Political strategies and legitimization mechanisms of an initial class society: the sculptures of captives from late Classic Maya period

Abstract

This article intends to bring together Luis Felipe Bate’s theoretical proposal on initial class society and studies of prehispanic maya culture, using the sculptures of captives of the Late Classic Maya Lowlands to propose that they were a legitimizing mechanism within a theatrical political strategy. In Bate’s words, these sculptures were an important element in the politics and ideology of this initial class society. The results become an important contribution to the understanding of scultures of captives through their specific iconographic components (strings, nudity, submissiveness) and the architectonic place they occupied, as a mean for maya elites to legitimize their right to use and abuse power.