States and Empires in Ancient Mesoamerica

Ancient Mesoamerican polities are an important source of data for considerations of state development, despite internal debate over their size and complexity. We review complex political units, usually referred to as “states” and “empires,” in ancient Mesoamerica and reach the following conclusions: these polities tended to be hegemonic, rather than territorial, in composition; they melded ritual and political action; and they utilized the ruler as a symbol of the “body politic.” We also note the apparently larger size of most Maya polities as compared to other Mesoamerican city-states. Besides reviewing the commonalities among ancient Mesoamerican states, we also highlight the variation among these polities and the need to consider historic and archaeological data contextually in making interpretations of political structure. CONQUEST-PERIOD CITY-STATES AND EMPIRES Ethnohistoric sources provide scholars with rich information on Mesoamerican polities at the time of the Spanish conquest. A long tradition of research, following the “direct historical approach,” attempts to determine whether polities of the sort documented in the ethnohistoric sources existed in earlier periods. Did Teotihuacan or Monte Albán rule domains like the Aztec empire? Did sixteenth-century Maya institutions like the batabil exist in the Classic period? Was the Aztec altepetl (city-state) system present in earlier periods (Hirth 2003a; Zeitlin 1990)? While drawing comparisons between historic descriptions and archaeological data can be a valuable and productive approach, archaeologists must be wary of giving too much literal credibility to the written sources, nearly all of which are propagandistic and biased. It is equally important to consider changes that took place immediately preceding and in association with Spanish contact. In this section we review briefly the variation in political forms at the time of Spanish conquest; some of the limitations of the documentary sources for the study of Mesoamerican political dynamics are discussed in a separate section below. The Triple Alliance or Aztec Empire (composed of Tenochtitlan, Texcoco, and Tlacopan) is the best known ancient Mesoamerican polity. The conquering and governing Spaniards had considerable interest in determining how this tribute-generating entity worked, and the empire is documented in a wide range of written sources. Ross Hassig (1985) first identified the structure of the Aztec empire as “hegemonic” in nature (employing indirect control of provinces, in contrast to the direct control of “territorial” empires), thereby helping place the polity in a comparative perspective. Most conquered polities were left to their own devices as long as they paid tribute to the imperial capitals. The specific strategies and processes of indirect rule were examined by Berdan et al. (1996), who used local documents from provincial areas to identify two geospatial patterns: (1) an inner core of provinces that made regular tribute payments (as listed in documents such as part 2 of the Codex Mendoza [Berdan and Anawalt 1992]); and (2) a group of outer client states that maintained imperial frontiers and provided “gifts,” but not “tribute,” to the capitals. Pedro Carrasco (1999) analyzed documents from the three imperial capitals to show how they established and maintained a complex and cross-cutting system of tribute, authority, and territory. More recently, archaeology has become the major source for new insights on the Aztec empire and imperial processes. In Tenochtitlan, the Templo Mayor project has uncovered dramatic evidence of political ceremony at the heart of the empire (López Luján 2006) and recent fieldwork in the provinces has illuminated the impact of Aztec imperialism on the ground (Ohnersorgen 2006; Smith and Berdan 2003; Sergheraert 2009). The Aztec empire was constructed on a foundation of city-states, and these polities were far more important in the lives of most of the Aztec peoples than was the empire. As in the case of the empire, our understanding of Aztec city-states began with documentary research (Gibson 1964; Lockhart 1992) and is continuing with archaeological fieldwork (Hodge 1997; Smith 2008a). As in other city-state systems around the world (Hansen 2000), central Mexico was a politically fragmented, but culturally unified, landscape. Individual city-states warred and competed with one another, while simultaneously interacting peacefully through trade, noble intermarriage, and visiting. Rulers of these polities (altepetl in Nahuatl) were selected by a council of nobles from the royal lineage. The small size of the Aztec altepetl is notable; the typical Aztec polity controlled approximately 90 km of territory. Within a given altepetl, the capital city was the only urban settlement. The median population of second-largest settlements was only 7% of the population of the capital and very few second-order sites contain any public architecture (Smith 2008a:152). Small polities were the norm in Conquest-era Mesoamerica (Smith and Berdan 2003). In the Maya area Contact-period materials are less numerous and detailed than those available for central Mexico. Furthermore, 175 E-mail correspondence to: [email protected] Ancient Mesoamerica, 20 (2009), 175–182 # Cambridge University Press, 2010 doi:10.1017/S0956536109990095 archaeologists are frequently drawn to accessible accounts that are not firsthand and/or have the potential to incorporate misinformation. Bishop Landa’s Relación de las cosas de Yucatán (Tozzer 1941), for example, may well include plagiarism from other sources and areas (Chase 1986; Restall and Chuchiak 2002). Nevertheless, studies of these documents suggest the existence of a variety of Contact-period political forms. Roys (1957) identified three different kinds of political organization within the pre-contact regional states of the Northern Lowlands. His first type represented centralized control of a polity through a single individual, a halach uinic, under whom a series of batabil was organized. In his second type, extended kin relations produced a series of interrelated batabil who collectively governed the polity. His third type consisted of loosely allied batabil who did not share kinship affiliations and who were largely independent of each other, probably only coalescing in times of crisis. Restall (1997:7) has further noted that each batabil was in charge of a cah, which he identified as the principal sociopolitical unit of the Maya and as equivalent to the central Mexican altepetl. Restall (1997:28) also commented that the kinship alliances noted by Roys were probably based on patronym groups, called chibal, which he equated with “a capolli-type subunit.” Archaeological and ethnohistoric data have been used to suggest that a Postclassic period Maya hegemonic empire was centered at the site of Mayapan (Pollock et al. 1962). Ethnohistoric sources record a form of government at Mayapan (and also perhaps at the earlier Chichen Itza; see Cobos 2007) called multepal that implied a “joint rule” of other dominated polities. These same sources record that Mayapan’s demise about a.d. 1440 resulted in the fragmented political picture recorded for the Contact-era Northern Lowlands (Roys 1957). For the Postclassic Guatemalan Highlands, a series of smaller city-states (Smith 1955) resembles the situation described for central Mexico by Smith (2008a). Not all regions of Mesoamerica (Figure 1), however, were organized into small polities at the time of Spanish conquest. The Tarascan empire, centered on the site of Tzintzuntzan, developed at the same time as its Aztec rival, and the two expansionist polities achieved a military standoff several decades prior to the Spanish conquest. The Tarascan domain is largely ignored in the standard central Mexican ethnohistoric sources, perhaps because of Mexica embarrassment at their lack of military success. The available documentary and archaeological data on the Tarascan empire show that it had a more centralized and “territorial” structure than the Triple Alliance empire (Pollard 1993). The Tarascan kings were powerful figures, and their regional economy was under greater administrative control than in Aztec central Mexico.