Collapse from the Outside In: A View from the Western Maya Periphery

Summary

Despite the sociopolitical instability and depopulation observed at numerous sites in the Southern Maya Lowlands during the 9th century A.D., often referred to as the "Maya Collapse," numerous politically and geographically peripheral sites do not show evidence of these characteristics. Many of the small cities and towns of the Central Highlands of Chiapas maintained their roles as political centers throughout the Late Classic-Early Postclassic period transition, and also experienced demographic expansion. Excavations at Moxviquil and Huitepec, two small hilltop sites in the Jovel Valley, suggest their durability in the face of the instability and collapse experienced by their lowland counterparts was in part due to highly diversified local economies and relatively flexible and shifting participation in long-distance trade networks. We specifically examine the degree to which highland sites shifted exchange networks towards the periphery, to the Ixtapa Valley and Central Depression, and the degree to which such shifts provided economic and political stability. A periphery-centered perspective highlights the complex relationships between periphery polities and core centers, and challenges the assumptions of traditional core-periphery economic models.

SAA 2015 abstracts made available in tDAR courtesy of the Society for American Archaeology and Center for Digital Antiquity Collaborative Program to improve digital data in archaeology. If you are the author of this presentation you may upload your paper, poster, presentation, or associated data (up to 3 files/30MB) for free. Please visit http://www.tdar.org/SAA2015 for instructions and more information.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 80th Annual Meeting, San Francisco, CA (2015)   •
• People without Collapse: Peripheries as Active Participants in Cultural Transformations

Keywords

Spatial Coverage