18 CHAPTER 1 ANCIENT AMERICA
collapse accompanied by widespread depopulation
through warfare, malnutrition, and disaster, until
those who survived were again able to achieve a
stable agricultural society at a much lower level of
population density and social organization.”
No such decline occurred in northern Yucatán,
a low, limestone plain covered in most places with
dense thickets of thorny scrub forest. Occupied by
the Maya in numbers equal to the south, although
with less impressive cultural achievements, this
area was also the site of great ceremonial cen-
ters complete with steep pyramids, multistoried
palaces, and large quadrangles. Into this area, in
about 900, poured invaders from the central Mexi-
can highlands, probably Toltec emigrants from
strife-torn Tula. Toltec armies overran northern
Yucatán and established their rule over the Maya,
governing from the temple city of Chichén Itzá.
The invaders introduced Toltec styles in art and
architecture, including colonnaded halls, warrior
columns, and the reclining stone fi gures called
Chac Mools. Toltec infl uence was also refl ected in
an increased obsession with human sacrifi ce. Af-
ter 1200, Maya cultural and political infl uence
revived. Chichén Itzá was abandoned, and power
passed to the city-state of Mayapan, a large, walled
town from which Maya rulers dominated much of
the peninsula, holding tribal chiefs and their fami-
lies as hostages to exact tribute from surrounding
provinces. But in the fi fteenth century, virtually all
centralized rule disappeared. A successful revolt
overthrew the tyranny of Mayapan and destroyed
the city itself in 1441. By this time, Maya civiliza-
tion was in full decline. By the arrival of the Span-
iards, all political unity or imperial organization in
the area had disappeared.
MAYA ECONOMY AND SOCIETY
Archaeological discoveries of the past three dec ades
have radically revised our notions about the subsis-
tence base of the ancient Maya. Until recently, the
prevailing view assumed the primary role of maize
in the diet and the almost exclusive reliance on the
slash-and-burn (swidden) system of agriculture.
Since this system excluded the possibility of such
dense populations as were found at Teotihuacán
and other Mesoamerican Classic or Post classic
centers, the traditional interpretation assumed
a dispersed peasant population whose houses—
typically one-room, pole-and-thatch struc tures—
were widely scattered or grouped in small hamlets
across the countryside between the ceremonial
and administrative centers. These centers, which
contained temples, pyramids, ritual ball courts,
and other structures, were denied the character
of true “cities”; it was believed that only the Maya
elites—a few priests, nobles, and offi cials and their
attendants—lived in them. On the other hand, the
rural population, who lived among their milpas
(farm plots), visited these centers only for religious
festivals and other special occasions.
This traditional view began to be seriously
questioned in the late 1950s, when detailed map-
ping of the area around the Tikal ceremonial pre-
cinct revealed dense suburbs that spread out behind
the center for several miles. Similar dense concen-
trations of house clusters were later found at other
major and even minor centers of the Classic period.
In the words of Norman Hammond, “The wide-
open spaces between the Maya centers, with their
scattered bucolic farmers, suddenly became fi lled
with closely packed and hungry suburbanites.”
These revelations of the size and density of Clas-
sic Maya settlements forced a reassessment of the
economic system that supported them. It has now
been clearly established that, in addition to slash-
and-burn farming, the Maya practiced an intensive
and permanent agriculture that included highly pro-
ductive kitchen gardens with root crops as staples,
arboriculture, terracing, and raised fi elds—artifi cial
platforms of soil built up from low-lying areas.
The evidence of dense suburban populations
around ceremonial centers like Tikal has also pro-
voked a debate about the degree of urbanism pres-
ent in the Maya lowlands. The traditional view that
the Classic Maya centers were virtually deserted
for most of the year has become untenable. Debate
continues, however, as to whether they were “cit-
ies” in the sense that Teotihuacán was clearly a
city. Tikal, in the heart of the Petén, was certainly
a metropolitan center with a population of perhaps
fi fty thousand and a countryside heavily populated
over an area of some fi fty square miles. There is also