Reappraising Mobility during the Ninth and Tenth Centuries CE among Lowland Maya Populations: A Bioarchaeological and Isotopic Approach

Summary

This is an abstract from the "The Movement of People and Ideas in Eastern Mesoamerica during the Ninth and Tenth Centuries CE: A Multidisciplinary Approach Part II" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Conventional inferences of Maya mobility have been based on cultural exchange. The isotopic composition measured in human skeletal remains provides a direct measure of past peoples’ movements. Founded on published isotopic datasets across the Maya area, in this contribution we reappraise human residential shifts and the possibility of migration during the Classic period and the initial stages of the Postclassic era. Comparing the strontium isotopic signatures (87Sr/86Sr) from the dwellers buried during the Early and Late Classic with those deposited during the Terminal Classic, we discuss residential mobility trends toward and during the Maya collapse. Our results show complex regional mobility dynamics with a noticeable increase from the Early to Late Classic period and, subsequently, a seemingly drastic decrease during the Terminal Classic phase. We discuss this trend among the remnant populations of the inner Petén and further examine the directionality of residential shifts among those population segments that appear on the move. During the time of the collective crisis, nonlocally born females and males appear to have coped with residential shifts and permanence in a distinctive fashion.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• The Movement of People and Ideas in Eastern Mesoamerica during the Ninth and Tenth Centuries CE: A Multidisciplinary Approach Part II   •
• Society for American Archaeology 88th Annual Meeting, Portland, OR (2023)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 36758.0