The dates assigned to the Terminal Classic in our region of study correspond to the ceramic sphere Tepeu 3. Equivalent complexes for this period include the Eznab phase in Tikal, Tepeu 3 in Uaxactun, and Tolobojo in Yaxha, all beginning around the year a. d. 830. However, because the ceramic assemblage of the Tepeu 3 sphere shows significant regionalization in comparison to Tepeu 2, this has led to dating discrepancies for the end of this period in the different subregions of the central Maya lowlands (Rice 1986). Although several scholars continue to consider concluding the Classic period in the year a. d. 900 in locations as distant as Yaxha (Hermes, Noriega, and Calderon 1997), La Milpa (Hammond et al. 2000), and the Maya Mountains (Dunham and Prufer 1998), at the present time this position is being re-evaluated based on ceramic materials, with the proposal that the Terminal Classic of the central area and eastern regions continued until a. d. 950-1000, depending on the characteristics presented by each site (Laporte and Fialko 1995; J. Braswell 1998; G. Braswell 1998; Rice, personal communication).
The term “Terminal Classic” is restricted exclusively to the Maya area and was first employed with the study of the post-construction deposits of Temple I at Tikal (Adams and Trik 1961). According to Culbert (1993, 1997), Eznab pottery at Tikal is similar to the earlier material of the Ik and Imix phase of the Late Classic, and reflects a general decadence in variability, although Rice (1986) adds that the ceramic changes related more to the pastes. Without a doubt, two of the clearest diagnostics in the ceramic industry are the appearance of Fine Orange ware, which reflects ties between the central area and the Pasion-Usumacinta drainages (Foias 1996; Foias and Bishop 1997: 283), as well as the sudden disappearance of polychrome pottery. These features accompany more significant changes used as markers of the Terminal Classic in central Peten, such as political organization, disappearance of inscriptions, dramatic change in funerary patterns, and demographic decline and shifts in settlement patterns.
The Terminal Classic represents a critical stage, a product of deficiencies and failures in the government and its system of administration that could not judge the cost of the political wear due to an exaggerated centralized power in the hands of the supreme sovereign and his reduced elite group. As a consequence, in Tikal, Uaxactun, and neighboring cities, processes of leadership and economic and social instability were unchained during the second half of the ninth century, increasing over time until the collapse of these centers. However, this phenomenon of instability manifested itself in central Peten almost a century after the wars of disintegration in the Petexbatun region and many decades after the collapse in the Usumacinta zone. For these reasons, the time span assigned to the Terminal Classic varies according to the region under study.
The investigations undertaken in Dos Pilas and other Petexbatun centers have discovered that the local crisis and collapse began with the process of regional disintegration in this zone. This occurred, in part, when minor polities, such as those of the Petexbatun, had to fulfill the pact supporting Calakmul in its continuous wars against other sites. Without doubt, the minor polities were ruined by the conflicts and wars commanded by the major states of Calakmul and Tikal (Martin and Grube 1995; Demarest and Valdes 1995, 1996; Demarest 1997). The continuous battles undertaken by the rulers of Dos Pilas since its founding also took them to their final destruction, because the last leader, K’awil Kan K’inich (Ruler 4) was captured by the army of Chanal Balam, ruler of Tamarindito, in the year A. D. 761. At the death of this sovereign, he was interred with honor in a funerary temple. His mortuary offering included two sacrificial knives, one of obsidian placed over his pelvis, and another larger (0.50 meter in length), sharp knife of chert deposited over his chest and between his arms as a symbol of the great warrior-chief of vanquishing armies. Iconographic evidence of this time period shows that these knives served to extract the hearts and to decapitate sacrificial victims (Valdes 1997: 327). The defeat of Dos Pilas without a doubt altered relationships in this riverine zone and led to the questioning of the supreme power of the traditionally respected major centers by the small dependent sites, affecting the scheme of alliances maintained by the ruling elites.
This disequilibrium affected commercial routes as alliances were suddenly broken, interrupting the right of passage from one place to another and access to sumptuary goods for religious ceremonies. This weakness, and the rapidity with which the conflicts propagated, caused one site after another throughout the region to stop sculpting monuments during the eighth and ninth centuries. But, in the same conservative manner that they sculpted their rulers during the eighth century, the traditional and hierarchical society of Tikal responded with more confidence to the worrisome news from afar, showing that it possessed a better or more complex organization that permitted the cities of the central area to last longer. However, this changed at the end of the ninth century and at the beginning of the tenth century, when the cessation of inscriptions, the disappearance of the polychrome pottery with palace scenes, the absence of exotics due to the interruption of commercial routes, and the dramatic change in the placement of burials show the decline of the traditional political dynastic system. Thus, in Tikal the last carved monument dates to a. d. 869, while twenty years later, the last monuments were inscribed at Uaxactun, Jimbal, Ixlu, and La Muneca. Stela 6 of Xultun (a. d. 899) was the last monument sculpted in stone in the central zone. This same phenomenon also clearly affected the sites located to the north of Uaxactun, in the Mirador basin (Forsyth 1989; 134; Hansen 1996: 4—11), where the densest settlements, such as Nakbe, ceased producing Codex-style polychrome pottery, and the weak regional interaction cracked, destroying minor sites at the same time.
With this perspective of crisis and exhaustion, the elite could not confront the changes, nor did it have sufficient force to plant a new model with enough validity to reorient their lives and activities. During the tenth century, the sites of central Peten were rapidly abandoned, sometimes in a dramatic manner, leaving behind their old objects of daily use in the palace rooms. The lower-class city dwellers and farmers continued to live at Tikal and Uaxactun but moved from their original homes toward the center of these cities to occupy the vaulted edifices abandoned by the upper class (Ricketson 1937; Smith 1950; Puleston 1974; Valdes 1985; Laporte and Fialko 1995). After the collapse, little is known about the fortunes of the elite families, as they disappear from history without ever again using written records.
It is interesting to note that archaeological investigations undertaken in southeast Peten and in northwest Belize have detected an irregular pattern of settlement for Tepeu 3. According to these studies, many major and minor centers in southeast Peten declined and the population became concentrated, especially in the zone of Dolores, where the site of Ixtonton centralized a large part of ritual and residential activities (Laporte and Quezada 1998: 732). On the other hand, R. Adams (Demarest and Escobedo 1987: 703) indicates that some sites in northwest Belize experienced great growth during the Terminal Classic, and others only increased in a modest way, while a third group of sites suffered a strong decline. These inconsistencies are notable in the pottery of La Milpa, where Tepeu 3 ceramics are more similar to sites in southern Yucatan and the rest of the Belize region than with the sites of central Peten (Kosakowsky et al. 1998: 661).
A general opinion among Maya archaeologists signals that it is impossible to define the exact moment when the Terminal Classic ends and the Early Postclassic begins, mainly because of the continuing lack of refinement in the ceramic analyses of the late materials. In spite of this problem of temporal definition, it is possible to suggest that the irregular pattern in the demographics of the Terminal Classic reflects migrations from the polities that were declining in all parts of the Maya lowlands. In Uaxactun, there is no ceramic evidence later than Tepeu 3, no doubt because of an extremely reduced population remaining at the site. Almost all the sites of the central area remained abandoned, and chaos and despair must have ruled. Nevertheless, some communities of the central Peten lakes region, others in southeast Peten, as well in the Belize area, including Lamanai, were able to provide refuge and security to the migrating people, which allowed them to continue and cross that frontier of cultural time marked as the arrival of the Postclassic period.
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