The Political Agency of Royal Women: A Comparative Analysis of Eight Premodern States According to Societal Rules and Roles

How Maya Archaeologists Discovered the 99% Through the Study of Settlement Patterns

“…Baseline understandings can be found in the volumes edited by Ardren (2002) and Pyburn (2004;see also Wright 1996;Claassen & Joyce 1997;Gillespie & Joyce 1997;Joyce 2000Joyce , 2008Marcus 2001;Meskell & Joyce 2003, among many others), detailing the many key roles played by ancient Maya women in a variety of cultural spheres, including economic production, ritual, and politics. Recently, the roles of queens have become clearer (see Joyce 1996, Guenter & Freidel 2009, Guenter 2014, for example); Paula Sabloff (2019) has demonstrated that elite women had not only significant power and wealth but also real agency amid their powerful fathers, husbands, and other male kin.…”

Prosperity and prestige: Archaeological realities of unfree laborers under Inka imperialism

“…We propose that imperial states like the Inka became economic powerhouses when they de-coupled prestige from a good quality of life (prosperity) for their subjects. Within the Inka ruling class, different lineages politically vied with each other for power (Covey, 2006a;Rostworowski, 1999;Sabloff, 2019), which incentivized the creation of economically efficient ways to extract labor. They had to manage immense systems of wealth production for imperial expansion.…”

Boundary Things in the Eastern Maya Lowlands: Negotiating Allied Relations From Terminal Classic to Postclassic Times

“…We also argue, however, this was not some entirely new form of governance or “heterodoxic” break from Classic-period traditions, as some have suggested (McAnany 2012). Marriages had always been tightly controlled among noble lineages and principals of shared governance appear to root in earlier times (Fash et al 1992; Marcus 1976, 1992; Martin 2017; Rice and Rice 2018; Sabloff 2018, 2020). While masculinity, feathered serpent imagery, and displays of warfare appear to be emphasized during Terminal Classic and Postclassic times, we argue there is a concurrent emphasis on marriage and the maternal line that continues to be central to elite legitimation.…”

“…In most cases, marriage partners among the pre-Hispanic Maya were probably between members of communities that were in close proximity with one another and involved alliances between patrlineages ( ch'ib’als ), which were strictly exogamous at the time of Spanish Contact (Coe 1965:107–108). Following Mills (2018:1053), we refer to this form of intermarriage as “local exogamy,” which contrasts with intermarriage that involves migration and boundary crossing “outside of the local group's more regular marriage patterns.” Records from Spanish Contact period and pre-Hispanic Maya epigraphy suggests that, in many cases, Maya kings ( ahau ) were polygamous, marrying not only local women but also “foreign” noble females who moved post-marriage to live in their husband's city (Sabloff 2020:Table 2). For instance, the Classic-period epigraphic and iconographic evidence suggest that royal women from Calakmul were actively involved in marriages with dynasties at La Corona and El Peru-Waka (among other places) that required noble brides to move, shown being physically transported in palanquins by porters over long distances to their post-marital residences (Freidel and Guenter 2003; Martin 2008).…”