Cultural Change on a Temporal and Spatial Frontier: Ceramics of the Terminal Classic to Postclassic Transition in the Upper Belize Valley (BAR International)

The decline of ancient Maya civilization has resonated in both the popular and archaeological imagination. Over the years archaeologists have questioned this ôcollapseö with increasing detail in some parts of the Maya area, but in the Belize Valley the era remains virtually unknown. Although the term "collapse" is still used as an abbreviation, the regional variability of the phenomenon has led most archaeologists to adopt more neutral terms such as that preferred in this study: Terminal Classic to Early Postclassic transition. As work at individual sites continues, evidence grows that this transition varies even within regions, indicating that the nature of the transition may have to be assessed on a site-by-site basis. The site-by-site approach, in turn, has slowed the realization that there is probably no single cause for the Maya collapse in areas where a collapse can be said to have occurred at all. This study is a comparative approach to the collapse in the Upper Belize River Valley using ceramics, the most ubiquitous and durable data set available to archaeologists, from sites of varying size and importance. Ceramics are quantified and described in addressing fundamental questions about the nature of Maya life during the Terminal Classic to Early Postclassic transition in the Belize Valley.

James J. Aimers