ABSTRACT
Research surrounding the modern city of Champoton has focused primarily on the importance of the prehispanic polity of Chakanputun during the Postclassic period. Nevertheless, recent investigations have documented substantial evidence of much earlier cultural developments. This new research within the Rio Champoton drainage has provided important information about the political and economic organization of polities along the central Campeche coast during earlier phases of the prehispanic era. This chapter examines patterns of economic and political change that took place during the Late and Terminal Classic periods, focusing specically on shifting patterns of political afliation, settlement patterns, and the changing role of Gulf Coast groups in interregional exchange networks. The Rio Champoton basin of Campeche, Mexico, was the territory of the ancient Maya province of Chakanputun,1 a late Maya polity well documented in Spanish ethnohistorical sources (Figure 1.1; Ruz Lhuillier 1969; Scholes and Roys 1968; Vargas Pacheco 1994, 2001). Chakanputun was one of several important yet poorly understood states located along the Gulf Coast periphery of the Maya area that rose to prominence late in the prehispanic era. Data from recent investigations by the Champoton Regional Settlement Survey (CRSS) at several sites within the surrounding region reect a disjunction between inland and coastal zones during the latter part of the Late Classic and into the Terminal Classic, with demographic expansion along the coastal margin. This shift was associated with changes in ceramic sphere afliation and increasing participation in coastal trade networks. I begin this chapter with a review of the archaeology of the Gulf Coast periphery of the Maya lowlands, and discuss inuential theories about the role of local groups in larger-scale cultural dynamics. Next, I outline recent research undertaken by the CRSS along the central
Campeche coast. Data from settlement survey, ceramic analysis, and household testexcavations reect major changes in the regional political landscape, in subsistence systems, and in long-distance trade networks. These data are examined within the context of broader cultural developments associated with the collapse of the inland polities of the southern Maya lowlands and the subsequent reorganization of economic and political systems during the Terminal Classic period. The sequence of events that unfolded in the Rio Champoton drainage provides insights regarding the nature of broader pan-Mesoamerican trends. These changes in regional economic systems were part of a general trend towards increasing long-distance trade and interaction that became fully manifested in the highly integrated and international economies of the Terminal Classic and Postclassic periods. The Chontal Maya of the Gulf Coast
The ancient city of Chakanputun was located on the central coast of Campeche, near the northwestern periphery of the Maya area. This region, referred to here as the Peninsular Gulf Coast, includes the west coast of the Yucatan peninsula and the river deltas of coastal Tabasco. This area corresponds to the approximate geographic extent of the Chontal Maya language (Scholes and Roys 1968; Vargas Pacheco 2001), encompassing the coastal margin from central Campeche to the Rio Copilco, near the site of Comalcalco, and extending an unknown distance inland (Figures 6.7 and 7.4). Communities of the Peninsular Gulf Coast were strategically positioned near the major maritime trade route linking the Maya area with coastal Veracruz and highland Mexico. Several large rivers drain into the Gulf Coast between southern Campeche and Tabasco, and connected Gulf Coast polities with centers in the western Maya lowlands, the Maya highlands, the Peten, the edge of the Puuc region, and across the base of the Yucatan peninsula to the Caribbean. During the Postclassic and contact periods, mercantile cities such as Chakanputun, Potonchan, Xicalango, and Itzamkanac facilitated the movement of goods in a trans-isthmian network focused on the Gulf Coast maritime trade route (Ruz Lhuillier 1969; Scholes and Roys 1968; Vargas Pacheco 2001). The ancient polities of the Peninsular Gulf Coast have long been portrayed as active agents in the collapse of large city-states in the southern Maya lowlands and the introduction of foreign and new material culture in the Terminal Classic and Postclassic periods (Adams 1973; Ball and Taschek 1989; Graham 1973; Ochoa and Vargas Pacheco 1980; Sabloff and Willey 1967; Thompson 1970). Gulf Coast peoples have been correlated with ethnic groups including the Putun (Thompson 1970), Itza (Andrews et al. 1988; Ball 1986; Kowalski 1989), and Chontal Maya (Fox 1987; Ochoa and Vargas Pacheco 1980; Scholes and Roys 1968; Vargas Pacheco 2001). These peoples have in turn been associated with the introduction of Mexican cultural traits into the Maya area, with purported roles ranging from outright military conquest (Adams 1973; Sabloff and Willey 1967; Thompson 1970) to opportunistic domination of maritime trade networks (Andrews et al. 1988; Freidel and Scarborough 1982; Kepecs et al. 1994). Such models have typically focused on the effects of militant coastal traders on economic systems in the central Maya lowlands and other regions outside their Gulf Coast homeland (see Ball and Taschek 1989; Fox 1987; McVicker 1985; Sabloff and Willey 1967; Thompson 1970). Critics of these hypotheses have explained the emergence of foreign or new material culture styles as indigenous developments (Schele and Mathews 1998; Tourtellot and González 2004) or have highlighted contradictory ethnohistorical information (Kaplan 1998; Kremer 1994).
