Anthroponym-Place Names and Disputes over Territory in the Middle Usumacinta Basin during the Early Classic Period

Abstract

This article studies the forms of Mayan political organization during the Early Classic period in the middle Usumacinta basin through the epigraphic analysis of lintels 60, 49, 37, and 35 of Yaxchilán. Derived from the study of these four monuments, which form a single narrative unit, the importance of anthroponym-place names in the historical reconstruction of political, territorial, and social processes in the region is explored. In said lintels there are recorded anthroponym-place names made up of the expression
waklaju’un pet, ‘sixteen pet[enes] (provinces)’, which are significant because they indirectly indicate that some populations were made up of petenes (provinces), before they were consolidated as “lordships” (ajawlel). The names of people (anthroponyms), which have integrated place names, appear in hieroglyphic records from the Late Classic and Terminal Classic periods and allow us to measure the deep relationship that exists between the anthroponyms, the designations of the territories, and the names of family. The most important evidence that indicates that the territorial integration of the lordships, structured into “sixteen provinces”, was a long-lasting phenomenon (until the Postclassic period, in Mayapán) is the presence of the terms waklaju’un oon, ‘sixteen families’, and waklaju’un ajaw, ‘sixteen lords’, in the inscriptions of the Classic period, as well as the evidence of the existence of sixteen cuchcabaloob in Mayapán. The reason why the Mayans would have conceived the structure of the ajawlel in sixteen provinces and sixteen families would have responded to a quadripartite, directional, and chromatic harmonic logic, with four petenes in each cosmic direction.