The People of the Patio: Ethnohistorical Evidence of Yucatec Maya Royal Courts

This chapter discusses the four methods used by the Maya ruling class to perpetuate symbolic of the continuity of status. Symbolic of the continuity of the court despite the disruption of conquest is the fact that one of those seized on Napot Canche’s patio was a grandson of his, Nachan Couoh, who would later become baptized and serve as batab of Calkini. The ethnohistorical evidence on Maya slaveholding in and before the sixteenth century is effectively limited to one source, the Title of Calkini. The chapter is concerned with the “royal” court, let people look at the administrative structure again, but Colonial time from a dynastic perspective. The sources are archival documents written alphabetically in the Colonial period in Yucatec Maya. The chapter also discusses the space and place, consisting of a conception of the court as a series of concentric spaces emanating from a center.