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The Terminal Classic in the Maya Lowlands: Collapse, Transition and Transformation

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In this volume Arthur Demarest and his colleages present a admirably comprehensive overview of the available evidence concerning the decline and collapse of the Classic Maya theocratic states and the transformation of Maya society to new forms of social organization and states in the Maya lowlands during the Terminal Classic period. Ceramic, lithic, architectural, ecological, iconographic and epigraphic evidence point to multiple events and processes that took place in a variety of ecological regions throughout the Maya lowlands at differing points of time during the two centuries that scholars define as the Terminal Classic period.

The transformation of Maya civilization from theocratic kingdoms dominated by charismatic divine individual rulars into more secular states ruled by councils of elite lineages characteristic of the Postclassic period is favored over previous and still-current hypotheses that point to single catistrophic events leading to the Classic Maya collapse. Increasing warfare, the imbalance of demands for labor and luxury trade goods by the ever-growing elite class, overpopulation and environmental degridation (in some regions), climate changes (droughts) affecting parts of the lowlands, and disruptions leading to chages of trade routes all played rolls in various regions at different times, ultimately leading to massive depopulation of the southern and central lowlands and the abandonment of the long-standing ancient political traditions and the states and governments that maintained them. Nevertheless, the authors maintain that the great tradition of Maya civilization continued in new varieties of forms up to the period of the conquest, when these traditions were selectively stamped out by the Spanish conquerers. This volume provides a balanced and comprehensive perspective of this period in the Maya civilization, which has generated so much interest and controdictary ideas of just what led to the end of a glorious age for the ancient Maya.