The Memory of Collapse: Considering the Role of Cultural Trauma in Societal Reorganization following the 9 th Century Maya Collapse at Actuncan, Belize By David W. Mixter Introduction The recent use of models derived from ecology, such as Resilience Theory (Gunderson and Holling 2002), employed to model the progression of human societies through periods of collapse and regeneration have most successfully focused on describing large scale narratives of culture change and process. Although modeling these long term trajectories can provide important insights into human-environment interactions and point to potential triggers of collapse, they do not successfully model the immediacy of change and action in the aftermath of collapse. In contrast to the scales emphasized by Resilience Theory, local communities are affected by collapse and reestablish social and political institutions immediately. This process was seen most recently in Libya, where the collapse of Muammar al-Qadhafi’s regime resulted in the rapid community-level re-institutionalization of order by localized negotiations between elites, tribes, and militias (Lacher 2011). The result has been a patchwork of diverse rapidly established structures of authority that continue to be more effective than the rebuilt central authority in Tripoli. Similarly, the aftermath of archaeologically identified collapses would have been chaotic and also led to rapid reformation. Rather than relying on dehumanized large scale mechanistically determined modeling, studies of reorganization must focus first on detailed analyses of the localized factors that frame agents’ negotiations of power. Only through a careful interrogation of numerous factors can archaeologists begin to model the intra-community power negotiations taking place in the wake of collapse. Such factors can include economics, safety, and other practicalities; however, they also include less rational factors such as cultural trauma, individual charisma, and agents’ ability to maintain control over resources . Here, I will specifically address the role cultural trauma may have on processes of reorganization using an example on the 9 th century Maya collapse. Key Concepts - Cultural Trauma, Identity, and Founding Narratives … a formal definition of cultural trauma: a memory accepted and publicly given credence by a relevant membership group and evoking an event or situation which is a) laden with negative affect, b) represented as indelible, and c) regarded as threatening a society’s existence or violating one or more of its fundamental cultural presuppositions (Smelser 2004:44). Cultural trauma occurs when members of a collectivity feel they have been subjected to a horrendous event that leaves indelible marks upon their group consciousness…changing their future identity in fundamental and irrevocable ways (Alexander 2004:1). All collective traumas have some bearing on national identity. While in some cases [cultural] trauma results in enhancing a sense of unity within a society, there are other cases in which collective traumas have fragmenting effects (Neal 1998:31). Founding narratives are about creating, constituting, a collective subject as they are about creating and ‘imagined’ community (Eyerman 2004:163) Cultural Trauma and the Maya Collapse During the past decade, archaeological research has revealed that the ancient Maya collapse was not a monolithic moment of demographic decline and cultural degradation. Rather, the collapse is best understood as a regionally and temporally variable process of political transformation (Aimers 2007). Over a 300 year period (from A.D. 750 to 1050), polities throughout the Maya Lowlands gradually abandoned the Classic period system of hierarchical political authority led by divine kings (Demarest et al. 2004). Importantly, the failure of divine kings reached beyond simply toppling the individual sitting at the apex of authority. It rent Maya political authority from its legitimizing basis in Maya cosmology and mythic charters, leading to a double crisis of political organization and ideology. A leader’s authority could no longer derive from shamanistic conflations with the Maya maize god, as seen during earlier times (Freidel and Reilly 2009; Taube et al. 2010). With a few exceptions, investigations into the Maya collapse have focused on the causes and impacts of collapse. Discussions of causes have typically promoted mechanical or deterministic models emphasizing environmental deterioration, ecological devastation, or warfare. Similarly, discussions of the impacts of the collapse have focused on the cessation of the monument erection, the disappearance of monumental construction, population decline, and ultimately settlement abandonment. Little work has been done to explain the accommodations remnant populations made to rebuild and recreate their social and political systems in the moments immediately following the collapse. Rather than considering just pragmatic causes or results of the Maya collapse, I propose ideas regarding cultural trauma afford a lens for understanding the choices communities made in the process of reorganization (Figure 1). For the Maya, the failure of divine kingship would have been a significant source of collective trauma by virtue of “violating one...of [the Maya’s] fundamental cultural presuppositions” (Smelser 2004:44). The simultaneous collapse of their political system and its disarticulation from ideology would have substantially damaged communities’ conceptions of identity, causing groups to seek ways to reconstruct a new collective identity (Neal 1998). One primary tool for the creation of collective identity is to draw on deep collective memories in order to affirm common foundational narratives, while simultaneously ignoring or collectively forgetting more recent memories directly associated with the trauma inducing events. A historical understanding of the local political landscape and an analysis of household occupation trends within the lower Mopan River Valley indicate that the process modeled above may be at play within the collapse period abandonment at the ancient Maya site of Xunantunich and subsequent reorganization at the neighboring site Actuncan. Acknowledgements I would like to thank the Belizean Institute of Archaeology and especially Drs. John Morris and Jaime Awe. I would like to thank my US and Belizean colleagues. Dr. Lisa LeCount has graciously allowed me to work at Actuncan for the past three years, and hopefully for years to come. I would like to thank my advisor, Dr. David Freidel. This research has been funded by the National Science Foundation and Washington University in Saint Louis. Finally, I’d like to thank the hard working folks of San Jose Soccotz, Belize, without whom our research would not be possible. Figure 2: Testa/Diameter Ratio: Log10Testa Thickness/Log10Diameter Radius of the La Barca Chenopodium sp. (triangles) and Bruno’s(2006 Figure 4.6) modern Chenopodium spp.varities. Bruno’s four species are identified as Kañawa (C. pallidicaule) (empty circle) and quinoa (C. quinoa) (black circle) are the domesticated varieties. Paiko (C. ambrosioides) (empty square) and quinoa negra (C. quinoa var. melanospermum) (black square) are the wild weedy varieties. . History, Memory, and the lower Mopan River Valley Here, I consider the occupation history of the lower Mopan River Valley with a particular focus on the ancient Maya sites of Actuncan and Xunantunich (Figure 2). Actuncan has been a location of monumental construction for thousands of years making it a permanent part of the local landscape of memory. The ridge-top on which Actuncan sits was settled by 1000 B.C., and the ceremonial center was well-established in the Late Preclassic period (300 to 0 B.C.). By the Terminal Preclassic (0 to A.D. 250), Actuncan was the political center of the region. Its architecture includes many hallmarks of early civic construction, such as a 32-m high triadic pyramid group, an E-Group, and a ballcourt (Figure 3; Estrada-Belli 2011). A Preclassic carved stela points to the early adoption of kingship at the site (Figure 4; Fahsen and Grube 2005:79). Despite the center’s early authority, construction of monumental architecture halts during the Early Classic period (by the mid-6 th century) and several large elite households were ritually terminated and abandoned. These actions signal the end of Actuncan’s role as the seat of a local polity and the beginning of a 300 year long hiatus of civic construction. Although Actuncan was no longer a center of power, its prominent silhouette on the landscape would have perpetuated the memory of the site’s ancient rulership and position of authority. During the Late Classic period, from A.D. 600 to 780, Xunantunich, located on a hilltop only 2 km upstream from Actuncan, was constructed de novo and served as the seat of dynastic royal authority in the lower Mopan River Valley (LeCount et al. 2002). During this time the site’s monumental architecture dominates the landscape, visible for miles around (Figure 5). Importantly, Xunantunich’s power begins to decline before the end of the Late Classic. By the time the Terminal Classic period begins (A.D. 780 to 1000), Xunantunich’s control over their hinterland is decreasing and the occupants of the Xunantunich site core are condensing into a single plaza in the site core (Yaeger 2008, 2010). Curiously, as Xunantunich and its hinterlands retract, Actuncan’s population stays steady during the Terminal Classic period (Figure 6; Table 1). Furthermore, construction of civic architecture resumes, indicating the resumption of the site as a seat of authority. The new activity at Actuncan includes the construction of a possible council house, which would indicate a new form of communal political authority, and a resumption of ritual activity, but not construction, in the site’s main ceremonial core. The fine grained ceramic chronologies from the lower Mopan River Valley indicate that Xunantunich’s retraction and the build-up at Actuncan are simultaneous. I propose that local populations, having rejected the divine authority at weakening Xunantunich, chose to return to Actuncan in part as a way to cope and begin the healing from the trauma of their failing political ideology. Throughout the rule of Xunantunich, Actuncan would have been a visible fixture on the landscape. Further, the site’s early carved stela would have signaled an older message, unrelated to the recently failed kings from Xunantunich. In search for a new identity, the people of the lower Mopan Valley resettled at the oldest seat of ancestral authority, and resumed placing offerings in the oldest temple group. In essence, the settlement at Actuncan serves to acknowledge a universal foundation story under which the community can gather. Conclusions In the case of post-collapse lower Mopan River Valley, cultural trauma may serve as a major motivating factor in reorganizing and resettling Actuncan while at the same time abandoning the most recent capital of Xunantunich or any other center in the valley. Likely, it is not the only factor. Actuncan does rest on a hilltop and would have served as a strong defensible position. Additionally, the site is situated at a major crossroads of canoe trade from the Caribbean into the Central Petén. Regardless, in this poster, I attempted to consider one of the more directly human motivations for reformation, rather than assume the rational was based in economic or strategic value. The sociological and psychological literature on collective trauma makes it clear that major events result in irrational action aimed at seeking to reestablish collective identity. In order to better understand the temporally short chaotic process of reorganization, ideas about memory and trauma enable us to look at more culturally based explanations that provide insight into the community conversations and negotiations that result in novel reorganization. REFERENCES CITED Aimers, James J. 2007 What Maya Collapse? Terminal Classic Variation in the Maya Lowlands. Journal of Archaeological Research 15:329-377. Alexander, Jeffrey C. 2004 Toward a Theory of Cultural Trauma. In Cultural Trauma and Collective Identity, edited by Jeffrey C. Alexander, Ron Eyerman, Bernhard Giesen, Neil J. Smelser and Piotr Sztompka, pp. 1-30. University of California Press, Berkeley. Demarest, Arthur A., Prudence M. Rice, and Don S. Rice (editors) 2004 The Terminal Classic in the Maya Lowlands: Collapse, Transition, and Transformation . University Press of Colorado, Boulder. Estrada-Belli, Francisco 2011 The First Maya Civilization: Ritual and Power Before the Classic Period. Routledge, New York. Eyerman, Ron 2004 The Past in the Present: Culture and the Transmission of Memory. Acta Sociologica 47(2):159-169. Fahsen, Federico, and Nikolai Grube 2005 The Origins of Maya Writing. In Lords of Creation: The Origins of Sacred Maya Kingship, edited by Viginia M. Fields and Dorie Reents-Budet, pp. 75-79. Los Angeles County Museum of Art and Scala Publishers, Los Angeles and London. Freidel, David A., and F. Kent Reilly, III 2009 The Flesh of God: Cosmology, Food, and the Origins of Political Power in Ancient Southeastern Mesoamerica. In Pre-columbian Foodways: Interdiscipilanary Approaches to Food, Culture, and Markets in Ancient Mesoamerica, edited by John E Staller and Michael D. Carrasco, pp. 635-680. Springer, New York. Gunderson, Lance H., and C.S. Holling (editors) 2002 Panarchy: Understanding Transformations in Human and Natural Systems. Island Press, Washington, D.C. Lacher, Wolfram 2011 Families, Tribes and Cities in the Libyan Revolution. Middle East Policy 18(4):140-154. LeCount, Lisa J., Jason Yaeger, Richard M. Leventhal, and Wendy Ashmore 2002 Dating the Rise and Fall of Xunantunich, Belize. Ancient Mesoamerica 13:41-63. Neal, Arthur G. 1998 National Trauma and Collective Memory: Major Events in the American Century. M. E. Sharpe, Inc., New York. Smelser, Neil J. 2004 Psychological Trauma and Cultural Trauma. In Cultural Trauma and Collective Identity, edited by Jeffrey C. Alexander, Ron Eyerman, Bernhard Giesen, Neil J. Smelser and Piotr Sztompka, pp. 31-59. University of California Press, Berkeley. Taube, Karl A., William A. Saturno, David Stuart, and Heather Hurst 2010 The Murals of San Bartolo, El Petén, Guatemala, Part 2: The West Wall. Ancient America 10. Center for Ancient American Studies, Barnardsville, North Carolina. Yaeger, Jason 2008 Charting the Collapse: Late Classic to Postclassic Population Dynamics in the Mopan Valley, Belize. Research Reports in Belizean Archaeology 5:15-21. 2010 Shifting Political Dynamics as seen from the Xunantunich Palace. In Classic Maya Provincial Politics: Xunantunich and Its Hinterland, edited by Lisa J. LeCount and Jason Yaeger, pp. 145-160. University of Arizona Press, Tuscon. Figure 2: Map of the Belize River Valley with Actuncan and Xunantunich. (LeCount 2004:Figure 1) Time Collapse Cultural Trauma Search for Identity Foundation Narrative Figure 1: Schematic of a possible ramification of Societal collapse. Collapse events create trauma. Cultural trauma leads to a collective need to search for identity. One important way to regain identity is to reinforce foundation narratives that refer to pre-collapse memories. Xunantunich Transect Actuncan Transect Vaca Brava Callar Creek San Lorenzo Xunantunich Settlement Survey Totals Actuncan Core N = 6 N = 7 N = 5 N = 10 N = 29 N = 57 N = 9 (N) Freq (%) (N) Freq (%) (N) Freq (%) (N) Freq (%) (N) Freq (%) (N) Freq (%) (N) Freq (%) Middle Preclassic 0 0% 7 100% 3 60% 9 90% 5 17% 24 42% 2 22% Late Preclassic 0 0% 4 57% 2 40% 6 60% 2 7% 14 25% 4 44% Terminal Late Preclassic 0 0% 4 57% 3 60% 8 80% 5 17% 20 35% 7 78% Early Classic 2 33% 4 57% 1 20% 7 70% 2 7% 16 28% 8 89% Late Classic I 5 83% 5 71% 2 40% 9 90% 13 45% 34 60% 4 44% Late Classic II 6 100% 7 100% 5 100% 2 20% 24 83% 44 77% 7 78% Terminal Classic 2 33% 3 43% 2 40% 1 10% 10 34% 18 32% 7 78% Postclassic 0 0% 0 0% 0 0% 0 0% 0 0% 0 0% 2 22% 0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100% P e r c e n t a g e F r e q u e n c y o f O c c u p a t i o n Time Period Xunantunich Zone Actuncan Zone Vaca Brava Zone Callar Creek Zone San Lorenzo Zone Xunatunich All Actuncan Core Figure 4: Line Drawing of Actuncan Stela 1. (Fahsen and Grube 2005:79) Figure 5: Photo showing Xunantunich and Actuncan on the Landscape. Figure 6: Chart showing the percentage of residences occupied during each time period within settlement zones along the Mopan River Valley (after Yaeger 2008:Figure 4). Table 1: Occupation histories of Mopan River Settlement zones (after Yaeger 2010:Table II.3 from Ehret 1995, Yaeger 2000; Actuncan Core data is courtesy of the Actuncan Archaeological Project and not included in the Xunantunich Settlement Survey totals) Figure 3: Map of Actuncan pointing to Preclassic civic architecture. Triadic Complex Ballcourt E-Group Xunantunich Actuncan