Excavation of a council house at the major Lowland Maya centre of Ucanal, Guatemala reveals how the public gained some influence over Maya politics over 1000 years ago.
During the Classic period (c. AD 300–810), governance in the Southern Maya Lowlands was characterised by a system of divine kingship, whereby individual rulers controlled the populace and expressed their power through imposing palaces and pyramids.
However, by the Late Postclassic period (c. AD 1200-1521), governments relied heavily on council-based systems, in which political decisions were made through consensus and resulted from power-sharing between leaders.
Little is known about how this transition from divine kingship to more consensus-based governance during the Terminal Classic period (c. AD 810–1000) occurred.
“The Terminal Classic period is known as a period of tremendous political instability and crisis, with many sites in the Southern Maya Lowlands having been reduced in population”, says Dr Christina Halperin from the University of Montreal. “How did Maya peoples rework their governing systems during this time of political instability?”
To answer this, Dr Halperin and colleagues excavated a Terminal Classic civic building at the major power centre of Ucanal, Guatemala as part of the Proyecto Arqueológico Ucanal.
The building; a colonnaded open hall; was likely an early example of a council house, where political leaders, including kings, nobles, and lineage heads, met to deliberate on political accords, discuss war, adjudicate crimes, feast and prepare for weddings and dances.
The open nature of the building meant that meetings were visible to the public. Whilst there was almost certainly a theatrical nature to this public display of government, it also highlights the importance of public participation in politics during this period.
This stands in direct contrast to the Classic period, in which many political decisions took place in enclosed, internally segmented palaces, emphasising the hierarchical relationship between the king and members of the royal court.
“Another feature of the new civic-ceremonial architecture was that they were located in large public plazas”, adds Dr Halperin. “Because their facades were open, the interior activities in these buildings could be seen by anyone in the plaza spaces. Governance had become, in a sense, more transparent.”
Importantly, dating found the construction of this building coincided with the emergence of a new ruler at Ucanal, called Papmalil. The reign of Papmalil and those after him, during the Terminal Classic period, saw the construction of new public buildings and water infrastructure projects in Ucanal that benefitted non-elite residents in particular.
This suggests that the public were not only able to participate in politics as spectators and witnesses, but that they may have also influenced the decisions being made by the elites, signifying that public consensus became important to the maintenance of power.
Therefore, the Terminal Classic emergence of colonnaded open halls indicates this new form of building helped condition a more co-operative form of Maya governmentality, a more civically engaged populace and, ultimately, the increased influence of ordinary people on Maya politics.
"Ancient Maya societies did not collapse but reworked their institutions and political arrangements”, Dr Halperin concludes. “One of these reinventions was an effort to counter the weight of paramount kings and create more consensus-based governing systems.”