Chichen Itza is clearly a remarkable and distinctive historical development in the Terminal Classic period of the north. In our current perspective, the cultural changes at Yaxuna during the Terminal Classic are due in large part to the growing domination of the Itza, extending out from their capital in the center of the peninsula. Ultimately, an Itza incursion and occupation marks the end of the Terminal Classic at Yaxuna. Nevertheless, we have identified an earlier component of the Terminal Classic that is just as important at Yaxuna, one that is quite distinctive from what follows. Following close on the heels of Coba’s occupation of Yaxuna in the Late Classic (Ardren et al. 1998), this early Terminal Classic period is distinguished by a variant of the Cehpech ceramic complex at Yaxuna.
We believe Cehpech (predominantly slate ware) ceramics developed into a fully functional complex in the Puuc hills. From there their makers and purveyors began an inexorable eastward march across the peninsula sometime in the early a. d. 700s. A developmental slate ware sequence is indicated by rudimentary slate wares from Early Classic contexts at Yaxuna (representing 3.3 percent of sealed Early Classic lots, about the same as many other imports), Ek Balam (Bey et al.
1998), and Coba (Robles 1990). Nevertheless, it is not until the end of the Terminal Classic that they represent a homogenous ceramic assemblage at these respective central, northeastern, and eastern sites.
Therefore, while the rise of Chichen Itza helps define the history of the northern Terminal Classic regionally, the appearance of Cehpech ceramics is likewise an indicator of Terminal Classic peoples there. Prior to the articulation of chronological and ceramic sphere “overlap” models in the northern lowlands (Andrews and Sabloff 1986; Lincoln 1986), archaeologists tended to treat Cehpech potterymaking people as chronologically earlier than the heyday at Chichen Itza: Cehpech ceramics dated to the Terminal Classic and Itza history was a product of a Mexicanized Early Postclassic (R. Smith 1971; Brainerd 1958; Tozzer 1957; Andrews IV 1965). Continuing research in the northern peninsula has now demonstrated considerable temporal overlap between Chichen Itza and the Cehpech-using sites.
The ceramic types (Fine Orange, Plumbate) that played a major role in defining a distinctively foreign Early Postclassic Chichen Itza are found in small quantities and usually in specialized deposits. These features are quite often outside the routine construction and midden contexts where the majority of Sotuta wares have been found (Lincoln 1986; Suhler and Freidel 1995; Cobos Palma, Chapter 22, this volume). Likewise, the foreign elements in the iconography of Chichen Itza notwithstanding (Taube 1994), there is a core iconographic program that remained mainstream Maya in both content and meaning throughout the late florescence of the city (Kurjack, Maldonado, and Robertson 1991; Scheie and Freidel 1990; Krochock 1998). Even the architecture developed out of and was built using earlier extant peninsular forms (Winemiller and Cobos 1999; Pollock 1980: 587). We think there was a close relationship between the Puuc cities and Chichen Itza and between Cehpech and Sotuta ceramic spheres. In our view the majority of Chichen Itza Sotuta ceramics were slate wares, a variant of the Cehpech ceramic wares that were popular throughout the northern peninsula during the Terminal Classic.
The mechanisms by which Cehpech ceramics and technology spread across the northern peninsula as coherent complexes, completely replacing previous ceramic complexes, are not yet fully understood. We have developed the following Terminal Classic processual model to provide a framing context to complement our discussion of Terminal Classic Yaxuna. For purposes of explanation, orientation, and cross-reference with other peninsular sites, we have divided the northern Terminal Classic into four stages. The time periods provided should be taken more as placeholders than hard boundaries and will surely shift as we (and others) further develop this model.
1. Slate Ware Expansion and Conquest (a. d. 700-800)
At the end of the Late Classic, Puuc groups emerging from sites such as Oxkintok, Sayil, and Uxmal began campaigns of eastward movement and territorial expansion. This period sees the Puuc-Cehpech absorption or conquest of sites such as Yaxuna, Coba, and Tancah, as well as the Puuc founding of Chichen Itza. At Terminal Classic Yaxuna, Cehpech slate wares appear as a functional complex, in concert with core-veneer architecture, a change in burial patterns, and evidence of new rulership at the site. Historically, the Chilam Balam of Chumayel records that those who would eventually be known as the Itza entered the peninsula during Katun 8 at the end of the seventh century (Roys 1967: 7072).
As we (and others) have noted, the first Terminal Classic structures built at Chichen Itza, for example, the Caracol, were dedicated with early Cehpceh ceramics (Lincoln 1986; Suhler and Freidel 1995). Additionally, we would assign to this same period at Chichen Itza traditional Maya accession architecture, for example, Monjas East Wing with its tripartite depiction of the cosmos and the ruler seated in the heavens. One of the early Terminal Classic buildings at Yaxuna, Structure 6F-68, discussed in more detail below, was built as a popol na, or council house, a structure type first recognized at Late Classic Copan. These factors lead us to believe that competing regional polities that practiced the Maya concept of kingship first mark the northern lowland Terminal Classic. The recent discovery of a named king at Ek Balam (Vargas and Castillo 2001) serves to further reinforce this idea. These polities sent out populations, technologies, and even perhaps ruling families in order to make territorial claims at geographically strategic cities like Yaxuna, Coba, Ek Balam, and Chichen Itza.
World History
