This chapter continues through the early eleventh century our account of the political histories related in Chapter 8. In contrast to events chronicled for the Copán-centered network at this time, what we see in other parts of Honduras and El Salvador is the emergence of large capitals that dominated their respective domains. These processes are most evident in Honduras’s Lower Ulúa, Lower Cacaulapa, and Comayagua valleys where the regional capitals of Cerro Palenque, El Coyote, Tenampua, and Las Vegas were established. Whereas these developments had Indigenous roots, Pipiles, Nahua-speaking immigrants from Mexico, now founded Cihuatán, a large town located in El Salvador’s Cerrón Grande basin. How power relations within the realms governed from these capitals were structured varied considerably. Similarly, the roles of things, whether locally fashioned (such as copper at El Coyote) or imported (such as Plumbate and Fine Orange ceramics and Pachuca obsidian), in these political processes also differed.

This chapter traces the consequences of Copán’s dynastic collapse for the realms that had been colonies or allies of the lowland Maya capital. All of these domains underwent demographic declines and political fragmentation. The nature of the changes, however, differed depending in part on what relations an area’s inhabitants had enjoyed with Copán’s agents. A crucial event in this process was the secession of Quirigua from the colonial network in CE 738. This dramatic development precipitated changes in governance at Copán even as it offered novel opportunities for former allies to advance claims to power that had not been available to them when Copán’s rulers enjoyed greater regional predominance. Ultimately, however, processes of political centralization and hierarchy building were curtailed among all participants in this network by CE 1000.

This interval witnessed drastic changes in political formations throughout Southeast Mesoamerica. These shifts generally took the form of political decentralization as what had been regional capitals were largely abandoned and replaced by the more muted expressions of political preeminence that took shape in smaller, dispersed political centers. A major exception to this trend is found at the site of Copán. The arrival here of interlopers from the Maya lowlands, led by K’inich Yax K’uk’ Mo’, transformed this settlement into the capital of a realm ruled according to principles previously foreign to the Southeast but which were well established among lowland Maya domains to the west. Much of the chapter is devoted to exploring how this singular event was possibly implicated in changes occurring elsewhere in Southeast Mesoamerica at this time. Copán’s rulers, outside their realm, did not determine the course of any area’s local history. Their mode of rule that combined political centralization with marked expressions of hierarchy, however, offered a model that their Southeastern neighbors could and did adapt to their own purposes.

In this chapter, we consider how power was centralized within multiple Southeastern societies and the ways such pretensions were challenged. These contests were waged as people employed a diverse array of things secured from various sources to accomplish their distinct aims. Efforts to concentrate power and build hierarchies generally involved the creation of plazas, surrounded by monumental platforms, that served as venues for communal gatherings. The rituals and feasts held within these locales helped instill in the participants a sense of belonging to a group that encompassed and transcended earlier loyalties to individual households. Such events also promoted the preeminence of those who hosted them, planned the raising of these impressive arenas, and lived in the buildings bordering them. Resistance to these political projects relied on the majority’s efforts to remain economically self-sufficient, thus stymieing the emergence of hierarchies in most parts of the Southeast. The resulting political formations varied in their degrees of power concentration and the creation of invidious distinctions based on the shifting outcomes of these power competitions.

This summary chapter focuses on the tensions that characterized the political histories of Southeast Mesoamerica. At the heart of these contradictions are the majority’s strategies to protect their autonomy in the face of those who sought to centralize power and build hierarchy by promoting the rank and file’s dependence on them for essential goods, symbols, and practices. Schemes to concentrate power by reconfiguring extant social nets and the movement of resources through them were met by countermeasures of the intended victims, who redirected needed assets to their projects by working within social networks of their own making. Oscillations between centralizing and decentralizing tendencies occurring at multiple scales resulted from these contests. Shifts in the availability of resources among competitors presented opportunities for the formation of new political arrangements comprised of novel social webs enacted through unprecedented practices. Thus, as diverse agents sought their often contradictory aims, assets derived from multiple origins came to constitute the lives of people of all ranks living across wide swaths of Southeast Mesoamerica.

The Naco and Middle Chamelecón’s political histories continued to diverge from patterns seen elsewhere in the Southeast during the ninth through tenth centuries. Political fragmentation in the Naco valley was accompanied by the proliferation of craft specialization. Specialized manufacture, though still pursued at La Sierra, was no longer restricted to the capital. Just about every known rural homestead was engaged in one or more forms of manufacture, exchanges of surpluses constituting a matrix of social networks that bound all valley residents together in relations that were more heterarchical than hierarchical. Differences in the scales and intensities of production did contribute to variations in the material well-being of producers; those who made more of a greater variety of goods accumulated more valuables than those who made less. Community-wide specialization in pottery production continued at Las Canoas even as signs of centralized power vanished there. Las Canoas’ potters exchanged their output with the Naco valley’s residents, though they were seemingly disadvantaged in those dealings. This vital system of production and exchange ended by CE 1000.

We review here the scant evidence pertaining to the early arrival of people in Southeast Mesoamerica and what is presently known about the timing and nature of the first efforts to domesticate plants in the area. Most of the chapter summarizes the different forms that sociopolitical complexity took in the Southeast during 1600–400 BCE. It was during this period that the first monumental platforms were raised in the area, suggesting the emergence of leaders who could plan these projects and command the labor to complete them. While such constructions speak to a modicum of political centralization, they did not necessarily signify the existence of hierarchies. People in different areas thus used similar things, such as large buildings, to craft different, locally specific power relations. Such variety sets the stage for the different political histories that will take shape in the coming centuries.

This chapter considers processes of political centralization, hierarchy building, and social differentiation that were initiated and sustained by agents who, from CE 600–800, operated in realms that were not in direct contact with representatives of the Copán state. In general, the creation of sociopolitical complexity in each case involved the selective acquisition and use of goods and ideas from various sources, including but not limited to the Maya lowlands, in strategies designed to advance the interests of a few elites over those of their immediate subordinates. The latter, in turn, transformed their domestic arrangements as they sought to maintain as much autonomy as they could in the face of these threats. The resulting changes often involved increased involvement in craft production and possibly market exchanges as those facing onerous elite demands for tribute sought novel means to counter them. The outcome was a dynamic set of political relations that operated at multiple spatial scales and which were animated by people of all ranks who mobilized diverse resources secured through overlapping social networks from various sources to exercise power in all its forms.

This chapter summarizes the diverse natural environments from which Southeast Mesoamerica’s inhabitants variably drew the resources they used in forging their distinct but interrelated histories. We then review how archaeologists have approached the study of those histories. In particular, we relate the relative lack of interest that researchers exhibited in the area’s ancient inhabitants to trends in anthropological and archaeological theory that pertained throughout much of the twentieth century. Especially important were the efforts of investigators to define the borders of lowland Maya civilization and the relegation of those living beyond those limits in the Southeast to a frontier or periphery whose residents were largely enthralled and dominated by the accomplishments of their lowland Maya neighbors. Ancient Southeast Mesoamerican developments were, thus, understood as pale reflections of, and largely inspired by, events instigated by lowland Maya rulers. The legacy of this approach for our understanding of Southeast Mesoamerica’s Pre-Columbian past is long and pervasive, an issue that is also addressed within this section.

Two major forms of political organization emerged in Southeast Mesoamerica during the last Pre-Columbian centuries. One, prevalent throughout western Honduras, saw power weakly concentrated in the hands of leaders who ruled small domains together with councils comprised of lesser elites. The boundaries of these realms were fluid, interelite alliances combining several independent domains into larger units that often fragmented at the deaths of their creators. The other, found mostly in El Salvador, was characterized by highly centralized, hierarchically structured states ruled from small cities. Whereas the former mode of governance was of autochthonous origins, the latter is attributed to Pipil migrants from further west in Mesoamerica. After describing these patterns, the chapter recounts developments in the Naco valley that diverge from the aforementioned political tendencies. The Naco experiment was shaped by persistent tensions among elite factions and between rulers and their subordinates that ultimately resulted in a form of corporate, or councilor, rule. Resources from far and near played key roles in shaping these political contests and their outcomes.

The volume considers how processes of political centralization, hierarchy building, and social differentiation were related in the political histories of ancient Southeast Mesoamerican societies. We define the above terms here and review how proponents of world systems, prestige goods, and community of practice theories have understood these connections. Subsequently, we summarize our approach to the topic. This perspective models political formations as the variably successful, never fully stable, outcomes of efforts made by agents of different ranks and identities to secure power by drawing on resources obtained through social networks of differing spatial extents. The resulting social webs were thus means for promoting cooperation among agents who were allied in the pursuit of shared goals even as they competed with those seeking comparable objectives through different social connections.

This chapter describes the political formation that took shape at Copán and how that center’s rulers sought to secure their regional preeminence by establishing a network of colonies and allies at varying distances from the center. These extensive political arrangements come closest to approximating the traditional view of Southeastern societies as existing within the periphery of powerful lowland Maya cores. Nonetheless, what stands out in this account is the varied forms these relations of relative inequality took as local leaders and Copán’s lords negotiated the ever-shifting terms of their mutual dealings. Special attention is devoted to two Copán colonies, Quirigua in Guatemala’s Lower Motagua valley and El Paraíso in the western Honduran valley of the same name. Both were established by Copán’s rulers to accomplish specific, but different objectives. Their divergent histories highlight the limits of royal rule and the capacity of the colonized to shape their own destinies.