What Maya Collapse? Terminal Classic Variation in the Maya Lowlands

Interest in the lowland Maya collapse is stronger than ever, and there are now hundreds of studies that focus on the era from approximately A. D. 750 to A. D.1050. In the past, scholars have tended to generalize explanations of the collapse from individual sites and regions to the lowlands as a whole. More recent approaches stress the great diversity of changes that occurred across the lowlands during the Terminal Classic and Early Postclassic periods. Thus, there is now a consensus that Maya civilization as a whole did not collapse, although many zones did experience profound change.