Recent adjustments to the chronology of the northern Maya Lowlands have brought about a closer alignment of the decline of Terminal Classic/Early Postclassic Yucatecan polities with the collapse of the southern Maya states. The collapse of the entire Classic-period societal structure throughout the lowlands can now be compressed into a 200- or 250-year period and seen as a progressive chain of events that began in the south and culminated with the fall of Chichen Itza in the eleventh century. This new reconstruction has led us to propose eliminating the Early Postclassic period, the existence of which was based largely on a purportedly late occupation of Chichen Itza. We assign this final occupation of the Itza capital to the Terminal Classic period, which ended sometime in the eleventh century in the northern Maya Lowlands.

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Excavaciones de salvamento arqueológico en varios sitios aledaños a la ciudad de Mérida han aportado nueva información sobre las características y la ubicación cronológica de las etapas más antiguas de la alfarería maya del noroeste de Yucatan. Un reciente cotejo de previas y nuevas evidencias estratigráficas y la calibración 1-2 sigma de 16 fechas de 14 C provenientes de contextos preclásicos, nos sugiere que la producción del repertorio cerámico Nabanche temprano, el más antiguo hallado hasta ahora en el norte de Yucatan, comenzó en una fecha anterior al año 1000 a.C. Después del año 400 a.C. la alfarería Nabanche temprano empezó a ser reemplazada paulatinamente por nuevos grupos cerámicos, principalmente por el Xanaba rojo, hasta su virtual desaparición al inicio de la era cristiana.

Archaeological explorations and surveys, conducted over the course of the last 140 years, have documented a long history of human occupation of the northwest coast of Yucatán, from Middle Preclassic times (ca. 600 B.C.) to the present. Recent archaeological research, coupled with historic data and oral history, indicate that a 215 kilometer-long estuarine swamp, located behind the narrow coastal barrier beach, served as an intracoastal waterway between Celestún and Dzilám de Bravo. This waterway was a major navigation and trading route in prehispanic and historic times, until the mid-20th century.

This chapter reviews the growing evidence of human presence in the Maya area during Late Paleo-Indian and Archaic times. By the end of the Archaic, around 2500-2000 B.C., agriculture had spread throughout much of the Maya area, possibly accompanied by the first semi-permanent settlements. During the Early Preclassic, around 2000-1500 B.C., if not earlier, the first permanent farming settlements appear. The search for preceramic sites on the Yucatan peninsula has not been very successful and in northern Yucatan the earliest permanent settlements with ceramics do not appear until the early part of the Middle Preclassic period, ca. 1000-900 B.C.