What Maya Collapse? Terminal Classic Variation in the Maya Lowlands

Abstract

Interest in the lowland Maya collapse is stronger than ever, and there are now hundreds of studies that focus on the era from approximately A.D. 750 to A.D. 1050. In the past, scholars have tended to generalize explanations of the collapse from individual sites and regions to the lowlands as a whole. More recent approaches stress the great diversity of changes that occurred across the lowlands during the Terminal Classic and Early Postclassic periods. Thus, there is now a consensus that Maya civilization as a whole did not collapse, although many zones did experience profound change.

Classic Period collapse of the Central Maya Lowlands: Insights about human–environment relationships for sustainability

“…Surely, this picture is incomplete, but it returns us to the collapse theme proposed 40 y ago (15,20) before current attention to vulnerability, resilience, complex adaptive systems, and sustainability. Complex system interactions generated the collapse and depopulation of the CMLs and fostered its long-term abandonment.…”

“…The Terminal Classic Period, therefore, did not mark the end of pre-Columbian Maya civilization-the 16th century Spanish Conquest did (18). For this reason, some scholars have been reluctant to use the term collapse to describe the ninth century events in the Maya Lowlands (19,20), consistent with recent cautions, advanced in this journal, about the use of collapse themes in general to inform sustainability concerns (21). The Central Maya Lowlands (CMLs) (Fig.…”

Drought, agricultural adaptation, and sociopolitical collapse in the Maya Lowlands

“…is a preeminent example of societal collapse (1), but its causes have been vigorously debated (2)(3)(4)(5). Paleoclimate inferences from lake sediment and cave deposits (6)(7)(8)(9)(10)(11) indicate that the Terminal Classic was marked by a series of major droughts, suggesting that climate change destabilized lowland Maya society.…”

Terminal Classic Maya Heterodoxy and Shrine Vernacularism in the Sibun Valley, Belize

“…Situated on the cusp of the transition between Classic and Postclassic periods (ad 800-1000), this study attends to a time and place of political transformation that -while not well understood -has provided rich fodder for doomsday prophets and environmental determinists alike (see reviews in Aimers 2007;McAnany & Gallareta Negrón 2009;Webster 2002). There is no doubt that these were chaotic times during which millennial-old structures of authority -dynasties with deep taproots -were swept aside.…”