Spatial autocorrelation tests and the Classic Maya collapse: Methods and inferences

Terminal Long Count Dates and the Disintegration of Classic Period Maya Polities

“…He argued that the spatial distribution of terminal dates shows a southwest-to-northeast trend and that clusters of terminal dates can be identified within the broader study area, though he did not elaborate on this latter finding. Whitley and Clark (1985) analyzed the same dataset using global spatial autocorrelation and Moran's I to discern the visual patterns in the dataset. Moran's I measures features and associated attributes to evaluate whether the pattern observed is clustered, dispersed, or random (Moran 1950).…”

“…First, do terminal long count dates found on inscribed monuments exhibit broad-scale spatiotemporal patterning? Some studies have suggested spatial patterning, but others indicate that no meaningful spatial trends can be identified from terminal long count dates (Premo 2004;Whitley and Clark 1985). The second question is whether regional and sub-regional spatiotemporal patterns indicating polity disintegration can be determined.…”

“…Previous efforts to use Maya long count calendar dates to characterize the timing of political collapse concentrated on statistical analyses of dates from epigraphic sources and the search for broad spatial trends (Bove 1981;Hamblin and Pitcher 1980;Kvamme 1990;Neiman 1997;Premo 2004;Whitley and Clark 1985;Williams 1993). They suggest that the disintegration of Maya polities occurred either in a southwest-to-northeast trajectory in a relatively abrupt manner (Bove 1981;Kvamme 1990) or outward from core areas in the central Peten region of Guatemala (Neiman 1997).…”

Archaeology and geostatistics

“…The data set was used to illustrate how large scale trends (that is, a spatially varying mean) may affect the predictions made using kriging, so the objective was only indirectly archaeological in nature. In a specifically archaeological application, Neiman [27] used variograms to explore spatial variation in the terminal dates of Maya settlements (Whitley [40] and Kvamme [20] had a similar focus).…”

“…Specifically, I was estimated for several spatial lags (that is, for pairs of locations separated by several distance and direction vectors), enabling assessment of structure in the spatial distribution of the index. Other studies have applied similar statistical measures of spatial autocorrelation to the terminal distribution of dated monuments at lowland Maya sites [20,40].…”