Key Events

• ca. 1000

  In the formerly dynamic central region of the southern lowlands, dramatically diminished populations are clustered in small settlements largely in riverine, coastal, and lake-side areas maintaining close trade relations with sites to the north.

• ca. 1100

  Construction activity at Chichén Itzá ceases, the population decreases, and the city falls into decline. Mayapan is founded by members of an Itzá lineage. The northern lowlands are fragmented politically.

• ca. 1150

  At Chichén Itzá, a treasure in gold, jadeite, wood, shell, and bone objects is cast into the Sacred Well.

• ca. 1200

  At Lamanai in northern Belize, elite burials contain gold and copper objects from Oaxaca, West Mexico, and the Veraguas region of Panama in addition to quantities of local and Yucatec ceramics.

• ca. 1250

  Mayapan is the political capital of a confederation of provinces in northwestern Yucatan. With about 12,000 inhabitants, the city covers some two square miles and is surrounded by a defensive wall over five miles long. Its architecture features pyramids, temples, and palaces showing strong central Mexican ties.

• ca. 1250

  Chichén Itzá is largely abandoned. Pilgrims continue to come to the site to worship Maya deities. They offer large quantities of ceramics, copal incense, and occasionally jade ornaments to the Sacred Well.

• ca. 1280

  The K’iché establish a modest state in highland Guatemala. Tribute is delivered by many conquered towns to their capital city Utatlán located in a defensive position atop a hill surrounded by deep ravines.

• ca. 1300

  Numerous small, mostly coastal communities and city-states with modest, crudely built pyramids, temples, shrines, and residential structures exist in northern Yucatan and eastern Quintana Roo. Among the larger regional centers are San Fernando, El Meco, and Chetumal.

• ca. 1330

  Large numbers of censers with elaborate deity effigies on the front of cylindrical containers are produced at Mayapan and throughout the region. They are made of rough clay and painted after firing with bright blue, red, and white.

• ca. 1350–ca. 1400

  Polychrome frescoes on the walls of two buildings at the fortified city of Tulum on the Caribbean coast of Yucatan are painted in hybrid Maya-Puebla-Mixteca style.

• ca. 1400

  Screenfold books (manuscripts called codices) are painted by a priestly elite on fig-bark paper. They portray deities of the Maya pantheon and include tablets of astronomical or calendrical information. While many such books were made, only four survive today.