Over the past decade, data from the Petexbatun project have helped fuel a growing interest in the role of warfare in the end of Classic Maya civilization. Some scholars, however, have responded with skepticism that war could be a factor in the many changes involved in the Classic/Postclassic transition of lowland kingdoms referred to as “Classic Maya civilization.” The mortality rates associated with warfare are, indeed, usually insufficient to explain presumed widespread and rapid depopulation, and ecological causes have been sought instead. Yet such responses indicate a stereotyped view of the Classic Maya “collapse” as a uniform process involving widespread abandonment of the lowlands. As the diverse papers in this volume demonstrate, the end of the Classic period of lowland Maya civilization was a highly varied phenomenon with population decline in many regions, but with political florescence and transformation in other zones. Peak population areas were redistributed in new patterns with new affiliations.
Precisely these types of realignments do occur after periods of large-scale warfare and population displacement. As the United Nations Refugee Commissions have demonstrated (e. g., Hakovirta 1986; Anan 1997; Cohen and Deng 1998), massive population displacement and its consequences can be the most devastating cost of war. The movement of refugees caused by war often has a profound impact on regional ecology, leading to overexploitation of water and soil resources and eventually to famine (e. g.. Black and Vaughan 1993; Bellos 1997; Black 1998). Exhausted emigrating groups are susceptible to disease, which can spread with their movement (e. g., Cohen and Deng 1998). Alternatively, smaller-scale migrations can have a positive impact on regions that have economic and political systems capable of absorbing and utilizing new sources of labor and skills (see below). What is most consistent is the political impact of population movements, which can change stable neighboring systems and transform neighboring polities (e. g., Rogge 1987; Cohen and Deng 1998). Recent events in Somalia, Yugoslavia, and central Africa have driven home this point. Disease, famine, ecological decline, and the contagious spread of warfare or other forms of political disruption often follow in the wake of regional wars and subsequent migrations. Again, however, migrants can simulate political systems infused with this new, generally subordinate, source of labor.
At the end of the Classic period, shifts in population are accompanied by both declines and florescences of polities in the lowlands, some with new political forms. Political fragmentation in central Peten was followed initially by increased occupation in defensible locations in the lake region (Rice and Rice, Chapter 7, this volume). Subsequent Postclassic alliances occupied central Peten more widely, but vied in regional wars for control. Belize witnessed an erratic ninth - to tenth-century pattern, with some kingdoms continuing with general stability while other centers were abandoned, grew dramatically, or continued successfully, absorbing both northern and Pasion-region influences (e. g., Pendergast 1986a; Adams et al. Chapter 15, this volume; D. Chase and A. Chase 1982; A. Chase and D. Chase 1985, Chapters 3 and 16, this volume).
Meanwhile, to the north, the Puuc region and central Yucatan witnessed cultural transformation, florescence, and population growth, but accompanied by an increase in siege and fortification warfare. Notably, western Peten ceramic influences, political titles, and even identical epicenter fortification layouts appear in Yucatan at this time (Stuart 1995; Scheie and Mathews 1998; Scheie and Grube 1995; Carmean et al. Chapter 19, this volume; Suhler et al. Chapter 20, this volume). The low defensive walls encircling Yaxuna, Ek Balam, Uxmal, Chacchob, Dzonot Ake, Cuca, and many other northern sites in the ninth to tenth centuries were virtually identical to those encircling the architectural epicenters, small sites, and villages in the Petexbatun in the late eighth and early ninth centuries (Suhler et al. Chapter 20, this volume; Carmean et al. Chapter 19, this volume; Ringle et al. Chapter 21, this volume; Webster 1980). Meanwhile, to the southeast in the Mopan region (Laporte, Chapter 10, this volume). Classic-style kingdoms continued to thrive, but registered strong influences from the north and west. They only later declined in a gradual, as yet poorly understood, process.
It is probable, then, that warfare and collapse in the Petexbatun and lower Pasion regions affected processes in other regions through migration and its consequences. This is not to say that the Maya lowlands collapsed through a “domino effect” of warfare. Rather, the movement of peoples from the western Peten would have simply impacted processes of change already beginning elsewhere. The common problems of the K’ul Ajaw system, the competitive pressures from other regions of Mesoamerica, and in some regions ecological stresses, already were guiding kingdoms elsewhere to the various types of changes that they experienced later in the ninth and tenth centuries. The political collapse of the western lowland kingdoms and subsequent migrations may help explain the chronological sequencing of these changes and their concurrence within a century and a half Notably, while Terminal Classic manifestations in each region differed, in all areas the K’ul -Ajaw system (and its monumental accoutrements) was abandoned or transformed into the varied multepal political systems characteristic of the Postclassic era.
World History
