Classic to Postclassic Maya Rulership: Changes in Military-Courtly Institutions

Résumé En

The postulated demise of Maya sacred kingship at the end of Classic times (750-950/1050) must be rather reformulated into research questions bearing on how much change occurred in political institutions at that time and later on. Referring particularly to rituals, selected data sets are summoned to document transformations in three institutional categories: dynastic authority, military organization, and royal courts. On the first one, the evidence of calendrical cults indicate that Classic kingship tended to shift from dynastic to rotating power transmission, even though dynastic ideology may have persisted late in Postclassic times through genealogical and non-genealogical principles (both already present in Classic rulership). Second, data on Late Classic warfare suggest that, with a few exceptions, Maya kings did not monopolize coercive forces (vis-à-vis noble houses) and that such a monopole was not formalized through military corporate orders until Postclassic times. As for Classic royal courts, the question to ask is what would the surviving courts have had that the others which collapsed would not? I attempt to show how institutional changes in the three areas were closely related, to the extent that Classic kingship would have transformed into an oligarchical, rotating regime doted with a monopolistic control over warfare and over noble ranks, through the shared (among polities) operation, cult and ideology of military orders.