Resilient Maya City at the End of the Classic Period: Archaeological Evidence from the Site of Ucanal, Petén, Guatemala

Christina T. Halperin, PhD, Université de Montréal

The end of the Classic period in the Southern Maya Lowlands is known as a time of political collapse and site abandonment. Not all settlements, however, were abandoned and some even prospered during the Terminal Classic period (ca. 810-1000 CE). This talk presents new archaeological data from one of these prospering settlements, the ancient city of Ucanal, the capital of the K’anwitznal kingdom. Research at the site by the Proyecto Arqueológico Ucanal documents an early 9th century fire-burning event at the Maya site of Ucanal and argues that it marked a momentous moment in not only the political history of the kingdom, but in the political transition between the Late Classic (ca. 600-810 CE) and Terminal Classic (ca. 810-950 CE) period in the Southern Maya Lowlands. The fire-burning rite involved the destruction of an earlier dynastic line, in which the contents of a Late Classic royal tomb were taken out and burned. This talk outlines the archaeological evidence for this momentous event as well as a range of evidence documenting the ways in which the K’anwitznal polity reinvented itself and in which the city of Ucanal went on to a flourishing of activities throughout the Terminal Classic period and beyond.

Christina T. Halperin is Associate Professor of Anthropology at the Université de Montréal. Her research examines ancient Maya politics from the perspectives of households, gender, materiality, and everyday life.  Halperin has conducted archaeological field investigations in Guatemala, Mexico, and Belize over the last 28 years. She currently directs an international, multi-disciplinary archaeological project at the site of Ucanal, Guatemala. She has published extensively on topics such as ceramic figurines, textiles, the production and circulation of polychrome pottery, architecture, and landscape archaeology.  Halperin is author or editor of the following books: Foreigners Among Us: Alterity and the Making of Maya Societies (2023), Vernacular Architecture of the Pre-Columbian Americas (2017), Maya Figurines: Intersections between State and Household (2014) and Mesoamerican Figurines: Small-Scale Indices of Large-Scale Social Phenomena (2009).

The November member-supported meeting will be presented on Zoom. This meeting is open to the public but to attend you must pre-register here.