We deliberately chose to use the word “transformations” in the title of our chapter, because we believe that is the operative term for the period in question, certainly in the central Peten lakes region if not elsewhere in the lowlands. Rather than marking solely the “termination” of Classic civilization, it is also a period of initiation of numerous patterns that are distinctly Postclassic. At the same time, it is generally an interval of flux—population movements and material exchanges— that play a role in those endings and beginnings, but also have their own dynamic. We see the Terminal Classic in the central Peten lakes area as a “Transformational Classic,” a time of continuities and changes between the Classic and the Postclassic.
Discussions about the Classic “collapse” and the end of the institution of divine kingship in the southern lowlands tend to imply, if not state outright, that the entire system of Classic Maya politico-religious organization (cum “government”) collapsed and died. However, while divine kingship and Long Count dating may have ceased, other components of the underpinnings of Classic lowland civilization and geo-politico-ritual organization were maintained through the Postclassic period. These include calendrics, cosmovision, shared architectural programs, period-ending rituals, as well as calendrically based political organization based on celebration of k’atun and may cycles. In this regard it is useful to remember an often ignored point: Mayapan revived the Classic period-ending stela complex, with at least thirteen sculptured stelae and twenty-five or more plain monuments (Proskouriakoff 1962: 134). Landa’s informants (Tozzer 1941) told him that they were accustomed to erect these monuments every twenty years. One stela per k’atun for thirteen k’atuns equals 256 years, a may cycle. After this span of stela erection, Mayapan experienced the foreordained “collapse” and “abandonment”—or ritual termination— of a may center, in a scenario not unlike that of the southern lowlands in the Terminal Classic some 500 years (two may cycles) earlier.
Thus we find it difficult to accept the idea that lowland Maya civilization “collapsed.” Following the reasoning in Chapter 1, the Maya “civilization as ‘great tradition’ ” neither ended nor necessarily became less complex or fragmented. Rather, it transformed itself into something different—perhaps describable as a transition from more theocratic and less secular, to less theocratic and more secular. And even though it might be argued that “collapse” pertains primarily to elite ruling authority (especially divine kings), occurred at only the largest sites, and did not result in complete depopulation, it is evident from the data above that the k’atun - and may-based political organization of the Preclassic and Classic periods survived through the Terminal Classic and Postclassic periods and up to the time that it was recorded during the Colonial period in the books of the chilam b ’alams.
At the same time, by the end of the Late Classic period there is evidence for intersite conflict in many parts of the lowlands, and surely such hostilities would have played a major role in transformations of the Terminal Classic period. There is, for example, considerable evidence in Classic Maya art of the capture and sacrifice of elites by their counterparts from other kingdoms, with the Bonampak murals (Miller 1986) being the archetypical illustrations of battles between such factions. While there is disagreement over the degree to which war was ritualized competition, and the degree to which success in combat yielded ideological versus material gain for the victors (e. g., Demarest et al. 1997; Webster 1993, 1998, 2000), it is clear that Classic-period wars began at a small scale, with a limited number of individuals involved.
In the late Late Classic period, however, the nature of warfare was transformed. The construction of fortifications in site centers (Wolley 1995), the relocation of population centers to physiographically isolated locations such as islands and peninsulas (Demarest, Chapter 6, this volume; Demarest and Escobedo 1997; Pugh 2001; D. Rice 1986), and the construction of massive moat-wall complexes at defensible boundaries of sites (Pugh 2001; Rice, Rice and Pugh 1998; Wolley and Wright 1990) suggest to us that local populations were increasingly involved in and the focus of warfare, and that motivations for hostilities included control over territory.
One implication of this level of Late Classic warfare is that it would have resulted in vast numbers of refugees and displaced persons. Regardless of time and circumstances, displaced and migrating populations change social and political landscapes. Disfranchised and dispossessed, they abandoned fields and stores, and often have been denied access to food. They are invariably suffering malnu-UTtion, diseases, and fertility problems related to living in impoverished circumstances. They are susceptible to diseases that can spread with their movement (The Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report [MMWR] Http://www. cdc. gov/ mmwr/). Displaced persons and refugees put added stress on soil and water resources, altering the natural ecology and often creating famine conditions (Bellos 1997). Most consistently, however, they disrupt the economic, social, and political systems of neighboring regions, exacerbating problems those polities and populations may be already facing and forcing redefinition of in-group and out-group boundaries. As of December 31, 2000, the estimate of refugees worldwide was 14,544,000, with the largest numbers coming from Africa—3,346,00—and the Middle East—6,035,000 [World Refugee Survey 2001: Table 2). An additional twenty million persons were estimated to be internally displaced worldwide. Causes of this out-migration and displacement include: alleged armed insurgency; border war; civil war; foreign occupation; lawlessness resulting from a breakdown of civil and moral authorities; and religious and political violence. Units of population movement varied from whole towns to fragments of families (mothers and their children).Warfare between ethnic factions in Somalia in 1988-1994, for example, produced more than 500,000 deaths from the violence and population displacement (Http://www. refugees. org/world/countryrpt/africa/somalia. htm). In the southern zone of the country, factional disputes degenerated into intensified conflict between villages, as well as between fortified districts of the capital city of Mogadishu, producing a rapid political devolution that reduced the nation to rule by rival petty warlords (Anan 1997; McKinley 1997). During the worst of the turmoil in 1992, an estimated 800,000 Somalis were refugees in neighboring countries and two million were internally displaced. In the more peaceful northern zone of Somalia, which received continuous small-group migrations of internally displaced people, the city of Bossaso alone increased from 10,000 to 80,000, pushing leaders of Bossaso to attempt political reformulations, experiments in clan-based government focused upon ancient Somali principles and ideology, in an effort to consolidate the diverse elements of incoming refugee populations (McKinley 1997).
We reference these details here because we see in them an analogy to the situation in the central Peten lakes region during the Terminal Classic period. The lakes region seems to have been an intermediate or final destination for numerous groups of people on the move between about a. d. 800 to 1000. The reasons for the movements may be varied, including political factionalism, ideological or “religious” disputes, social or ethnic strife, agricultural stresses, or other causes. We can refer to these groups as refugees—fleeing something in their homeland—or more neutrally as migrants.
Whatever the causes and whatever the terminology, it is clear from multiple sources of evidence that, while the Peten lakes region experienced some population loss during the Terminal Classic, it also saw considerable in-migration. Architectural styles (the introduction of C-shaped structures) and ceramics (including Fine Orange) bespeak the arrival of migrants from the war-tom Pasion region, while architecture (the Nixtun-Ch’ich’ ballcourt), stelae (glyphs and styles), and ceramics (imitation slate wares?) indicate contacts with—and probably migration from—the Puuc region. In this context of movements and interactions in central Peten, the erection of monuments emphasizing extended texts and scenes of conversations (diplomacy? negotiations?), rather than individual rulers’ power, seems highly appropriate.
Elsewhere (Rice and Rice n. d.) we have discussed the Peten lakes area in terms of its constituting a frontier, particularly in the Contact period. As we noted there,
[i]nterpretations of frontier-type situations tend to be couched in terms of
Dichotomies: frontier as place vs. frontier as process. . . . They may be
Regarded as spatially dynamic and socially open, or as static and closed backwaters. They may be occupied and contested or an empty no man’s land, close to a homeland or distant from it, permeable or impermeable, inclusive or exclusive, long-term or short-term. Frontiers may be conceived as repositories of tradition or as arenas of innovation. Through time, they may expand or shrink. They may be literally “front lines” in a wave of movement of something new... or they may be “last lines of defense” in the conservation of cultural traditions. Often, they are all these at once.
Frontiers are places, but what makes them interesting are not so much the characteristics of place but rather the processes played out within them. We see the Peten lakes area during the Terminal Classic period as a frontier in the sense of being “spatially dynamic and socially open” to in-migration and new ideas, but also “occupied and contested” as evidenced by settlements on islands and peninsulas, sometimes fortified. It was a region of dynamic and contested social and political identities, simultaneously a “repository of tradition” (the role of the Kan Ek’ dynasty and stelae glorifying ancestors) and an “arena of innovation” in architectural and iconographic styles. It seems to have maintained this frontier status well into the Early Postclassic period, perhaps up to ca. a. d. 1200 or so.
It is doubtless significant—although the nature and implications must await further fieldwork and testing—that the evidence for population incursions, new iconographic styles, new architectural forms, and imported ceramics in the Terminal Classic is found in the western part of the lakes district, specifically around Lake Peten Itza. The eastern extreme of the region, that is. Lakes Yaxha and Sacnab, seems to have been relatively isolated from these intrusions. It appears, therefore, that what we have identified as an east-west ethno-political or ethno-social differentiation in the Late Postclassic period in the Peten lakes region— Kowoj in the east and Itza in the west—may trace its roots into the Terminal Classic period and the many transformations occurring during these centuries.
It is also significant that there existed eastern and western ethno-socio-politi-cal divisions in both northern and southern lowlands for nearly seven centuries beginning in the Terminal Classic period. We cannot resist the temptation to suggest that this might represent a new Postclassic quadripartition of the geopolitical landscape, something on the order of what Marcus (1976) presented for the Classic period.
World History
