8 Calakmul: Agent Risk and Sustainability in the Western Maya Lowlands

ABSTRACT Great attention has been focused on the southern trade routes across the Yucatan Peninsula through Tikal but little to the potential for crossing through Calakmul further to the north. This chapter shows that a combination of topography and politics make the Calakmul corridor the more effic...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Archeological papers of the American Anthropological Association 2014-03, Vol.24 (1), p.101-123
Main Authors: Gunn, Joel D., Folan, William J., Isendahl, Christian, Carrasco, María del Rosario Domínguez, Faust, Betty B., Volta, Beniamino
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
agency
climate
Conflict
Economic systems
economic world system
Europe
Hegemony
landscape
Maya
Risk
Sustainability
Topography
trade routes
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Summary:ABSTRACT Great attention has been focused on the southern trade routes across the Yucatan Peninsula through Tikal but little to the potential for crossing through Calakmul further to the north. This chapter shows that a combination of topography and politics make the Calakmul corridor the more efficient transit route. The political turmoil generated by Teotihuacan's involvement in Lowland trade following C.E. 378 cascaded into centuries of conflict between cities along the Tikal corridor and inhabitants of alternative routes. We trace the evolution of this conflict as influenced by landscape and climate, and decisions of the ambulatory Kaan Dynasty of El Mirador, Dzibanche, Calakmul and finally Calkini. The conflict seems to have played out in the elevated interior of the peninsula, the bone of contention perhaps being control of the Calakmul corridor through the Candelaria River. We suggest there are sufficient parallels between the Calakmul and European Rhône River corridors to draw a productive analogy between two, including that they both fall under the same synoptic climate system. Because the post‐Columbian world economic system rose indirectly from the Rhône corridor, the two systems make a good test bed for thinking about the future evolution of the world system. The scale of comparison is rendered feasible by viewing the systems in terms of the scale of information transfer in which they were embedded. We offer three brief examples of how rise and decline of the Calakmul hegemony suggests ways of thinking about the future of the world economic system: warfare, sustainable design, and climate engineering.
ISSN:1551-823X
1551-8248
DOI:10.1111/apaa.12032