The Great Maya Droughts in Cultural Context: Case Studies in Resilience and Vulnerability

9: The Classic Maya Collapse, Water, and Economic Change in Mesoamerica

177 DOI: 10.5876_9781607322801.c009 9 The Classic Maya Collapse, Water, and Economic Change in Mesoamerica Critique and Alternatives from the “Wet Zone” Arthur A. Demarest Many previous discussions of the end of Classic period Maya civilization have failed to address the collapse issues in broader theoretical and culture historical perspectives . They also often have been unaware of the great variability in chronology and the layered nature of causality over the nearly three centuries of the process of termination of the Classic Maya political system .In this volume,however,the chapters’authors have sought to create a historical and theoretical framework and context for the varied regional transitions or collapses in the final centuries of the Classic period.In this volume there is, in general, more specificity about the question of what we mean by collapse and about exactly what it was that “collapsed,” was transformed, or otherwise disappeared at the end of the Classic period. Naturally, given the subject of this volume, there is particular attention to the ecological aspects of Classic,and Preclassic,lowland Maya civilization.Yet,I would argue that it is a political system and its ideology that disappears (one way or another) between about AD 700 and 1000 (as is argued in many chapters in this volume). Here I address the problem of collapse by first considering what actually collapses. Then I consider some concepts and perceptions that create disagreement, and some contradictions between the chronology and geography of Peten culture-history and the most popular forms of global drought theory.The latter contradictions are discussed in other chapters in this volume (see especially Aimers and Iannone [Chapter 2], Iannone, Yaeger, and Hodell [Chapter 3]) and in recent compendiums of the various regional sequences at the end of the Classic period (e.g., Demarest, Rice, and Rice, 2004b). More important, for the southwestern Peten 178 DEMAREST I propose a positive alternative regarding culture history and causality for a strategic region of the Classic Maya world—the southwestern Peten. It was a region that did not have a problem of access to water and that nonetheless had the earliest, best-documented, and best-dated collapse. I believe that it is best to examine causality, and the role of any factor, by testing alternatives in those regions that have the most detailed data. The western Peten is one such region. whaT collapses As Aimers and Iannone point out (Chapter 2), we need to first be clear about our definitions of “collapse” and of what it is that collapses. Joseph Tainter (1988) convincingly defined collapse in a narrow sense as “a rapid decline in the level of sociopolitical complexity” of a society. Although he subsequently (Tainter 2000:332) has modified this definition to specify that rapid could mean within two or three generations, that does not avoid the need for further clarifications. The problem with Tainter’s modification in application to the Maya is that, despite the appearance of such rapid pronounced declines in sociopolitical complexity, often perhaps within a single generation in specific subregions, such “collapses” occurred at different periods in different zones over a span of three centuries. Thus, though Tainter’s concept would apply, the end of Classic Maya civilization occurred over a period of 300 years, consisting of a variably dated series of subregional “collapses.” All of these issues are best dealt with by viewing of the end of Classic Maya civilization in terms of a nested series of collapses, linked, but not precisely chronological or causally aligned.This pattern can be conceptualized in terms of “panarchy theory” as described by Aimers and Iannone (Chapter 2 in this volume), which envisions that “adaptive cycles of varying size—from the household to the empire—are interconnected to varying degrees (i.e., there are hierarchies of adaptive cycles), and they thus have the potential to influence each other in a positive or negative manner.” Still, the precision of our terms will not resolve the conceptual problems. In endless theoretical dialogues in all disciplines we find that in order to be close to accurate, nouns must be replaced by phrases, phrases by paragraphs, and so on. Nonetheless, the phrase “the Classic Maya collapse” at least serves to designate the decline or disappearance—rapid in some regions, slower in others—of specific political and ideological structures, as well as many of their specific characteristics and, sometimes exuberant, material manifestations. THE CLASSIC MAYA COLLAPSE, WATER, AND ECONOMIC...