CONCLUSIONS

Shifting, distinct settlement pattern strategies in the Petexbatun reflect social and political events in the course of the history of the region. The earliest inhabitants entered a virgin landscape and logically chose the fertile zones with the most abundant natural resources in which to build their homes. As soils became less productive through the Late Preclassic, Early Classic inhabitants moved up onto the escarpment but still focused settlement on locations that were well situated to exploit the environment. Natural springs and deep soils in sinkholes were used in combination with increasingly complex subsistence strategies to support a small but growing population. The Petexbatun region experienced a population boom during the first half of the Late Classic. Population figures reached their height at all centers, and even the landscape between centers filled with small villages interspersed with agricultural fields delimited by walls and terraces. Despite heavy occupation, there was little appreciable ecological decline. While deforestation did occur, it was ameliorated by a well-managed system that included check dams, terraces, field walls, box gardens, reservoirs, managed forests, and other features that controlled ecological deterioration (Dunning et al. 1997; Dunning and Beach 2004).

However, settlement strategies shifted yet again with the fall of Dos Pilas. In the late eighth century, virtually the only deciding factor in settlement location in the Petexbatun was defensibility. At Dos Pilas and Aguateca, energy was focused on building complex defenses. Nearby, fertile intersite zones were abandoned in favor of remote, resource-poor hilltops that could be more easily defended. Only at Punta de Chimino, where box gardens were established on a fortified portion of the peninsula, was subsistence clearly considered in addition to defensibility. By the ninth century, the Petexbatun escarpment was virtually devoid of occupation, with only very small villages located near the springs of Tamarindito and Dos Pilas. The last center with public architecture was the low-lying, fertile peninsula of Punta de Chimino with its deep soils and access to the abundant aquatic resources of Laguna Petexbatun. The population decline in the Petexbatun was the result of warfare and population shifts in the Late Classic. Despite debates about ultimate causality, here this final settlement shift and the simultaneous demographic collapse occurred in the context of ongoing endemic warfare.

One of the most significant facts in the abandonment of the Petexbatun region is that, in comparison to the Late and Terminal Classic changes elsewhere in the lowlands, the Petexbatun decline was the earliest—yet one of the most rapid— shifts, a true “collapse” in the terms defined by Tainter (1988) and Yoffee and Cowgill (1988). This leaves us to ponder the impact of the Petexbatun abandonment on the remainder of the Maya world. As described in the next chapter of this volume (Demarest), recent data from other western areas suggest that the early political collapse of the Petexbatun kingdom may have set in motion or, more likely, accelerated. Late and Terminal Classic changes elsewhere in Maya civilization (see also Barrientos et al. 2000; Johnston et al. 2001; Demarest 2001; Demarest and Escobedo 1998). In the Petexbatun itself, the settlement (O’Mansky 2003) and paleoecological evidence (Dunning and Beach 2004) reflect a nearly complete abandonment of most zones by a. d. 830.