Kaminaljuyu Chiefdom:: Abridged Edition

By Joseph W. Michels

This abridged edition of the 1979 work entitled The Kaminaljuyu Chiefdom is intended to provide a readable portrait of the ancient Maya of this highland Guatemalan archaeological site. Most of the original books methodological and technical sections have been left out so that the reader can more easily focus on the main theme of the work, namely how a society adapts to changing conditions over millennia while retaining organizational continuity.

Kaminaljuyu first appears in the archaeological record as a small nucleated village located near a small lake but, over time, grew into a major ceremonial and political center that played an important role in the regional and transregional economies of the time. Unsettled conditions challenged the political fabric of the center, necessitating organizational and societal adjustments. Monumental architecturetemples, tombs, shrines, ball courts, homes for the nobilitylay concealed under hundreds of earthen mounds and signal the presence of eleven archaeologically recognizable phases.

The archaeological remains of the site of Kaminaljuyu have, over the years, been profoundly affected by the ceaseless expansion of Guatemala City, making research at the site enormously difficult. Mounting a large-scale, systematic investigation of the kind undertaken by the Penn State University Kaminaljuyu Projectthe project that provided much of the underlying empirical evidence for the ideas developed hereis sadly no longer possible. Nevertheless, archaeologists continue to study what remains of the site, owing to its importance to Mesoamerican prehistory.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Oct 21, 2016
• ISBN: 9781532008924

Joseph W. Michels

JOSEPH W. MICHELS came to fiction writing after a long career as an archaeologist and cultural anthropologist. KAGNEW STATION: DATELINE 1956 is a sequel to the ALAN HARPER TRILOGY. The author became acquainted with Kagnew Station in 1974 while directing a large archaeological project in the region. The project’s headquarters was two blocks from the entrance to Kagnew Station and the project’s staff made extensive use of the base’s facilities.

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Kaminaljuyu Chiefdom:

Abridged Edition

by

Joseph W. Michels

37220.png

Kaminaljuyu Chiefdom: Abridged Edition

Copyright © 2016 Joseph Michels.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

Original (unabridged) version entitled The Kaminaljuyu Chiefdom published in 1979 by The Pennsylvania State University Press, University Park, PA.

Copyright © 1979 The Pennsylvania State University

Assignment of Copyright (01/18/2011) to

Copyright © 1979 Joseph W. Michels

Credit for cover art photo:

Copyright © 2016 Alexander Ryabintsev/shutterstock.com

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ISBN: 978-1-5320-0891-7 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-5320-0892-4 (e)

iUniverse rev. date: 10/20/2016

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Preface

The Setting

Chapter One The Mounds of Kaminaljuyu

Chapter Two The Conical Clan Chiefdom

Chapter Three Kaminaljuyu During the Preclassic Era

Chapter Four Religion vs Commerce: The Preclassic Era Gives Way to the Classic Era

Chapter Five The Middle Classic Phase: A Port-of-Trade, A Teotihuacan Enclave, and the Rise of the El Incienso Subchiefdom

Chapter Six Teotihaucan Withdrawal, Secularism, Population Growth, and the Decline of the Northeast Intermediate Lineage

Chapter Seven The Collapse of Kaminaluju as a Political Capital, Chiefdom Disintegration, and the Quest for Security

Chapter Eight The Late Postclassic: Nuclear Fortification, Chiefdom Resurgence, and The Eclipse of the Moiety Chief

AFTERWORD THE CONICAL CLAN CHIEFDOM: ETHNOLOGICAL NOTES

Bibliographic Resources Used in the Preparation of the Unabridged Publication

LIST OF FIGURES

Figure 1 — Kaminaljuyu and the Valley of Guatemala

Figure 2 — The Central Highlands of Guatemala

Figure 3 — Late Formative Mound Groups

Figure 4 — Early Terminal Formative Mound Groups

Figure 5 — Late Terminal Formative Mound Groups

Figure 6 — Early Classic Mound Groups

Figure 7 — Middle Classic Mound Groups

Figure 8 — Early Late Classic Mound Groups

Figure 9 — Spatial Trajectories of Mound Groups

Figure 10 — The Kaminaljuyu Chiefdom: District, Lineage & Moiety Units

Figure 11 — Organizational Chart: The Conical Clan Chiefdom of Kaminaljuyu

Figure 12 — The B-V-3/B-V-6 Mound Groups of the San Carlos Precinct

Figure 13 — Obsidian Distribution System During the Early Classic Phase

Figure 14 — Utilitarian vs Elite Economic Exchange Models for Kaminaljuyu

Figure 15 —    Charting Intensive Farming Tool Appearance vs Population Estimates by Phase

Figure 16 — Proportion of Elite Households to Non-Elite Households by Phase

Figure 17 — Percent of Rank II, III, IV Households Engaged in Exotica Crafts by Phase

Figure 18 — Eliteness Index Scale of Changing Relative Rank of the Intermediate Lineages

Figure 19 — Deployment of Moiety-Scale Civic Centers During the (Late) Late Classic Phase

Figure 20 — Proximity of the Late Postclassic Site of Beleh to Kaminaljuyu

Figure 21 — Site Map of the Late Postclassic Site of Beleh

Preface

This work is an abridged version of the book THE KAMINALJUYU CHIEFDOM written by the author and published in 1979. By focusing on the interpreted findings of the original version, and omitting most of the book’s methodological and technical narrative, it is hoped the portrait of the ancient Maya of Kaminaljuyu that was presented in the original volume will have become more accessible and more compelling. The work is intended to serve a wider audience—those students, scholars and others who share an interest in how human societies organize themselves, particularly the Maya and other emergent complex societies.

The archaeological remains of the site of Kaminaljuyu have essentially vanished—obliterated and covered over by the ceaseless expansion of Guatemala City. This has made subsequent research on the site enormously difficult. Nevertheless, talented archaeologists—both Guatemalan and those from other lands—have continued to make significant discoveries over recent decades—discoveries that sometimes support, and sometimes challenge, the ideas presented in this volume. The author leaves it to others to amend, correct, or otherwise alter the portrait of the ancient Maya of Kaminaljuyu as presented in this work. What seems unassailable, however, is that the site of Kaminaljuyu has much to teach us about how a society adapts to changing conditions over millennia while retaining remarkable organizational continuity—the reason, above all, for why this abridged version has been prepared.

The Setting

Kaminaljuyu is an ancient highland Maya archaeological site located in what was the immediate outskirts of Guatemala City (Fig. 1). Popularly noted for its more than two hundred monumental earthen mounds, the sprawling site is now largely concealed beneath the modern city’s relentless urban expansion. The site lies close to the northern end of the Valley of Guatemala—part of the country’s central highlands.

The central highlands of Guatemala (Fig. 2) are part of the long, rugged, volcanic range of the Antillean Chain. The highlands parallel the narrow Pacific coastal plain from which they arise abruptly and are edged on the south by a line of high, geologically young volcanos, many of which reach altitudes in excess of 3,000 meters. The highlands are, themselves, derived from an older volcanic range and consist of a highly complex system of hill country, valleys, and intermontane plateaus.

The Valley of Guatemala, so called because it is the location of Guatemala City, is one of these intermontane plateaus. Its surfaces are traversed by deeply cut and relatively narrow stream valleys, or barrancas, which give it a high degree of relief. The barrancas are widely spaced so that only a small part of the plateau surface is dissected into steep slopes. The land areas between the barrancas tend to be broad and flat.

The Valley also represents the only major pass connecting the Pacific coastal plain and the Montagua Valley, which in turn is believed to have served as an important artery for intra-highland and highland-Caribbean contacts.

Swidden (or hoe) cultivation appears to have been the principal agricultural system during all developmental phases within the Valley of Guatemala. A survey of the topographic, climatic, edaphic, and vegetational features of the valley strongly suggests that this prevailing agricultural system could be successfully practiced in all areas: on the valley floor, the surrounding hill lands, on the upland plateaus, and around Lake Amatitlan.

Chapter One

The Mounds of Kaminaljuyu

The earthen mounds of Kaminaljuyu appear, upon superficial examination, to be scattered haphazardly over the landscape but turn out to be very tightly patterned once they are given chronological placement. It is helpful to view the spatial patterns of mound distribution both synchronically and diachronically. Both dimensions yield critical information relating to the way space was partitioned within the site.

Monumental architecture, consisting of earthern platforms or substructures, does not appear at Kaminaljuyu until the Late Formative. Figure 3 reveals that during this initial phase of civic architecture five distinct mound groupings can be identified. Each mound group has acquired a designation based upon the Carnegie Grid System. Beginning with the northernmost group and moving clockwise, we have the A-I-2 group, the D-IV-10 group, the C-IV-7 group, the B-V-3 group, and the A-V-6 group. One of the principal features of each grouping is that there is a prevailing alignment of large mounds so as to define a particular compass orientation for the group. Although there is some minor variation, by-and-large the five groups share a common compass orientation that is north-northeast. The groups vary to some extent in the number of small residential platforms incorporated into the groups. These variations, as well as numerous similarities between the groups, will be the subject of an analysis presented elsewhere. What is important to note is that there are clearly five distinct groupings. If one assumes that they represent (in an institutional form) groupings of the resident population at Kaminaljuyu, it is reasonable to conclude that beginning with the Late Formative there is a fundamental division of the population into five organizationally comparable social units.

When one examines the distribution of mounds at Kaminaljuyu during the succeeding phase—Early Terminal Formative—as exhibited in Figure 4, it can again be noted that there are five distinct mound groupings. In two—the A-V-6 group and the C-IV-7 group—there has been a continued utilization of Late Formative civic architecture to which has been added substantial new construction so as to produce groupings of significantly greater complexity than in the preceding phase. In three instances, however, the Late Formative mound group has completely ceased to function: the A-I-2 group, the D-IV-10 group, and the B-V-3 group. In their place has appeared three new mound groups: the C-I-6 group, the E-III-3 group, and the C-V-9 group. The coincidence of the disappearance of three mound groups and the simultaneous appearance of three new mound groups can perhaps be best explained in terms that are consistent with the manner in which the population is socially organized.

The continued utilization and expansion of the A-V-6 group and the C-IV-7 group may be thought to represent a continuity in the organizational framework of those two residential areas of the site. Similarly, the simultaneous disappearance of the three Late Formative mound groups and the appearance of three Early Terminal Formative mound groups suggests that the organizational entities represented institutionally during the Late Formative by the now absent mound groups have undertaken the construction of new civic centers just a small distance away.

Thus the five organizational entities of rough structural comparability that existed during the Late Formative appear to persist into the Early Terminal Formative. The idea of organizational continuity is supported both by the spatial continuity of two of the five mound groups despite their expansion, and by the replacement of three Late Formative mound groups by three Early Terminal Formative mound groups in situations of conspicuous spatial proximity. The conservative nature of the spatial shifts suggests that these organizational entities are associated with definable spatial precincts within the site of Kaminaljuyu.

Two very dramatic transformations occurred at the outset of the Late Terminal Formative (Fig. 5). The first is the disappearance of the five large and complex mound groups that evolved during the Early Terminal Formative, and secondly, the appearance of ten distinct mound groups that are substantially smaller in scale and in complexity when compared with the mound groups of the Early Terminal Formative and Late Formative phases.

It is helpful to focus upon the phenomenon of conservative spatial shifts in mound group relocation that was first observed in the transition from Late Formative to Early Terminal Formative in this case as well. By applying the ‘nearest neighbor’ principle it is possible to suggest which Late Terminal Formative mound groups tend to derive from which Early Terminal Formative mound groups. The principle involves the assumption that historical antecedents will be spatially closer, in straight-line measurement, than mound groups that are unrelated.

Several transformations appear obvious. In the case of the C-I-6 mound group, the C-II-2 and the B-I-1 Late Terminal Formative groups are in immediate spatial proximity. In fact, the C-II-2 mound group appears to have actually reutilized a fraction of the mounds that are incorporated within the C-I-6 group. The Late Terminal Formative groups—D-III-14 and C-III-9—are in immediate and overlapping spatial proximity with the E-III-3 mound group and can, therefore, be reasonably derived from it. The C-V-9 mound group appears to have given rise to the Late Terminal Formative groups D-V-1 and C-VI-1, for again there is clear spatial proximity. Although the Early Terminal Formative derivation of the remaining four Late Terminal mound groups is less obvious, no real difficulty exists in pairing them and, in turn, recognizing which of the remaining two Early Terminal Formative mound groups is in closest proximity to which pair.

The overall symmetry of the pattern at Kaminaljuyu is remarkably suggestive. First, it suggests that the organizational entity that was represented by each of the Late Formative and Early Terminal Formative mound groups contains within itself a structural subdivision of two component entities—entities that achieve full architectural expression in the Late