The arrival of the ninth and tenth centuries is associated with Eznab ceramics (a. d. 830-1000), a time tied with the collapse phenomenon in the central Maya area. The projects undertaken by the rulers who directed Tikal’s destiny during
8.2 Tikal Stela 11 carved with the image of the last sovereign of the Terminal Classic: Hasaw Kan K’awil II.
The ninth century are poorly documented because of the scarcity of glyphic texts. What is certain, though, is that sixty years passed before another monument was carved, in this case Stela 11, pertaining to the ruler Hasaw Kan K’awil II in a. d. 869, representing the last glyphic inscription at the site (Figure 8.2). We can read with some security that he was thirty-second in the line of succession, indicating the existence of one or two sovereigns before him who do not appear in the epigraphic record, possibly because their monuments were later destroyed.
It is known that there was a strong demographic decline during the Eznab phase, but due to the lack of a more detailed ceramic chronology, it is not possible to determine precisely the temporal events of this decline. At the beginning of the ninth century a large labor force was used for the construction of Temple III, indicating that the power of the ruler remained solid. Later, there were no other monumental projects, reflecting the early debility of the system, for which we propose that the cultural and demographic decline must have started a little before A. D. 869 when Hasaw Kan K’awil II was on the throne.
Based on the information available, we have been able to discern that there are two factors that impede us from better understanding this historical moment: 1) the lack of refinement of the Eznab phase, and 2) the absence of hieroglyphic inscriptions. Nevertheless, thanks to the excavations of the Pennsylvania Tikal Project and the Proyecto Nacional Tikal, it is known that during the ninth century construction projects continued in different sectors of the city and that significant changes must have occurred at the transition to the tenth century (Fry 1969; Culbert 1973; Puleston 1974; Coe 1990; Jones 1991; Laporte and Fialko 1995). In the East Plaza, a group of residences was built in the north, and the ballcourt was arranged so that its use continued, although the market appears to have already been abandoned. Eznab-phase ceramic deposits were found in the Central Acropolis, while burials and refuse were present in the Lost World. It is notable that the population of the Terminal Classic, possibly during or after Hasaw Kan K’awil II, was mostly concentrated in the palace areas adjacent to the Great Plaza, at a time when the site was occupied by only 1,000 to 2,000 persons.
As already described, the last ruler known at Tikal erected his monument in A. D. 869 and continued as the head of state in the year a. d. 889, as we know from the reference made to him on Uaxactun’s Stela 12. This demonstrates that some sites continued to have divine rulers decades after their last written text, but in the middle of the impending social and political crisis, the sovereigns possibly feared writing their nominals in stone. It must be taken into account that this Tikal ruler was last named on a monument of Uaxactun, not in his own city, twenty years later. This fact, although strange, is not unique, as Yax Pasah of Copan participated in a bloodletting rite in Quirigua when he was no longer named in his own city. Furthermore, the last ruler of Palenque appears mentioned on a painted sherd found in a modest residential group in the plains north of the ceremonial center (Scheie and Freidel 1990: 342, 381-382).
The instability of the great region of Tikal is manifested on Altar 1 of Ixlu, which commemorates the date 10.2.10.0.0 (a. d. 879) by a ruler who used the Tikal Emblem Glyph, as did the sovereign of Jimbal ten years later on Stela 2 (Figure 8.3). This leads us to propose two possibilities: 1) by this time, Tikal’s central authority was seriously questioned by the neighboring secondary sites and their governors, possibly relatives of the royal family of the primary center, wanted to affirm their independence, but without forgetting the glorious lineage that legitimated them; and 2) the Tikal lord made a last effort to save his kingdom, implementing a new political model formed by small, semiautonomous polities that replaced the old centralized system. It seems to us that the second option is more likely and would help explain why these secondary centers were permitted to use the Tikal Emblem Glyph, since at both Ixlu and Jimbal the sovereign proclaimed himself as “K’ul Mutul Ahaw.” There remains a chance, however, that in his eagerness to reconstruct his power, the last leader may have held a type of regency shared with the governors of secondary centers, similar to what happened at Copan (Scheie and Freidel 1990). Unfortunately, it was too late to implement political changes and the model did not have the desired success, without leadership support. Even so, the Tikal Emblem Glyph was still used on Stela 6 (at C5) of Xultun in the year a. d. 889 (10.3.10.0.0), this being the last known glyphic reference to the great metropolis.
The impact of this instability caused the palaces with multiple rooms and built in monumental groups to be abandoned by their original inhabitants, in a wave that increased after a. d. 900 and in the following decades. The decrease in or disappearance of population in the rural sectors during the Eznab phase indicates a mobilization toward the administrative center, where the inhabitants arrived to reoccupy the palaces of the elite groups (Puleston 1973). This same situation was occurring in the secondary centers around Tikal, as observed in Bobal, Chikin Tikal, Jimbal, Uolantun, Navajuelal (Fry 1969), and maybe Corozal, which concentrated their populations in the central sector. In very few instances the new occupants worried about fixing or remodeling the invaded edifices, because they did not have the means or the labor for the necessary work. When they did renovate, the difference in architectural quality and finish was notable, as they used very thin walls, and with the passage of time sporadic wall falls would occur in the interior of the rooms as well as on the exterior facades of the struc-mres. The reservoirs and deposits of water were, of course, magnets for human occupants. These migratory shifts left the fields without workers, however, and the subsistence system must have suffered several production losses, especially the maize crop that needed permanent care, from the preparation of the soil to the planting and harvest.
The dramatic change in funerary patterns has particularly attracted our attention. While during the centuries a transcendental respect for death and its significance existed, during the Terminal Classic no cists or tombs were prepared for
8.3 Jimbal Stela 2.
The placements of human burials, but rather these began to be deposited within the existing constructions, such as stairways, floors, rooms, or even over collapsed residences. An example comes from Group 6C-15 (Valdes 1983, 1992), a small ceremonial complex that included an oratory on the east side (Str. 6C-50) and where three priests of the Late Classic (Imix phase) were interred ceremoniously, following the traditional customs of using the main axis of the building. However, after the abandonment of the building, a flexed burial was placed in the stairway access, and the body was partially covered by the same stones of the staircase, although the cranium was left in the open. The putrefaction of this body and the other burials left half-exposed in the Lost World and other groups at Tikal probably were odiferous at some distance and may have resulted in the appearance of contagious diseases.
The young adult male buried in Str. 6C-50 maintained the old tradition of cranial deformation, and next to his body was placed a mortuary offering of predominantly lithic objects. Among these were 18 fine obsidian blades, 2 obsidian knives, 3 chert lance points, a greenstone, and 3 ceramic vessels. Other burials of this epoch also showed a preference for lithic offerings, leaving pottery in second place. Following the same abandonment process, in Str. 6C-50 a cylindrical censer and various bowl fragments were deposited in the interior of a niche that remained open and untouched for centuries, until the arrival of archaeologists. The censer is of the type Pedregal Modeled, decorated with the image of the solar deity of the Underworld. We consider that its use must have been of primordial importance in the rituals carried out by the priests during the night, because the use of this type of incensario was frequent by the end of the Terminal Classic (Rands and Rands 1959) as the priests maintained the relation between the Jaguar-Sun deity of the Underworld in his manifestation of the night sun with the rituals of fire (Stuart 1998: 408).
In Tikal, the Caban phase was defined for the Early Postclassic, beginning around A. D. 1(X)0, with the presence of Pabellon Molded-Carved pottery. The most important manifestations of this moment in time are marked by continued occupation in the debris of the ancient palaces, the movement of carved monuments, the pillaging of tombs, and the celebration of rituals in the ancestral temples. Cases that implicate the replacement of sculpted monuments have been reported from the Great Plaza and Temple VI (with some monuments reutilized as grinding stones). Signs of Postclassic rituals were found in the upper precincts of Temples I and II with the deposition of burials and offerings that included blue-painted copal balls. (Adams and Trik 1961; Coe 1975). Such activities also took place in an oratory located immediately south of Temple III, where quantities of sherds and broken Postclassic censers (Coe 1975: 77) were discovered, and on the stairway of Str. 3D-43 in the North Zone, where a tripod censer with rattles of Paxcaman Rojo type appeared. The censer was used and abandoned in this structure, so that the archaeologists found it complete, but it was covered by debris from the upper part of the edifice.
According to Culbert (1973), only a dozen dispersed localities present signs of Postclassic occupation within and around Tikal. This was confirmed by the excavations undertaken in residential groups south of the Lost World, where only two (6C-12 and 6D-20) of sixteen groups yielded Caban pottery (Valdes 1985; Laporte and Iglesias 1999).
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