Postclassic Period — Transformation and Change

The Postclassic Period (c. 900 – 1519 CE) is the final pre-Columbian era of Maya history, ending with the first Spanish contact and the establishment of Spanish colonial rule in the Yucatán and highland Guatemala. It is a period of transformation rather than collapse: populations shifted northward into the Yucatán Peninsula, trade networks expanded, new forms of political organization emerged, and the Maya region was increasingly drawn into broader Mesoamerican networks of exchange. The Postclassic also saw some of the most spectacular Postclassic cities ever built, including Chichén Itzá, Mayapán, Tulum, and the southern Petén capital of Nojpeten (Tayasal).

This page is a summary of the Postclassic. For a high-level overview, see the History of the Maya Civilization pages. For the years immediately following, see the Spanish conquest and colonial era.

Subdivisions of the Postclassic

Early Postclassic (c. 900 – 1200 CE). The rise of Chichén Itzá and the northern Yucatán. Demographic and political reorganization following the southern lowland collapse. The emergence of new ceramic and architectural styles associated with Yucatec populations.
Middle Postclassic (c. 1200 – 1400 CE). The League of Mayapán (also called the League of Xiu) and the political fragmentation of the Yucatán. The early phases of contact with central Mexico, possibly including some Tula or Tula-style cultural influence at certain sites.
Late Postclassic (c. 1400 – 1519 CE). The dissolution of the Mayapán league, the founding of small rival polities (the Xiu at Uxmal, the Cocom at Sotuta, and many others), the height of the Itza kingdom of Nojpeten in the Petén, and the first direct contact with Spanish and other European travelers in the early 16th century.

Demographic shift to the northern Yucatán

The most striking demographic feature of the Postclassic is the movement of population northward from the central Petén and the southern lowlands into the northern Yucatán Peninsula. The reasons for this shift are still debated, but they include: (1) the climate and political disruption of the southern lowland collapse; (2) the availability of water in the form of cenotes (sinkholes) and natural aguadas in the north; (3) the trade potential of the northern coast, which was in contact with both the Caribbean and the Gulf of Mexico; and (4) the persistence of useful soils in the north, which had not been as thoroughly depleted as some of the southern lowland milpa soils.

The northern Yucatán had been continuously occupied throughout the Preclassic and Classic, but the major Postclassic centers — Chichén Itzá, Uxmal, Cobá, Mayapán, Tulum, San Gervasio on Cozumel — were on a much larger scale than their Classic Yucatec predecessors. Population estimates for the northern Yucatán in the Late Postclassic are difficult, but the densest Yucatec cities appear to have been Tulam Tzaco (a likely earlier name for Chichén Itzá) and the Mayapán region.

Chichén Itzá

Chichén Itzá, located in the central Yucatán about 120 km east of modern Mérida, was the dominant political and ceremonial center of the Early Postclassic. The city’s heyday is usually dated to c. 800 – 1200 CE, with construction occurring in several distinct phases. The most famous monuments — the Castillo (Temple of K’uk’ulkan), the Great Ball Court, the Temple of the Warriors, the Group of a Thousand Columns, the Cenote of Sacrifice, and the Osario — represent a mix of Yucatec Maya and central Mexican (Tula-related) styles. The full discussion of the Maya vs. Tula debate is on the Chichén Itza: Yucatán’s great capital page.

The iconography of Chichén Itzá includes both classic Maya elements (the Maya sun god, K’uk’ulkan in his local manifestation, chaac masks) and central Mexican elements (the procession of Toltec warriors, the tzompantli or skull rack, the use of eagle and jaguar war symbolism). The presence of the tzompantli is one of the strongest pieces of evidence for a central Mexican connection, since these racks of human skulls are characteristic of the central Mexican Postclassic (Tula, Tenochtitlan) but not of the earlier Classic Maya tradition.

The Cenote of Sacrifice (the famous natural well at the north end of the site) was the destination of many offerings, including the famous Cenote offerings recovered by Edward Herbert Thompson in the early 20th century: jade, gold, copper bells, ceramic vessels, the bones of young men and women, and a wide range of perishable objects of wood and cloth. These offerings, many of which are now in the Peabody Museum at Yale University and in the National Museum of Anthropology in Mexico City, are the richest single collection of Postclassic Maya ritual materials.

The collapse of Chichén Itzá and the rise of Mayapán

By the early 13th century, Chichén Itzá’s political dominance had weakened, and the political center of the Yucatán shifted to Mayapán, located in the south-central part of the peninsula, about 90 km southeast of modern Mérida. The League of Mayapán (also called the Xiu League or, sometimes, the League of Mayapán or the Confederation of Mayapán) was a political confederation that included the major Yucatec noble families — the Xiu, the Cocom, the Itzá, the Chel, and others. Mayapán was a smaller and more densely packed city than Chichén Itzá, with a population estimated at perhaps 15,000 – 20,000 within its walls. The architecture of Mayapán is in many ways a smaller-scale version of Chichén Itzá, with a similar mix of Puuc and Toltec-style elements.

The collapse of the Mayapán league in the mid-15th century (variously dated c. 1440 CE) is one of the famous events of the Late Postclassic. After the league fragmented, the Yucatán split into about 16 small rival polities, each centered on a major town. This political disunity was to have fateful consequences in the early colonial period, when the Maya kingdoms were unable to mount a unified resistance to the Spanish. The cause of the Mayapán collapse is not well understood, but it appears to have involved internal conflict among the noble houses, possibly combined with a period of drought or pestilence. The historical traditions of the colonial-period Books of Chilam Balam record the league’s fall in a series of passages that the colonial Maya and their descendants used to explain the events.

The Puuc region and other northern Yucatec centers

The Puuc hills of the central Yucatán contain one of the densest concentrations of Postclassic Maya sites in the world. Uxmal is the largest, with its famous Pyramid of the Magician, the Nunnery Quadrangle, the Governor’s Palace, and many other fine examples of the Puuc architectural style. Other Puuc sites include Kabah, Sayil, Labna, and Loltún. The Puuc style is characterized by fine stone masonry, a lower plain wall and an upper frieze of mosaic stone decorated with stylized chaac masks, columns, and geometric ornament. The Puuc sites reached their peak in the Late Classic and Early Postclassic (c. 700 – 1100 CE) and many were still occupied in the Late Postclassic, although on a smaller scale.

Other important northern Yucatec Postclassic sites include Cobá (a major city in the eastern Yucatán that controlled a network of causeways and many smaller sites in the surrounding area), San Gervasio on the island of Cozumel (a center of the goddess Ixchel, patron of childbirth and weaving, and a major pilgrimage destination in the Postclassic), and Tulum on the east coast (a fortified port town, with a small but spectacular set of painted murals and a wall surrounding the central precinct).

The Itza at Nojpeten (Tayasal)

In the southern Maya lowlands, the centuries after the southern collapse were not empty. Populations persisted in the Petén, particularly around the lakes of the central area. By the Postclassic, the Itza had established a capital on the island of Nojpeten in Lake Petén Itzá — the site the Spanish would later call Tayasal. Nojpeten was the seat of an Itza kingdom that, in the words of the 17th-century Spanish sources, ruled the surrounding Petén and claimed descent from a long line of local rulers, including the legendary Cozumel, Cakixteitutul Canek, and other figures.

The Itza were the last independent Maya kingdom. They refused all early Spanish attempts at conversion and resisted several military expeditions. The 1697 expedition of fray Andrés de Avendaño, which combined religious and military elements, finally brought the Itza under Spanish authority, and the founding of the town of Flores on the same island marked the end of independent Maya government in the central Maya lowlands. The full story of the Itza and of the 1697 fall is told on the Spanish conquest and colonial era page.

Religion, ritual, and the Postclassic transformation

The Postclassic was a period of important change in Maya religion. The elaborate Classic-era temple-and-palace complexes were replaced in many areas by smaller ritual centers, and new cults — particularly the cult of K’uk’ulkan / Quetzalcoatl, the cult of the cenotes, and the cult of the saints in the late Postclassic — became prominent. The famous Books of Chilam Balam, written in Yucatec Maya using the Latin alphabet in the late 16th to 18th centuries, record many Postclassic religious traditions, including the prophecies of the chilan b’alam (the “spokesman of the jaguar”) and the katun prophecies that divided history into 20-year cycles.

The Postclassic also saw the expansion of maritime trade along the coasts. Mexican (Totonac and Aztec) trade goods reached Yucatán via the Gulf coast, and cacao, copper bells, cotton textiles, obsidian, and other items moved through the port of Tulum and other coastal sites. The Maya traders of the Yucatán were famous in the 16th-century sources for their commerce with central Mexico, and the 16th-century chronicler Diego de Landa records that Maya traders from Cozumel and other ports regularly visited the Mexican coast.

Art and architecture of the Postclassic

Postclassic art and architecture are distinctive and easily recognized. Maya codices survive from this period (the Dresden, Madrid, Paris, and Grolier codices — see the Maya codices and surviving books page), and the Mixteca-Puebla style of polychrome ceramics, which became important in central Mexico, has some reflection in the Yucatán. Carved stelae continue to be made in the southern Petén, but at a much reduced scale compared to the Classic. The most distinctive Postclassic architectural form is the Puuc style, with its mosaic-stone friezes, chaac masks, and columnar ornament; the Tula style (Chichén Itzá); the Cobá style, with its massive Causeways connecting urban sectors; and the East Coast style (Tulum, Tancah, Xcaret), with its small masonry buildings arranged on a grid.

The Spanish arrive

The first documented Spanish contact with the Maya occurred in 1511, when the survivors of a Spanish shipwreck — including Gonzalo Guerrero and Jerónimo de Aguilar — were cast ashore on the Yucatán coast. The first major Spanish expedition into Maya territory was the 1517–1518 Francisco Hernández de Córdoba voyage, which was followed by Juan de Grijalva’s 1518 voyage and the Hernán Cortés expedition of 1519. By the time the Spanish attempted to conquer the Yucatán and highland Guatemala in the 1520s, the Maya Postclassic political world was a patchwork of small rival kingdoms, none of which was able to mount a coordinated resistance.

The Postclassic world was therefore not a unified entity that fell to a sudden conquest: rather, it was a fragmented late-Maya civilization that was gradually absorbed by Spanish colonial administration over the course of the 16th and 17th centuries. The Caste War of 1847–1901 was, in a sense, the last great eruption of the Postclassic political world into the modern one. The full story is on the Caste War and Yucatec resistance page.

Sources

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Schele, L. & Freidel, D. (1990). A Forest of Kings: The Untold Story of the Ancient Maya. William Morrow. — link
Canuto, M. A. et al. (2018). Ancient lowland Maya complexity as revealed by airborne laser scanning of northern Guatemala. Science 361 (6409), eaau0137. — link