Regional response to drought during the formation and decline of Preclassic Maya societies

CE Ebert, NP May, BJ Culleton, JJ Awe… - Quaternary Science …, 2017 - Elsevier
The earliest complex societies and a distinctive set of pan-regional social, political, and
economic institutions appeared in the southern Maya lowlands during the Preclassic period …

Ancient Lowland Maya neighborhoods: Average Nearest Neighbor analysis and kernel density models, environments, and urban scale

AE Thompson, JP Walden, ASZ Chase, SR Hutson… - PloS one, 2022 - journals.plos.org
Many humans live in large, complex political centers, composed of multi-scalar communities
including neighborhoods and districts. Both today and in the past, neighborhoods form a …

Eschewing the apocalyptic: Recent research on the aftermath of “collapse” in archaeology across the Americas

N Sharratt - Journal of Archaeological Research, 2023 - Springer
For 40 years, political collapse has been increasingly prominent in anthropological
archaeology. Throughout that period, scholars have grappled with defining collapse and …

Caracol, Belize, and changing perceptions of ancient Maya society

DZ Chase, AF Chase - Journal of Archaeological Research, 2017 - Springer
Archaeological research at Caracol, an ancient Maya site that was rediscovered in 1937,
has become a major resource in the interpretation and understanding of the ancient Maya …

Drought and its demographic effects in the Maya lowlands

JA Hoggarth, M Restall, JW Wood… - Current …, 2017 - journals.uchicago.edu
Increasing evidence supports the role of climate change in the disintegration of regional
polities in the Maya lowlands at the end of the Classic Period (750–1000 CE). However, the …

Measuring inequality: The effect of units of analysis on the Gini coefficient

AE Thompson, ASZ Chase, GM Feinman - Ancient Mesoamerica, 2023 - cambridge.org
To variable degrees, inequality is present in all human societies, but how archaeologists
measure inequality varies greatly. In recent research, we used the same unit of analysis …

Decline in seasonal predictability potentially destabilized Classic Maya societies

T Braun, SFM Breitenbach, V Skiba… - … earth & environment, 2023 - nature.com
Classic Maya populations living in peri-urban states were highly dependent on seasonally
distributed rainfall for reliable surplus crop yields. Despite intense study of the potential …

The role of diet in resilience and vulnerability to climate change among early agricultural communities in the Maya Lowlands

CE Ebert, JA Hoggarth, JJ Awe… - Current …, 2019 - journals.uchicago.edu
The Terminal Classic Period (AD 750–1000) collapse of lowland Maya social, economic,
and political systems has been temporally correlated with severe and extended drought in …

The political collapse of Chichén Itzá in climatic and cultural context

JA Hoggarth, SFM Breitenbach, BJ Culleton… - Global and planetary …, 2016 - Elsevier
Chichén Itzá dominated the political landscape of the northern Yucatán during the Terminal
Classic Period (AD 800–1000). Chronological details of the rise and fall of this important …

Household inequality, community formation, and land tenure in Classic period lowland Maya society

AE Thompson, KM Prufer - Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory, 2021 - Springer
Access to social capital and valued resources modulates household decision-making as
people seek to occupy the best-quality patches of land available. Prior occupancy …