Archaeological excavations begun at Mayapan in 1996 require re-evaluation of this site, sometimes disparaged as representing “decadent” Postclassic Maya culture. New discoveries show that the site was an international center that incorporated specific symbols in its art from areas as far away as Central Mexico and Oaxaca. Indeed, there is evidence of trade with both areas. Another important Postclassic trade route connected Mayapan to Yucatan's eastern coast and Peten, Guatemala. These connections are reflected in similar ceramics and architecture in the three areas. Revival of Terminal Classic traditions at Mayapan inspired certain architectural constructions and a stela cult marking Katun endings. The Katun-cycle chronologies of the Colonial period provide intriguing evidence that political events at Mayapan may be linked with the site's architectural history. The “founding” of Mayapan may have occurred earlier than the conventionally accepted date of a.d. 1263 (end of Katun 13 Ahau). The Chilam Balam of Chumayel chronicles use of a 24-year Katun instead of a Katun of 20 Tuns, suggesting that the earliest founding event at Mayapan (Katun 8 Ahau) may date back to the eleventh century a.d. and overlap with the demise of Chichen Itza. Some of Mayapan's earliest architecture is contemporary with Chichen Itza's latest constructions. Several hundred years after Mayapan was founded, there was a renaissance of the Cocom heritage evident in specific architectural forms modeled on those from Chichen Itza.

Ancient Mesoamerica is pleased to honor T. Patrick Culbert, one of the foremost scholars in the field of Maya archaeology, in this Special Section. A brief survey of Culbert's many contributions to Maya studies reflects the general contours of the advances that have occurred in Maya archaeology over the course of the past four decades, and these patterns illustrate Culbert's role in the forefront of these trends.

Pat Culbert's scholarship and teaching are marked by both an insistence on rigorous attention to data and a gentleness and humaneness in which scholarly inquiry should flourish. I discuss in this paper one aspect of his research—the size and degree of political integration of Maya polities—by means of a comparison with Mesopotamian examples.

Traditional analyses of ceramics from Maya Lowland archaeological sites have focused on descriptive typologies to define site and regional chronologies. However, T. Patrick Culbert's groundbreaking work on the ceramics of Tikal (1993) utilized vessel shapes, as well, involving an analytical system of two levels: shape classes and shapes. His systematized modal analysis and concentration on vessel-shape classes, in conjunction with a focus on the importance of deposit types and site-formation processes, revolutionized what ceramics can tell us about prehistoric Maya behavior. The same approach was applied to the research on the Cuello ceramics presented here to gain a better understanding of the behavior associated with ceramic-vessel usage during the Preclassic period at this northern Belize site.

In Mesoamerica, the pottery made and used in regions peripheral to highly developed core areas is relatively plain; it is not standardized; and it has a narrow range of forms. Such pottery does not represent cultural “backwardness” or a tradition separate from that of core areas. Instead, backcountry pottery is explained by rational economic behavior of producers and consumers whose choices are constrained by location at the distant ends of dendritic or solar market systems. The literature on peasant markets provides a basis for distinguishing core versus peripheral economic behavior. Expectations for peripheral pottery are generated from this and from archaeological studies of pottery specialization. The pre-Hispanic pottery form Peñoles, a mountainous periphery of the Valley of Oaxaca, exhibits the expected characteristics. These results are limited by small sample size; more detailed studies should find a macroregional economy that is more variegated than that portrayed by the core–periphery dichotomy.

Research on the Lowland Maya Hiatus that focuses solely on the inscriptions on monuments is too limited to provide information about its causes, nature, and consequences. I consider the hiatus at Tikal using additional evidence from architecture, settlement patterns, caches and burials, domestic artifacts, and inscriptions on portable objects. A preliminary conclusion is that Tikal's long hiatus can be regarded as part of a sequence of internal political development rather than due to conquest from outside. The displacement and destruction of inscribed and plain stone monuments was an ongoing phenomenon at Tikal. It was present from Terminal Preclassic times and occurred with increasing frequency until the beginning of the late Late Classic period. Monument destruction may have come to a halt then under a series of powerful rulers. The setting of inscribed stone monuments and wooden lintels continued for another two centuries until the disappearance of dynastic rule itself.

This paper examines the evidence for status and wealth differentiation within the peripheral areas of Tikal, Guatemala, and intersite areas north and south of Tikal. Frequency counts of differing major shape classes show that large groups had significantly higher frequency of serving forms and more associated pottery. The technique of multidimensional scaling is used to see whether there are any qualitative differences in pottery reflecting higher status or wealth. Results of the analysis indicate that qualitative differences are present only for Ik Complex vases. There are also indications of a special relationship between central Tikal and the minor center of Navahuelal located beyond the edges of the Tikal settlement zone.

Significant indirect evidence suggests that one of the Classic-period residential groups at Tikal was the residence of a family of potters who produced high-quality painted wares. Delineation of the borders of residential Group 4H-1 at Tikal led me to postulate that the bajo was a major resource zone for ceramic manufacturing rather than a spatially limiting feature. This family of upscale ceramic producers used the adjacent bajo as a source of clay and fuel for firing pottery. The configuration of other groups near Group 4H-1 suggests not only that the people occupying the several groups on this peninsula were related, but that they were all involved in the production, painting, and distribution of fine ceramics. These several residential groups, located on adjacent house lots, define a barrio within Tikal whose occupants formed an extended kin unit sharing an economic focus on the production of high-quality ceramics. A consideration of the contents of trash deposits that were used by the Maya for building fill and a study of the middens found adjacent to residential groups at Tikal provide clues to the location of a specific kiln, or firing area. Broken pottery in the structure fill tells us more than architectural history. In this example, pottery indicates how other aspects of one or more house lots were organized and used. In particular, these data suggest that a barrio-like cluster of households at Tikal, with its own ritual center (Group 5G-I), housed families of ceramic producers who had specifically located their residences in direct proximity to the bajo. The search for the firing facilities associated with the production of ceramics in Group 4H-1 is now a major research focus. “Kilns,” or firing facilities, should be among the various architectural features found “out back,” or located on the margins of a house lot. Kilns may have been of the trench type or free-standing small buildings, possibly within sheds, and are expected outside the perimeter formed by the main buildings of the residential group. The structures facing a plaza or series of plazas that are the most obvious elements of a single household tend to attract archaeological attention. Location of structures “out back,” or peripheral to the residential core buildings, could help define the configuration of household lots.

Conducting field research in the dense forests of the Peten, northern Guatemala, is as difficult today as it was for A. V. Kidder 70 years ago. However, through the use of airborne and satellite imagery we are improving our ability to investigate ancient Maya settlement, subsistence, and landscape modification in this dense forest region. Today the area is threatened by encroaching settlement and deforestation. However, it was in this region that the Maya civilization began, flourished, and abruptly disappeared for unknown reasons in the ninth century a.d. At the time of its collapse it had attained one of the highest population densities in human history. How the Maya were able to manage water successfully and feed this dense population is not well understood at this time. A project funded by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) used remote-sensing technology to investigate large seasonal swamps (bajos) that make up 40% of the landscape. Through the use of remote sensing, ancient Maya features such as sites, roadways, canals, and water reservoirs have been detected and verified through ground reconnaissance. The results of this preliminary research cast new light on the adaptation of the ancient Maya to their environment. Microenvironmental variation within the wetlands was elucidated and the different vegetation associations identified in the satellite imagery. More than 70 new archaeological sites within and at the edges of the bajo were mapped and tested. The combination of satellite imagery and ground verification demonstrated that the Maya had modified their landscape in the form of dams, reservoirs, and possible drainage canals along the Holmul River and its tributaries. The use of Landsat Thematic Mapper (TM) and Enhanced Thematic Mapper (ETM), 1-m IKONOS satellite imagery, as well as high-resolution airborne STAR-3i radar imagery—2.5 m backscatter/10 m Digital Elevation Model (DEM)—are opening new possibilities for understanding how a civilization was able to survive for centuries on a karst topographic landscape. This understanding is critical for the current population that is experiencing rapid population growth and destroying the landscape through non-traditional farming and grazing techniques, resulting in socioeconomic problems.

The Maya archaeological site of Chau Hiix, located slightly south and between the ancient cities of Lamanai and Altun Ha, is associated with some of the most extensive hydrological control features recorded from the pre-Hispanic era in the New World. The modest population size of the community, combined with this enormously productive agricultural technology, strongly implies economic interdependency among Classic-period sites. The location of Chau Hiix on an important inland water route further suggests the transportation of foodstuffs outside the local area.

The Spaniards described a particular type of Maya building found in the center of Maya cities that served multiple functions, from temporary homes for men and boys to council houses. This type of building, labeled a popol nah at Copan, was noted in Yucatan and the highlands of Guatemala. Two probable popol nahs, Structures 10L-223 and 10L-22A, have been identified at Copan, Honduras, suggesting continuity in this building type into at least the Maya Late Classic period. The differences between the two structures in both location and form support the idea of competing lineages in the Late Classic. These differences also suggest that the later rulers may have transformed earlier multifunction buildings into more specific functions that served their political needs.

This paper seeks to define and discuss the nature, size, variety, ideology, and change in the polities of three regions of the Maya Lowlands: the Greater Peten, Central Yucatan (Río Bec/Chenes), and the Puuc Hills. Patterned variety is demonstrable on all levels of analysis and even within stylistic regions, within suggested regional states, and within sites.

Recent adjustments to the chronology of the northern Maya Lowlands have brought about a closer alignment of the decline of Terminal Classic/Early Postclassic Yucatecan polities with the collapse of the southern Maya states. The collapse of the entire Classic-period societal structure throughout the lowlands can now be compressed into a 200- or 250-year period and seen as a progressive chain of events that began in the south and culminated with the fall of Chichen Itza in the eleventh century. This new reconstruction has led us to propose eliminating the Early Postclassic period, the existence of which was based largely on a purportedly late occupation of Chichen Itza. We assign this final occupation of the Itza capital to the Terminal Classic period, which ended sometime in the eleventh century in the northern Maya Lowlands.

During the ninth century, many sites in the Southern Maya Lowlands were abandoned as elite and commoners felt the effects of the Classic-period Maya collapse. At the same time, sites to the north and east continued to flourish. Recent climatic data indicate that, at this time, much of the Maya area experienced a significant drought. However, this drought does not appear to have uniformly affected the entire region; instead, climate appears to have acted as a mosaic, shifting through time and space. It is hypothesized that one of the key factors responsible for these variable cultural trajectories is localized and regional climate change brought about through irregular anthropogenic deforestation. These changes, when coupled with an out-of-balance cultural system, may have served as a catalyst that sent some parts of the Maya world down the path to systems failure, while other zones were able—at least, temporarily—to adjust and continue.