Cultural Horizons

In the 1965 lowland ceramic conference the Terminal Classic was identified as an archaeological “horizon.” Although a horizon is typically characterized by a broad spatial, rather than long temporal, distribution of distinctive artifacts or styles (Phillips and Willey 1953:625; Willey and Phillips 1955:723,1958: 38; Rice 1993b), the Terminal Classic was deemed to be a horizon because of the perception that the lowland Late Classic period ended everywhere throughout the lowlands with societal collapse.

The problem with this conceptualization is that it pertains to only a portion of the Maya lowlands, the south and central zones. In the northern lowlands, patterns of “classicism” varied regionally and changed at different times and in different ways than those of the south. The focus on the cessation of Classic traits in the southern region was primarily a result of several factors related to the vagaries of archaeological investigation and assumptions about the Maya area in general. By 1965, more research had been carried out, with more data available to researchers, concerning the southern and central zones than in the north or other areas peripheral to the southern region. Moreover, much of this work was done in the western region—the Usumacinta and Pasion River Valleys—where collapse did occur (Demarest, Chapter 6, this volume). In addition, the detailed research had been concentrated on a few relatively large sites that tended to draw a natural interest in the elements of elite classicism. Thus there was a general tendency to see the southern region as constituting the center or “core” of the Maya lowlands in a cultural, and not merely a geographical, sense. These factors plus others, such as a reliance on dated monuments and standing architecture for assessing occupation at most Maya sites, had led many researchers to see the termination of long-established Classic traits and behavior as a rapid and catastrophic process that affected the whole southern region more or less simultaneously. The horizon concept for Terminal Classic lowland ceramics may have been a valid one thirty years ago, but it certainly is not now.