ABSTRACT
Recent calls to extricate the Maya from the stereotype of collapse have singled out cultural resilience as the viable new brand for the political present. In this paper I examine two episodes of Maya collapse and reorganization in Yucatan: the Spanish invasion (A.D. 1511-1546) and the Caste War (A.D. 1847-1901). Using the framework of resilience theory, I explore archaeological evidence of settlement aggregation and dispersal, reorganization of the built environment, and household production to reveal how strategies enacted before each catastrophe compare with those of their aftermaths. My evidence suggests that some native communities pursued consistent strategies that maintained or increased resilience of historic-period socioecological systems, whereas others suffered losses of autonomy under the Spanish colonial and post-independence regimes. Will Andrews’ approach to the Classic Maya collapse always has been to assemble empirical archaeological evidence to explain variations in social transformations (Andrews et al. 2003; Sabloff and Andrews 1986; see also Andrews 1990). Viewing the Classic-period collapse of the central and southern lowlands as the apocalyptic endgame of a great tradition just does not work well for archaeologists who work in Yucatan. The consensus reached by contributors to a recent volume on the Terminal Classic in the Maya Lowlands is that Andrews is right (Demarest et al. 2004). The evidence does not support a pan-Maya catastrophe. New data have muddied the waters, failing to reveal a neat, chronologically uniform decline in population and political institutions. Many scholars who sift through the range of variation between A.D.7501000 are now asking “What Maya Collapse?” (Aimers 2007). Some point out that we should be looking at the other side of the coin (McAnany and Yoffee 2010a:10; Pyburn 2006; Scarborough 2009; Scarborough and Burnside 2010); that the real story is cultural resilience-the remarkable suite of adaptations to a tropical environment that allowed the Maya to produce surpluses that supplied great urban centers for over 2,000 years. They revive an old idea that the collapse was just one of several shifts from maximization to resilience that occurred in the Maya area as macroregional systems underwent waves of
economic prosperity and depression (Marcus 1993, 1998; Scarborough 1998, 2000; see also Adams 1974, 1978; Lattimore 1951:531, 547; 1962; Sanders and Webster 1978; Skinner 1985:288). I submit that the question Maya scholars should be asking is not “What Maya Collapse?” but “Which Maya Collapse?” and, further, “What do we mean by resilience?” In this paper I explore historic examples of reorganization of Maya socioecological systems on the Yucatan peninsula using the framework of resilience theory, known as Panarchy (Gunderson and Holling 2002; Redman 2005). In addition to the collapse of the eighth through tenth centuries A.D., the Maya experienced at least two later episodes of reorganization that rarely receive attention in collapse research: the Spanish conquest of the sixteenth century and the Caste War of nineteenth-century Yucatan. Here, I marshal documentary and archaeological evidence to illuminate the reorganization of not-so-ancient Maya society. Historic examples of Maya reorganization offer several important perspectives to collapse research. First, they provide alternatives to the standard cases used for cross-cultural comparison, which usually contrast well-known ancient civilizations from the Old and New Worlds. Moreover, they facilitate appraisal of differences in the duration, scale, and extent of structural change caused by internal and external factors (see Kolata 2007). Further, they can be used to build bridging arguments between the processes of reorganization and patterning in the archaeological record. Finally, study of the ninth-, sixteenth-, and nineteenth-century reorganizations on the Yucatan peninsula enables comparison of sequential developmental cycles over the longue durée (Redman and Kinzig 2003). Resilience Theory and Collapse
Resilience theory is an interdisciplinary framework for explaining adaptive change in complex ecological and social systems (Holling and Gunderson 2002). Panarchists envision adaptive cycles unfolding in four stages: exploitation, conservation, release, and reorganization (Figure 13.1). In this framework resilience is a dynamic concept, measured by the magnitude of disturbance that can be absorbed before the system changes its structure (Holling and Gunderson 2002:28). Of particular interest to collapse researchers are the release and reorganization phases of the adaptive cycle. Release, or collapse, is dened by low ecosystem resilience, where impacts of external forces on structural vulnerabilities provoke crisis and transformation. The succeeding reorganization stage is characterized by high ecosystem resilience, where the release of capital and resources permit wide latitude among actors to form new and unexpected structural associations. Resilience theorists focus on three properties that shape trajectories of change in ecosystems and organizations: potential, connectedness, and resilience. Potential is a system-specic measure of accumulated resources, productivity, knowledge, or biomass and nutrients. It sets limits on available options for change and determines the number of future alternatives. Connectedness is the degree of internal control that a system exerts over external variability. Changes between internal and external interconnections cause shifts in system stability. High connectedness means that the system can control its own destiny. Ecosystem resilience is the capacity of the system to weather unexpected disturbances; it determines how vulnerable the system is to unexpected shocks. Levels of resilience shift as the system moves through the four stages of the adaptive cycle.
