The Last Groups Standing: Living Abandonment at the Ancient Maya Center of Minanha, Belize

The most archaeologically visible dimension of the Classic Maya Collapse is the abandonment of monumental royal courts. Yet, in some cases, non-elite populations lived for centuries in and around Classic Maya centers without rulers. Processes of abandonment among Classic Maya commoners are detectable and reflect their own ritual and social practices divorced from the ritual performances undertaken by the ruling elite. We study the abandonment context and chronology of three domestic groups from the Contreras Valley, an agricultural community located on the outskirts of the Classic Maya center ofMinanha, Belize. There, several artifact assemblages were deposited at the time of abandonment, representing termination rituals. This study goes beyond the ideological dimension of termination rituals to examine how these ceremonies helped reshape the identity of social groups who were about to abandon their home. We explore how the last inhabitants of a mostly abandoned landscape lived through this process of gradual depopulation. Moreover, we evaluate potential explanations for the archaeological processes behind the occurrence or non-occurrence of termination rituals in different domestic groups.

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THE WAY THINGS FALL APART: Social organization and the Classic Maya collapse of Copan

Ancient Mesoamerica ◽

10.1017/s0956536104151092 ◽

2004 ◽

Vol 15 (1) ◽

pp. 107-125 ◽

Cited By ~ 32

Author(s):

T. Kam Manahan

Keyword(s):

Social Organization ◽

Social Groups ◽

Classic Maya ◽

University Of Pennsylvania ◽

Recent Application ◽

Ruling Elite ◽

Foreign Occupation ◽

Archaeological Project ◽

Maya Collapse ◽

Social Units

While the recent application of the house model to archaeology (Joyce and Gillespie 2000Beyond Kinship: Social and Material Reproduction in House Societies. University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia) has renewed interest in the nature of Classic Maya social organization, the relationships between Classic Maya social units and Classic Maya polities remain poorly understood. This article examines the effects of the Classic Maya collapse of Copan, Honduras on its constituent social units in an effort to ascertain the flexibility and resilience of these groups within larger political structures. Previous researchers suggested that Copan's collapse was limited largely to the ruling elite. However, the Copan Postclassic Archaeological Project has documented a distinct, possibly foreign occupation in the site center froma.d.950 to 1100. These data suggest that the longevity of all Classic Copaneco social groups in the wake of dynastic collapse was significantly shorter than some have postulated. These data demonstrate that Classic Maya social units were not semiautonomous groups but, instead, were integrated within polities. Thus, they must be understood within larger political frameworks.

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‘To Mount or Not to Mount?’

10.1093/oso/9780199477791.003.0007 ◽

2018 ◽

Author(s):

Nandita Sahai

Keyword(s):

Eighteenth Century ◽

Social Groups ◽

The State ◽

Record Keeping ◽

Royal Courts

This chapter examines documentary culture in eighteenth-century Rajasthan through an exploration of the legal archive—the Sanad Parwana Bahis—of the kingdom of Jodhpur. More particularly, it studies the petitions that were written in the course of a series of protracted disputes during which the ceremonial and ritual claims made by low-caste Sunars were contested by upper castes. The increasing importance of the written record in the administration and courts both caused, and was an outcome of a nascent “literate mentality” that existed even amongst those social groups like the Sunars who were not traditionally associated with scribal work. What is particularly telling is the shift from oral testimonies to written evidence as verifiable and authentic, both in the royal courts and in lower assemblies like caste councils. The pervasive culture of record keeping, and the significance of writing both for the state and its subjects at this time allows us to interrogate any easy bifurcation between the modern and the premodern.

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The Classic Maya Collapse: Testing Class Conflict Hypotheses

American Antiquity ◽

10.2307/279284 ◽

1980 ◽

Vol 45 (2) ◽

pp. 246-267 ◽

Cited By ~ 25

Author(s):

Robert L. Hamblin ◽

Brian L. Pitcher

Keyword(s):

Large Scale ◽

Time Series Data ◽

Classic Maya ◽

Class Conflict ◽

Series Data ◽

Geographical Patterns ◽

Historical Societies ◽

Testing Class ◽

Lowland Area ◽

Maya Collapse

Several lines of archaeological evidence are presented in this paper to suggest the existence of class warfare among the Classic Maya and of issues that historically have been associated with class conflict. This evidence indicates that class warfare may have halted the rule of the monument-producing, or Classic, elites and precipitated the depopulation of the lowland area. The theory is evaluated quantitatively by testing for time-related mathematical patterns that have been found to characterize large-scale conflicts in historical societies. The information used in the evaluation involves the time series data on the duration of rule by Classic elites as inferred from the production of monuments with Long Count dates at a sample of 82 ceremonial centers. The analyses confirm that the Maya data do exhibit the temporal and geographical patterns predicted from the class conflict explanation of the Classic Maya collapse. Alternative predictions from the other theories are considered but generally not found to be supported by these data.

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Stature at Tikal, Guatemala: Implications for Ancient Maya Demography and Social Organization

American Antiquity ◽

10.2307/2694660 ◽

1967 ◽

Vol 32 (3) ◽

pp. 316-325 ◽

Cited By ~ 75

Author(s):

William A. Haviland

Keyword(s):

Social Organization ◽

Classic Maya ◽

Ancient Maya ◽

Ruling Class ◽

Late Classic ◽

Class Division ◽

Lower Status ◽

Simple Class ◽

Males And Females ◽

Maya Site

AbstractThis paper presents an analysis of stature of the prehistoric population from the Maya site of Tikal, Guatemala. From this analysis, based on 55 skeletons from the Tikal burial series, three important conclusions emerge with respect to ancient Maya demography and social organization. (1) Tikal was settled by people of moderate stature, and this remained relatively stable over several centuries. A marked reduction in male stature in Late Classic times may be indicative of a situation of nutritional stress, which may have had something to do with the collapse of Classic Maya civilization. (2) Stature differences between those buried in tombs and others at Tikal suggest that, in the last century B.C., a distinct ruling class developed at Tikal. This simple class division of rulers and commoners may have become more complex in Late Classic times. (3) There was a marked sexual dimorphism in stature between males and females at Tikal. This is probably partially genetic and partially a reflection of relatively lower status for women as opposed to men in Maya society.

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Swamps, canals, and the locations of ancient Maya cities

Antiquity ◽

10.1017/s0003598x00043386 ◽

1980 ◽

Vol 54 (212) ◽

pp. 206-214 ◽

Cited By ~ 41

Author(s):

R. E. W. Adams

Keyword(s):

Radar Data ◽

Classic Maya ◽

Classic Period ◽

Intensive Agriculture ◽

Ancient Maya ◽

Maya Lowlands ◽

Rank Ordering ◽

Topographic Information ◽

Maya Civilization ◽

Mapping Discovery

The recent radar mapping discovery of widely distributed patterns of intensive agriculture in the southern Maya lowlands provides new perspectives on classic Maya civilization. Swamps seem to have been drained, modified, and intensively cultivated in a large number of zones. The largest sites of Maya civilization are located on the edges of swamps. By combining radar data with topographic information, it is possible to suggest the reasons for the choice of urban locations. With the addition of patterns elicited from rank-ordering of Maya cities, it is also possible to suggest more accurate means of defining Classic period Maya polities.

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The Classic Maya Collapse

Understanding Collapse ◽

10.1017/9781316584941.011 ◽

2017 ◽

pp. 244-275

Author(s):

Guy D. Middleton

Keyword(s):

Classic Maya ◽

Maya Collapse

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Shifting fortunes and affiliations on the edge of ruin: a ceramic perspective on the Classic Maya collapse and its aftermath at Copan

The Maya and Their Central American Neighbors ◽

10.4324/9781315798288-13 ◽

2014 ◽

pp. 103-132

Keyword(s):

Classic Maya ◽

Maya Collapse

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Chert Resource Availability, Production, and Economic Logic

The Real Business of Ancient Maya Economies ◽

10.5744/florida/9780813066295.003.0007 ◽

2020 ◽

pp. 117-131

Author(s):

Rachel A. Horowitz ◽

Marcello Canuto ◽

Chloé Andrieu

Keyword(s):

Economic System ◽

Resource Availability ◽

Raw Materials ◽

Social Hierarchy ◽

Classic Maya ◽

Local Market ◽

Ancient Maya ◽

Production And Distribution ◽

Basic Level ◽

Different Levels

At a basic level, the lowland Classic Maya economy was a complex web of prestige exchange, centralized distribution, and local market economies. While it is important not to consider the lowland Classic Maya economic system as monolithic, it is also as critical to understand how it articulated with the different levels of social hierarchy. In this chapter, we address the distribution of utilitarian goods in the ancient Maya economy through comparisons of lithic resources, particularly chert, in northwestern Petén and western Belize. We find that access to locally available raw materials affects the involvement of actors of differing sociopolitical status in lithic production and distribution.

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