Not long after the Maya Ceramic Conference, leading Mayanist scholars met in a seminar at the School of American Research in Santa Fe, New Mexico, in 1970 for the first attempt to systematically compare and synthesize the data that had accumulated on the causes of the collapse. The conference, organized because “a series of major research projects [had] been undertaken in the Maya Lowlands in the last two decades that provide important masses of new data” (Culbert 1973d: xiv), revealed some of the complexity of the lowland Late Classic Maya world and the emergence of different regional patterns of change in the eighth through tenth centuries. But it is important to recognize that the data presented at the conference and published in the resultant volume. The Classic Maya Collapse (Culbert 1973a), represent a rather biased sample of the lowlands. Robert L. Rands’s (1973a) effort to provide the chronological summary for the volume was based on data from only eight sites—essentially those from the earlier ceramic conference—particularly in the west along the Pasion and Usumacinta Valleys (Seibal, Piedras Negras, Altar de Sacrificios, Palenque, and so forth).
The Classic Maya Collapse concluded with a characteristically skillful summary by the “Great Synthesizer,” Gordon Willey, assisted by Demitri Shimkin. These authors (Willey and Shimkin 1973) wove the seemingly contradictory interpretations and diverse data sets into a summation that included “structural” considerations (subsistence, population density, sociopolitical organization, religion, militarism, urbanism, trade, and markets) and dynamic features (role of the elite, social distinctions, intersite competition, agricultural problems, demographic pressures, disease burdens—especially malnutrition—and external trade). Significantly, they downplayed the role of militarism, either as internal revolt (earlier favored by Sylvanus G. Morley and J. Eric Thompson) or external invasion (see Rice n. d.). They concluded with a descriptive model of sorts that uncomfortably forced integration of all these possible causes and, as such, was unsatisfactory (Culbert 1988: 76 calls it a “kitchen-sink model”). The fissions in our visions of a uniform “Classic Maya collapse” were already apparent.
Subsequently, in the late 1970s and 1980s archaeological research in the lowlands began to legitimize a new focus—the Postclassic period—and this brought about completely different perspectives on the Classic collapse. Instead of viewing the ninth and tenth centuries as the sudden ending of something (that “something” being Late Classic civilization, privileged as the principal period of Maya history worthy of study), archaeologists began to consider the view that these centuries simultaneously represented a transition and, possibly, the beginnings of something else that was also of importance (Chase and Rice 1985; Sabloff and Andrews 1986). Indeed, one conclusion drawn from such perspectives is that, in the Maya lowlands, the truly dramatic transformations “came with the fall of Chichen Itza in the thirteenth century a. d. and not with the fall of the Classic centers in the South” (Andrews and Sabloff 1986: 452).
In the years following the 1970 conference, additional scrutiny of the collapse included new approaches such as computer simulation (Hosier, Sabloff, and Runge 1977), general systems theory (Culbert 1977), catastrophe theory (Renfrew 1978), trend-surface analysis of the distribution of dated monuments (Bove 1981), and new or revised causal mechanisms, including peasant revolt (Hamblin and Pitcher 1980), decline of Teotihuacan influence (Webb 1973, 1975; Cowgill 1979), and agricultural-subsistence stress (Culbert 1988). At the same time, growing interest in settlement surveys, combined with the interpretations of massive depopulations in the ninth and tenth centuries, sparked closer attention to regional demographics and more realistic population estimates (Culbert and Rice 1990). It has been estimated that by a. d. 800 the population density was about 145 people per square kilometer, falling into the low 40s per square kilometer by A. D. 1000 (Turner 1990: 312). In terms of numbers, by a. d. 800 the population peak is estimated to range between 2.6 and 3.4 million, falling to “less than 1 million or so” by a. d. 1000, a depopulation rate of 0.53-0.65 (Turner 1990: 310). Also during the 1980s and 1990s, rapid advances in glyphic decipherments brought about new interpretations of events of the Late Classic period, principally leading to an emphasis on militarism and intense intersite warfare as factors in the collapse in some regions (Demarest, Valdes, et al. 1991; Demarest 1996,1997; Scheie and Miller 1986; Scheie and Freidel 1990; also Cowgill 1979).
Culture Change
Earlier considerations of the so-called Classic Maya collapse were plagued by the assumption of a common “cause” and by vague terminology (see, e. g., Cowgill 1988). Here, in our consideration of what constitutes the decline, collapse, or transformation of a political system, such as that of the Maya, we follow recent discussions and debates of the epistemology of such considerations of culture change (e. g., Eisenstadt 1967, 1968, 1986; Tainter 1988; Yoffee and Cowgill 1988).
In particular, as Norman Yoffee (1988: 14) explains, the various meanings assigned to the word “collapse” can be grouped into two categories. One category consists of words like fall, collapse, fragmentation, and death, which imply “that some meaningful entity ceased to exist.” The second category implies a change to something that is “morally or aesthetically inferior,” as in the words decline, decay, and decadence. Here, when we speak of a “decline,” it is in reference to a particular political system that experiences a notable decline in the degree of complexity.
In addition, Cowgill (1988: 256) urges a careful distinction between the kinds of entities that are in transition, such as state, society, and civilization. The term “state” refers to a type of political organization, and its ending, unless achieved by force, should be referred to as “fragmentation” rather than collapse or fall. Civilization should be used “in a specifically cultural sense, to mean... a ‘great tradition.’ To speak of the collapse of a civilization, then, should be to refer to the end of a great cultural tradition” (Cowgill 1988: 256).
Some of these specific distinctions are difficult to apply to the lowland Maya, however. The term “political fragmentation” may or may not be inappropriate, as it depends on the degree to which Maya states are viewed as centralized or decentralized. Similarly, “civilizational collapse” is inappropriate unless one postulates a “southern lowlands variant of the Maya great tradition” (Cowgill 1988: 266).
Postmodernism and Postprocessualism
The collapse of the Maya, like that of any other civilization, is a gripping metaphor for contemporary fears of individual death or societal decline, and has always been a subjective, reflexive reading of an imagined past in the present. As recent trends in social philosophy have emphasized, the ancient past has never been “objectively” or “scientifically” studied. The ancient past has always been, at best, a Rorschach test for contemporary concerns, and at worst, a text constructed in a metanarrative with a conscious or subconscious agenda of legitimating the conquering Western capitalist tradition. Clearly, the “mystery of the Maya collapse” falls somewhere between these subjective extremes as a contemporary, emotional reading of the past (cf. Montejo 1991; Castaneda 1996; Hervick 1999).
The notion of a collapse of Maya civilization has been viewed as offensive by some scholars and a few Maya activists, given the vigor of the Maya cultural traditions of millions of speakers of Maya languages in Mexico and Guatemala today. Both the intellectual confusion and political insensitivity can be attributed to careless terminology about what constitutes a “transition,” “decline,” or “collapse” and what it is that experiences the transition, decline, or collapse. Clearly, Maya civilization as a general cultural and ethnic tradition—a “great tradition”— did not experience any “collapse” or “decline.” The Postclassic Maya kingdoms of northern Yucatan, Belize, and Guatemala were large, vigorous polities, and the Maya tradition of more than ten million indigenous citizens of Guatemala and Mexico is currently experiencing a great cultural, linguistic, and political florescence (e. g., Fischer and Brown 1996). Indeed, this contemporary Maya resurgence is challenging our conceptions of what is “Maya” and how anthropologists and archaeologists view these societies (e. g., Warren 1992; Watanabe 1995; Nelson 1999; Montejo 1991; Fischer 1999; Cojtf Cuxil 1994).
In this regard, our referring to or describing a “collapse,” “decline,” “transition,” or “transformation” of Classic lowland Maya kingdoms is neither a moral/ aesthetic judgment nor a denigrating statement about Postclassic Maya polities or the later societies and cultural formations of speakers of the Maya languages and their traditions (although some earlier authors may have placed such connotations on these terms). Rather, these are more specific interpretations about what happened to particular political and economic systems in the ninth and tenth centuries. Similarly, talking of the decline of the Western Roman Empire or the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian hegemony is not a broader denigrating statement on the European Western tradition or modem Western society; it is a generalization about changes, some rapid, some gradual, in particular political systems.
While acknowledging the inevitably reflexive nature of archaeology, many of us still remain dedicated to the mundane, traditional task of ordering artifacts from different regions, dating them using a variety of methods, comparing them, and then attempting to constmct culture-history consistent with those data sets and sequences. Our dedication to this task may simply be due to a lack of intellectual courage; that is, we are lackeys in the capitalist metanarrative constmction system and this is our job! Alternatively, however, one could argue that despite the efforts of Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, and a host of French philosophers (and their British archaeological “translators,” Ian Hodder, Michael Shanks, Christopher Tilley, et al.), some of us still cling to the seemingly outdated concepts of linear time, subject/object distinctions, and other credos of modem science.
A volume such as this must be viewed as traditionalist constmction and comparison of regional culture-histories, together with some initial attempts at interpretation of causality in terms of traditional Western scientific “metanarrative.” We did not seek in this volume to debate the epistemology or terminology of discourse as applied in archaeology, in Mayanist archaeology, or, specifically, in the study of the final centuries of Classic Maya civilization. We share concerns regarding the admittedly problematic terms used in interpretive discourse here and in general in the Maya field, such as civilization, tradition, decline, collapse, etc. These concerns are touched upon briefly in several articles in this volume and also in Chapter 2 by Diane Z. and Aden F. Chase. We do not necessarily agree with the Chases’ negative presentation of much earlier research, nor with their approach to “hermeneutics.” Nonetheless, we do believe that awareness of postprocessual critique has enriched some of these chapters. In general, however, we leave to future fomms the worthy debate and general re-evaluation of our essentialist views of “Maya civilization” and its culture-history, and the necessarily subjective and value-laden ways in which we interpret such abstractions in the archaeological record.
New Balche', Old Ollas
Since the 1970 Santa Fe conference, the concept of civilizational collapse has stirred enormous disagreement among Mayanists, particularly because such an event did not occur simultaneously in the north, where cities were flourishing. In the thirty years since the conference, an enormous amount of research has provided a wealth of data, stimulating a need for a new look at the ninth - and tenth-century changes taking place in the lowlands. This research has also revealed considerable variability in the timing of these processes and in the extent to which they took place. Most archaeologists’ discussions now highlight (rather than suppress) variability within and among Classic Maya kingdoms during this period.
Wholesale abandonment versus slow decline, sudden versus gradual economic change, population dispersion, endemic warfare, destruction, reorientation, and florescence—all are represented in the interpretations of change and transformation in regional lowland cultures during these centuries. In addition, the whole notion of “collapse” as the defining event of the ninth and tenth centuries in the lowlands is being rethought, and major shifts in theoretical approaches to culture-history and causality prompt similar reviews.
We adopted the term “Terminal Classic” in accumulating these papers, largely because of tradition; this is what it has been called in the southern and central lowlands. The Terminal Classic in the southern lowlands was dated ceramically from a beginning at about a. d. 800/830, to an ending around 950/1000. In the northern lowlands, however, the temporal interval of the Terminal Classic is subsumed with a longer (ca. a. d. 700-1050/1100) period usually known as “Flores-cent” or “Pure Florescent,” alluding to the flowering of the Puuc centers in the northwestern comer of the Yucatan peninsula (see Brainerd 1958). For the northern lowlands, then, the term “Terminal Classic” is a rather ill-fitting and restrictive label for this longer period.
Consequently, we have taken the period under consideration here to be an interval of some three hundred years, from approximately a. d. 750 to 1050. This is not a conscience-stricken attempt to force-fit the southern chronology into the northern, but rather recognition that, overall, the focus of interest for Mayanists is no longer simply a political collapse in the south. Instead, research has revealed that the end of divine kingship—the termination of a key element of “classicism” in the south—is only one strand in a complex web of events and processes of intra - and intersite dynamics and broader, continuing inter-regional interactions between the north and the south. While still flawed, the “Terminal Classic” designation at least remains more neutral than terms like “collapse,” “fall,” or “decline.”
The reader will find even greater chronological variation in the periods covered by these articles. To some degree, this reflects the great chronological variability in the changes in material culture in different regions. For example, the events and processes leading to a population decline and emigration in western Peten began before a. d. 750 and in some areas (such as the Petexbatun, and possibly the Copan Valley) were all but over by a. d. 830. Yet in some other areas, in Belize and the northern Yucatan peninsula, a variety of differing shifts and changes continued through a. d. 1100, before the material culture and institutions associated with the Postclassic were firmly in place. This variability is especially notable in Chapters 19-22 on the northern lowland sites.
Other variations in the chronological framing of chapters is due to the interpretive approaches and theories of the authors, which draw on earlier, or later, parallel processes. For example, in Chapter 15, Richard Adams et al. envision a true global “collapse” that is the last of three earlier global “disasters” driven by climatologically caused droughts and famines. They trace their regional culture-history, then, back to the Preclassic to try to demonstrate such a repeating pattern. Conversely, Christopher R. Andres and K. Anne Pyburn (Chapter 18) and Marilyn A. Masson and Shirley Boteler Mock (Chapter 17) try to elucidate the changes involved in the Classic to Postclassic transition by working backward from Postclassic evidence in Belize that helps define the new, yet vigorous, Maya tradition in Belize after a. d. 1100.
What is really of interest to anthropological archaeologists, after all, are the processes underlying a broader cultural transformation, a Late Classic to Postclassic transition, taking place in this period. In the southern lowlands, the focal transition has long been the end of divine kings and the large cities they ruled. In some areas, this was an abrupt political collapse of the type that is traditionally identified with the Terminal Classic period and is certainly worthy of scholarly attention. However, contributing factors can be traced back to at least the sixth century, carved stelae continued to be erected in some sites into the early tenth century, and the aftermath—population movements and new alliances—all demand that at least several decades immediately preceding and following the Terminal Classic proper be considered in any genuine effort to understand these broad processes of cultural transformations.
World History
