’anil becomes a way to better grasp the complex interactions between Maya-language texts and performance, particularly in the context of the readings that Maya authors and intellectuals give at the now yearly Cha’anil Kaaj or “Fiesta del pueblo.” Of singular importance to this review is the fact that Llanes-Ortiz cites a 2003 article by Alexandre Tokovinine to articulate cha’anil as a Maya conceptualization of performance and spectacle with roots that transcend histories of European invasion. Articles like Llanes-Ortiz’s thus participate in broader processes of pan-Maya organizing, in which Maya intellectuals make free use of work by non-Maya Western academics, a topic that has been explored by scholars like Kay Warren and by Maya intellectuals such as Jakaltek-MayaVictor Montejo. Within this context, this review also demonstrates the profound potential that multidisciplinary engagement with texts such as Tokovinine’s recent book, Place and Identity in Classic Maya Narratives, has for scholars working in Indigenous Studies, Native American Studies, and Maya Studies. In this sense, the volume takes its place among the invaluable works on pre-Hispanic art and culture published over the years by the Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection in Washington, D.C., a facility administered by the Trustees of Harvard University. For readers unfamiliar with Dumbarton Oaks, this year marks the venerable institution’s seventy-fifth year as an important research center in Pre-Colombian Studies, Byzantine Studies, and Garden and Landscape Studies that, in addition to publishing monographs in these fields, also supports scholarly work on its considerable collections. Although many of the glyphs in the text will remain somewhat ambiguous to those of us who lack expertise in Maya epigraphy, Tokovinine’s thorough grounding in previous scholarship and concise justifications of his own interpretations make the work’s six chapters a convincing, enjoyable read that offers insights and challenges to how we understand the connections between pre-Hispanic texts and those written in Latin script after the Conquest. The book’s introduction outlines the author’s theoretical orientation with regard to “landscape as a means to see the environment in a certain way, to represent and to modify it in accordance with such perceptions and representations” (1). Though, in the words of the author himself, the monograph “does not pursue the immediate goal of reviewing or critiquing other landscapes” articulated by previous scholars, the work’s engagement with Maya terms used to perceive and represent landscapes nonetheless “may serve as a basis for a discussion about the analytical usefulness of some categories and concepts in Classic Maya landscapes as we see them today” (4). For example, among its arguments, Chapter 2: “Classic Maya Places,” demonstrates quite effectively the centrality of corn and houses in many place names, suggesting perhaps the role that human interaction with the environment played in Maya conceptualizations of space with regard to human settlement. Even more interesting, Chapter 3: “Classic Maya Landscape Categories,” takes up the specific ways in which language participates in how one understands aspects, built and natural, of the environment in the Classic Maya world. Indeed, Tokovinine’s readings of the inscriptions for ch’e’n and kab are fascinating in both their implications and for how these terms intersect (or fail to intersect) with understandings of landscape in colonial documents. For the author, ch’e’n goes well beyond its traditional translation as “well” to encompass the ritual precincts of cities, if not entire cities...

Listening in the Pakal controversy: a matter of care in Ancient Maya studies.

This article explores the fraught historical politics of a 20th-century controversy over a Classic Maya king. The controversy ostensibly concerned the age at death of a ruler discovered in 1952 in an elaborate sarcophagus at the Mexican site of Palenque. Combining osteological and epigraphic techniques, Mexican scholars estimated that the ruler died at about 40 or 50years of age. Two decades later, an emerging collective of US hieroglyph experts claimed to have determined the grammatical structure of Maya glyphs for the first time and reevaluated the sarcophagus inscriptions. They concluded that the king, given the name 'Pakal', lived a remarkably long life of 80years (603-683 CE). This reading sparked a controversy that would persist until 1999. At stake was not just how to tell the story of an ancient Maya lord, but who could tell it, with what evidence, and with what degree of certainty. The inclination of some Mexican archaeologists to adopt nationalist and Marxist orientations came into palpable tension with foreign scholars' liberal, universalist knowledge practices. To address this problem, I rethink Pakal's material mediation through bones and inscriptions as a 'matter of concern' (Bruno Latour) and 'matter of care' (Maria Puig de la Bellacasa). I show how these concepts facilitate the reconsideration of contradictory historical propositions as potential sites of coexistence among actors temporarily ill equipped to listen to each other's claims. Ultimately, I present 'listening' as a technique of cosmopolitical care that complements the extensive emphasis on speech and spokespersonship in Latourian cosmopolitics.

Brazilian Women's Filmmaking: From Dictatorship to Democracy. By Leslie L. Marsh. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2012. Pp. 248. Notes. Bibliography, Index. $85.00 cloth; $28.00 paper.

REVIEWS 571 710:). While the intent of the vaccination program regulations is to encourage people to participate, the effect is to discourage people not only from getting vaccinations but also from using the clinic at all. I-Ian/ey’s work is not meant to be a study of the ethnomedicai system itself. Rather, it is an excelient study of language use in health care. The emphasis is on the social rela- tions and communication in medical encounters and how they affect resource utiliza~ tion and healing, with the aim of uncovering the cultural and linguistic factors that complicate cross-cultural meciical care, rather than revealing Maya medical beliefs and practices. Nevertheless, more detail on the syncretism reflected in and practiced by Miriam, the nurse and Maya healer would have sharpened the analysis. Although he shows that her healer role is considered by the Maya to be a divine or a spiritual gift mandated from birth, and her manner of communication during the consultation fol- lows a Maya pattern rather than a biomedical one, the analysis would better illustrate this syncretism if there were more information concerning what it is about her beliefs or practices that derives from her training as a nurse vs. her training as an ajkun. A suggested next step would be to expand the “ethnography of polyphony” method- ology to incorporate the behaviors that accompany the verbal interaction, such as light- ing candles, burning incense, spraying with holy water, massaging, pulsing, praying, using the stethoscopc——any physical examination that might occur during the consul- tation. This would provide a type of choreography to accompany the score. Harvey makes a significant contribution, both tnethodologieally to linguistics and com- munication studies and substantively to Maya studies. It should be of interest to grad- uate students and scholars in both of these areas. Rutgers Univmity SHEILA COSMINSKY Camden, New ferxey Bmzilimz Women’: Filmma/dug: From Dz&#39;cmto1&#39;.r/aip to Democracy. By Leslie L. Marsh. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2012. Pp. 248. Notes. Bibliography, Index. $85.00 cloth; $28.00 paper. Women have long had an important presence in Brazilian cinema as actors, directors, and producers. Starting in the late 1910s and continuing into the early 1950s, Carmen Santos, the founder of the Brasil Vita studios, starred in several films and produced numerous others, including major works by film pioneer Humberto Mauro. Gilda de Abreu followed suit in the 19405 and 195 Os, directing or scripting such films as O Iibrio and Comgio Mmteruo. The late 1950s and early 1960s witnessed the emergence of major new female actors; however, women tended to remain in front of the camera during the period dominated by the Cinema Novo movement and not in directing or producing. It was only in the 1970s that the number of women directors began to increase, and that is where Leslie L. Marsh’s book begins in its attempt to provide a sense of films directed by women from that time until the mid 2000s.

T168 as Itsa’: Maya Sorcerers and Their Succession

The reading of T168 has long been a major problem for Maya epigraphers (Thompson, 1950; Berlin, 1968; Proskouriakoff, 1960, 1963, 1964; Barthel, 1968; Lounsbury, 1976; Marcus, 1976; Mathews and Justeson, 1984). The only evidence for its meaning which does not rest upon a translation is provided by its apperance with titles such as those examined in Appendix B of this paper. Similarly the nature of the itsa' has long been a thorn in the side of Maya historians (Roys, 1933; Thompson, 1970, 1977; Edmonson, 1982; Villagutierre Soto-Mayor, 1983). The primary evidence concerning the nature of the itsa' comes from such difficu1.t to interpret sources as the Yucatec Books of Chilam Balam and the accounts of early Spanish chroniclers. The reading presented here, of Tl68 as itsa', suggests these two problems cannot be examined in isolation as they are facets of the same problem, a problem of paramount importance to Maya studies as a whole.

The Graffiti of Tikal, Guatemala

Graffito (plural, graffiti) derives from the Italian meaning scratch or scribble. Art historical studies outside the area of Maya studies have traditionally distinguished graffiti from more formal types of writing, drawing and painting. Likewise, in Tikal, on the basis of formal style or technique, the architectural graffiti are separable from what appear to be the more deliberately conceived and valued forms of art, the material upon which most of the art history of Tikal will be written. Maya graffiti are among the least recognized and poorest preserved of the Maya modes of drawing and painting. The incised, gouged punctuate, painted and printed architectural graffiti of Tikal represent the largest known collection of Maya graffiti. Architectural graffiti is distinguished here from other forms of graffiti appearing on portable objects such as shells, ceramics and obsidians found in Tikal. Many of the centers listed in Chart 1 are represented by a single graffito and some major Maya art centers are conspicuously absent from this list. Maya graffiti have not been carefully recorded and an undetermined number of centers not included in Chart 1 may have unreported graffiti. Graffiti, in fact, appear to be a common and expectable feature of Maya centers; they appear almost everywhere that plaster walls, vaults and floor surfaces are preserved and searched specifically for graffiti. The lack of any concentrated survey and research into the distribution of Maya graffiti, their relationship to Maya art and the meaning graffiti might have in the reconstruction of Maya civilization, is reflected in the few brief and dispersed references to Maya graffiti in the bibliography on Maya art.

Reflection as transformation: mirror-image structure on Maya monumental texts as a visual metaphor for ritual participation

In spite of their aberrant orientation, ancient Maya monumental hieroglyphic inscriptions that were carved in mirror-image have been relatively understudied by scholars with respect to the significance of their shared form. Based on examination of eleven such monuments, I propose that mirror-image inscriptions constituted visual metaphors related to the ritual importance of artifactual mirrors as symbols of political and religious power. Furthermore, the metaphorical significance of these texts influenced the viewer’s interpretation of and interaction with the monument. Using evidence from archaeology, epigraphy, iconography, linguistics, and cognitive science, I argue that the mirror-image form, of these monumental inscriptions, extended ritual participation beyond the monument’s protagonist to the ancient Maya viewer through contact with the supernatural. With this work, I hope to begin to fill a significant gap in ancient Maya studies and offer an alternate perspective on the relationship between monumental form and function.

Empowered Children in Classic Maya Sacrificial Rites

Sacrifice is a basic component of human religious experience, and well documented in many ancient cultures. In Mesoamerica, sacrifice took many forms although perhaps the most dramatic was the offering of human children. In Maya studies this topic has largely been overlooked despite data from a variety of sources. This paper explores the perspective that children were not the subject of sacrifice due to their marginal status as less than adult, but rather the opposite – that due to their very young age which afforded them proximity to the ancestors and the gods, they were one of the most precious offerings available. When children are understood to have held a numinous power related to their recent time on earth, child sacrifice is revealed to be a religious rite of profound emotion and loss, consistent with the nature of the spiritual contract held by ancient Maya people.

Cameron McNeil, ed. Chocolate in Mesoamerica: A Cultural History of Cacao. Maya Studies Series, edited by Diane Z. Chase and Arlen F. Chase. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2006. ISBN 978-0-8130-3382-2, $34.95 (paperback).

Cameron McNeil, ed. Chocolate in Mesoamerica: A Cultural History of Cacao. Maya Studies Series, edited by Diane Z. Chase and Arlen F. Chase. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2006. ISBN 978-0-8130-3382-2, $34.95 (paperback). - Volume 11 Issue 1

ECKIXIL: Understanding the Classic to Postclassic Survival and Transformation of a Peten Maya Village

AbstractThis study uses architectural and activity area analyses to examine the Classic-Postclassic transition and the resulting Postclassic-Early Historic (A. D. 1000–1697) Maya society in the Petén Lakes region of Guatemala. The research combines a detailed temporal comparison of architectural styles and an analysis of changing architecture as the restructuring of everyday social action. The methods have significance beyond Maya studies in addressing questions of cultural continuity or in-migration. Archaeological data from recent excavations, including new radiocarbon dates, document the intensive settlement of the Quexil Islands in the Terminal Classic period (A. D. 800–1000) and its occupation thereafter. Architectural evidence from the Quexil Islands and other Petén Lakes sites indicates a mosaic pattern of change, reflecting to varying extents Classic-Postclassic continuity and external contacts, with differences among sites rather than the complete replacement of populations. Evidence of the later incorporation of this small village, known ethnohistorically as “Eckixil,” in the Late Postclassic-Early Historic Itza polity, demonstrates a strong linkage with the political core, illustrating the political complexity of this hinterland region.