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DEBATING CHICHEN ITZA

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 March 2017

William M. Ringle
William M. Ringle*
Affiliation:
Department of Anthropology, Davidson College, Davidson, North Carolina 28036-7019
*
E-mail correspondence to: [email protected]
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Abstract

Teams from the Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia (INAH) and the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) have put forth a new chronology for Chichen Itza that challenges recent scholarly opinion favoring a date of roughly a.d. 800/850–1000/1050 for the so-called “Toltec” or Modified Florescent occupation. The new chronology instead argues for the placement of this occupation between a.d. 950–1150, a span favored by scholars prior to the 1970s. This paper presents a critique of the ceramic, radiocarbon, and stratigraphic foundations of these arguments, arguing that, on present evidence, Chichen Itza experienced a tenth-century florescence. Although the site may very well have been occupied into the next century, at present we have no absolute dates after a.d. 1000 and no evidence for later monumental construction. Furthermore, arguments for a proposed hiatus or discontinuity at the onset of the Modified Florescent period are rejected in favor of a model of continued development of Toltec ideas from the late ninth century onward.

Type
Research Article
Information
Ancient Mesoamerica , Volume 28 , Issue 1 , Spring 2017 , pp. 119 - 136
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Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2017 

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