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ECONOMY, EXCHANGE, AND POWER: NEW EVIDENCE FROM THE LATE CLASSIC MAYA PORT CITY OF
CANCUEN
Arthur A. Demarest, Chloé Andrieu, Paola Torres, Mélanie Forné, Tomás Barrientos and Marc Wolf
Ancient Mesoamerica / Volume 25 / Issue 01 / March 2014, pp 187 - 219
DOI: 10.1017/S0956536114000121, Published online: 07 August 2014
Link to this article: http://journals.cambridge.org/abstract_S0956536114000121
How to cite this article:
Arthur A. Demarest, Chloé Andrieu, Paola Torres, Mélanie Forné, Tomás Barrientos and Marc Wolf (2014). ECONOMY,
EXCHANGE, AND POWER: NEW EVIDENCE FROM THE LATE CLASSIC MAYA PORT CITY OF CANCUEN. Ancient
Mesoamerica, 25, pp 187-219 doi:10.1017/S0956536114000121
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Ancient Mesoamerica, 25 (2014), 187–219
Copyright © Cambridge University Press, 2014
doi:10.1017/S0956536114000121
ECONOMY, EXCHANGE, AND POWER: NEW
EVIDENCE FROM THE LATE CLASSIC MAYA PORT
CITY OF CANCUEN
Arthur A. Demarest,a Chloé Andrieu,b Paola Torres,c Mélanie Forné,d Tomás Barrientos,e and Marc Wolff
a
Department of Anthropology, Vanderbilt Institute of Mesoamerican Archaeology and Development, Vanderbilt University, Nashville,
TN 37235
b
CNRS, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Archéologie des Amériques, Maison de l’archéologie et de l’ethnologie, 21 allée
de l’université, 92023 Nanterre, France
c
Universidad de San Carlos de Guatemala, 11 calle “A” 5-31 zona 18 Col. Santa Elena II, Ciudad de Guatemala
d
Centre d’Études Mexicaines et Centraméricaines, 5a Calle 10-55 Dentro de Alianza Francesa, Finca la Aurora, zona 13, Ciudad de
Guatemala
e
Universidad del Valle, Departamento de Arqueología, 18 avenida, 11-95 zona 15. Vista Hermosa III, Ciudad de Guatemala
f
City University of New York, Department of Anthropology, CUNY GC, 365 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10016
Abstract
The site of Cancuen held a strategic position as “head of navigation” of the Pasión River and the physical nexus of land and river routes
between the southern highlands, the Maya lowlands, and the transversal route to Tabasco and Veracruz. For that reason, the well-defined
ports of Cancuen were critical to both Classic Maya highland/lowland commerce and interactions with the far west. All aspects of
Cancuen were related to its role as a port city. By the late eighth century, evidence suggests that in the site epicenter peninsula ports and
other aspects of the economy were elite controlled and supervised, based on associated architectural complexes, artifacts, imports, and
placement. Recent evidence indicates that, in addition to previously discussed long-distance exchange in exotics such as jade and pyrite,
Cancuen also was involved in very large-scale obsidian transport and production, as well as probable exchange of other piedmont
commodities such as cacao, cotton, salt, achiote (Bixa orellana), and vanilla.
Distribution of architectural, epigraphic, and iconographic evidence and an administrative/ritual palace all indicate growing roles for
nobles in these economic activities, particularly the ports. It would appear that, as elsewhere, nobles were taking a more direct mercantile
role and that many aspects of the multepal system of power, characteristic of Postclassic period societies, were already in place at Cancuen
by the late eighth century. The failure of Cancuen’s early transition to a Terminal Classic political economy may be related to its
dependence on highland resources and overextended trade networks.
major land routes (Figure 1). Cancuen lies at the direct interface
between highlands and lowlands (Figure 2), controlling the beginning of one of the longest trade routes of the ancient Maya world.
Thus, it held a strategic position in Classic Maya exchange
systems, a fact acknowledged by the history of actions of the
Classic Maya dynasties and alliances to secure this nexus of terrestrial and riverine routes. The epicenter of Cancuen and its adjacent
zones have clear evidence for ports and port economy. Examination
of this evidence in field, laboratory study, and comparative perspective provides some insights into Maya economy, elite control, and
changes in power and hegemony on the eve of the Classic Maya
“collapse.”
Before turning to the nature and history of Cancuen as a port city
and aspects of its economy, we should specify the focus of this particular article and then review some theoretical issues. Note that
many other recent publications, cited for various specific interpretations, deal more directly and in detail with the specific evidence on
aspects of Cancuen including the most recent analyses of the obsidian assemblage (Andrieu, Quiñonez, and Rodas 2011; Andrieu
et al. 2011, 2012), ceramics and chronology (Forné et al. 2010,
2013 Forné and Torres 2010; Torres et al. 2013), ideological
systems legitimating economic power (Barrientos 2008, 2014;
The 13 large-scale field seasons and 14 years of laboratory research
by over 40 scholars at the royal port city of Cancuen have provided
important evidence on the nature of eighth-century changes in
Classic Maya interregional economy. Excavations and laboratory
analyses have been reported in more than 200 articles, chapters,
or reports, most in Spanish (see, for example, Andrieu and Forné
2010; Andrieu et al. 2011, 2014; Andrieu, Quiñonez, and Rodas
2011; Barrientos 2014; Barrientos and Demarest 2007; Barrientos
et al. [eds.] 2006; Demarest and Barrientos 1999, 2000, 2001;
Demarest et al. 2002, 2003; Demarest et al. [eds.] 2007, 2008,
2011, 2012; Demarest and Martínez 2010, 2013; Fahsen and
Barrientos 2006; Fahsen et al. 2003; Fahsen and Jackson 2001;
Forné et al. 2008, 2010, 2013; Forné and Torres 2010; Torres
et al. 2013; Urquizu et al. 2013; Wolf and Bracken 2013a). The
location of the site at the head of navigation of the Pasión River
facilitated its role as a port and a gateway, linking highland valley
land routes to the south with the lowlands to the north via the
broad river highway of the Pasión, which flows north through the
Peten past many of its cities and connecting to tributaries and
E-mail correspondence to: [email protected]
187
188
Figure 1. Some of the principal exchange and transport routes of the
Classic Maya world.
Barrientos and Demarest 2007, 2012; Barrientos et al. 2006;
Demarest 2013); the extent of the site and its sustaining area
(Demarest 2013; Demarest et al. 2009, 2013; Wolf and Bracken
2013a), epigraphy and political relations (Barrientos 2014; Fahsen
and Barrientos 2006; Fahsen et al. 2003; Fahsen and Jackson
2001; Jackson 2004, 2005), new understandings of Cancuen’s
role in nonexotic, basic commodity production and exchange
(Demarest and Martínez 2013; Demarest et al. 2013), corrected
and new analyses of jade working (Andrieu et al. 2011, 2012,
2014; Andrieu, Quiñonez and Rodas 2011), the significance of
local ceramic types and imports (Torres et al. 2013), and instrumental neutron activation analysis (INAA) of both (Bishop et al. 2005;
Forné et al. 2010; Torres et al. 2013), cave ritual (Spenard 2006;
Woodfill 2010; Woodfill and Andrieu 2012), frontier relations
(Demarest and Martínez 2013; Demarest et al. 2013; Wolf and
Bracken 2013b), and evidence on Cancuen’s violent collapse
(Demarest 2014; Demarest et al. 2014; Quintanilla 2013;
Quintanilla and Demarest 2013; Suasnávar et al. 2007; Winburn
et al. 2013. These are referenced here, and they provide detail on
elements referred to in this synthetic article by the Cancuen subproject directors.
Here the focus is primarily on the epicenter port area of the site,
not the site as a whole. The “Greater Cancuen” area extends for
several kilometers beyond the epicenter peninsula, depending on
direction (Demarest and Martínez 2013; Demarest et al. 2013).
Detailed mapping and excavations are underway on the 4 km transect east (Wolf and Bracken 2013a). Cave shrines 8 to 12 km from
the epicenter have been excavated and there the very characteristic
Cancuen ceramic assemblage ends (Demarest 2013; Spenard
Demarest et al.
Figure 2. Cancuen region at the valley interface of the highland and
lowland Maya worlds.
2006; Torres et al. 2013; Woodfill 2010). Also, recent fieldwork
has included excavation of neighboring highland sites (Demarest
et al. 2013; Demarest and Martínez 2013; O’Mansky et al. 2013;
Torres et al. 2013; Wolf and Bracken 2013b), as well as further
investigation of the complex peninsular epicenter (Demarest and
Martínez 2010; Demarest et al. 2011, 2012). Port and related activities and much public architecture, as well as residences, were concentrated in that epicenter.
A FEW POINTS ON THEORY, TERMINOLOGY, AND
EVIDENCE
Recent Relativistic Perspectives on Ancient Maya Economy
One stylistic trope that will be avoided here is to posit that the new
evidence overturns the “traditional model” of Classic Maya
economy, power, and/or exchange. There is no traditional model
(unless one evokes once more the ghost of J. E. S. Thompson
from the 1940s). Rather, for decades there has been long-standing
healthy debate regarding the nature of Classic Maya economy and
the role of elites in it (see, for example, Chase and Chase 1992,
2014; Masson and Freidel 2002, 2013; Schortman and Urban
2004a; Tourtellot et al. 1992; and see below regarding other
recent critiques). Those debates center around several issues, including the degree of elite involvement in various aspects of economy
such as exchange, production, and infrastructure. In the past, such
debates were diverted into contrasting Classic versus Postclassic
models, as absolutes, or contrasting universal models of regal-ritual
versus unitary states, and so on. Increasingly, however, it is
Economy, Exchange, and Power
recognized that models of both ideology and economic power
should be more complex and that Classic Maya intersite, interregional, and chronological variability was very great. Therefore, we
should address these issues in relative—not absolute—terms with
a recognition of the multiplicity and great variability in
Mesoamerican (including Classic Maya) politics and economy
(compare, for example, Aoyama 1999, 2007; Braswell 2010;
Chase and Chase 1996; Demarest 2009; Fox et al. 1996;
McAnany 1993, 2010; McAnany et al. 2002; Rice 2009;
Schortman and Urban 2004a; Schortman et al. 2001; Shaw 2012;
Wells 2006).
Accepting the latter point allows us to assert, in relative terms
only, that most Maya centers in the southern lowlands in the full
Classic period (in contrast to some central Mexican and
Postclassic period states) appear to have been characterized by relatively less direct state involvement in economic infrastructure, somewhat less important interregional markets, and a relatively greater
reliance on local or subregional tribute, or “tithing,” as sources of
economic support for the elites and for their architectural, artifactual, and ritual expenses (see McAnany [2010, 2013] for comparative and chronologically sensitive discussion of the latter point).
Most Classic period Maya state economies appear to have been
largely sustained in their basic subsistence necessities within a
more limited region. This is a pattern appropriate to the varied,
but still less variable, Peten lowland subsistence environment relative to, for example, highland Mexico. By putting assessments in
relative terms, we avoid the ubiquitous stylistic and analytical
fallacy of “hyperbolizing the argument of the other.”
Even in the Classic period, the variability between megasites in
the lowlands, such as Calakmul, Tikal, Coba, or Caracol, and the
vast majority of Maya polities is great, with the average site probably far more reliant on local ideological and military authority
and usually only tied via tribute to those greater centers of
power—at least in economic terms. Interregional variability is
also pronounced, to some degree responding to ecological parameters (Scarborough et al. 2003), when one contrasts the
complex political economy and ecology of a northern lowland
center, particularly a port city, such as Chunchucmil (Dahlin
2009; Hutson et al. 2008), with the majority of southern lowland
Classic Peten sites. Finally, as emphasized in this article, variation
over time in state or elite economic roles is not only pronounced,
but may be the factor of greatest interest to our understanding of
the dynamics of economy in the history of Classic Maya states.
A major issue in understanding the diversity of Maya economies
and their degree of commercialization is the quantity of goods produced and exchanged through time (Hirth and Pillsbury 2013;
Smith 2004). Here we argue that at Cancuen there was an intensification of the production and exchange of goods in the last four
decades of occupation, and that elites were probably directly supervising the major ports in the site epicenter and production of some
resources, even in initial stages. We also speculate here that the centralized ruler’s power, in relation to merchant elites, was waning at
the end of the eighth century.
189
that it could imply elite supervision of workshops (Clark 2003;
Clark and Parry 1990; Costin 2001). This criterion has been recently
criticized, and various authors have underlined that there is no need
to supervise work to control it and vice versa (Clark 2003; Costin
2001, 2007; Flad 2007). In fact, supervision of work is only one
of the possible means of controlling production, which can also
be controlled by restricting the access of the producers to the raw
material or by centralizing a part or the totality of the distribution
of the final products (Costin 2001). Patterns, therefore, such as the
exclusion of the producers from the finished artifacts (Andrieu
et al. 2014), or patterns of exclusiveness in the distribution of
certain artifacts (Aoyama 2001), would appear to be a much more
effective criterion. It has been argued, however, that the latter
would be difficult to distinguish from consumption by wealthy consumers (Clark 2003), and such patterns should be compared to data
on the organization of the corresponding production. Centralization
of certain specific production waste in elite contexts is another
element that could indicate either embedded production, elite
direct participation in the production process (Inomata 2001), or
hierarchized control of production (Pool et al. 2014). In all cases,
we suggest that the use of a single criterion is probably not
enough and that such complex relationships such as power relations
of production should be demonstrated by correlating different
parameters.
Because the word “control” covers a wide variety of cases, and
social and economic relations, in this article we specify in some
cases these various power relations by using different terms. We
will use the term “supervision” to designate control through propinquity, “participation” to refer to forms of embedded production,
Control of Production and Exchange of Goods
Despite the variety of means and reasons for control documented in
anthropology (Costin 2001:299; 2007; McAnany 2010:205), we are
usually very limited in our interpretation of the archaeological data,
and propinquity between elite structures and workshops has been
the most used criterion to recognize attached work, with the idea
Figure 3. Schematic conceptual representation of the strategic position of
Cancuen at the intersection of the north-south (river to highlands) and
east-west (transversal) transport routes. Drawing by Luis F. Luin.
190
Demarest et al.
“priority of access” to designate evidence of control of distribution,
and “claims of control” to indicate evidence of symbolic control
over certain production activities.
Control of Long-Distance Exotics Exchange Routes
One area of the debate on elite involvement, participation, supervision, and/or priority of access concerns the routes of long-distance
exchange. The intensity of long-distance exchange and the frequency of travel involved have never been very clearly understood.
While many authors underline that most goods traded over long
distances were primarily very highly valued goods, gifted in low
quantities, the long-distance exchange of obsidian, cacao, and salt
was more complex, and many questions remain (Woodfill and
Andrieu 2012). Others have recently argued that the quantities of
goods involved in the tribute system could imply that other materials
had to be traded in order to pay that tribute (McAnany 2013). In that
context, it would have been critical for many cities to assure their
access to major trading routes.
This pattern is especially evident in the southwestern Peten
where the access to the Pasión/Usumacinta trade and transport
artery was critical to Classic Maya civilization. In the west, there
was a linear trade route on the long, wide, and highly navigable
Pasión river, which connected the western and central highlands
with the Peten and then, via the Usumacinta, to the Gulf of
Mexico in the north and through the highlands and Motagua
Valley to the south (Figures 1–4). Major Classic period sites are
placed at portages and conjunctions of tributaries along this route,
and the main river routes also connect to Peten land routes. One
of these was what Freidel, Canuto, and Barrientos refer to as the
“royal road” from the highlands through Cancuen down the
Pasión River and then by land to Calakmul (Canuto and
Barrientos 2013; Freidel et al. 2007) (see Figure 5). This route
could have connected these sites in order to secure the transport
of precious goods from the highlands, Pacific coast, and Motagua
Valley. The epigraphic chronology and history of alliances and
wars recorded in monumental texts, as well as changing material
culture, show the attempts to maintain privileged access, or unify,
this western route. This occurred in a series of well-documented historical episodes including: (1) Early Classic Tikal or central Peten
fifth- and sixth-century expansion along the river valley through
Tres Islas, Punta de Chimino, and other Pasión Valley sites, and
on into the highland land corridor, establishing cave shrines all
along this route which had Central Peten Tzakol ceramic offerings
(Bachand 2010; Demarest et al. 2007; Woodfill 2010; Woodfill
and Andrieu 2012); (2) later sixth- and seventh-century Calakmul
versus Tikal wars and alliances centering on the control of Dos
Pilas, El Peru-Waka, Cancuen, and the other western river and
land route centers (Demarest 2006; Martin and Grube 1994,
2008); (3) subsequent Calakmul alliance control of the western
route (Figure 5), as verified in the texts of the Petexbatun, El
Peru-Waka, La Corona, Cancuen, and other centers in their recorded
wars and alliances in the seventh century (Canuto and Barrientos
2013; Freidel et al. 2007; Martin and Grube 1994, 2008); (4) after
the a.d. 695 defeat of Calakmul by Tikal, the Dos Pilas hegemony
expansion of its Petexbatun kingdom and its (approximately a.d.
730) marriage alliance with Cancuen to control the Pasión River
portion of the route (Demarest 2006; Houston 1993; Houston and
Stuart 1990); and (5) after the a.d. 761 fall of Dos Pilas, the political disintegration of numerous Pasión River states, but with
Cancuen’s greatest florescence as the sole controlling power on
Figure 4. The specific routes of the highland Verapaz valley, the “transversal,” and the Pasión River.
the Upper Pasión (north-south) River route and with access to the
connecting transversal (east-west) route (Figures 4, 5, and 6). In
each case, shifts in alliance are celebrated at many sites in texts
and are materialized in changes in architecture, monuments, and
artifacts (including compositionally traced ceramics and lithics),
showing that these different strategies had a clear economic
impact on the access of each city to long-distance trade.
Even further downriver, on the Usumacinta, we see that the historical and archaeological record presents continuous Late Classic
wars over access to that river route between Piedras Negras,
Yaxchilan, and other powers, and an increase in territorialized
control over these trading routes, which became more strategic
over time (Golden and Scherer 2013). Recent investigations have
shown that in the eighth century, even minor centers along the
Usumacinta were placed and defended along alternative routes
and portages as those wars escalated (Golden and Scherer 2006;
Golden et al. 2007, 2008, 2010).
Meanwhile, on the other side of the Maya world, the textual and
archaeological evidence shows the expansion of central Peten influence (probably from Tikal) in the Early Classic, through Belize and
into Quirigua and Copan in Honduras (Bell et al. 2004), probably to
Economy, Exchange, and Power
191
Figure 5. The “royal road” from the Cancuen head of navigation to Calakmul, as hypothesized by Freidel, Canuto, and Barrientos. Map
after Canuto and Barrientos [2013:Figure 1].
secure a transport and exchange artery to the Caribbean and its river
tributaries (Figure 1) and to Motagua sources of jade, obsidian,
shell, and presumably also Belize coastal commodities like salt
and cacao (McAnany et al. 2002; McKillop 1989, 1996).
Thus, a starting point in our consideration of elite roles in Classic
Maya economic systems, and one of the more secure points in that
dialogue, is the importance to polity leadership and strategy to
control access to the principal long-distance exchange routes
south, particularly for the exotics and commodities necessary as
accoutrements of elite ceremony and status, for royal and noble
patronage tribute networks, and for the provisioning of royal
courts (McAnany 2013). That factor also provides the very reason
Figure 6. The “Great Detour” of Taj Chan Ahk utilizing the western highland base “transversal” land route, and eastern river route via
Machaquila to avoid the chaos of Middle Pasión and Usumacinta riverine wars, creating new exchanges with the far west. Drawing by
Luis F. Luin.
192
for the founding, existence, and importance of Cancuen, and the
starting point for discussion of the nature and implications of its
political economy.
THE STRATEGIC POSITION OF THE PORT CENTER OF
CANCUEN
In 1999, the Cancuen Regional Archaeological Project began the
first large-scale exploration in a previously little-explored zone covering hundreds of square kilometers, (Figures 1, 2, and 4), which is
located at the interface of the highland and lowland Maya worlds—
the far southwestern Peten and the piedmont and highlands of the
adjacent Alta Verapaz region. Fourteen years of research in this
zone has led to many new insights but also to an almost annual
need to revise previously published interpretations (see especially
the following: Andrieu et al. 2012; Barrientos 2014; Barrientos
et al. [eds.] 2006; Demarest 2012, 2013; Demarest et al. 2009;
Demarest et al. [eds.], 2011; Demarest and Martínez 2010, 2013;
Forne et al. 2010, 2011, 2013; Torres et al. 2013; Woodfil and
Andrieu 2012; Woodfill 2010). Cancuen’s strategic importance
was already known since it had been identified as the head of navigation of the Pasión River (Tourtellot et al. 1978) with inscriptions
indicating its founding at this spot by Calakmul (Martin and Grube
1994) and its subsequent shift in alliance to Dos Pilas as part of the
Late Classic geopolitical sequence described above (Demarest
2006; Houston 1993; Houston and Stuart 1990). Despite these historical records, Cancuen and the entire northern Verapaz/southwest
Peten zone was one of the largest “blank spots” in Maya archeology,
known only from some cave reconnaissance carried out in the northern Verapaz (Carot 1989), and some test units and a five day reconnaissance at Cancuen (Tourtellot et al. 1978).
Cancuen’s location could not be more directly linked to the
major trade routes. The great western trade route is a major axis connecting the volcanic highlands and the Pacific coast through the
narrow valley of the northern Verapaz region (Figure 4), dropping
down over 1,000 m into the Peten lowlands to the north. This
route has been well documented for the Colonial period (Adams
1978; Feldman 2000). But it was probably already in use long
before, given its potential for moving materials, especially El
Chayal obsidian, into the lowlands (Arnauld 1990; Hammond
1972, 1973) and given the number of important sites along this
natural communication corridor (Demarest et al. 2008b). The highland valleys come down to the flat or rolling lowlands at the port city
of Cancuen, and there the route continues by the Pasión River
(see Figure 3, conceptual schematic; Figure 4 for more specific
probable routes). Thus, Cancuen is located not only at the base of
the highlands and its valley, but also at the beginning of the
Pasión-Usumacinta River, a natural access to much of the Maya
lowlands. Furthermore, the seldom discussed (but important both
historically and today) east-west land route, the “transversal,” runs
along the base of the highlands from the Caribbean all the way
west, past Cancuen, Salinas de Nueve Cerros, and other sites,
curving along the base of the Chiapas hills deep into Mexico to
Tabasco and Veracruz (Figures 1, 3, and 6). In addition to longdistance imports, this transversal route was probably also of importance in regional production and exchange with Cancuen, as discussed below.
Initially, Cancuen was built on a highly defensible island-like
peninsula (Figure 7) sitting in the middle of the Pasión itself
(Barrientos and Demarest 2007; Demarest et al. [eds.] 2008,
2011). At Cancuen, the river, after dropping from the highlands in
Demarest et al.
cascades and rapids, slows down and first becomes navigable for
canoe or boat travel. This makes Cancuen the “head of navigation,”
a strategic transfer point between highlands and lowlands. From
there, the Pasión-Usumacinta River system heads north, then west,
and near its banks, or those of its tributaries, sit many of the great
sites of the Classic Maya civilization of the southern lowlands
(Figures 1 and 4) including Altar de Sacrificios, Seibal, Dos Pilas,
Aguateca, Yaxchilan, Piedras Negras, Machaquila, Tamarindito,
and dozens of others—as well as newly discovered sites like El
Raudal (Barrios et al. 2008; Demarest et al. 2008b; Forné,
Quintanilla, and Barrios 2011). The river or its tributaries, such as
the Santa Amelia, Machaquila, Salinas, and Rio San Pedro, also
connect to the land routes that led further inland to great centers
such as El Peru-Waka, La Corona, Calakmul, Tikal, El Mirador,
Machaquila, Palenque, and others (Figures 4, 5, and 6). While
there are many shorter land or river routes in the Maya lowlands,
the only other route of Maya transport of that length was the sea
route along the Caribbean and Gulf (Figure 1) (Andrews 1990;
Barret and Guderjan 2006; Dahlin and Ardren 2002; McKillop
1989, 1996). Cancuen, however, held a pivotal position in the
western Peten routes that were internal to the southern Maya lowlands and connected them to the highlands, as well as to the transversal route west.
CANCUEN HISTORY AND THE EIGHTH-CENTURY
APOGEE
Using this strategic position, Cancuen became a rich royal capital.
We know from multiple inscriptions that the Upper Pasión
Cancuen kingdom had its earlier dynastic seat (not yet identified)
moved by the hegemonic super power Calakmul to Cancuen’s
Late Classic period peninsular location (Figures 4, 5, and 7) at the
head of navigation (Fahsen et al. 2003; Fahsen and Jackson
2001). This founding occurred at a.d. 656, the same time that
Calakmul engaged in other wars and alliances to take control of
the Pasión river and the connecting land route north (Figure 5)
(Canuto and Barrientos 2013; Demarest 2006; Freidel et al. 2007;
Martin and Grube 2008). Cancuen’s wealth, disproportionate to
its site size, grew in the eighth century, as it progressed from a
vassal of Calakmul, then to a part of the Dos Pilas hegemony,
and then—with the a.d. 761 destruction of Dos Pilas—an independent power for the late eighth century. Over the short 144 years of
the site’s history there were great changes in material culture, well
dated by monuments, architectural sequences, and ceramic
microchronology.
By the mid-eighth century, and probably earlier, the Cancuen
epicenter peninsula was filled with public and residential architecture, including its oversized palace, ports, noble’s complexes, one
workshop, and numerous nonelite residences of workers and staff,
many possibly involved in port functions (see below). Beyond the
ports and epicenter of the narrow peninsula, we now know that
the Cancuen sustaining area occupation covers a large area with
architecture extending for at least the 4 km east of the epicenter
peninsula investigated thus far (Demarest 2013; Demarest et al.
2013; Demarest and Martínez 2013; Spenard 2006; Urquizú et al.
2013; and see Wolf and Bracken 2013a for data, definition, and discussion of the Cancuen complete site sustaining area and settlement). Due to 1999–2011 landowner restrictions, most discussion
here (and most published to date) is on the peninsular epicenter
and ports, the economic engine of the site.
Economy, Exchange, and Power
193
Figure 7. Part of “Greater Cancuen” showing peninsular epicenter, port area, and ongoing east transect leading into non-epicenter
occupation (on high ground “mesetas” of drained land). Note the transect location of stelae/altar complexes, Peten architecture,
ceremonial areas, and giant lithic cache. Maps by Marc Wolf and Justin Bracken.
Cancuen’s eighth century wealth was reflected in its ostentatious
royal palace of over 32,000 m2. This palace featured 11 courtyards
(Figure 8), with some rooms 8 m high and decorated with massive
full round stucco sculptures, some reaching nearly 3 m in height
(Barrientos 2014; Barrientos and Demarest 2012; Demarest 2013).
The palace covered an area almost equal to the Tikal palace, the
Central Acropolis, although Cancuen is only a fraction of Tikal’s
size. The epicenter has three elaborate ballcourts, each in a different
regional style (Torres 2011), eight smaller range structure complexes, and at least six ports, of which three are fully confirmed
and excavated. By the late eighth century, Cancuen had an interregional mix of styles in ceramics, architecture, and artifacts. The
reach of its connections across Mesoamerica was extraordinary, as
indicated by compositional (INAA) tracing of ceramics and sourcing
of obsidian and jade (Andrieu, Quiñonez, and Rodas 2010, 2011;
Andrieu et al. 2011; Bishop et al. 2005; Ronald Bishop, personal
communication 2011–2013; Forné et al. 2008, 2009, 2010, 2013).
In light of its position and ports, this impressive late apogee is
not surprising, since a good portion of the exotic goods necessary
to many western Peten k’uhul ajaw for accoutrements of power or
for patronage networks, would have passed through Cancuen—
either along the north-south route of the Verapaz valley to the
Pasión River or along the east-west transversal. To the south, in
the adjacent Verapaz highland and piedmont regions, are recently
identified sources of jade (Andrieu et al. 2010, 2011), as well as
the core habitat of the quetzal bird that was valued for its
plumage. Down the southern land valley route also came Pacific
coastal shell and, most importantly, huge quantities of El Chayal
obsidian. Other commodities may have followed a lesser distance
on the transversal routes. Cancuen was truly a “gateway center,”
but not fully in the same technical sense as defined by Hirth
(1978), since its exchange and influence patterns at the highland
interface continued to be linear, not dendritic, as guided by the topography along the Verapaz Valley route, the east-west transversal,
and on the river corridor of the Pasión.
Cancuen’s wealth, internationalism, and importance grew in
three stages, as reflected by changes in alliances and trade routes,
and as well defined by epigraphy, architecture, and ceramics. First,
it was a modest kingdom under Calakmul domination (a.d. 656 to
approximately a.d. 720). Then, between a.d. 720 and 735, it fell
under the hegemonic sway of the Petexbatun kingdom. That connection was formalized by a much celebrated marriage alliance between
the “Lady of Cancuen” and the ruler of Dos Pilas (Demarest 2006;
Fahsen et al. 2003; Houston 1993). Yet the periods of Cancuen’s
greatest internationalism and wealth corresponded with the late
eighth century and a distinct change in strategy confirmed by artifacts and epigraphy. The a.d. 740–760 disintegration of the
Petexbatun kingdom of Dos Pilas, the coeval defeat of El
Peru-Waka, and other events led to an epoch of endemic warfare
and political disintegration downriver to the north in the Middle
Pasión region (Demarest 2004, 2006; O’Mansky and Dunning
2004). As a result, much of the Pasión would have become extremely
problematic as a route of transport. During the same period, the
Usumacinta route, to which the Pasión connected, was also
194
Demarest et al.
Figure 8. Cancuen’s central palace: (a) map position of the royal palace of Taj Chan Ahk showing its oversized placement in relation to
the epicenter; (b) the Cancuen palace general view; (c) the western royal entryway; (d) one of the many high ostentatious exterior structures of the palace; (e) head of large stucco sculpture figure. All drawings by Luis F. Luin.
plagued with intercenter warfare, and there alternative routes and
detours were sought by land and controlled by defensible outposts
(Golden and Scherer 2013; Golden et al. 2007, 2008, 2010). It
was precisely in that period, during the reign of the great ruler Taj
Chan Ahk (a.d. 757–796), that Cancuen achieved its true apogee,
the expansion of its palace, a proliferation of elite architecture, its
finest ballcourts, massive obsidian exchange and production, very
long-distance imports, and, in its final years (a.d. 790–800), a
jade preform workshop. During these periods (relating to the Los
Laureles [a.d. 760–780], Early Chaman [a.d. 780–790], and Late
Chaman [a.d. 790–800] ceramic phases) (Forné, Alvarado, and
Torres 2011; Forné et al. 2010, 2013; Torres et al. 2013), there
was an apparent change in Cancuen’s exchange routes, avoiding
the chaos of the Middle Pasión and Usumacinta to the north by
emphasis on exchange along the east-west transversal route
(Figures 1, 4, and 6), and marked by an influx of ceramics and
some lithics from Tabasco and Veracruz. This “detour” west
(Demarest et al. 2007, 2009) avoided the chaos occurring in the
late eighth century to the north, where most of its former allies downriver on the Pasión were destroyed, declined, or were under siege
(Demarest 2006; Inomata 2008; O’Mansky and Dunning 2004). A
second change in emphasis was on the northeast river routes,
moving not due north on the Pasión through the Petexbatun, but
probably from the Upper Pasión to an eastern tributary river corridor
to Machaquila (Figures 5 and 6)—a change indicated in historical
texts at Cancuen (Fahsen and Barrientos 2006; Lacadena 2011).
THE CANCUEN PORTS
The peninsular epicenter of Cancuen was essentially a large port. By
the mid-eighth century, probably earlier, it was filled with residential and public, elite and nonelite architecture, and its port facilities,
Economy, Exchange, and Power
which lined this peninsula, which was defined by the river and
swamps (Figure 9). Based on topography and use today, there
were six, possibly seven ports, with three or four of them on the
western side of the peninsula. It is the three east side ports,
however, that have been mapped in detail and extensively excavated
between 1999 and 2013 (Alvarado 2004, Alvarado et al. 2006;
Demarest and Martínez 2010, Demarest et al. 2008a, 2011; Wolf
and Bracken 2013a). Those three are shown in Figures 9 to 16.
Each consists of a fine protected natural portage with adjacent
elite architecture located above the port on the north. Each port is
surrounded by structures of a wide variety of styles, sizes, possible
levels of status or wealth, and differing interregional affiliations in
artifacts and architectural style. At two ports we have excavated
probable stone docking locations or terraces. All three east side
ports were still used by the local Q’eqchi’ and/or landowners
when our first explorations were initiated in 1996. Of the three excavated ports, two of these, the east and southeast ports, gave access to
the elite activity areas, palaces, plazas, and a sacbe. A third, the
northeast port, was the true “head of navigation” of the Pasión
River and a principal working port, probably the most important
at the site.
Recent investigations (2008–2013) have focused on this northeast port zone (Figures 9, 10, and 11), which also linked to a
wider, but more shallow, possible northwest port, the latter yet to
be investigated. Located in the northern part of the epicenter peninsula, near this northeast port, were a high range structure complex,
Figure 9. Cancuen main peninsula with probable ports and position of
confirmed and excavated northeast, east, and southeast ports. Map by
Marc Wolf and Luis F. Luin.
195
the jade preform working area, a number of unusual architectural
complexes, and the isthmus entrance to the epicenter. The
Peten-style range structure complex (Figures 10, 11a) dominates
the landscape with an elaborate stairway and fine masonry and a
higher percentage of Peten-style ceramics (Forné et al. 2010,
2013; Torres et al. 2013). It is situated on the north and at the
highest point on the adjacent escarpment facing both the port and
the jade preform workshop to the south. The slopes around the
port present extremely uneven terrain, and so the hillside was
sculpted by terraces for leveling (see, for example, Figures 10,
11j, and 11q), and many individual structure floors were made
level by different types and styles of retaining walls on one, two,
or three sides (Figure 11b, 11c, 11k, and 11l). Around the sides
of the port, modified and artificial terraces rise up the steeply
sloping escarpments south and north. A western path slopes more
gradually from the port up the escarpment to the architectural complexes above.
On all sides of the area around the northeast port were structures
of both probable residential and administrative function with a completely unpredictable range of styles and sizes (Figures 10 and 11).
Many structures were clustered together in dense, irregularly shaped
complexes incorporating platforms of differing style, and probable
status and/or function, on high ground that was leveled or extended
by artificial terraces (see Figure 11b, 11c, 11j, 11k, 11l, 11q). These
are defined by Wolf and Bracken (2013a) as “aggregated clusters.”
More than 30 structures have been identified near the northeast port
and jade preform working mounds. Most of those structures were
excavated with large horizontal exposures between 2006 and 2011
(Demarest et al. [eds.] 2007, 2008, 2011; Demarest and Martínez
2010; Wolf and Bracken 2013a). Excavations measuring 2,796 m2
in this northern port and jade workshop zone have been carried
out, as well as intensive laboratory analyses of all recovered artifacts
and detailed mapping (Demarest et al. [eds.] 2007, 2008, 2011;
Demarest and Martínez 2010; Wolf 2006; Wolf and Bracken
2013a). As discussed above, structures there defy consistent typological assignment, some ranging from simple 4 × 6 m residential
platforms, like typical Peten-style house mounds, to a fine
masonry range structure, to a single platform of more than 270 m2
in area (9 × 30 m) with a six-course retaining wall only on its downhill slope and an obsidian and eccentric cache (Figures 10, 11c, and
11l). In yet other cases, structures are of cobbles and earth in highland style (Quiñonez and Hernandez 2011) (see Figure 11f and
11n), and still others have portions constructed in pounded clay
(Figure 11i and 11p). Some are at ground level on one end but
with retaining walls and even stairways on hill slopes (Figure 11b,
11c, 11k, and 11l). Middens and burials indicate that, whatever
else their functions may have been, most were also residential.
The complexity and variety of structures is primarily due to fitting
them onto the rolling ridges between inundated and uninhabitable
land that define parts of the peninsular epicenter, as well as most
areas of the rest of Cancuen beyond it (Wolf and Bracken 2013a).
The variety, however, also probably reflects some specialized functions and, above all, the interregional variety at Cancuen in both
structure styles and ceramics, which includes familiar Classic
Maya Peten platforms, Dos Pilas-style construction (Figure 11e),
and highland styles—with associated ceramics and lithics from
the lowlands, the piedmont, the highlands, Tabasco, and
Veracruz, as well as types distinctively characteristic of Cancuen
assemblages.
The failure of most of our initial attempts at structure typologies
and/or residential interpretations (Barrientos 2002; Demarest et al.
196
Demarest et al.
Figure 10. Complexes of the northeast including small palace, port areas, “aggregated cluster” complexes, and jade preform production
area Maps by Marc Wolf and Justin Bracken.
2003; Kovacevich 2007, 2013; Woodfill et al. 2001) were due to the
misapplication of standard lowland Maya categories to the bewildering variety of Cancuen’s architecture, a variability most evident in
the northern area of the epicenter and the non-epicenter east transect
where level, drained land was limited. To understand Cancuen, particularly near the port areas, we find that it has been necessary
simply to excavate extensively almost all structures with both
deep trenches and wide horizontal exposures. The artifacts and
architecture recovered have confirmed the strikingly multiregional
nature of the city—fitting well with its port function as a nexus of
exchange between many areas (Barrientos and Demarest 2007;
Barrientos et al. 2006; Demarest et al. 2009, 2013; Forné et al.
2009, 2010).
Again, despite their great variability, most structures were, at
least in part, residential, given middens and burials placed under
floors or on one or more sides. Yet many structures appear to
have had exclusively ritual or public functions (Barrientos 2014;
Demarest 2013; Torres 2011). Judging from architecture and artifacts, status at Cancuen and some other Pasión sites (see, for
example, Palka 1995) was related directly to elevation and drainage
in this swampy inundated zone. Lying near the base of the rainy
Verapaz highlands, river flood levels at Cancuen can change erratically by 8–9 m per year and as much as 6 m in a single day, as
occurred in June 2013 (Figure 12). In this swampy riverine peninsula, even minor differences in the elevation of residences and
public architecture were consistently associated with higher levels
of wealth or status, as seen in other archaeological markers
(lithics, ceramics, masonry, etc.). Although this is not an uncommon
pattern at Classic Maya sites, it is more pronounced here, given the
river and swamp environment of Cancuen (see similar patterns at
Dos Pilas [Palka 1995] and La Joyanca [Arnauld et al. 2004]).
Note also that the slightly higher elevated ground usually has the
longest occupation sequences within the ceramic phases of
Cancuen’s century and a half history (Arriaza 2012; Barrientos
2014). Completed and ongoing investigations of the general site
sustaining area beyond the peninsula also reflect this association
between elevation and status (Demarest et al. 2013; Wolf and
Bracken 2013a). At the lowest area of one mound cluster in the
Economy, Exchange, and Power
197
Figure 11. Some of the very wide range of different Cancuen architectural or construction styles on the level, and more often rolling,
terrain of Cancuen: (a) fine masonry nonresidential audiencia range structure overlooking the northeast port and its varied groups;
(b and k) artificially leveled ground with worked stone staircase; (c and l) partially worked stone terrace walls forming large leveled platforms; (d and m) structures with partially worked stone wall and patios of different heights; (e) higher mounds with platforms defined
by lines of stone roughly worked on only one face; (f and n) platforms with unworked or minimally worked retaining walls; (g and o)
very low platforms formed by thin unworked paving stones; (h) pounded clay platforms, some with thin flat stone patios; (i and p)
platforms of very dense hard red clay, sometimes with later earth or clay extensions; (j and q) large unworked boulder retaining
walls to level slopes for group or aggregated cluster construction.
northern peninsula zone were several residential floors with almost
no platforms, where initial stages of jade preform production were
carried out near the end of Cancuen’s history (Figure 10; see also
Andrieu et al. 2014:Figure 2).
Further south, the east port (Figures 13, 14, and 15) is also well
defined with a larger subroyal elite (“noble’s”) palace complex
directly above the sharply defined bay of the port. This port was excavated from 2002–2004 (Alvarado 2004; Alvarado et al. 2006). It has a
shallow small bay with one cobblestone terrace on the north side, just
above water level, that could have served as a dock (Alvarado 2004;
Alvarado et al. 2006). At the end of the small port bay, the inclined
slope leads up to a palace group and a stone, gravel, and plaster
198
Demarest et al.
Figure 12. Examples of highly unstable river levels and frequent inundations (left, Q’eqchi’ Maya Cancuen Visitor Center, May 2013;
right, June 2013).
sacbe, which runs past courtyards and architecture further south
toward the palace complexes (Figures 13 and 15). This port
complex was surrounded in the final years of Cancuen’s occupation
by a defensive wall, identical to the many kilometers of such walls
in the Middle Pasión Petexbatun region during its late eighth-century
collapse period (Demarest 2006; Inomata 2008). The noble’s complex
directly above the port had numerous residential structures associated
with a presentation palace structure of fine corbelled-vaulted masonry
(Jackson 2001, 2002, 2004, 2005). The fine masonry, purely Peten
Maya-style principal structure has been identified to have been an
audience chamber, as proposed by Barrientos (2014) for this and
many peripheral structures of the palace—not residential, as originally
conceived (Demarest et al. [eds.] 2002, 2003; Jackson 2002). The
adjacent platforms of this plaza group, low but with well-defined
retaining walls and high elevation, were the actual residences of the
elites of this complex, and lower platforms nearby were likely those
of retainers. Some of these well-constructed residential platforms
had significant numbers of sherds of fine paste wares from Tabasco
(Torres et al. 2013) (see Table 1). Note that an elaboration of this
complex and a slight reorientation toward the port occurs in the late
eighth century, perhaps associated with the defensive additions.
The southeast port (Figure 16) is topographically very clear but
has been disturbed by modern activity. It is the principal portage
today. There a bay of the Pasión River was overlooked from an
escarpment by several structures. Unfortunately, the principal structure here was dismantled for stone by the local landowner. Its form
and status (potentially “middle” to “high”) can be inferred from finished masonry base blocks and the landowner’s great stack of stone
masonry extracted from the building (observed during our initial
visits to the site in 1996). Excavations in and around this structure
recovered ceramics of each period but with an unusual concentration
of fine orange sherds from Veracruz (Torres et al. 2013) (see
Table 1). Along the sides of the shallow inner bay that was
entered from the southeast port were a variety of structures
ranging from simple mounds to complexes with bottom courses
of fine masonry, one of which had another concentration of the
imported fine paste wares. The bay leads into the site, narrowing
and terminating near the entrance to the royal ballcourt of Taj
Chan Ahk and adjacent subroyal palace structures.
“INTERNATIONALISM” AT CANCUEN IN THE
EIGHTH CENTURY
Figure 13. Map of east port. Map by Marc Wolf and Luis F. Luin.
Fitting with its role as an interregional port center, Cancuen has a
mixture of regional styles in both architecture and artifacts.
Multiregionalism at Cancuen, especially in the a.d. 740–800
period, includes architecture in central Peten style, some with fine
masonry, including a number of central Peten style “Plaza Plan 2”
groups with high east side structures (at least three of those are
outside of the epicenter on the east transect). Also present are Dos
Pilas/Pasión distinctive style structures with a mix of only some
(often just one or two) fine masonry courses combined with clay
and rough faced stone. One structure of this Dos Pilas style is
even part of the palace complex (Sears 2002). More common are
southern highland styles of constructions of clay- and cobble-faced
platforms and, of course, simple earthen mounds (Figure 11). Note
Economy, Exchange, and Power
199
Figure 14. Detailed map of excavations and features of Cancuen’s east port. Map by Carlos Alvarado.
that at Cancuen structure forms do not correspond simply with
status, but also with chronological period, terrain slope, and regional
styles. Indeed, a seemly unimpressive structure that was in the distinctive and rather crude Dos Pilas “mixed style” (of clay and partly
worked stone with only a few courses of masonry) held the tomb of
a king (Sears 2002). As at the east port, other compounds sometimes
have nonresidential fine masonry “audiencias” with separate corresponding elite residences and combined with probable simpler retainer structures in terraced clusters (Barrientos 2014; Barrientos and
Demarest 2012; Cotom-Nimatu and Quintanilla 2011; Jackson
2001, 2002, 2004, 2005; Martínez 2008; Martínez et al. 2012).
Figure 15. Reconstruction of the east port complex circa A.D. 800.
Drawing by Luis F. Luin.
Figure 16. Map of the southeast port showing entrance, bay to epicenter,
and dismantled elite structure. Map by Marc Wolf and Luis F. Luin.
200
Demarest et al.
Table 1. Ceramic detail on Gulf Coast Fine Paste imports. The 11 contexts with the highest frequencies of Fine Paste ceramics from Tabasco and Veracruz.
(Listed in order of highest frequencies of Chablekal Fine Grey.)
Sherds analyzed
and classified
Location at the site
M2 of excavation
1
K7-24 (in Operation 13) residence near palace
213 m2
23%*
1,595
2
“Los Patos” (in Operation 39) Western
epicenter at possible northwest port
K8-11 and K8-12 Western epicenter probable
west port (in Operation 19A)
250.1 m2
27%*
1,449
137.5 m²
14.8%
4,803
4
Residential cluster at probable north NW port
area (in Operation 54)
176.27 m2
19%*
2,595
5
Jade preform workshop area; Structures M10-3
to M10-7 near NE/NW ports (in operation 24)
924 m2
100%*
15,355
6
North epicenter Highland Ballcourt
(in operation 25C, 25F, and 25G)
Sacred cistern mass burial at palace entrance
(in Operation 42)
Structure M6-12 on excavated SE port bay
(in Operation 14B)
Structure L6-2 Large palace kitchen (in
Operation 7)
M9 Elite complex at excavated East port
(in Operation 25A, 25E)
M6-19 on excavated SE port bay
(in Operation 14A)
Totals
381.18 m2
41.2%*
8,646
269.9 m2
29%*
2,370
138.6 m2
15%*
8,251
84 m2
9%*
2,442
571.75 m²
61.8%*
28,245
51.45 m²
5.5%*
4,672
3
7
8
9
10
11
3,197.6 m²
80,423
Number of sherds of
Fine Pastes
281 Chablekal
14 Campamento
59 Chablekal
34 Campamento
170 Chablekal
46 Campamento
2 Chablekal vessels
58 Chablekal
3 Campamento
2 Chablekal vessels
1 Campamento
vessel
330 Chablekal
43 Campamento
4 Chablekal vessels
(fifth in Chablekal
Concentration)
165 Chablekal
40 Campamento
25 Chablekal
5 Campamento
75 Chablekal
43 Campamento
21 Chablekal
221 Chablekal
43 Campamento
27 Chablekal
32 Campamento
1,422 Chablekal
303 Campamento
8 Chablekal and 1
Campamento vessel
Frequency of Fine Paste
imports in context
17.61% Chablekal
.877% Campamento
4.07% Chablekal
2.34% Campamento
3.53% Chablekal
.957% Campamento
2.235% Chablekal
.115% Campamento
2.15% Chablekal
.28% Campamento
1.908% Chablekal
.462% Campamento
1.054% Chablekal
.21% Campamento
.90% Chablekal
.52% Campamento
.859% Chablekal
0% Campamento
.74% Chablekal
.152% Campamento
.577% Chablekal
.684% Campamento
2.145% of total sherds are these
imported fine paste wares
*Percentage of area excavated compared to area excavated at jade workshop/NW port (924 m²)—by far largest sampled area.
All ceramic and statistical data by Paola Torres, Melanie Forne, and their laboratory teams. (Imports compositionally confirmed by INAA by Bishop/Smithsonian.)
Note that:
1) All contexts are securely dated to Los Laureles (a.d. 760–780), Early Chaman (a.d. 780–790), and/or Late Chaman (a.d. 790–800).
2) Six or seven of the 11 contexts with most imported Gulf fine pastes are areas adjacent to confirmed (east) or probable (west) ports (but the latter are still under investigation).
3) There is no correlation of Chablekal (nor Campamento) with production areas or artisans.
4) The jade workshop area is not highest in Chablekal frequency, but fifth, and seventh in Veracruz Campamento.
5) Combining # 8 and # 11 the general SE port area would be second in Campamento.
6) Surprisingly, there is no correlation with regional architecture styles.
There are a number of enigmatic structures of unusual dimensions,
some in highland style (Demarest and Martínez 2010; Demarest
et al. [eds.] 2011; Quiñonez and Hernandez 2011). Two modally
early La Concordia phase (beginning at a.d. 656) palace constructions from the first occupation of the site by the dynasty were actually made of adobe bricks (Barrientos 2014). The latter is clearly a
highland influence, and a parallel to the initial palace architecture of
the similarly intrusive “frontier” Peten Maya elite occupation at
Copan during the Early Classic establishment of that lowland
dynasty (Bell et al. 2004).
“Frontier” interaction with transversal, piedmont, and highland
sites is primarily reflected within Cancuen itself, rather than at
those presumably less complex centers, a pattern that challenges
both intuitive expectations and more traditional notions of “frontiers” between “high civilization” and less complex societies
(Demarest 2013; Demarest et al. 2013; Wolf and Bracken 2013b;
and, for a fuller critique of such boundary models see, for
example, Schortman and Urban 1994, 2012). Epicenter ceramics
are also eclectic, including not only Cancuen’s local styles, but
Tepeu lowland ceramics, highland vessels, southern piedmont
Verapaz-style ceramics, and fine paste pottery from distant
Tabasco and Veracruz (Ronald Bishop, personal communication
2011–2013; Forné et al. 2008; 2010, 2011, 2013; Forné and
Torres 2010; Torres et al. 2013).
Using INAA data demonstrates that the high chromium variant
Chablekal Fine Grey ceramics found at Cancuen (specifically the
decorated Telchac Composite and Chicxulub Incised) were actual
imports from the distant plains near the Gulf coast of Mexico, not
just local stylistic imitations (Ronald Bishop, personal communication 2010–2013; Bishop et al. 2005; Forné et al. 2010). More
Economy, Exchange, and Power
recently, and even more surprising, was the compositional identification of Campamento Fine Orange ceramics imported from
Veracruz (Ronald Bishop, personal communication 2010, 2012;
Forné et al. 2010, 2013; Christopher Pool, personal communication
2011; Torres et al. 2013). It is important to emphasize that these
thin-walled, fine paste wares of Chablekal and Campamento are
not markers of the Terminal Classic period but are late eighth
century ceramics (Chablekal a.d. 750–800; Campamento a.d.
650–800) that indicate early western exchange and influence of
some kind (Bishop et al. 2005; Forné et al. 2010; Torres et al.
2013). These early fine paste wares are important in the establishing
the culture-history, dating to the Los Laureles (a.d. 760–780) and
Early Chaman (a.d. 780–790) and Late Chaman (a.d. 790–800)
phases. Chablekal Fine Grey and Campamento Fine Orange ceramics are found at each of the three excavated ports and notably
near the head of navigation northeast port but are also found in
some deposits at other locations (Table 1; Figure 17). These loci
include the elite residential complexes near the east port and the
southeast port, groups near the northeast port, and at other structures
near the palace and even a cache in the palace itself.
Note that this ceramic type is not correlated with artisans, craftsmen, or jade production, as previously hypothesized (Demarest
et al. [eds.] 2003; Kovacevich 2007, 2013), but with the entire
northern port area, other ports, and other contexts but always
Figure 17. Distribution of some long-distance ceramic imports in the epicenter. Circles are areas of the epicenter that have Chablekal Fine Grey
(high chromium variety) from Tabasco, some also having Campamento
Fine Orange ceramics from Veracruz. Map and data by Paola Torres,
Mélanie Forné, Marc Wolf, and Luis F. Luin.
201
associated with deposits or constructions dating to the late (a.d.
760–800) chronological periods, as now known from ten more
years of site-wide investigations (Demarest et al. [eds.] 2008,
2011; Demarest and Martínez 2010; Forné et al. 2010, 2013;
Forné and Torres 2010; Forné, Alvarado, and Torres 2011; Torres
et al. 2013) (see Table 1 for exact statistics; Figure 17 for a distribution map). There is no lithic working or production of any kind
at most of the 11 identified areas with Chablekal concentrations
(Torres et al. 2013) and it is not most associated with jade-working.
Furthermore, we can no longer say that Chablekal is not associated
with elites since many sherds were present in the east port noble’s
group and a lip-to-lip Chablekal dedicatory vessel cache was
found in the patio directly in front of what has been identified as
the very residential complexes of ruler Taj Chan Ahk (L7-12 and
L7-33) within the palace itself (Barrientos 2014; Barrientos et al.
[eds.] 2006; Rodas et al. 2011; Torres et al. 2013; Valle 2010).
The latter is perhaps the most “elite” possible context in the site.
Veracruz Campamento Fine Orange is relatively rare but co-varies
with Chablekal and has its second greatest concentration at the
two principal structures of the southeast port (Torres et al. 2013)
(see Table 1 and Figure 17).
It seems probable, given their loci of distribution, that these fine
paste ceramics had some significance, particularly associations with
ports and long-distance exchange. But, even those correlations are
not yet definitive. It is notable that two “aggregated cluster”
groups near the northern ports also have such fine paste ceramics
from Tabasco and Veracruz. One of these large complexes
(Operation 24) contains a small group with jade preform production
debris (Figure 10, center; see also Andrieu et al. 2014:Figure 2), but
the other (Operation 54) (Figure 10, upper left) appears to be purely
residential—with a variable mix of structures of different styles and
probable statuses (Figure 11) within both of these aggregated clusters (Demarest et al. 2009, 2013; Torres et al. 2013; Wolf and
Bracken 2013a).
The multiregionalism of Cancuen is also manifest in the presence of both green and black opaque or semiopaque obsidian
from highland Mexico in quantities (n = 201), much more than
present at most Classic period Peten centers, and comparable to
Terminal Classic occupations (Braswell 2003; Forné et al. 2013).
This central Mexican obsidian is also mostly found in the northern
portion of the peninsular epicenter and the northeast and east ports
but, again, also in other locations, including the highland ballcourt.
Of the Ixtepeque obsidian at Cancuen, all seven concentrations are
at loci that have Chablekal Fine Grey ceramics. All of this material
from distant regions speaks to the function of Cancuen as a transport
center and also confirms that during the late eighth century (the
epoch of downriver Pasión disintegration), Cancuen was not only
looking south to the highlands, but was also engaged with the transversal land route to northern Chiapas, Tabasco, and Veracruz
(Demarest et al. 2009, Forné et al. 2010, 2013; Forné and Torres
2010).
Meanwhile, direct southern highland connections were apparent
in ceramics and especially in the presence of a large sprawling
highland-style ballcourt in the middle of the epicenter that is like
none found in the Maya lowlands (Torres 2011). Its low earthen
alley was defined by alignments of natural stone slabs and it was
surrounded by thick middens with local and Verapaz piedmont ceramics including comales, jars, and serving vessels (see Demarest
2013:Figure 9; Torres 2011). It was a “feasting ballcourt” of the
type found in the highlands and southern periphery of
Mesoamerica (Fox 1996), an identification confirmed by its
202
artifactual associations with piedmont ceramics (Torres 2011). It is
particularly interesting to note that, while no such ballcourt is
known in the lowlands, exactly this highland architectural style of
ballcourt and other constructions is found at sites in the Verapaz/
Quiche regions (Ichon and Hatch 1982; Torres 2011; van
Akkeren 2012). This area is the source zone for Cancuen’s substantial quantities of jade from the newly identified non-Motagua deposits (Andrieu et al. 2010, 2011). As elsewhere, this underscores the
economic as well as ritual functions of ballcourts (Fash and Fash
2007). It also is one of many elements indicating that Cancuen
network connections with highland centers were built upon participation by highland and local leaders in rituals at Cancuen itself,
rather than upon Cancuen military, or even economic, dominance
(Demarest 2013; Demarest et al. 2013).
Additionally, while Cancuen in general lacks temples, its rituals
were apparently more often held in the cave/hill shrines of remnant
karst towers that lie a few kilometers from the greater site area, and
8–12 km from the epicenter peninsula (Demarest 2013; Demarest
et al. 2013; Spenard 2006; Woodfill 2010). The cave shrines there
have very distinctive Cancuen ceramics, dominated by large open
bowls and jars of the La Isla Group (Forné et al. 2009, 2010,
2013; Forné and Torres 2010; Torres et al. 2013). Beyond this
area, however, the ceramic patterns of Cancuen end (Demarest
et al. 2013). What is significant here is that, like the highland-style
northern ballcourt, Cancuen’s other religious rituals drew on highland canons, both within the site and in its sustaining areas
(Demarest 2013; Demarest et al. 2013; Spenard 2006; Woodfill
2010). All of these traits underscore the role of Cancuen as an
exchange and port center.
NEW EVIDENCE ON CANCUEN OBSIDIAN, JADE,
COMMODITIES, AND REGIONAL ECONOMY
As we have continued to investigate this very complex lowland/
highland frontier center, repeated surprising discoveries have,
accordingly, led to evolving perspectives on its economy. Recent
data have demonstrated a much wider range of economic roles for
this port city than previously imagined. These are now known to
include not just the long-distance exchange of exotics, but also a
large-scale involvement in commodity production and exchange
on both a regional and interregional scale.
Obsidian Blade Production and Exchange
Obsidian is most often used as a trading indicator because it is not
perishable and because, unlike many goods exchanged over great
distances in the Maya lowlands, it is not a luxury good (Aoyama
2001; Tourtellot and Sabloff 1972). As a major port in a strategic
location between the highlands and the lowlands, Cancuen could
have been a point for the transport of this material, especially the
El Chayal obsidian that was primarily exchanged through inland
routes during the Classic period (Arnauld 1990; Hammond 1972,
1973; Nelson 1985, 1994).
In fact, obsidian is abundant at the site. From 1999 to 2011,
11,862 fragments were recovered at Cancuen. From this material,
the collection corresponding to the 1999–2004 excavations—
which were originally analyzed with the data combined by structure
types (Kovacevich 2006, 2007)—has been entirely reanalyzed in
order to be integrated into a lot by lot analysis, and then added to
the rest of the materials from the later 2004–2011 excavations
(Andrieu and Quiñonez 2010; Andrieu, Quiñonez, and Rodas
Demarest et al.
2011). Most of it could be visually associated to the El Chayal
source (11,226 fragments), with 388 fragments visually attributed
to the Ixtepeque source, 201 considered as non-Guatemalan (probably central Mexican, because of their visual aspect—opaque,
green, or semiopaque), and 47 fragments attributed to other
sources, such as San Martin Jilotepeque or Milpas Altas. X-ray diffraction is in course.
Most of the Cancuen production is oriented toward the manufacture of prismatic blades. Of the obsidian collected, 67% are prismatic blades, 0.8% are prismatic core fragments, 6.3% represent
first and second series blades (Clark 1997), and less than 3% represent core rejuvenation flakes. The overall lack of cortical
fragments (n = 44), the scarcity of primary series blades, and the
absence of any flakes corresponding to the preforming of the
cores indicate that the material was brought into the epicenter as prepared cores (fragments considered ‘cortical’ were required to exhibit
more than 50% cortex on a surface [Andrieu and Quiñonez 2011]).
The remaining obsidian artifacts were composed of percussion
flakes, a few flake tools (scrapers, macroblades, drills), bifacial
industries, and small unclassified fragments.
When looking at the different sources of obsidian, it appears
that not all this material was likely to have been managed the
same way. The central Mexican and Ixtepeque obsidians are
mostly associated with the northern part of the epicenter peninsula,
implying that their exchange was probably not centralized. The low
quantities of both these obsidian types could indicate that they were
not exchanged as a principal import but that they arrived among
other types of imports through long distance exchange networks.
Such patterns would be consistent with the hypothesis of port
activities, particularly in the northeastern area of the epicenter.
A very different pattern appears, however, for the grey translucent
obsidian that we have visually attributed to the El Chayal source.
As a matter of fact, this obsidian material presents a much more
centralized pattern. While the distribution of the prismatic blades
is relatively homogeneous across the site (Andrieu 2012), the
distribution of prismatic cores is clearly centralized in elite contexts,
indicating that this production could have been at least partially
controlled. Of the 101 cores and core fragments found within the
epicenter, 58 were found in elite ritual deposits: 53 in the burial
of Kaan Maax, the last king of the site, two under an epicenter
stela along with hundreds of obsidian flakes (Andrieu 2011,
2012), and three in an elite burial in the adjacent small palace
group (Operation 45B).
This pattern is reinforced by the recent discovery of a massive
cache of prismatic cores. To the east of the peninsula, the site has
continuous habitation on the areas of drained land with 123 structures mapped and/or tested, thus far, in the 4-km east transect
alone, despite the fact that about 20% of this area has been
leveled by tractor plowing and more than 40% of this area is uninhabitable swamp and steep slopes, and is frequently and erratically
inundated. These transect structures include houses, standard plaza
groups, “Plaza Plan 2” groups characteristic of the central Peten,
“aggregate cluster” complexes, and elite or public architecture,
such as higher structures (4–5 m tall), and three plain stelae
groups. Near the end of the east transect, at 3.8 km from the epicenter peninsula, one plain stela was removed and revealed a cache of
4,219 chert flakes, 8 chert eccentrics, 8 obsidian eccentrics, and,
most importantly, 831 whole spent or half spent obsidian cores
and 20 complete, but broken, cores (Figure 18) (Urquizú et al.
2013). This is by far the largest obsidian core cache or burial
deposit ever discovered in the Maya lowlands.
Economy, Exchange, and Power
203
Figure 18. Some of the 851 whole spent (or half spent) obsidian cores from a Cancuen east transect stelae complex cache.
Together with core caches in elite or public contexts in the epicenter peninsula, this gives a total of 952 partially spent obsidian
cores. If we add these to the ones found in the epicenter, it
appears that 90% of the cores were concentrated in ritual or elite
associated contexts. This implies that, at some point, these cores
were gathered from the various craftspeople to be buried in highly
valued contexts. Therefore, it is both a claim for control and a centralization of the means of production. It is a very clear hint of a
direct relationship between prismatic blade production and elite
contexts.
But such a quantity of cores is also impressive when compared to
the quantities of blades found at the site. Most cores in the epicenter
itself correspond to the very latest occupation at Cancuen: the Kaan
Maax burial and Early (a.d. 780–790) and Late (a.d. 790–800)
Chaman phases. Outside of the epicenter, this plain stela cache
can be less precisely dated but was within the a.d. 760–800 timeframe (Torres et al. 2013; Urquizu et al. 2013). This implies a
very high intensity of exchange during that period. It is difficult
to calculate the exact number of blades produced from polyhedral
cores (Clark 1986), but we can suggest, given the size of the complete prismatic blades at the site (3.7–9.5 cm in length and
.5–1.5 cm in width) and that of the exhausted cores (with diameters
ranging from 1–2.5 cm), that it is reasonable to infer that a core produced roughly 50–100 blades (Andrieu 2009a, 2009b; Clark 1988;
Flenniken and Hirth 2003:100; Fowler 1981). Therefore, 952 cores
would correspond to the production of anywhere between 47,600
and 95,200 blades—that is to say, far more than what was found
for the entire occupation sequence of Cancuen, where the actual collection, so far, totals 7,934 blades. Even if we take into account the
fact that a few cores from the plain stela cache were not completely
exhausted and apply a minimal core/blade ratio of 20, there would
still be a vast number of blades missing from the site.
The question remains, then, where did these blades go? Initially,
it would seem that Cancuen was engaged in long-distance export of
obsidian in the form of finished blades, which would seem
improbable given the fragility of blades and the great distance
north, downriver on the Pasión, to any major Classic Maya site.
Another hypothesis, perhaps more probable, is that blade distribution from Cancuen in the late eighth century was not downriver,
but was southward, to nearby sites with a highland material culture
in the far northern Verapaz and “transversal” piedmont region. This
possibility would fit with other new evidence of Cancuen’s intraregional ritual and political involvement with the surrounding nonlowland Classic Maya Verapaz communities (Demarest 2013;
Demarest et al. 2013; Torres 2011).
A few obsidian nuclei in this transect cache deposit, however, are
not completely spent (Figure 18). This evidence, the nexus position
of Cancuen, and the ample Peten textual evidence for long-distance
exchange both north and west suggest that Cancuen was also exporting whole or half-spent obsidian cores downriver to the Peten. Now
we have indications of a probable massive scale of both longdistance obsidian exchange and regional blade production at
Cancuen. This evidence is even more striking considering that
2013 (due to previous landowner and/or ‘drug lord’ issues) was
the first season of extensive excavations in the greater site transects
outside the epicenter peninsula. Cancuen may prove to be one of the
most important centers for both obsidian production and transport in
the lowlands—and probably the largest in the Late Classic period.
Future excavations on the eastern transect of the site will seek to
locate the workshops and provide a better understanding of obsidian
production and exchange at Cancuen.
Elite Supervision of Jade Production
Another important element indicating that Cancuen was oriented
toward long-distance exchanges is the jade workshop located
close to the northeast port of the site (Figure 10). This workshop
was associated with several low, modestly constructed residential
mounds within a much larger aggregated cluster (Demarest and
Martínez 2010; Demarest et al. [eds.] 2008, 2011; Kovacevich
204
and Pereira 2002; Wolf and Bracken 2013a) where 3,606 fragments
of jade debitage were found. The production in that workshop did
not involve skilled artistry (Andrieu et al. 2011, 2012, 2014;
Kovacevich 2006). Instead, the analysis of the material showed
that the craftspeople were separating different qualities of jade and
making beads and earflare preforms by percussion (Andrieu et al.
2014; Andrieu and Forné 2010; Andrieu et al. 2011; Andrieu,
Quiñonez, and Rodas 2011; Kovacevich 2006).
Many indicators show that this production was elite-controlled
(Andrieu et al. 2014), mostly because it clearly appears from the
burials found in this workshop that these craftspeople were excluded
from access to the jade objects they produced. The distribution of
the different colors of jade within the site clearly shows that the
palace area benefited from a priority of access to the brightest
(and most valuable) green jade (Andrieu et al. 2014:Figure 19).
The lack of highland ceramics in that specific residential group—
whereas some highland-style vases were associated with elite and
royal burials—(Barrientos 2014; Barrientos et al. 2006) also indicates that raw material procurement may have been elite-managed
and that the craftspeople did not handle the importation of raw
materials themselves (Andrieu et al. 2014).
Above all, the location of the workshop indicates potentially
direct supervision of the work by elites. Indeed, the jade preform
workshop is at the bottom of a low topographic bowl completely
surrounded by a variety of structures in this larger terraced
“cluster” group and with more elite architectural complexes
nearby (Andrieu et al. 2014:Figure 2; (Demarest 2012; Demarest
and Martínez 2010; Demarest et al. [eds.] 2008) (see Figure 10).
One structure above the jade working area was a 9 × 30 m platform,
with a stone masonry retaining wall on its downside slope (Rodas
and Quiñonez 2010; Wolf and Bracken 2013a) (Figure 11c and
11l). Complexes of mixed styles and masonry construction—
some with stairways (see Figure 11b and 11k)—are higher in
elevation than the adjacent jade working areas (Figure 10). To the
north, a fine masonry range structure stands directly above all of
these complexes and the port of which they were a part
(Figure 11a). In sum, the jade working mounds are surrounded by
more than 30 structures, including large masonry platforms,
houses, structures of a variety of styles, and an elite range structure—all in the epicenter of a major regional royal capital
(Demarest 2012; Demarest et al. 2009, 2011). Given the physical
layout alone, it would be impossible for anything to occur in that
area without elite supervision. As with the ports, location evidence
suggests such elite supervision of the residential locus of jade
preform production. This does not indicate, of course, elite participation in the actual production process, which was repetitive and
very labor intensive (Andrieu et al. 2014).
This jade preform production activity came toward the end of
Cancuen’s occupational sequence (a.d. 790–800). The workshop’s
residential floors and middens held 98.4% of identifiable sherds
(n = 15,113) from the Late Chaman phase (a.d. 790–800) and
only 1.6% (n = 242) from the ancient surface below one mound
were Los Laureles phase (a.d. 760–780) based on stratigraphic
microchronological analysis (Forné and Torres 2010; Torres et al.
2013). The Cancuen chronology is also now bracketed by epigraphic dates (Fahsen and Barrientos 2003, 2006; Fahsen et al.
2003; Fahsen and Jackson 2001) and correlated with a six-stage
architecture sequence (Barrientos 2014) for the a.d. 656–800
period. Thus, the jade production contexts are very securely dated
to the Late Chaman phase (a.d. 790–800). This demonstrates that
the workshop did not exist until after many features to which it
Demarest et al.
has previously been correlated in various interpretations (Andrieu
et al. 2011; Demarest et al. 2003; Kovacevich 2007, 2013).
There is little evidence of later stages of jade production, other
than the preforms of beads and earflares, and finished jade artifacts
are very rare at Cancuen. There are only 14 figurines or pendants
and 16 earflares found, thus far, across the entire site, and there is
very little jade in burials—even noble and royal burials (Andrieu
et al. 2014; Barrientos et al. 2006; Quintanilla 2013). Further, of
the 14 somewhat more elaborately carved jade objects (the pendants), some predate the workshop. For example, two of these are
diadem or crown pieces bearing the “X” design found on the
Jester God’s forehead that were recovered from a Dos Pilas
architectural-style (single phase) shrine and royal tomb of the predecessor, probably the father, of Taj Chan Ahk (Barrientos 2014;
Sears 2002). This shrine has a carved panel celebrating the latter’s
accession to power, which took place in a.d. 757, a date that
aligns well with the ceramics (modally transitional between the
La Concordia and Los Laureles phases) and with the distinctive
Dos Pilas architecture (a style that ends with the destruction of
that site at a.d. 761). Barrientos (2014), from his architectural
sequence (linked to epigraphic dedication dates), would date this
even somewhat earlier, to a.d. 740–750. Thus, the tomb and
shrine (K7-3), along with its fine jades, predate the jade workshop
by somewhere between 30 to 50 years, as do many other important
contexts. A second finely carved jade object is a carved plaque
found in the throne cache in the palace and is, significantly, from
the later period of the workshop, during the Late Chaman phase
(a.d. 790–800). In the other 117 burials analyzed thus far, from
any time period, including elite burials, less than a dozen have
very simple carved jade objects (Andrieu et al. 2014; Quintanilla
2013). The rich deposit of offerings at the cistern sacrifice site,
where 31 elites were executed and deposited with many precious
artifacts, also has only a few jade pieces (n = 37), and all but four
were simple beads (n = 33) (Andrieu et al. 2014; Barrientos et al.
[eds.] 2006; Demarest et al. 2014; Quintanilla 2013).
This paucity of jade artifacts is remarkable for any intensively
excavated dynastic epicenter, especially one with impressive elite
and public architecture and monuments, and even more unexpected
at a production site. The difference between the 4 kg of finished artifacts and the 60 kg of jade debitage found in the workshop is surprising. This, plus the lack of jade production waste that would
have corresponded to an absent stage of bead and earflare production, suggests that preform production was almost exclusively
as an export commodity (Andrieu and Forné 2010; Andrieu et al.
2012, 2014).
Jade preform exchanges have never been previously documented
in the Maya lowlands before, but they appear to be attested to later
on for the Aztecs (Andrieu et al. 2014). Interestingly, we can underscore that the exchange of preform, rather than finished objects,
implies a form of commodification of jade. Preforms are more standardized in form and shape, and they certainly do not imply the
same obligations between the actors of the exchange than the gift
of finely carved objects (Andrieu et al. 2014; for jade as a “commodity,” see also Freidel et al. 2002; Freidel and Reilly 2010;
Masson and Freidel 2013:28; Rochette 2009, 2014).
Perishable Commodities
Other, perishable commodities were probably also traded to and
from Cancuen. Recent ethnohistorical studies (Caso Barrera and
Aliphat Fernández 2006, 2012; van Akkeren 2012) show that the
Economy, Exchange, and Power
“transversal” piedmont zone, just 12–15 km to the south of
Cancuen, was a major zone for production of cacao, cotton,
achiote, and vanilla throughout the Contact period. Indeed, the
cacao and achiote from this piedmont zone were considered to
be of unusually prized quality (van Akkeren 2012:38–39).
Paleobotanical studies are underway to try to identify physical
evidence of cacao at transversal sites (Avendaño et al. 2013). The
highly valued Maya condiments of vanilla and achiote were
mixed with the processed cacao in chocolate drinks (Caso Barrera
and Aliphat Fernández 2006:36–37; van Akkeren 2012:39), and,
of course, cacao was a major element in tribute and court
economy (McAnany 2013; McAnany et al. 2002; Stuart 2006).
Cotton was also a major product of the “transversal” far northern
Verapaz region (van Ahkeren 2012). Such transversal cotton
would have been important to all the population, but cotton
mantas were, specifically, given as tribute to Maya royal courts
(McAnany 2013).
At Salinas de Nueve Cerros, further west on this same transversal
route, previous and ongoing research (Dillon et al. 1988; Woodfill
et al. 2011, 2012) has demonstrated large-scale salt production of
more than 24,000 tons a year. A major route of salt transport from
Salinas would have been east on the piedmont transversal to the
ports of Cancuen and then downriver via the Pasión. Distinctive
Cancuen-style figurines have been found at Salinas and compositionally sourced by INAA to Cancuen (Sears et al. 2005).
Furthermore, a unique style of grinding stone for final salt processing has been identified at the salt mines of Salinas de los Nueve
Cerros, and a number of such grinding stones have been found at
Cancuen (Mijangos 2013). Movement of other perishables may
have also included quetzal feathers from the Verapaz core area,
their “biotope,” which lies directly on the Alta Verapaz Valley
route to Cancuen. Probable transfer of all of these perishables
through the Cancuen ports is geographically the shortest and least
difficult route. As always, for routes we must rely most directly
on lithic and ceramic evidence, and the rest is difficult to demonstrate, but Cancuen was very likely to have been involved in local
and regional, as well as long-distance, exchange.
ELITE AND NONELITE ECONOMIC ROLES AND
POWER AT CANCUEN
What was the nature of economic activities and roles in the variety
of complexes around the northern and other ports, and the jade production area? In this regard, it is probable that residential jade
preform producers and other nonelites were probably not “full
time” crafters. The quantities, though high for a material as precious
as jade, do not correspond to full-time work; in fact, percussion
work is the least time-consuming aspect of the working of jade
(Pétrequin et al. 2013). It requires strength but not time, as most fractures are immediate from the percussion. The same could be said for
prismatic blade production, knowing that a qualified knapper can
produce a complete polyhedral core in roughly an hour (Darras
2010:29), and that “[w]orking at a relaxed pace, one competent
knapper could reduce 160 polyedral cores in 50 days, working
about 2–4 hour day” (Clark and Bryant 1997:132). Thus, the presence of 952 cores, though impressive and highly significant in terms
of trade and exchange, would not imply more than a few months of
part-time work, if it was made by a single knapper and even less if
there were numerous artisans.
Few nonelites at the Cancuen epicenter peninsula itself would
have been farmers, since by the late eighth century construction
205
had covered all potential agricultural land on the peninsular core
of the site. As discussed above (see also Demarest and Martínez
2013; Wolf and Bracken 2013a), moving eastward from the
isthmus of the epicenter, less dense habitations and clustered
groups continue for, at least, the 4 km from the peninsula investigated to date (Figure 7). The structures mapped on that transect so
far would correspond to a density of about half of that in the peninsular epicenter. These areas, broken by water and swamp, and probably also extending in other directions, provided part of the
agricultural sustaining area of the site. How the epicenter nonelite,
nonagricultural workers identified themselves, given multiple occupations, is more problematic, but their power over the productive
process might have been minimal when compared to the wide
variety of craft and labor arrangements identified elsewhere in
Mesoamerica (Brumfiel 1998; Costin and Wright 1998; Hirth
1996, 2009; Hirth [ed.] 2009; Hirth and Pillsbury 2013; Inomata
2007; Reents-Budet 1998; Schortman and Urban 2004;
Schortman et al. 2001).
The probability is that many nonelite families and individuals in
the epicenter peninsula area were involved in port functions—most
“part-time” in any one occupation but being fully employed as retainers or workers for resident elites in one activity or another. The
center would have needed masons, cooks, and servants. Above
all, however, there would have been a great need for porters,
boatmen, rowers, canoe builders, carpenters, and agents of various
kinds for the primary function of epicentral Cancuen, which
would have been transport, not production. Port and
transport-related occupations are seldom discussed in the Maya
area, except in terms of energetics, but any broader comparative
consideration would indicate the great importance of such occupations in economy and identity, particularly at a port city. As an
aside, modern Pasión River Q’eqchi’ Maya boatmen have a
highly respected, though generally nonelite, status. They are often
the wealthiest members, of their, albeit not very wealthy,
communities.
Note here that we would not extrapolate from the evidence for
elite involvement in exchange and supervision on the Cancuen epicenter peninsula as a general model for Classic Maya centers.
Cancuen’s location, its access to multiple long-distance exchange
routes, the channeling mechanism of its ports, its connections to
Gulf coast economies, and the late date of its apogee, may all indicate an unusual economy and, as discussed below, one that was
undergoing change near the end of the Classic period. Thus, the
Cancuen port economy is best viewed as an addition to the
growing body of evidence on the great degree of economic and political variability in the centers of the Classic Maya lowlands.
PORTS, MATRIX CONTROL, AND IDEOLOGY
The supervision of ports by elites, or even the state, could have provided ample opportunity for control of resources, elite accumulation, and the development of economic power. The strategic
position of Cancuen on major exchange routes provided great
opportunities to create regional and interregional mechanisms of
control. On the Cancuen epicenter peninsula itself, restricted
access of the ports and isthmus could have facilitated control of epicenter networks of distribution of a wide range of goods. That
would provide ideal circumstances for what Hirth (1996:224) identifies as the “matrix-control principle” in which elites “seek to
control these networks by placing themselves at major matrix positions to influence directly or indirectly the production,
206
accumulation, and flow of resources.” While the social constructs
surrounding elite matrix-control of materials are not well defined
at Cancuen, the opportunity for such control is clear.
Matrix-control in this case would facilitate Hirth’s (1996:224)
“context-oriented accumulation … where resources are produced
and/or accumulated in special contexts under the direction of organizing or supervising elites.”
Yet elite control over peninsular ports and transferred material
resources needed to be defined and legitimated. It is not a foregone
conclusion that elites control specific resources. To define this it was
necessary to have an economic ideology, as in Hirth’s “ideology
principle.” “An economic ideology reinforces both the basis for
the unequal accumulation of resources and the structure in which
it occurs” (Hirth 1996:225; also see DeMarrais et al. 1996). In
this case, control would be of ports and some material
resources—an economic power that would need to be legitimated.
Such mechanisms of legitimation and/or economic ideology at
Demarest et al.
Cancuen are discussed in detail elsewhere (Barrientos et al. 2006;
Barrientos and Demarest 2012; Demarest 2013). Just a glimpse of
legitimating ideology might be seen in Cancuen’s rich corpus of
iconography and architecture. For example, in almost all representations, the ruler is identified as a water lord. Both the ruler, Taj
Chan Ahk, and his highest nobles are presented (Figure 19) in a quatrefoil with water symbols, water lilies, and a water deity (Fahsen
and Barrientos 2006). Elite architecture is covered with stucco
imagery with water associations. The royal ballcourt where kings
played nobles was covered with such stucco imagery with water
symbols (Fernández Aguilar 2010).
State or elite control over the river itself also may have been
claimed in aspects of ritual site landscaping. Throughout the site
epicenter runs an elaborate ritual water system, a miniature river
with stone pools at springs, and small 1 m-wide channels (for
more detailed discussion of this feature see Alvarado 2011;
Alvarado and Mencos 2007; Barrientos 2008; Barrientos et al.
2006; Demarest 2013). This system is comparable to that at other
sites but is purely ritual, and its symbolism might be more specific
than elsewhere (Lucero and Fash 2006). The elaborately constructed
water system was symbolic in nature, since the site has several
springs within it, as well as being almost an island in the Pasión
River with access to the last aerated cascades (compare against
the situation at Copan: Fash 2005; Fash and Davis-Salazar 2006).
Water was always abundant, but the ritual water system may have
further legitimated their control of the critical nodes in the site’s
economic matrix—the river and its ports. Other ideological
devices may have been specific rituals, rather than architectonic
(Demarest 2013).
A number of factors indicate a shift to possible control by nobles
of the ports in the final half-century of Cancuen’s history. What is
most obvious is the layout of all three of the most investigated
ports, as discussed above. Each port was also surrounded by a
variety of other elite and “intermediate range” unusual architectural
complexes, as defined by taking together artifactual association,
masonry, scale, and—just as importantly—elevation.
ELITE VERSUS STATE CONTROL: ROYAL CLAIMS AND
NOBLE EVIDENCE
Figure 19. Panel 3 of Cancuen showing ruler Taj Chan Ahk as a water lord,
but sharing the scene with sajal and aj-k’uhun nobles (panel size 58 ×
67 cm). Photograph by Ken Garrett; drawing by Luis F. Luin.
A less easily resolved issue pertains to who the elites were that were
directly in charge of the supervision of the ports, the jade preform
production, obsidian exchange, perhaps commodity exchange, and
other economic activities at the ports of Cancuen. Noble versus
state control, like elite versus domestic economy, are overlapping,
rather than exclusive, categories. Nobles function as agents of the
state and the issue becomes one of their relative degrees of autonomy. The latter is also not a stable variable but one that could
vary between individuals, from site to site, and over time in the
Classic period. Cancuen’s elites are identifiable by their smaller
“subroyal” palaces or range structure complexes, some strategically
located near critical resources. That circumstantial evidence indicates at least probable direct noble supervision of the ports and
the preform jade production area by the resident elites. Note, regarding the obsidian core deposits, that in the epicenter they have associations with the royal palace, but in the transect on the outskirts of
Cancuen the most massive obsidian cache stelae is associated
with a 5 m-high elite structure (Urquizu et al. 2013; Wolf and
Bracken 2013a).
Yet there were significant claims of central state control. Late
eighth century claims of state control of economic activities are
Economy, Exchange, and Power
explicit, as well as implicit, in royal caches and burials. The cache
under the throne of the king includes a giant raw jade boulder cut
and finely polished on only one face (Barrientos et al. [eds.]
2006). The ruler Kan Maax (a.d. 796–800) was buried with obsidian cores and flakes, and most other cores recovered were in
stelae caches (Andrieu 2009b, 2011; Urquizu et al. 2013). The
ruler Taj Chan Ahk, in name and in most representations, is portrayed as a water lord, and his name, headdress, and that found
with his son, Kan Maax, might have been seen as claims of
mastery of the river. One could speculate that the central location
around the palace (and its ballcourt) of the channels and pools of
the ritual water system might have also associated the ruler with riverine control (Barrientos et al. 2006; Demarest 2013). The iconography of royal monuments and stucco sculptures (Fahsen and
Barrientos 2006; Fernández Aguilar 2010) was mostly water
related and the details of images, as well as the water system,
could identify the palace as a “water mountain” (Palka 2014;
Palka and Sanchez Balderas 2012).
Despite such possible claims of royal control of the river, as well
as control of the epicenter jade and possibly obsidian distribution,
the reality on the ground and in images at Cancuen indicates hegemonic division of power, increasing over time—a phenomenon
common in much of the Maya world in the late eighth century. At
Cancuen this is manifest in the proliferation of elite complexes
with fine masonry (see, for example, Figure 20), some at strategic
points. Some of those complexes were quite impressive, having
fine masonry stucco decoration and corbelled-vaulted audience
chambers like those in the Cancuen royal palace (Ajin 2010;
Barrientos 2014; Cotom-Nimatuj and Quintanilla 2011; Demarest
2006; Jackson 2001, 2002, 2005; Martínez 2006, 2008; Martínez
et al. 2012; Pereira 2006; Quintanilla and Mencos 2007; Tejeda
2007). The east port palace group and port were connected by a
sacbe to the more southern subroyal and royal complexes. Given
its features and location, Jackson (2004) believes that this east
port complex was the residence of a high noble, perhaps an
207
aj-k’uhun (Jackson and Stuart 2001). The importance of this
palace and port complex is underscored by the construction of a
defensive wall around it late in the history of the site. Meanwhile,
other similar range structure complexes had fine architecture,
some with stucco portraits, and Peten ceramics (Figure 20). This
architecture of nobles’ complexes at Cancuen was a major
element in Jackson’s (2005, 2013) extensive study of similar
nobles whose numbers, roles, and importance were increasing
through the southern lowlands, especially in the Usumacinta and
Pasión regions, but also at centers like Copan (Fash et al. 2004;
Fash and Stuart 1991; Houston and Inomata 2009:170–176;
Iannone 2005; Jackson 2005, 2013; Stuart 1993; Webster 1989).
For the Copan kingdom, various investigators have proposed a
dramatic shift and balkanization of power in the late eighth
through ninth century. Rulers like Yax Pasah were pressured to
divide their authority with other high lords and coordinate rulership
at popolna or council houses (Fash et al. 1992; Fash and Stuart
1991). Just as at Cancuen, this division is also manifest in non-royal,
high-elite complexes with presentation chambers and, at Copan,
even with their own thrones. There, some nobles are epigraphically
and iconographically identifiable as high lords, some with specific
functions. Such division of power has been seen as a possible precursor for an internal collapse process at Copan, as the centralized
power of the k’uhul ajaw was weakened (Fash et al. 2004; Fash
and Stuart 1991).
At Cancuen such division of authority might also be seen in
monuments in which the central image of the k’uhul ajaw is
shared with other high lords in the final decade of the site’s
history. On Panel 3 (Figure 19), dated to a.d. 796, the king
shares the image with a sajal on one side and an aj-k’uhun on
another, both important titles of the highest nobles (Fahsen and
Barrientos 2006). On Altar 2 from Cancuen (Figure 21), dating to
a.d. 790, Taj Chan Ahk shares the scene with a lord who is identified significantly as the captor of a lord of Sac Witz, and later as
captor of a lord of the great state of Machaquila (Fahsen and
Figure 20. One noble’s palace complex at Cancuen (L7-28/M7-8) showing the high status of nobles and stucco imagery including a
possible noble portrait. Drawing by Luis F. Luin; interpretation of stuccos by Tomás Barrientos, Rudy Larios, and Luis F. Luin.
208
Figure 21. Altar 2 of Cancuen showing ruler Taj Chan Ahk and a companion lord playing the ballgame. The latter is credited in the text as having
been the actual captor of a lord of Sac Witz and a lord of Machaquila (from
Fahsen and Barrientos 2006).
Barrientos 2006). Altar 3 shows a similar scene with the image of
both Kan Maax, the royal successor of Taj Chan Ahk, and a competing ajaw.
Based on five years of excavations by Tomás Barrientos and
Rudy Larios and nine years of analysis (Barrientos 2014;
Barrientos et al. [eds.] 2006; Demarest and Barrientos [eds.]
2000, 2001, 2002; Demarest et al. [eds.] 2003), Barrientos has
demonstrated that the division of royal authority with nobles is
manifest in the central royal palace architecture and even stucco
art—where the form of a centralized palace gives way to the
Demarest et al.
pattern of an elaborated “long house” form, as identified by
Arnauld (2001). These have an emphasis on complex administrative
subdivisions, rather than a centralized residence with only some segregated administrative functions. Such a shift is starkly apparent in
the royal palace at Cancuen. Excavation and study by Barrientos,
Larios, and others (Barrientos 2014; Barrientos et al. [eds.] 2006)
in this enormous complex have led to the conclusion that it had
few residential rooms and possibly only three royal courtyard
groups in the inner palace in its final stages in the eighth century.
Instead, most of the many rooms in the structure were audiencias,
or receiving rooms for rituals and administration used by the
site’s growing elite (Barrientos 2014). Excavation of two of the
three royal residences in the palace in 2010–2012 (Demarest and
Martínez 2010; Demarest et al. [eds.] 2011; Demarest et al. 2011;
Quintanilla and Valle 2011; Rodas et al. 2011; Urquizu and
Torres 2012; Valle 2010) confirmed Barrientos’s hypothesis and
made starkly clear the architectural distinctions between the small
audiencias (less than 3 × 4 m in area, with their wide doorways
and benches open to massive stairways and plazas) and the larger
rooms with privacy in the royal residences with limited access
and greater living areas.
As reviewed by Barrientos (2014) in comparative perspective,
administrative palaces like Cancuen’s are characteristic of the very
end of the Classic and Terminal Classic periods at sites such as
Nakum, Xunantunich, Cahal Pech, Ek Balam, San Clemente,
Edzna, Caracol, Sayil, and Calakmul. Note also that Cancuen
lacks the critical centralized “theater state” element of epicenter
temples and appears to have relied more on the ritual forms of its
highland neighbors, which included the use of more dispersed
hill/cave shrines on the edges of the site sustaining area
(Demarest 2013; Spenard 2006) and its highland ballcourt (Torres
2011). Extensive study of the many large, almost three-dimensional,
stucco sculptures above palace audience chambers and some
nobles’ palaces has been carried out by Barrientos, Larios, Luin,
and Fernández Aguilar (Barrientos 2014; Fernández Aguilar
2010; Luis Luin, personal communication 2012–2014). They conclude that the stucco faces have a variety of features suggesting
that they were actual portraits. This may also be true of stucco portraits on facades of the nobles’ complexes, which may have represented the resident lords (Figure 20). Only a few of these might
be of ruler Taj Chan Ahk (Fernández Aguilar 2010; Barrientos
2014). Others above the audience chambers in the outer palace
(see, for example, Figure 22) might have served to incorporate
nobles into palace activities and councils. Barrientos (2014) proposes that the palace thus incorporated collaborative political activities like the popolna, or “Mat” houses, discussed above for Copan,
but also identified at other Pasión Valley sites (Inomata 2008;
Inomata et al. 2002). As at those sites, such structures indicate the
importance of power sharing with nobles near the end of the
Classic period (Fash et al. 1992, 2004; Fash and Stuart 1991).
In sum, a number of traits reveal a probable division of power
and proliferation of high nobility at Cancuen parallel to that occurring elsewhere in the southern lowlands but perhaps with the pattern
at Cancuen being more salient, with nobles’ architecture placed strategically in relation to economic resources. One can speculate that
these shifts also correlate to the late changes in political and economic power that have also been posited at other centers. Note also
the late date of Cancuen’s elite-supervised jade production, a.d.
790–800, which, though possibly state “controlled,” was likely
being supervised by resident sub-royal elites. As Cancuen nobles
were clearly placed in economically strategic points at the site, we
Economy, Exchange, and Power
209
Figure 22. Western entrance to Cancuen’s royal palace showing audience chambers and some of the stucco cornice facades and portraits. Drawing by Luis F. Luin; stucco interpretations by Tomás Barrientos and Luis F. Luin.
can hypothesize that they were acquiring a significant role in the
site’s exchange function, part of a general shift in the Maya world
toward a more mercantile elite.
For example, McAnany (2010, 2013) has drawn on a wide range
of evidence to argue that the role of merchant was transforming in
the Terminal Classic period. Merchants do not appear to have
been regarded with esteem in the Classic period in terms of status
and nature. Indeed, “the deity of trading, God L, was not an
exulted or a handsome member of the Classic Maya deity set: he
was depicted as elderly, wrinkled, lascivious, and a denizen of the
underworld” (McAnany 2013:235). In the Popol Vuh, the merchant
deity is presented as an “arrogant and wealthy” supernatural humiliated by the hero twins (McAnany 2013:235). Such presentation,
McAnany posits, “conveys the sense that Classic period royals
were wary of the wealth that came from trading activities that they
did not control, but upon which they were greatly dependent, in
order to express the social difference that formed the heart of their
authority” (McAnany 2013). Meanwhile, the “naturalized authority
of the royal court” (McAnany 2010:158–198) involved status,
patronage goods, and luxury items. The specific needs of the
court and its tribute emphasized exotics and commodities,
especially jade, quetzal feathers, spondylus shell, cacao, and
cotton mantas (McAnany 2013; Stuart 2006). Note that while
jade, shell, and obsidian came down the Verapaz Valley route to
the Pasión, cacao and cotton were probably cultivated in the
nearby transversal as they were in historic times, as discussed
above. Thus, all of those five tribute items that were critical for
the royal courts often would have passed through the highlands or
the transversal to the ports of Cancuen in route to western and
central Peten centers.
Of particular interest is McAnany’s (2013) argument that by the
Terminal Classic period, both God L and the image of merchants
had been “rehabilitated” and had elite associations in both images
and architecture such as the Cacaxtla murals. She concludes:
Evidence of trading as an elite occupation begins to appear
during the latter part of the Classic period. Conceivably, an
increasingly commercialized tribute economy facilitated a
change in the perception of traders. Such a shift appears to
have been linked to a greater openness to heterodoxic and
pan-Mesoamerican trading and ritual practices (McAnany
2013:243).
The evidence at Cancuen may testify to such a process already being
well underway in the eighth century. As a port center with
pan-Mesoamerican associations in artifacts and architecture, it certainly had a central role for mercantile activities, and the elite architecture was associated with specific staging places for those
activities. A direct economic role for high elites in the site’s principal activities is suggested by the complexes at the ports, the priority
of access to, and supervision of, jade preform production, the obsidian core deposits, the administrative/ritual palace, and the epigraphy and iconography. In its artifactual assemblages and imports,
Cancuen had associations with western and Gulf regions where
such changes had already taken place.
Thus, in its final half-century apogee, Cancuen had many patterns characteristic of the Terminal Classic period, from western
fine paste ceramic imports and central Mexican obsidian to its probable involvement in commodities export, to its ritual/administrative
palace, and high architectural and iconographic visibility for its
210
nobility. A shift in the role of its elites to more direct involvement in
economic activities would correspond with this florescence, but
would also reflect the weakening of the central royal authority.
THE VIOLENT END OF ECONOMIC AND POLITICAL
TRANSFORMATION
The overall nature and “feel” of the late Cancuen is different from
most Classic period Maya centers, including Cancuen itself, prior
to a.d. 760. By that time Cancuen had a number of nobles’
palaces, some placed at ports, an enormous administrative/ritual
palace compound, perhaps centralized obsidian distribution within
the epicenter, large-scale obsidian tool production beyond the epicenter, likely large-scale exchange of both exotics and perishable
commodities, proliferation of elite residential architecture, a lack of
Classic-style temple/plaza complexes, and a very interregional
mix of material culture. By a.d. 790 it had jade preform production
as a commodity. Changes were clear, and the involvement of elites is
implied in many of them. As an international port center involved in
exchange with western Mesoamerica, Cancuen was slightly ahead of
the curve in many of the transitions and transformations characteristic of the Terminal Classic and Early Postclassic periods. Like
some Maya centers in Tabasco, Campeche, and Yucatan, it was
making the transition to a Postclassic-style political economy.
Despite these transformations, Cancuen did not have the resplendent Terminal Classic that many centers of those other regions
enjoyed (Sabloff and Andrews 1986). Indeed, it did not even
survive the eighth century. Like the Yucatan coastal ports of
Xcambo and Chunchumil (Dahlin 2009; Sierra Sosa et al. 2014),
it was left behind earlier by shifts in the pan-Mesoamerican economic system. In the case of Cancuen, its florescence had a dramatic
ending. At about a.d. 800 the site was destroyed and abandoned—
its monuments and architecture were subjected to termination rituals
and its king, queen, and 31 of its nobles were ritually executed at
one palace cistern, and more than 20 nobles at another. The
bodies of the elites were placed into the two sacred red-painted cisterns of its springs and others at the east port (Alvarado 2004;
Alvarado et al. 2006; Demarest et al. 2014; Quintanilla 2013;
Quintanilla and Demarest 2013; Suasnávar et al. 2007, 2011;
Winburn et al. 2013). In terms of the multiregional nature of
Cancuen, it is significant that the analyzed sacrificed individuals
in the southern palace cistern were probably Peten lowland Maya
elites, as indicated by isotopic analyses, cranial deformation,
health, teeth inlays, and artifacts (Quintanilla 2013; Suasnávar
et al. 2007; Winburn et al. 2013). The entire site was ceremonially
terminated and not reconquered, not reoccupied, but permanently
abandoned. Why?
The answer to that question sends us even further into the realm
of speculation and is discussed in more detail elsewhere (Demarest
et al. 2014; Quintanilla 2013; Quintanilla and Demarest 2013;
Suasnávar et al. 2007, 2011). Perhaps Cancuen was a bit ahead of
its time in its internal economic transformations and political hegemony, creating internal divisions and weaknesses. It also certainly
would have been a target, as it always was, for political acquisition.
That, however, would not explain its abandonment; its lowland rival
kingdoms would have seized the head of navigation, not abandoned
it. Also, even former vassal states like Machaquila recorded no
reference to war or conquest of Cancuen on that site’s many a.d.
800–840 monuments. They, or other lowland states, would have
trumpeted their conquest of Cancuen in their many subsequent propagandistic monuments, as universally practiced in the western
Demarest et al.
Peten. Yet the Peten monuments have no mention of a Cancuen conquest, and the center was not reoccupied—nor was a similar center
established nearby.
While admitting that we really do not understand what happened
to Cancuen, we can propose some even more speculative thoughts
and possibilities on the abrupt end of its political and economic florescence. The most probable answer is that its surrounding Verapaz
region piedmont and highland trading partners and nearby neighbors brought a respectful, ritualized, but dramatic end to the site.
The epicenter presence of a Maya highland-style feasting ballcourt,
piedmont and highland ceramic imports, highland vases in royal
burials, some highland-style architecture, and highland canons of
religious ritual (Demarest 2013; Demarest et al. 2013; Spenard
2006; Torres 2011), all suggest close ties with that region through
which jade, shell, pyrite, obsidian, probably quetzal plumage, and
various commodities had traveled to Cancuen. Cancuen “courted”
those allies with highland-style ideological devices (Demarest
2013). A rift with that region would have been disastrous. The
chert in the scene of the royal mass assassination in the southern epicenter red-painted ritual pool included lance heads and points of
chert that were local and could have come from the nearby piedmont
communities (Andrieu and Quiñonez 2010). Note that only
Cancuen’s highland and piedmont neighbors, who had neither
writing nor monuments, would have failed to celebrate this conquest
in imagery and texts.
Regardless of whether or not the highlanders are the prime suspects, we can speculate that the eighth century transformation at
Cancuen to a Terminal Classic form of political economy was
doomed. As centers fell into crisis on both the river and transversal
routes, Cancuen found their Peten trading partners disappearing.
Long-distance exchange in obsidian and commodities was shifting
to the Caribbean and Gulf maritime route. Furthermore, Cancuen’s
role was as a transfer point, an intermediary in exchange, yet the
Greater Cancuen site area itself had very limited useable land and
resources, since half the area was swamp, shallow lakes, and
river. Its lavish ceremonial architecture, its mix of highland and
lowland ballcourts, its highland-style cave shrines, and its other
ideological devices presumably had allowed Cancuen to maintain
its role in highland exchange through ritual and awe, as much as
strategic position. With economic crisis, the ability to sustain that
impressive ceremonial presentation would have ended.
Thus, the forces of late eighth century change in political
economy, which had fueled Cancuen’s remarkable florescence of
a Terminal Classic nature, also left it behind by a.d. 800—
perhaps dramatically disappointing its once-awed highland partners.
In any case, at that time its rulers and nobility were ritually assassinated, its monuments and edifices were terminated, and its bustling
ports fell silent.
CONCLUSION
The well-defined ports of Cancuen appear to have been critical to
Classic Maya highland/lowland commerce and their interactions
with the south and the far west. They also appear to have been
state or elite controlled, based on associated architectural complexes
and artifacts. A late jade preform workshop, enfolded amid more
elite architecture, was most probably closely supervised by resident
nobles. More speculatively, massive obsidian ritual caches suggest
an elite role, or at least a claim of such, in its export, and even production. Furthermore, those contexts, epigraphic evidence, the
administrative/ritual palace, and sub-royal complex contexts all
Economy, Exchange, and Power
suggest a growing role for nobles in economic activities. It would
appear that, as elsewhere, nobles were beginning to take a more
direct mercantile role and that many aspects of the multepal
system of power characteristic of Postclassic period societies were
already in place at Cancuen by the late eighth century.
211
The dramatic failure of Cancuen’s early transition to a Terminal
Classic political economy remains enigmatic. Yet suggestions are
that Cancuen’s internal divisions of power, its dependence on highland and transversal resources, and its overextended trade networks
may have been factors precipitating its violent demise.
RESUMEN
Por más de una década se han realizado investigaciones en Cancuen, una
ciudad portuaria principal y una capital de la realeza maya ubicada en el suroeste de Peten. Estos estudios han dado como resultado evidencia importante
acerca de los puertos mayas y de los cambios en la economía política del
clásico tardío. Cancuen se localizaba al pie del altiplano y en la cabeza de
navegación del río La Pasión. Esta posición permitió que funcionara, no
sólo como un puerto, sino como un nexo que entrelazaba a las rutas terrestres
del altiplano de Guatemala hacia el sur, con las tierras bajas, vía la amplia
ruta fluvial de La Pasión. Esta ruta llevaba al norte a través de Peten, enlazando muchas de las ciudades más importantes del período clásico, y a la
vez conectaba con las principales rutas terrestres (Figuras 1, 3, 4, 5). Así,
Cancuen se constituyó en un vínculo entre el altiplano y las tierras bajas
(Figuras 2, 4, 5), que llevaba bienes importados incluso el jade, pirita, obsidiana, concha, y probablemente plumas del quetzal y otras aves del altiplano.
También en años recientes el proyecto ha descubierto que Cancuen estuvo
muy involucrado en la ruta “transversal” que corre de este a oeste a lo
largo del pie de los cerros de Alta Verapaz hasta Chiapas y de allí hasta
Tabasco y Veracruz. La posición estratégica que ocupó Cancuen en los sistemas antiguos de intercambio mayas condujo a que, durante el periodo
clásico tardío, se desarrollara una historia de alianzas dinásticas y de interacciones políticas que tenían como fin asegurar este nexo con las rutas terrestres y fluviales.
El sitio de Cancuen y sus zonas adyacentes revelan evidencias de la existencia de hasta siete puertos, tres de los cuales han sido confirmados e investigados intensamente. La revisión de estas evidencias de Cancuen en las
investigaciones de campo, estudios de laboratorio y a través de perspectivas
comparativas, proveen nuevas ideas acerca de la economía maya, el control,
y los cambios en el poder y la hegemonía en las vísperas del colapso maya
del periodo clásico.
Cada uno de los puertos de Cancuen bien definidos estaban relacionados
con complejos de estructuras elitistas. Los puertos del sitio se encontraron
asociados con importaciones provenientes del oeste, como las cerámicas
Gris Fino Chablekal de Tabasco y Naranja Fino Campamento de la frontera
entre Tabasco y Veracruz, así como la obsidiana de fuentes en México
central. Especialmente transportó bienes de estatus importantes del sur que
eran clave para el intercambio maya entre el altiplano y las tierras bajas
durante el período clásico. Descubrimientos de 2013 y nuevas evidencias
etnohistóricas indican que también Cancuen fue un centro muy importante
en el intercambio y producción de obsidiana y probablemente en el intercambio de mercancías incluyendo cacao, sal, achiote, y vainilla. A la vez, a
juzgar por su asociación con notables complejos arquitectónicos, artefactos,
importaciones, y por la ubicación donde se les descubrió, parece que tanto
mucho del intercambio, como los puertos mismos, eran controlados por la
élite. Similarmente, el área de producción de preformas de jade descubierta
entre otras estructuras de arquitectura elitista, también era supervisada por
nobles. Dicha zona producía preformas de cuentas y orejeras de jade en
los últimos años de ocupación del sitio (790–800 d.C.). También la
distribución de núcleos líticos en contextos públicos o en escondites elitistas
puede indicar cuál fue el papel de las elites en la economía de la obsidiana.
Asimismo en los últimos años de Cancuen una supervisión elitista de las
producción de preformas de jade para exportar, sugiere cambios en la
economía y en el poder hegemónico durante los últimos años del sitio.
En coincidencia con dichas asociaciones, las evidencias epigráficas e
iconográficas, los palacios administrativos/rituales y la distribución de la
arquitectura relacionada con la élite más alta, indican un papel cada vez
más activo de los nobles en las actividades económicas. Parecería entonces
que Cancuen se anticipó al fenómeno suscitado posteriormente o en los
mismos años en otras regiones, en cuanto a que los nobles empezaron a
tomar un papel mercantil más directo. Asimismo se tiene la impresión que
muchos de los aspectos del sistema multepal, característico del sistema de
poder de las sociedades del posclásico, ya estaba presente en Cancuen a
fines del siglo VIII d.C.
El dramático fracaso de Cancuen en esta incipiente y precoz transición
hacia una economía política del clásico terminal continua siendo un
enigma. No obstante, puede sugerirse que las divisiones internas de poder
en esta capital portuaria, su dependencia en recursos del altiplano y sus
rutas comerciales vastamente extendidas, pudieron haber sido unos factores
que precipitaron su violento y sacralizado, final.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The Cancuen research cited here was made possible by grants from the
Alphawood Foundation, the National Geographic Society, the Vanderbilt
University Ingram Chair Fund, the Vanderbilt Institute of Mesoamerican
Archaeology and Development, the Centre National de la Recherche
Scientifique, the Fyssen Foundation, the National Science Foundation,
the Smithsonian Institution, the Centre d’Études Mexicaines et
Centraméricaines, Laboratoire du musée du Louvre (C2RMF), the
Universidad del Valle de Guatemala, The City University of New York
(CUNY), Youngstown State University, and the Didrichsen Museum of
Helsinki. As always, the Ministerio de Cultura y Deportes de
Guatemala has been very helpful and supportive. We have many to
thank for unpublished data and/or feedback and help with various
points on the many different incarnations of this paper, but we’d
especially like to acknowledge ideas, critiques, and/or unpublished data
from Ronald Bishop, Horacio Martínez, Thomas Calligaro, Monica
Urquizu, Patricia McAnany, Brent Woodfill, Claudia Quintanilla, Matt
O’Mansky, Chris Pool, Ken Hirth, and others. Extensive work on
images and maps was completed by Luis F. Luin, Marc Wolf, Vilma
Anleu de Demarest, and Justin Bracken. A special thanks to
Vanderbilt’s Chancellor and Board of Trust for extraordinary support for
the recent years of research. Finally, we should acknowledge the inadvertent contribution of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency to our ability to
study beyond the peninsular epicenter through their arrest and extradition
of our most belligerent drug lord neighbor!
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