Maya Urban Activities during the Terminal Classic Collapse (AD 760–1000)

Abstract During the Terminal Classic period (AD 760–1000), Maya communities underwent a brief and violent political collapse, followed by a protracted period of instability that apparently culminated in an urban collapse as distinct from the earlier, political one. Rather than taking the kingdom or polity as the analytical unit, we propose to study the cities as actors in the collapse using the large and rich Terminal Classic datasets. A comprehensive database has been constructed encompassing 29 archaeological, epigraphic, and iconographic attributes that capture urban political and socioeconomic activities in a hundred Terminal Classic cities and towns. A multivariate analysis of the distribution of 12 attributes forming five variables in 56 well-documented cities suggests that the urban transformation subsequent to the dynastic collapse is less attributable to this political collapse than expected. The urban datasets have the potential to reflect the trajectories of late lowland cities, and once distributed in Terminal Classic subphases, a comparison of the datasets should elucidate chains of causality in the two collapses.