The Rise and Fall of an Ancient Maya Petty Royal Court

The Maya “collapse” began shortly after A.D. 750, and the events associated with this transition period would play out over the next three centuries. Many factors contributed to the collapse, not the least of which was the trend toward widespread power sharing that began in the eighth century, when lesser nobles, particularly the lords of secondary centers, began to acquire more wealth and political autonomy. The examination of secondary centers, particularly in frontier zones farthest from the polity capitals, offers an advantageous perspective from which to document the events leading up to the collapse and to explore the nature of the collapse itself. Sometime near the beginning of the eighth century, Minanha, one of these secondary centers, emerged as a petty royal court in the frontier between the contracting Naranjo and Caracol polities. After a century of apparent sociopolitical and socioeconomic success, Minanha’s royal residential compound was willfully buried, some of its most important facades and stelae were destroyed, and the center went into rapid decline. The rise and fall of Minanha are discussed with respect to regional politics, as well as the broader ninth-century “collapse” of the southern Maya lowlands.