The chultún analyzed in the 2024 study is thus situated within a site that was already complex in its ritual practices, a city whose relationship to sacrifice, to the underworld, and to cosmological themes of death and transformation was multifaceted and probably evolved over the centuries of its occupation.

The Terminal Classic Period and Chichén Itzá’s Moment

The Terminal Classic period, roughly from 800 to 1000 CE in the northern Maya lowlands, was characterized by two converging trajectories: the collapse of the great Classic Maya cities of the southern lowlands, and the florescence of new political and architectural developments in the north.

The “Classic Maya Collapse” — the abandonment of the major Classic-period cities of the southern lowlands, including Tikal, Palenque, Caracol, and dozens of others — is one of the most studied events in Maya archaeology.

Its causes were multiple and varied by region, involving some combination of prolonged drought, overpopulation and agricultural stress, political instability and warfare, epidemic disease, and the breakdown of the long-distance exchange networks that had sustained the Classic Maya elite economy.