ABSTRACT
After Hopewell diminished, in the fifth century ce, with no more great geometric embankments built and the distinctive ceramic styles no longer made, societies around the Gulf of Mexico continued to live in towns, constructing burial and platform mounds and manufacturing sophisticated pottery. Classic Maya kingdoms flourished in the first millennium ce, during and after Teotihuacan’s glory in central Mexico, undergoing political and economic shifts in the tenth and eleventh centuries that prompt archaeologists to designate the centuries after 900 ce the Postclassic. On the north side of the Gulf of Mexico, in the United States, the decline of Hopewell during what was the Early Classic in Mexico led to more modest societies. Those in the South, still committed to public ceremonies displaying rank, contrasted with those in the temperate Midwest and East, who no longer honored rank with extravagant outlay. Then, in the eleventh century, an American Postclassic began with an early climax at Cahokia, a truly impressive city where St. Louis now stands, and balkanized kingdoms after Cahokia collapsed, 1200 ce. Astute readers will notice that the dates for Cahokia parallel those for Chaco in the Southwest.
