“In the days of my life.” Elite activity and interactions in the Maya lowlands from Classic to Early Postclassic times (the long ninth century, AD 760-920)
As work continues on the archaeological and paleoenvironmental evidence relating to the end of the Classic period in the Maya Lowlands (traditionally dated AD 950), it appears that this “end” lasted too long—from 760 to 950-1050—to qualify as a brutal collapse. Certainly punctuated here and there by...
| Main Authors: | , , |
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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Société des américanistes
2017-12-01
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| Series: | Journal de la Société des Américanistes |
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://journals.openedition.org/jsa/15362 |
| Summary: | As work continues on the archaeological and paleoenvironmental evidence relating to the end of the Classic period in the Maya Lowlands (traditionally dated AD 950), it appears that this “end” lasted too long—from 760 to 950-1050—to qualify as a brutal collapse. Certainly punctuated here and there by radical crises and ruptures, the temporal “transition” from the Classic to the Postclassic periods must be studied as a long and thick, or complex sequence that linked up different processes in different regions with a different time sequence (Demarest et al. 2004b). But it also activated generations of actors who came into play as they became conscious of, reacted, and adapted to those changes. Although hardly appropriate, the degree of chronological resolution reached by Maya Lowland archaeology allows us to tentatively evaluate the Terminal Classic sequence using the generational time span. We aim to identify actions and strategies developed in those cities using well–dated archaeological sequences, and possibly envision how the calendric games stimulated an anticipation of political change. |
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| ISSN: | 0037-9174 1957-7842 |