Understanding the Classic to Postclassic Architectural Transformation of Rural Households and Communities in the Quexil-Petenxil Basins, El Petén, Guatemala

Discussion and Conclusion

The project advances Mesoamerican and specifically Maya archaeology because it investigates the least known era in later Petén cultural history (P. Rice 1986) so that a direct historical account can be developed (Kremer 1994; Rice et al. 1998). This is important work because it improves a poorly understood chronology (Rice 1987:235-239; Rice et al. 1996:304) to address processes of cultural transformation of architectural design through in-migration and internal social change. The project focuses on dynamic cultural processes in a rural community as it interacted with Classic period polities, as those relationships later declined, and as it was reincorporated in the Postclassic Itzá polity. In this study, I utilize the chronological analysis to inform my culture historical reconstruction. Ultimately the aim of the study is to understand how the form and organization of house architecture and rural settlement patterns were transformed between the Classic and Postclassic Period, a transformation that alternately may have been due to internal reorganization in Terminal Classic Maya society (Haviland 1968) or due to in-migration or contact with Maya or Non-Maya outsiders (Thompson 1970; Fox 1987; Rice 1988; Tourtellot 1988; Webster 2002). Thus, results of the AMS radiocarbon analysis (Table 1) are important anchoring points in this reconstruction and lead to a consideration of culture process.

Indeed, this report presents only a portion of the comprehensive analysis that I have developed fully in other works, including my dissertation (Schwarz 2001, 2003, 2004). As such, the following discussion can only briefly summarize that analysis especially as it applies to the chronological and culture historical analysis.

The Quexil Islands were intensively settled in the Early Terminal Classic period, as is documented by analysis of a stratified midden and burials and an AMS radiocarbon analysis demonstrating the occupation of the acropolis group of the eastern island at A.D. 810 ± 43 (Table 1). Likely the island location was settled as a result of political instability brought about by the Terminal Classic collapse of nearby states and urban areas. The island setting and external walls identified at nearby lakes region sites, such as Zacpetén (Pugh 2001) and Muralla de Leon (Rice 1986) demonstrate the defensible and defended nature of these sites and this was certainly an era of warfare and conflict in Petén (Demarest et al. 1997; Webster 2002).

Civic-ceremonial architecture at the eastern Quexil Island featured structure arrangements demonstrative of plaza plan 2, a Classic Period east-west alignment of structures prevalent at Tikal (Becker 1971, 1982, 1999). This coupled with artifact evidence (Schwarz 2004) suggests local cultural and populational continuity in the Classic to Postclassic time frame. Unlike many investigators (Thompson 1970; Fox 1987; Rice 1988; Tourtellot 1988) I do not think architectural or artifactual change in the Petén Lakes regions suggests the in-migration of Maya or non-Maya from Seibal or elsewhere. Rather I suggest that cultural transformation occurred as local villagers transformed their settlements and domestic architecture as part of a reorganization of society necessitated by macro-level political change occurring during the Maya political collapse. I infer that the use of C-shaped bench forms relates closely to changes in the architectural expression of ancestor veneration, such as the use of benches as altars (Gillespie 1999). Given this, similarities with bench forms at Seibal and elsewhere are more likely due to the adoption of a common set of religious architectural symbols in this region of Mesoamerica by local inhabitants (e.g., following Ringle et al. 1998) than due to the in-migration of large numbers of outsiders into the Petén Lakes region (contra Fox 1987; Rice 1988; Tourtellot 1988; Webster 2002). The Quexil Islands later became a well-integrated village within the Itzá state, most likely by the Late Postclassic Period (A.D. 1250-1450) in that cult religious ritual involving the use and burning of ceramic effigy censers (dated to this period) and animal offerings occurred there. As reported above, the Early Historic occupation of the Quexil Islands is well attested by my excavations and radiocarbon analysis and is corroborated by seventeenth-century Spanish texts.

Thus we have an exceptional record of the Maya settlement of a small, island village beginning in the Early Terminal Classic Period, with a long period of occupation, finally being abandoned approximately nine centuries later, following the Spanish Conquest. The most immediate problem is understanding how the Maya of the Quexil-Petenxil Basins survived the period of political crisis in the Terminal Classic Period to reorganize their rural society in light of the new conditions of the Postclassic, a reorganization that I view mostly through the lense of architecture. I view the transformation as a process of ongoing structuring of society (Giddens 1979, 1984) through the provisioning of social space of both domestic and civic-ceremonial architecture. My study documents how macro-political change during and after the Classic Maya Collapse, emanating from core regions, both shaped local communities and how those local communities adapted and actively transformed themselves and their domestic architecture to promote their own social reproduction in a era of greater political conflict that including elements of warfare, migration and political change. I conclude that the rural Maya of the Quexil-Petenxil Basin survived the political change of the Maya Collapse through a combination of purposeful political and practical action and transformed their social and family organization, effectively restructuring their households and communities, including their house architecture and spatialized religious practices, to adapt themselves to the social and political realities of post-collapse Maya society.

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