Dzuluinicob was a Postclassic Maya polity (kuchkabal) in the southern Maya Lowlands, in what is now Belize. It is thought to have been established during the Postclassic period, and to have been annexed by Spanish Yucatan in 1544, upon the successful Pachecos entrada. Scarce little is yet known about the province, having only been rediscovered or proposed in the 1980s by Grant D. Jones, a Mayanist scholar from the American Hamilton and Davidson Colleges. Consequently, Dzuluinicob is today noted in specialist literature, but little known elsewhere, including in popular culture.
Geography Dzuluinicob is most commonly thought to have encompassed, at least, the majority of the Belize River drainage basin. Some scholars further locate the drainage basins of the New, Sibun, and Sittee Rivers within the province. The province thus abbutted Chetumal to the north, the Mopan and Manche Ch'ol territories to the south, and the Peten Itza kingdom to the west. Neighbours further afield included Waymil to the north, and the Kowoj and Yalain polities to the west.
History
With few notable exceptions, the ninth and tenth centuries of the Classic collapse are thought to have been a period of gradual but marked political and demographic collapse in city-states within what would later become Dzuluinicob. Though scarce little is known of the province's pre-Columbian history, given the aforementioned population glut, it has been suggested that Dzuluinicob may have emerged as a polity after a significant wave of immigration into the region. The said demographic influx is thought to have been similar coincident with that which gave rise to the neighbouring Peten Itza kingdom, which is known to have involved immigration by northerly batabs () and their households upon the collapse of Mayapan and consequent disintegration of the regional council of provincial governors (the League of Mayapan). The burgeoning province is thought to have grown closer to its westerly neighbours in Peten, given the observed similarity of their pre-Columbian material cultures, than to its northerly neighbours like Chetumal, given the observed similarity of their material cultures.
Dzuluinicob is commonly thought to have been annexed to Spanish Yucatan during the Pachecos entrada in 1544.
Society
The province is thought to have been "a major player in [southern Maya Lowlands] cacao cultivation and trade". Some Muzul Maya people, in addition, are thought to have numbered amongst Dzuluinicob's residents, at least in the capital.
Legacy
None of Dzuluinicob's records are extant. Consequently, all scholarship on the province has relied on later Spanish records and modern archaeology. The province was first brought to attention by Grant D. Jones's 1989 Maya Resistance to Spanish Rule, based on 1982–1983 archival work at the General Archive of the Indies.
Aspects of the province as originally characterised have since been called into question. For instance, whilst Jones located Lamanai as a settlement of Dzuluinicob, recent literature has noted that pre-Columbian material recovered from Lamanai "is without any doubt distinctive from that [recovered] at Tipu", such that "it is hard to see them [Lamanai and Tipu] as part of a single 'provincial' unit". Similarly, whilst Jones originally glossed as , in keeping with 1980s scholarly consensus, recent literature has noted that the term might rather mean or .
Notes and references Notes
References