May 13, 2023 Dr. Stanley Guenther, AFAR: “From Apogee to Abandonment: The Twilight of Tikal.”
In the middle of the eighth century A.D. Tikal was at the height of its Classic period splendor, the most powerful kingdom in the Maya world. It had just defeated its neighbors, Naranjo and El Peru, as well as its great rival, the Snake Kingdom of Calakmul. However, less than two centuries later the site was completely abandoned. This talk explored this sunset period of Tikal’s history and examined what happened at this site, focusing especially on the site’s ruling elite. It offered a number of new insights by re-examining the relatively abundant though damaged and enigmatic hieroglyphic inscriptions from this era. Contrary to previous interpretations of this history it was argued that the kingdom of Tikal did not disintegrate into a number of smaller petty kingdoms that mutually destroyed each other, but rather that a single line of Tikal lords, ruling from variously Tikal itself, Zacpeten, and Ixlu faced a double crisis in the Terminal Classic period: both climate change and a regime of foreign warlords who established themselves to the north but held sway over much of the eastern part of the Central Maya Lowlands. The lords of Tikal fought long and hard for their homeland. For a moment in the middle of the ninth century they even managed to recover their home city of Tikal, which they had abandoned already half a century earlier. But the crises were too great and ultimately Tikal lost this fight, first to the foreign warlords and finally to the changing climate, when both the conquered and the conquerors disappeared together and Tikal was left to be reclaimed by the jungle. The talk concluded by presenting a new interpretation of an old inscription, a graffiti from the heart of Tikal’s Late Classic palace, that is now revealed to be the very last hieroglyphic date from the site, dating to A.D. 904, one that reveals how Tikal lost its fight against the foreign warlords before even they abandoned the site.
Stanley Guenter was born in Manitoba, Canada and was first introduced to the world of archaeology and the ancient Maya at the age of five when his whole family moved down to Belize for a year. From finding pottery fragments in their front yard to exploring an open chultun in a field behind the house, these experiences in Belize primed Stanley for a life fascinated by the past and its many civilizations. Stanley got his undergraduate degree in archaeology from the University of Calgary in 1999, his master’s degree from La Trobe University in Melbourne, Australia in 2002, and his Ph.D. in anthropology from Southern Methodist University in 2014. He has been participating in and conducting excavations in Mexico, Guatemala, and Belize in the Maya region since 1997, as well as in Cambodia in Southeast Asia and a number of sites in southern Europe. He has taught at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, TX and Idaho State University and is currently working with AFAR, the American Foreign Academic Research group of Davidson, NC, which teaches archaeology to high school students at four different archaeological sites in Belize, Portugal, Spain, and Greece.
A recorded version for Society members is available in Meeting Archives.