In the southeast, changes in the Terminal Classic period were complex and are still poorly understood. Fash et al. (Chapter 12) describe the political fragmentation of the Copan kingdom in the eighth century, followed by political collapse in the ninth. The intense competition manifest in ritual architecture, monuments, and more directly in warfare, reached a critical point in the mid-eighth century. In a. d. 738 Copan was defeated by Quirigua, after which the Copan dynasty was revived by ruler Yax Pasah, who maintained only a shaky grasp on authority by sharing power with leaders in the Copan Valley. Also as with the Petexbatun and other regions, this fragmentation was followed within sixty years by the collapse of the elite center, with no public architecture or monuments raised after a. d. 822 (Fash et al.. Chapter 12). A parallel political collapse occurred at their rival center of Quirigua, where the last monument was raised in A. D. 810, although reduced constructional activity continued in the center (Sharer 1991).
Controversy and debate in this volume surround the issue of what exactly happened to the general population outside the center after the political collapse of Copan. Recall that the neighboring populations there were only marginally involved in the Classic Maya tradition. Ceramic and artifact styles and architecture at most minor centers remained in modified forms of non-Classic Maya southeastern regional traditions after the establishment of the Classic Maya elite ceremonial centers at Copan and Quirigua in the fourth to fifth centuries. After the political collapse of these kingdoms or perhaps a Maya elite withdrawal from these southern valleys, these regions returned to local traditions of ceramics and artifacts and to a much lower level of political complexity (Manahan 1996, 1999; Sharer 1991; Fash and Stuart 1991; Webster and Freter 1990a, 1990b).
Disagreement concerns how long non-elite Classic Maya populations continued in these respective valleys, how rapidly populations declined, and how quickly artifact patterns changed from Classic to Postclassic styles. Some evidence from ceramic chronology and excavations has been interpreted as indicating a rapid collapse and decline of population after the end of the dynastic centers (Braswell 1992; Manahan 2000; Fash et al.. Chapter 12), while chronology based on the obsidian hydration dating techniques argues for a much slower decline in the Copan Valley, with large populations only slowly diminishing over two to three centuries (Freter 1988, 1994; Webster and Freter 1990a, 1990b; Webster, Freter, and Gonlin 2000; Webster et al.. Chapter 11). This type of disagreement over regional details in archaeology is common. In this case, its resolution has fewer implications for the nature of the political collapse of the Classic Maya than for interpretations of local populations’ degree of dependence on the ideological or economic leadership of the k’uhul ajaw.
In southeastern Peten and Belize, events and processes in the period from A. D. 750 to 1000 were highly complex and completely variable. This region is occupied by speakers of the Mopan language, which apparently was the earliest to separate from Late Classic proto-Yukatekan. Laporte (Chapter 10) describes in the Mopan Valley and the Maya Mountains the decline of some centers in population and public construction, coeval with the expansion and florescence of other centers and beginnings of monument erection in the mid-eighth century. Centers such as Ixtonton, Ucanal, Sacul, and others flourished at the expense of their neighbors, concentrating power, population, and constructional activities and surviving for almost two centuries after the decline of many western and central Peten Classic Maya centers. A distinctive element of the Late and Terminal Classic in southeastern Peten is the continued use of the E-Group “observatory” (or “Public Ritual Complex,” Laporte, Chapter 10) common to Late Preclassic/Early Classic k’atun celebration ritual in central Peten. These ties to central Peten are further supported by affiliation of the region’s Terminal Classic ceramic complex, Ixmabuy, with the Tepeu 3 sphere (Laporte, Chapter 10). The Terminal Classic Mopan region centers absorbed into their new political formations influences from northern Yucatan in architectural facades, monument style, and ceramics (Laporte, Chapter 10).
Structurally, these events and processes were parallel to the earlier collapse or decline of centers in the far west, with the continuation of centers such as Seibal and Altar de Sacrificios. As with Altar and Seibal, some Terminal Classic states of southeastern Peten relied upon new styles in monuments, artifacts (and presumably, ideology) that were an amalgam of Classic Maya traits with new, often northern, influences. As at Seibal and Altar, the Terminal Classic florescence of centers such as Ixtonton and Ucanal also may have involved movement of refugees from surrounding collapsing centers seeking new leadership and security under these Terminal Classic states. The shifts in the Mopan Valley region, however, appear to be a more gradual, slow, and prolonged process. Also like those western centers, these innovative Terminal Classic states later declined, with reduced populations left by Postclassic times (Laporte, Chapter 10).
The seven chapters on Belizean sites and regions describe a similarly variable mosaic of some collapsing Classic centers and other flourishing states with new mixtures of styles and political structures. Between a. d. 750 and 950, some sites were rapidly abandoned, including both epicenters and their surrounding countryside (Adams et al.. Chapter 15; Ashmore et al.. Chapter 14; Hammond and Tourtellot, Chapter 13), while others were stable or even grew in population and epicenter construction (Adams et al.. Chapter 15; Chase and Chase, Chapter 16). Still other centers such as Lamanai and some coastal sites simply carried on with great continuity, and changes in artifact styles and inter-regional contacts were incorporated into local traditions (e. g., Pendergast 1986a; Chase and Chase, Chapter 16). Some areas in northern Belize and on coastal islands, peninsulas, and lagoons experienced an irregular but pronounced increase in population at the end of the Classic period in the ninth to eleventh centuries. Again, this pattern suggests movement of populations, perhaps from the collapsing polities to the west (Adams et al.. Chapter 15; Masson and Mock, Chapter 17; Andres and Pybum, Chapter 18). Andres and Pyburn (Chapter 18) show how the use of coastal centers as refuges in times of radical change or disruption recurs in later episodes, including the conquest and Colonial periods. Some centers were then able to create successful mercantile enclaves linked to emerging coastal trade networks (Masson and Mock, Chapter 17; Andres and Pyburn, Chapter 18).
One example of an impressive, more aggressive regional polity in the Terminal Classic period in Belize is the kingdom of Caracol (Chase and Chase, Chapter 16). Despite shifts and changes, populations there continued to be high and monuments were erected until the very end of the ninth century (Chase and Chase 1987a, 1987b). There and at other northern Belize sites such as Nohmul (Chase and Chase 1982), monuments, architecture, and some artifacts show influence from the Terminal Classic polities of northern Yucatan (A. Chase 1985b). Yet other nearby kingdoms, such as Xunantunich and many smaller sites, were greatly depopulated or even completely abandoned (Ashmore et al.. Chapter 14), and farther north some Classic-period occupations ended with episodes of warfare and mass sacrifice of captives. At Colha, for example, a “skull pit” contained the skeletons of thirty sacrificed individuals heaped in a mass grave (Steele et al. 1980).
The overall picture in Belize was of a very complex mix of historical events and processes, as yet poorly understood, but certainly later than the western and central Peten declines. Yet in the Early Postclassic, Maya civilization flourished in many areas of Belize, with new economic and stylistic elements (Andres and Pybum, Chapter 18; Masson and Mock, Chapter 17). It is still unclear whether the northern traits seen at this time reflect migrations, the intrusion of smaller elite groups, merchants or warriors, or the adoption by local elites of new ideas (see also A. Chase 1985b; Chase and Chase 1982, 1987a, 1987b). All of these factors may have been involved, because some sites such as Colha and Nohmul register clear changes, while others such as Lamanai appear to have added elements to a tradition more continuous with Classic patterns (Pendergast 1986a; Chase and Chase, Chapter 2). Many sites, like Caracol, thrived in the Terminal Classic yet experienced a sharp decline by the eleventh century and the beginnings of the Postclassic era (Chase and Chase 1982, Chapter 16). Sites with continuing occupations, such as Lamanai, Chau Hiix, and growing centers on the coasts and cays of Belize, became part of a new, thriving Postclassic occupation with an emphasis on long-distance and coastal trade, inland-coastal exchange of products, and closer ties to the north and to other regions of Mesoamerica (Masson and Mock, Chapter 17; Andres and Pybum, Chapter 18).
In Belize, the only consistency apparent is the disappearance of the Classic institution of divine kingship and the spectacular architecture and trappings of power evidenced in calendrically based ritual. Systematic site-by-site, subregion-by-subregion comparison and correlation of data must be undertaken for all of
Belize. The large number of sites excavated there in the past twenty years should yield a more comprehensible pattern of change. Scholars working there need to increase communication between their many projects, including alignment of chronologies and typologies and collaborative construction of subregional culture-histories.
World History
