The Political Collapse of Chichén Itzá in Climatic and Cultural Context

Global and Planetary Change 138 (2016) 25–42 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Global and Planetary Change journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/gloplacha The political collapse of Chichén Itzá in climatic and cultural context Julie A. Hoggarth a,⁎, Sebastian F.M. Breitenbach b, Brendan J. Culleton c,ClaireE.Ebertc, Marilyn A. Masson d, Douglas J. Kennett e a Department of Anthropology, Baylor University, One Bear Place #97173, Waco, TX, United States b Department of Earth Sciences, Cambridge University, Downing Street, Cambridge, Cambridgeshire, CB2 3EQ, United Kingdom c Department of Anthropology, Pennsylvania State University, 409 Carpenter Building, University Park, PA 16802, United States d Department of Anthropology, University at Albany, State University of New York, Arts and Sciences 237, 1400 Washington Avenue, Albany, NY 12222, United States e Department of Anthropology, Institutes of Energy and the Environment, Pennsylvania State University, 409 Carpenter Building, University Park, PA, 16802, United States article info abstract Article history: Chichén Itzá dominated the political landscape of the northern Yucatán during the Terminal Classic Period (AD Received 31 December 2014 800–1000). Chronological details of the rise and fall of this important polity are obscure because of the limited Received in revised form 24 October 2015 corpus of dated hieroglyphic records and by a restricted set of radiocarbon dates for the site. Here we compile Accepted 4 December 2015 and review these data and evaluate them within the context of political and climatic change in northern Yucatán Available online 11 December 2015 at the end of the Classic period. The available data point to the end of elite activity at Chichén Itzá around AD 1000, Keywords: a century after the collapse of Puuc Maya cities and other interior centers. Evidence supports a population shift in Drought the eleventh century towards some coastal locations during a time associated with the end of monumental con- Northern Maya lowlands struction and art at Chichén Itzá. Our results suggest that regional political disintegration came in two waves. The Archeology first was the asynchronous collapse of multiple polities between AD 850 and 925 associated with a regional dry- Summed probabilities ing trend and punctuated by a series of multi-decadal droughts in the ninth and tenth centuries. The second wave Bayesian chronologies was the political collapse at Chichén Itzá that coincides with the longest and most severe drought recorded in regional climate records between AD 1000 and 1100. This is a time that some scholars have characterized as a “dark age” across the northern Maya lowlands. Political developments during the Postclassic period (AD 1000– 1517) correspond with a return to higher rainfall. These patterns support a strong relationship between political disintegration and climatic stress in the Maya lowlands. This research employs Bayesian radiocarbon models in conjunction with calendar dates on carved monuments and climate proxies to evaluate the rise and fall of Maya political centers and serves as an example of the impact of climate change on rainfall-dependent societies in Mesoamerica. © 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction disintegration occurred across the Maya lowlands between AD 750– 1000, a period when multi-decadal droughts are recorded in multiple The “Classic Maya collapse” has become one of the most cited exam- palaeoclimatic archives (Curtis et al., 1996; Hodell et al., 1995, 2005; ples of societal collapse in the ancient world. Popular conceptions ideal- Haug et al., 2003; Kennett et al., 2012; Medina-Elizalde et al., 2010; ize a complete disappearance of Classic Maya civilization. However, we Webster et al., 2007). The end of monumental construction and dated know from archeological evidence that cultural continuities occurred hieroglyphic inscriptions on carved monuments across the diverse and new forms of political and social organization emerged during the regions of the Maya lowlands suggests variability in the timing of Postclassic period (AD 1000–1517). Archeological and palaeoclimatic the end of divine dynastic kingship (k'uhul ajaw; Ebert et al., 2014; evidence indicates that climate played an important role within cycles Houston and Stuart, 1996). By AD 850, hieroglyphic texts with calendar of population aggregation and political centralization in the Maya low- dates sharply declined by over half in the southern lowlands (Kennett lands (Dahlin, 1990; Demarest et al., 2004; Dunning et al., 2012; et al., 2012) where most centers were completely abandoned by the Hodell et al., 1995, 2005; Iannone, 2014; Kennett et al., 2012; Turner end of the Terminal Classic period (Santley, 1990). and Sabloff, 2012). During the Classic period (AD 250–900/1000) poli- Archeologists have long argued that there was significant social and ties developed and expanded during a period of high precipitation political change in the transition from the Classic to Postclassic periods. (Kennett et al., 2012). This contributed to more complex social and po- These popular scenarios have suggested that as populations declined in litical hierarchies at the end of the Classic period (AD 600–800). Political the central and southern Maya lowlands, cities in the northern Maya lowlands experienced demographic and political growth at the end of fl ⁎ Corresponding author. the Classic period. Sites in the Puuc region ourished in the Late Classic, E-mail address: [email protected] (J.A. Hoggarth). reaching their political apex during the Terminal Classic period. Chichén http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.gloplacha.2015.12.007 0921-8181/© 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. 26 J.A. Hoggarth et al. / Global and Planetary Change 138 (2016) 25–42 Itzá emerged as the dominant political capital during the Terminal Clas- 1998; Fedick, 2014). Groundwater is scarce across northern Yucatán, sic (AD 800–1000) and Early Postclassic periods (AD 1000–1250). The with populations accessing the water table through sinkholes (cenotes) cultural florescence in the northern lowlands, isochronal with collapse and by storing rainwater in reservoirs (aguadas) and constructed under- in the south, has intrigued many archeologists (e.g., Dahlin, 2002), espe- ground cisterns (chultunob)(Luzzadder-Beach, 2000). Dunning et al. cially as archeological data indicate political and demographic persis- (1998) divided the northern Yucatán into 12 different adaptive regions. tence in the more arid northern lowlands during the interval of severe This has been recently expanded for the broader Maya lowlands to en- drought at the end of the Classic period. Recent re-evaluations of site compass at least 27 distinct environmental areas (Chase et al., 2014). and regional chronologies align the collapse of Chichén Itzá and north- Chichén Itzá is located in the northeast karst plain, characterized by eleva- ern sites more closely with the period of collapse in the southern low- tions up to 25 m, variable soil cover up to 2 m in depth, and access to the lands (Andrews et al., 2003). However, these chronological models are water table through sinkholes, depressions, and cenotes (Chase et al., primarily based on ceramic evidence and continue to be debated. Inves- 2014; Dunning et al., 1998). The city was located centrally between the tigating the timing of the political collapse of Chichén Itzá and settle- coast to the north and fertile agricultural zones to the west and east ments in northern Yucatán is vital to understanding the impact of (Puuc and the Coba-Okop; Dunning et al., 1998:91–92; Chase et al., climate change on social and political systems in Mesoamerica. More 2014:16–17, 23). The northwest karst plain exhibits some of the densest importantly, variation in the timing of collapse in the northern Maya settlement recorded in the Maya lowlands (Dahlin, 2002:331; Hare et al., lowlands may shed light on social or political responses to climatic in- 2014; Kurjack, 1974), recorded in surveys at the sites of Chunchucmil stability that may have enabled some polities to persist for longer in (Dahlin et al., 2005; Hutson et al., 2008), Dzibilchaltun (Kurjack, 1974), the midst of severe drought. Chichén Itzá and Ek Balam (Johnson, 2000; Houck, 2004). Access to the Archeological studies in the Maya lowlands are only beginning to coastal zone, with its swamps, estuaries, and seasonally inundated sa- investigate how populations responded to shifts in climate at the end vannas, may have contributed to high-density populations in these cen- of the Classic period (Chase and Scarborough, 2014; Iannone, 2014). ters (Dahlin et al., 2005; Farrell et al., 1996). To the south, the Elevated Despite these efforts, detailed studies grounded by high-resolution chro- Interior Region (EIR) includes the Puuc Hills and adjacent sub-regions, nologies that assess the demographic and political effects of individual which have characteristically deeper soils (Dunning et al., 2012). Little ev- drought episodes are lacking. In the absence of written records, some in- idence of intensive agricultural infrastructure has been recorded in the formation about the effects of extended drought may be inferred from ac- Puuc region. However, sites in this area were more dependent on artificial counts of historic droughts during the Colonial Period in the northern constructions such as chultunob and aguadas to store water (Barthel and Yucatán (Hoggarth et al., accepted for publication). Historic accounts de- Isendahl, 2013;

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