Classic Mayan Kinship Systems: Epigraphic and Ethnographic Evidence for Patrilineality

Abstract

For many years, scholars working to decipher Classic period (A.D. 300-900) Mayan hieroglyphic writing suspected that the inscriptions were devoted almost exclusively to esoteric calendrical or astrological concerns. However, progress in Mayan epigraphy over the last 20 years has made it clear that many monumental inscriptions in fact present the dynastic histories of the sites where they are found. We now have at least partial records of rulers at many sites. The longest lists of rulers include mythological founders dating back thousands of years, legendary kings contemporary with Olmec florescence, and historical rulers up to the end of the Classic in the tenth century A.D. Several elements of the information recorded in the hieroglyphic inscriptions have to do with the kinship system, which played a major role in Classic Maya social organization. At some sites, it was common for monuments to identify a ruler by including the names of one or both of his or her parents. These "parentage statements" were made using glyphs known as "relationship glyphs" (preceding the names of the parents), which have been interpreted as kin terms; this is a clear indication that kinship was relevant to rulership. And there are still other indications of the importance of kinship. Some of the titles which accompany rulers' names apparently refer to positions within a kin group. The rulers' names themselves may contain elements that are related to kin groups, and the so called "emblem glyphs" may relate as much to kin groups as to the sites they are associated with.