CONCLUSIONS

Regardless of the length of the Terminal Classic era, the latest de facto on-floor deposits at Caracol indicate that the final abandonment of the epicentral buildings was sudden and relatively rapid. In several cases a series of complete vessels and other artifacts (including chipped stone from weapons and iconography on ceramics related to warfare) are found crushed in situ on floors. In other cases, sheet deposits of reconstructible ceramics are found exterior to residential palace structures and are considered to be “provisional refuse” (Schiffer 1987); materials in such deposits range from complete to partial ceramic specimens to sherds and are indicative of either partial or interrupted collection procedures for garbage removal. Judging from content and contextual considerations at Caracol, these deposits do not appear to be related to termination rituals (e. g.. Mock 1998d).

The occurrence of easily recognizable late fmeware materials in surface and collapse levels of epicentral stone buildings across the southern lowlands and their general absence in residential units has been used to argue for a rapid population breakdown at the end of the Late Classic period, a breakdown associated with an epicentral coalescence of disorganized commoners in a situation of “cultural impoverishment” following the disappearance of the traditional Classic elites (Culbert 1973c: 65, 1988: 74). However, the archaeological data from Caracol appear to be indicative of a different scenario.

Caracol evinced significant late epicentral monumental construction activity and appears to have maintained continuity in elite diet (D. Chase et al. 1998). Caracol Terminal Classic fmeware deposits are epicentrally concentrated and unevenly distributed throughout the site. As at Tikal, they correlate with vaulted architecture and palaces. However, censerware and plainware ceramic materials that co-occur with such finewares in the epicenter are found throughout the outlying residential settlement, usually in association with eastern buildings that functioned as mausoleums (A. Chase and D. Chase 1994b). These deposits suggest that there was occupation and construction at Caracol in the epicenter for at least forty years after the site’s last dated monument (Stela 10—a. d. 859 or 10.1.10.0.0) and that the surrounding core probably continued to be occupied even later. A depleted population does not appear to have hurriedly migrated into the site center as part of a “last gasp” of Classic Maya civilization.

The Terminal Classic situation indicated by ceramic distributions contrasts greatly with that seen during the preceding Late Classic period, when access to almost all material items appears to have bfcen widespread at Caracol. It has been suggested instead that “status-linked” ceramics were in use during the Terminal Classic era by those individuals occupying the site’s epicentral palaces. And, it is suspected that the breakdown in uniform ceramic subcomplex usage correlates with a breakdown in the shared identity that was a unifying factor at Caracol through the eighth century. Evidence instead suggests the implementation of a more strict two-part structuring of Terminal Classic Caracol society into “elite" and “other” individuals, potentially mirroring earlier (i. e.. Early Classic) more restrictive social orders.

The probability that “status-linked” ceramics existed during the Terminal Classic period has other potential implications for the Maya collapse. Besides sharing similar forms, many of these ceramics also exhibit almost identical iconography and decorative scenes. Many of the fineware vessels also were tradewares into the sites in which they occur. The use of these ceramics appears to have been restricted to the latest elites. It is this elite association that we find so informative, for it would appear to mirror both Aztec (Brumfiel 1987a, 1987b) and Inca (Malpass 1993b; 10-12; 1993c: 237; Murra 1980) patterns of elite incorporation through the presentation of foreign goods. We take the widespread distribution of these ceramic markers in the southern Maya lowlands (in conjunction with changes in iconographic themes, particularly seen on stone monuments) to indicate that the last elites at a great many sites were bound together in some way—potentially as part of a broader political (or minimally ideological) system, even as they were segregating themselves from the rest of their own societies.

Although both occupation and construction continued at Caracol during the Terminal Classic period, there are apparent discontinuities. Not only do certain ceramics not continue to be widely shared and distributed at Caracol, but the predominant Late Classic ritual patterns begin to break down. There appears to be a lessened focus on the highly standardized Late Classic Caracol pattern of veneration of the dead (A. Chase and D. Chase 1994b; D. Chase and A. Chase 1998) that is correlated with burials and caches in eastern buildings in residential groups. These important eastern buildings, however, still continued to be associated with ritual, as can be seen by the incense burners deposited on their steps in several excavated groups. Caracol stone monument erection enjoys a brief flourish at the onset of the Terminal Classic period (Chase, Grube, and Chase 1991), but the carved stones embrace new iconographic themes (A. Chase 1985) and are also more widely distributed at the site than at any other time. There is also a general reduction of rulers’ portraits and textual foci on rulers’ life histories on these final stelae and altars. And, no monuments appear to have been erected during the final forty years of elite dominance. The lack of focus on rulers’ portraits and texts, the dichotomy in the final material culture remains at the site, and the unity of elite ceramic types and iconographic themes with other Maya sites of Terminal Classic date suggest to us that the carefully established Caracol-specific identity of the Late Classic period (A. Chase and D. Chase 1996b) was supplanted by a more pan-Maya elite identity at Caracol in the Terminal Classic period. We argue that the archaeological materials found on the floors of Caracol’s epicentral palaces do not represent a group of disorganized peasant squatters, who were the survivors of some unknown calamity, but rather an organized group of people who were tied into a much broader non-local frame and perhaps linked to a new ideological reality (A. Chase 1985; Ringle et al. 1998). The recovered deposits from the site’s epicentral buildings represent the material remains of its final elite—an elite who witnessed, if not directed, this changed ideological order.

Caracol and other sites (particularly the excavations at Dos Pilas that demonstrate Maya defensive posture [Demarest 1993; Demarest et al. 1997]) do show substantial evidence for increased warfare toward the end of the Classic period and at the beginning of the Terminal Classic era (A. Chase and D. Chase 1992; Chase, Grube, and Chase 1991). At Caracol, captives are depicted on Terminal Classic monuments and pottery; conquests and captives are also noted in late inscriptions. In fact, Caracol records the latest war events known in the southern lowlands, but within a framework of increased iconographic portrayal of alliances between former enemies (Grube n. d.). Weapons are frequently found within Caracol’s floor refuse, as is human bone. And, the extensive burning found in many buildings, especially when combined with the remains of an unburied child on the floor of one of Caracol’s palaces, could be viewed as evidence of a sitewide final calamity caused by war. Warfare clearly continued into and through the Terminal Classic era. But warfare for what goal and what reason?

Contrary to the traditional paradigm (in which small-scale, site-specific political systems abruptly fragment, with ensuing rapid depopulation during the late eighth and early ninth centuries), the archaeological evidence for heightened warfare, shifting identities, changes in monument erection, and the shared distributions of status-linked ceramics across sites, may be interpreted alternatively as representing the integration of the latest Maya elites of the southern lowlands into larger, but highly competitive, political units as the Terminal Classic period progressed toward the tenth century. Sites such as Caracol may have been aspiring to create their own Terminal Classic expansionist polities or “empires.” Ceramic similarities among sites and the replacement of past site—or even region-specific—patterns (such as those correlated with the veneration of the dead at Caracol) may be seen as reflective of greater cohesion among the elites of what had been a more regionalized mosaic of polities earlier in the Late Classic period. Some of the latest monuments in the southern lowlands depict local rulers whose changing style of dress suggests that they may have joined this new order; this is particularly seen iconographically on the monuments at Machaquila (A. Chase 1985b). The termination of a site’s carved stone monument record during the Terminal

Classic period might, in fact, reflect the final incorporation of previously independent elites into a higher-order expansionist polity. Whether centered on Seibal, on Chichen-Itza, or on one or more other unknown centers, the widespread distribution of uniform elite fmewares throughout the southern lowlands is archaeologically undeniable.

In comparing the Maya “collapse” to the trajectories of other early state societies, Lowe (1985: 160) noted that “most state systems have ended in a universal empire” and that the current scenarios of the Maya collapse make the Classic Maya a “glaring exception” to this generalized pattern. However, it seems to us that the Maya case may not be as unique as previously implied. Thus, whether imposed from without, simply emulated by an indigenous elite, or resulting from a combination of processes, the similarity of materials, archaeological distributions, iconography, and, potentially, processes across Terminal Classic sites of the southern lowlands can be viewed as reflecting the existence of one or more attempted expansionist polities that ultimately fell apart and, in so doing, completely ruptured Maya society in the southern lowlands.