Dzuluinicob

Dzuluinicob, or the Province of Dzuluinicob or Ts'ulwinikob, (Yucatec Maya: ; Mayan pronunciation: ) was a Postclassic Maya state in the Yucatán Peninsula of the Maya Lowlands.

Physical
Dzuluinicob encompassed, at least, most of the Belize River drainage basin. Some scholars further locate the drainage basins of the New, Sibun, and Sittee Rivers within the province.

Political
Dzuluinicob bordered the Chetumal and Waymil provinces to the north, the Mopan and Manche Ch'ol territories to the south, and the Itza, Kowoj, and Yalain polities to the west.

Pre-Columbian
With few notable exceptions, the ninth and tenth centuries of the Classic Maya 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 emerged after a significant wave of immigration into the region. It has been further noted that such demographic influx may have been similar coincident with that which gave rise to the Peten Itza Kingdom, i.e. settlement by northerly aristocratic mayors and their households upon the collapse of Mayapan and consequent disintegration of the regional council of provincial governors. The burgeoning province is thought to have grown closer to its western neighbours in Peten, given the observed similarity of their pre-Columbian material cultures, than to its northern neighbour, Chetumal, given the observed dissimilarity of their material cultures.

Columbian
Dzuluinicob is commonly thought to have been the last province conquered during the 1543–1544 Pachecos entrada.

Society
The province is thought to have been 'a major player in [southern Lowlands] cacao cultivation and trade.' It is further thought to have housed Muzul Maya residents, at least in the capital.

Scholarly
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, based on 1982–1983 archival research at the General Archive of the Indies. "The northern half of Belize, which under the Spanish became the greater part of the Bacalar province, was indigenously a province of Yucatec-speakers known as Dzuluinicob. [...] Earlier writers were unaware of the existence of Dzuluinicob and attributed far more influence to the province of Chetumal than it now appears to have had. / Because the sole direct reference to Dzuluinicob as a provincial entity is in a unique early version of Melchor Pacheco's probanza, it would be foolhardy to venture specific claims regarding its territorial limits. I have nonetheless argued throughout this study that Tipu was the political centre of this apparently extensive province, which must have included territory all the way from the Sibun River north to the lower New River." Aspects of the province as originally delineated have since come into question. For instance, while Jones placed Lamanai within 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, while Jones originally glossed ts’ul winiko’ob as ‘foreign people,’ in keeping with scholarly consensus then, recent literature has noted that the term might rather mean ‘gentlemen’ or ‘members of the Ts’ul lineage.’

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