36 K ' iche ' an Origins , Symbolic Emulation , and Ethnogenesis in the Maya Highlands

No topic in K'iche'an archaeology and ethnohistory has been the subject of more speculation than the source and timing of central Mexican influence in the central and western highlands of Guatemala. Evidence for an important connection between the two regions is undeniable, and is manifest in indigenous historical accounts such as the Papal Wuj (Brasseur de Bourbourg 1861; Saravia E. and Guarchaj 1996) and the Memorial de Tecpan Atitlan (Arana Xahila and Diaz Xebuta Queh 1573-1605),' in Postclassic architecture and mural painting, in portable artifacts, in burial practices, and even in the vocabulary and personal names used by K'iche'an peoples. The foremost concern of archaeologists of K'iche'an culture has been chronology, specifically whether the period of the most-intense intercultural contact was the Early or Late Postclassic (e.g., Lothrop 1933, 1936; Thompson 1943,1954; Wauchope 1949, 1970, 1975)· The goal of this research was to determine if central Mexican cultural traits found in the Guatemalan highlands were more properly associated with a "Toltec" horizon or with the Aztec expansion into Xoconochco. Borhegyi (1965:39-41) saw as many as three waves of intense and intrusive interaction, each characterized by the migration of central Mexicans into the Guatemalan highlands. Each of his conjectured migrations involved groups that he called the Pipil: the Teotihuacan-Pipil of A.D. 400-500, the Pipil-Nicarao (also called the Tajinized-Teotihuacan-Pipil) of A.D. 700-900, and the Nonoalca-Pipil-Toltec-Chichimec of A.D. roOo-1200. Thus, in a complex way, the appearance of central Mexican traits in highland Guatemala also was linked with movements of the Nahua-speaking Pipil and Nicarao into Guatemala, EI Salvador, and Nicaragua. More recently, a yariation of Thompson's Putun hypothesis has been championed by ethnohistorians as accounting for a ~ 0 ~ ~