In this paper, we present the results of our recent research
on the ancient causeways at the site of Chichen Itza, Yucatan.
We first discuss some of the field methods we employed to map
and facilitate the discovery of previously unrecorded causeways
at the site. We also consider the spatial patterning and chronology
of the Late and Terminal Classic periods causeway system at
Chichen Itza and make inferences about the functional significance
of linked terminal groups and the site-core. The Chichen Itza
causeway systems reveals two important moments of Chichen Itza
internal structure. During the Late Classic period, Chichen
Itza was a socially homogeneous community organized by a loose
and decentralized government. During the Terminal Classic period,
the causeway system mirrors a centrally governed hierarchically
organized community.
Archaeologists have begun to understand that many of the challenges facing our technologically sophisticated, resource dependent, urban systems were also destabilizing factors in ancient complex societies. The focus of IHOPE‐Maya is to identify how humans living in the tropical Maya Lowlands in present‐day Central America responded to and impacted their environments over the past three millennia, and to relate knowledge of those processes to modern and future coupled human–environment systems. To better frame variability in ancient lowland Maya development and decline, the area that they once occupied may be subdivided into a series of geographical regions in which the collected archaeological data can be correlated with environmental differences. Although beginning as small agricultural communities occupying a variety of ecological niches in the humid tropics of Mesoamerica, the ancient Maya became an increasingly complex set of societies involved in intensive and extensive resource exploitation. Their development process was not linear, but also involved periods of rapid growth that were punctuated by contractions. Thus, the long‐term development and disintegration of Maya geopolitical institutions presents an excellent vantage from which to study resilience, vulnerability, and the consequences of decision‐making in ancient complex societies.
Archaeological data and evidence of climatic change are used to suggest that the collapse of Uxmal and Chichén Itzá in the Northern Maya Lowlands was the result of long and recurrent drought episodes in the eleventh century. Although environmental evidence indicates that drought episodes might have begun in the ninth century, they gradually increased in frequency through the eleventh century and generated devastating effects on the late Terminal Classic period civilization. Evidence of recurrent drought episodes in the Northern lowlands is reported from the Holtún Cenote at Chichén Itzá. This cenote (sinkhole) shows two moments of the climatic change that affected Northern Yucatán. First, it corroborates the existence of extreme dry environmental conditions during the Terminal Classic period dated between the ninth and eleventh centuries. Second, after C.E. 1100, the water level rose inside the Holtún Cenote when environmental conditions turned wetter at the beginning of the Postclassic period. [northern Yucatán, climatic change, drought episodes, wetter environment, Maya collapse.]
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