Braiding Ancestral Maya Ontologies and New Materialism to Understand Ruins

My interpretation of the Maya ruins of Ake between AD 1100 and 1550 braids together ideas from ancestral Maya belief systems and academic conceptions derived from new materialism. I build upon works that, combining ideas from Indigenous ontologies and new materialism, provide methodical and evidence-based understandings of ancestral communities in Mesoamerica (Joyce Reference Joyce, Alt and Pauketat2020, Reference Joyce2024; Normark Reference Normark2010). Those studies, along with the articles in this special section on the vibrancy of ruins in ancient Mesoamerica, illustrate the compatibility and complementarity of Mesoamerican ontologies and ideas from new materialism (Joyce and Rosado-Ramírez Reference Joyce and Rosado-Ramirez2025).

For the ancestral Maya, the world was populated by humans, nonhuman beings, and other forces, each with different capacities to act. Various nonhuman entities, such as objects, plants, animals, raw materials, spirits, and scripts, possessed agency and personhood (Ardren and Miller Reference Ardren and Miller2020; Astor-Aguilera Reference Astor-Aguilera2010; Houston Reference Houston2014; Taube Reference Taube1992). Not all things were alive nor had the same power in the Maya world, however. Organic and inorganic materials, as well as immaterial beings, had latent power that became activated only through interactions with human and nonhuman agents (Harrison-Buck and Hendon Reference Harrison-Buck and Hendon2018). The Maya conceived of monumental buildings as active entities that were part of a living and breathing landscape (Harrison-Buck Reference Harrison-Buck2012). Monumental buildings were activated through ensouling processes that may have included actions such as dedication rituals involving the burying of meaningful objects in them (Hendon Reference Hendon2012; Stuart Reference Stuart and Houston1998). When such dedicatory offerings to buildings included the remains of deceased royals or other community members, their vitality and essence were transferred to those architectural features (McAnany Reference McAnany and Houston1998). Monumental buildings, then, became indexes of ancestors.

Throughout precolumbian times and across the Yucatán Peninsula, ruins and functioning buildings coexisted in urban centers (Halperin Reference Halperin2014), but scholars have not yet identified references to decaying buildings in precolumbian Maya texts. Ethnohistorical documents from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries offer a glimpse of how Maya-speaking descendant communities thought of ruins. In some Yucatec Maya documents, we read about lab cah, a term meaning “old” or “rotted” town (Hanks Reference Hanks2010:306). This term refers to towns abandoned due to the congregación policy, a forced relocation of Maya communities from small hamlets and isolated dwellings into Spanish-administered towns implemented by European invaders in the middle of the sixteenth century (Quezada Reference Quezada2014:55–56). This relocation program was intended to facilitate the religious conversion of the Indigenous population and their surveillance by Franciscan friars and military authorities (Hanks Reference Hanks2010:60). The congregación policy was a deterritorialization process that prompted the breaking apart of precolumbian communities and their reterritorialization into Spanish-administered towns (Machault Reference Machault2025; Normark Reference Normark, Cornell, Ersgård and Nilsen2018). Although the Yucatec Maya no longer inhabited “rotted” towns, those old places continued to be designated with their original names, and displaced Maya communities retained the right of use over those lands (Restall Reference Restall1997). Lab cah became agricultural plots and hunting grounds and were often used as references to set territorial boundaries between neighboring Indigenous communities (Hanks Reference Hanks2010:305–307). References to rotted towns in ethnohistoric documents suggest that Maya descendants understood the ruins of towns not as abandoned places but as sites of memory and interaction between human and nonhuman entities. Lab cah were, unlike a modern, Western understanding of ruins, traces of old communities that continued to be consequential in contemporary times.

Because ancestral Maya ontologies were relational and non-anthropocentric, new materialism has the potential to serve as a theoretical framework with which to connect fragmentary data available on how the ancestral Maya understood ruins. New materialism recognizes the role that relations among entities such as animals, plants, materials, landscapes, meteorological phenomena, and human beings have in assemblages that are in a constant process of becoming (Bennett Reference Bennett2010; Deleuze and Guattari Reference Deleuze and Guattari1987). This perspective describes communities not merely as groups of people but rather as assemblages of humans, ancestors, ideas, artifacts, raw materials, places, houses, landscapes, and other entities; the engagements and relations among these human and nonhuman entities are what temporarily constitute community in a place (Harris Reference Harris2014). As assemblages, communities are context-specific and historically situated. Communities coalesce under certain conditions, until their human and nonhuman entities break apart to become part of other assemblages (Harris Reference Harris2021). The emergence of a community in a place is a territorialization process, whereas the dissolution of a community is designated as a deterritorialization process (Bennett Reference Bennett2010). When a community breaks apart, its components reterritorialize to form new communities. For this reason, deterritorialization is always followed by reterritorialization (DeLanda Reference DeLanda2006).

Traces of human activities are overrepresented in archaeological accounts because archaeologists are trained to identify materials used and created by people. This, however, should not be an impediment to imagining the agency of nonhuman entities in past communities. By paying attention to Indigenous ontologies, natural ecosystems, ethnohistoric records, and archaeological evidence, this article tries to populate the ancestral Maya past in Ake with both human and nonhuman entities that have the capacity to make a difference in the world and to affect each other.

Ake, Yucatán: An Ancestral Maya City

Ake is a persistent place located in the northwestern region of the Yucatán Peninsula, in what is now the Mexican state of Yucatán (Figure 1). Throughout its more than 2,500-year cultural history, Ake came together first as a Maya city, then as a plantation, and later a rural village. Numerous and diverse entities have been part of Ake’s lively communities. For millennia, the monumental buildings in Ake’s epicenter have been constant members of these communities. Table 1 presents a general outline of the long history of Ake (derived from Quintal Suaste Reference Quintal Suaste, Lowe and Suárez2016; Rosado-Ramírez Reference Rosado-Ramírez2021; Roys and Shook Reference Roys and Shook1966).

Figure 1.

Map of the northern Yucatán Peninsula, with sites discussed in the text. Basemap image courtesy of SRTM Team NASA/JPL/NIMA. (Color online)

The ancestral Maya city of Ake is the result of cycles of building, rebuilding, expansion, and decay. Generations of designers, builders, farmers, and animals, as well as materials, climatic and geological forces, and Indigenous knowledge, contributed to the formation of its urban infrastructure. The city was organized around a 2.5 ha paved plaza, with its perimeter defined by the seven largest buildings of Ake (Quintal Suaste Reference Quintal Suaste, Lowe and Suárez2016:73). These buildings were salient features in the flat topography and low, tropical dry forest of northern Yucatán, and would have been visible kilometers away from the city center. The Maya thought of such massive buildings as god houses, sacred mountains, places of creation, and cosmological anchors (Stuart Reference Stuart and Houston1998; Taube Reference Taube and Houston1998). The central plaza was the largest open space in Ake, hosting large gatherings that brought together the city’s inhabitants, leaders, ancestors, deities, and massive buildings during market days and festivals. The contrast between the buildings’ solid mass and the central plaza’s open space created a salient monumental unit, a holy space that was both the center of Ake and of the Maya universe (Hutson Reference Hutson2016:179). Ake’s central plaza was accessible through three raised causeways (Quintal Suaste Reference Quintal Suaste1993:127). One of these causeways was 13 m wide road that connected Ake’s epicenter to the regional capital of Izamal, 32 km to the east (Burgos Villanueva and Palomo Carrillo Reference Burgos Villanueva, Carrillo, Berrón and Ruz2018). These causeways made Ake’s holy plaza permeable. As with other Maya cities (Hutson Reference Hutson2016:185), Ake’s epicenter was a salient, central, and permeable landscape, a place that attracted people and nonhuman entities, and where community was territorialized during the Classic period.

Table 1.

General Outline of Ake’s Culture History.

Between AD 1000 and 1100, Ake and all other city-states in northern Yucatán experienced an episode of political collapse, or the dissolution of their political organization (Andrews Reference Andrews, Wyllys, V, Quezada, Castellanos and Andrews2014). Factors prompting this political collapse included long and recurrent droughts as well as regional conflict and violence (Andrews et al. Reference Andrews, Andrews V and Castellanos2003; Cobos Palma et al. Reference Cobos Palma, de Anda Alanís and Moll2014). Three lines of evidence suggest an episode of political collapse in Ake from AD 1000 to 1100. First, the epicenter of Ake and its neighboring settlements were encircled by stone walls overlaying domestic structures, monumental buildings, and causeways, suggesting political instability (Kurjack and Andrews Reference Kurjack and V1976; Webster Reference Webster1980). Second, Ake and its region experienced a population decline, demonstrated by a decrease in the frequency of artifacts dating post AD 1100. Third, a small shrine was built on the summit of Structure 1, suggesting that building was no longer used for its original purpose (Maldonado Cardenas Reference Maldonado Cardenas1989). Due to the challenges brought about by political collapse, people were no longer able to attend to Ake’s extensive urban infrastructure. Political collapse prompted the deterritorialization of Ake’s urban community, a process that released the network of human and more-than-human entities that made up the city.

Ake’s monumental buildings began to transform into ruins because of human neglect, gravity, and the agency of plants, burrowing animals, and the tropical climate. By AD 1100, Ake’s epicenter was a landscape dominated by ruins. The data to support this claim include the presence of meaningful materials dated to AD 1100–1550 excavated from the rubble accumulated over monumental Structures 2 and 13. While restoring Structure 2, archaeologists documented two caches deposited in the rubble covering its eastern façade. The first consisted of a well-preserved tripod plate identified as a Xcanchakan black on cream type, which dates to AD 1000–1300 (Jiménez Álvarez Reference Jiménez Álvarez and Palma2016:78–79; Figure 2). This plate was resting on the first step of the eastern staircase of Structure 2 (Quintal Suaste et al. Reference Suaste, Beatriz, Elizabeth Puch and Zapata2004:113). Because it was found in situ and in good condition, the vessel was certainly deposited when rubble accumulated on the staircase. The second cache consisted of three zoomorphic Chen Mul modeled ceramic figurines found in the rubble accumulated near the summit of Structure 2 (Quintal Suaste et al. Reference Suaste, Beatriz, Elizabeth Puch and Zapata2004:114), which date to AD 1200–1550 (Milbrath and Peraza Lope Reference Milbrath, Lope and Aimers2013; Figure 3). The location and chronology of ceramics in these two caches suggest that Structure 2 began its process of becoming a ruin sometime during the period AD 1000–1300, and by AD 1200–1550, the building was in an advanced state of ruin. In another location in the central plaza, archaeologists found the skeletal remains of an adult male buried in the debris accumulated over the staircase of Structure 13 (Quintal Suaste and Rosado-Ramírez Reference Quintal Suaste and Ramírez2009:100), indicating that the burial took place when this structure was in ruin.

Figure 2.

Cache 1 found in the rubble of Structure 2, Ake. Photograph courtesy of Rodolfo Canto Carrillo. (Color online)

Figure 3.

Cache 2 found in the rubble of Structure 2, Ake. Photograph courtesy of Rodolfo Canto Carrillo. (Color online)

The ruination of Ake’s monumental buildings has been interpreted as evidence that the site was abandoned by AD 1100. Archaeologists have suggested that after its abandonment, Ake became a pilgrimage destination (Maldonado Cardenas Reference Maldonado Cardenas and Pacheco1995:503; Quintal Suaste Reference Quintal Suaste1993:150). According to this interpretation, people from the regional capital of Mayapan, 35 km to the east, left the meaningful materials discussed above during sporadic visits to the site. Ruination, however, does not necessarily imply abandonment. The next section presents an overview of the data and interpretations derived from recent surface surveys and excavations within Ake’s walled epicenter to further understand the site’s post-AD 1100 history (Rosado-Ramírez Reference Rosado-Ramírez2021).

Ake between AD 1100 and 1550: A Community in a Ruined Landscape

Ake should be understood in the context of Postclassic Maya history of northern Yucatán. There were Maya settlements distributed across the Yucatán Peninsula throughout the Postclassic era. Some communities were established at aquatic-oriented locations due to the increased reliance at that time on water-based trade, permanent sources of water, and non-agricultural subsistence resources (Masson Reference Masson2000). Many Postclassic Maya people were also living in the hinterlands, either in the densely populated city of Mayapan (Masson and Peraza Lope Reference Masson and Lope2014), in medium-sized settlements, or in small hamlets and isolated dwelling sites (Andrews Reference Andrews1993). Some of these inland communities were established amid the ruins of Classic period cities. In northern Yucatán, such communities have been documented in Dzibilichaltun (Santiago Lastra Reference Santiago Lastra2010), Kuluba (Barrera et al. Reference Barrera Rubio, Stanton, Lope and Hernández2003), Ek Balam (Bey et al. Reference Bey, Hanson and Ringle1997), and Uxmal (Huchim Herrera and García Ayala Reference Huchim Herrera and García Ayala2000), among many others. These settlements are characterized by the presence of small mounds in central plazas; the accumulation of domestic refuse in ruined elite-civic architectural contexts; C-shaped structures; miniature shrines; stone walls encircling the site’s epicenters; albarradas, or domestic boundary walls; and the remains of offerings within the rubble accumulated over buildings (Bey et al. Reference Bey, Hanson and Ringle1997; Stanton et al. Reference Stanton, Brown and Pagliaro2008). Postclassic sites established amidst the ruins of Classic period cities are referred to in the academic literature as post-constructional (Adams and Trik Reference Adams and Trik1961), post-monumental (Bey et al. Reference Bey, Hanson and Ringle1997), or post-collapse (Manahan Reference Manahan, Stanton and Magnoni2008) settlements. Some ancient Maya cities in ruins also attracted pilgrims from all over the Yucatán Peninsula in the Postclassic era. The monumental ruins of Izamal draw people to connect with the Maya deity Itzamnaaj (Solari Reference Solari2013). Chichen Itza was another ruined city that became a sacred center and a pilgrimage destination (Restall et al. Reference Restall, Solari, Chuchiak IV and Ardren2023:239). Ake was one of the many Classic-era Maya cities in ruins in northern Yucatán that was the seat of a vibrant community in the Postclassic era.

Around AD 1100, a community emerged within Ake’s walled epicenter where people built 96 small mounds amid ruins (Figure 4). Excavations on or adjacent to 17 mounds representing 20% of the 96 features recovered pottery dating to AD 1100–1550. A radiocarbon date from a trash deposit associated with one mound provided the date AD 1116–1218 (Rosado-Ramírez Reference Rosado-Ramírez2021:280). No gaps occurred in the distribution of pottery and other archaeological materials in the 17 archaeological deposits excavated. The stratigraphically uninterrupted accumulation of artifacts suggests that people interacted with and used artifacts within the walled epicenter continuously from 500 BC to AD 1550. Further, the similarities between the artifact assemblages from domestic contexts beyond Ake’s epicenter and those recovered from the small mounds excavated suggest that the site core drew people from the outskirts of Ake to live within the walled enclosure in a synchronous event. The establishment of this later settlement was likely a process of community transformation rather than population replacement.

Figure 4.

Map of the ancestral Maya city of Ake, showing Postclassic settlement.

Figure 4 Long description

The map depicts the ancestral Maya city of Ake, highlighting Postclassic settlement features. It includes various elements such as Classic-period buildings in ruins, Postclassic-period mounds, shrine-like structures and dry-stone boundary walls. The central area is labeled as ′Central Plaza,′ surrounded by structures and mounds. Classic-period buildings in ruins are shaded, while Postclassic-period mounds are marked with black squares. Shrine-like structures are indicated with circles and dry-stone boundary walls are represented by dotted lines. The map includes a scale bar showing distances of 50, 100 and 200 meters and a north arrow for orientation. Key structures are labeled, such as ′Structure 1′ and ′Structure 2,′ and pathways like ′Causeway to Izamal′ and ′Causeway′ are marked. The spatial arrangement suggests a complex layout with various historical and architectural elements within the walled epicenter.

Data from survey work and excavations documented the configuration, distribution, and contexts of the 96 mounds distributed within Ake’s walled epicenter. These mounds had an average area of 45 m², with plan shapes ranging from rectangular to apsidal to C-shaped. These small, low-lying mounds served as the foundations of pole-and-thatch structures. Megalithic blocks and carved stones from the ruins of Classic period buildings comprised the foundations of at least 75% of these late mounds (Figure 5). People built these features over paved plazas, causeways, and ruins within the site core. At least 76 mounds clustered around open spaces to form 12 patio groups, a spatial pattern typical of extended family compounds in Maya settlements (Robin Reference Robin2013). Grinding stones and middens were associated with those patio groups. Middens contained fragments of pottery vessels including ollas, cajetes, bowls, and tecomates, along with lithic artifacts, spindle whorls, and animal bones. The spatial domain of each patio group was demarcated by albarradas. Besides those domestic spaces, five shrine-like structures were distributed across the site’s walled enclosure. Shrine-like structures are small square features with no construction fill in their interior measuring 10 m² on average. Three of these structures were located near the base of ruined buildings and two were constructed on the rubble. Horizontal excavation of one of these shrine-like structures recovered the highest concentration of Chen Mul modeled effigy censer sherds thus far documented at Ake (Figure 6). The fragment of an Early Classic (AD 600) stela formed the central piece in the shrine-like structure. The characteristics and data recorded from the 96 mounds distributed within Ake’s walled epicenter indicate that these features are the archaeological manifestation of a community living amid the ruins of Ake during the Postclassic era.

Figure 5.

A late mound in Ake’s epicenter, with blocks from monumental buildings reused in its foundation. Photograph courtesy of Roberto Rosado-Ramirez. (Color online)

Figure 6.

Shrine built at the base of a ruined building: (a) before horizontal excavation; (b) at center, detail of Early Classic stela fragment reused in its construction. Photographs courtesy of Roberto Rosado-Ramirez. (Color online)

These data suggest that Ake’s ruined epicenter was bursting with activity between AD 1100 and 1550. Open spaces among the ruins became living grounds for people. Women, men, and children engaged in frequent and diverse face-to-face interactions across a walled enclosure strewn with ruins. People lived in neighboring house lots, seeing and talking to each other and passersby over boundary walls. Within house lots, people cooked and shared meals, constructed and maintained houses, and crafted stone tools for clearing agricultural fields and chopping firewood. They wove cloth for garments and household uses. Beyond their house lots but inside the walled enclosure, people farmed in adjacent plots, collected recyclables, and weeded common areas. The stone wall that encircled Ake’s epicenter sought to protect against the conflicts and violence that may have existed in northwestern Yucatán in the Postclassic era.

Residents of Postclassic Ake collectively convened with ancestors in the central plaza. The plaza was saturated with matter from a then-recent past and inhabited by ancestors. The monumental ruins surrounding the plaza were, as noted above, home to deities and deceased rulers. In this setting, people, ancestors, and deities interacted through commemorative practices performed in the ruins, including burning incense and placing offerings in shrines built on the rubble of monumental buildings, and burying ceramic vessels, figurines, and the bodies of community members within the ruins. Through those meaningful practices, the residents of Postclassic Ake interacted with one another, with ancestors and deities, and with the ruins and older artifacts that crowded the site core. These commemorative practices suggest that the ruined buildings in Ake were still active entities, like they were in the Classic era.

The ruins of Ake attracted animals and plants to an ancestral place. The present-day vegetation in the area is dominated by a low tropical dry forest. Significantly, the natural ecosystems in Ake, as those in the northwestern corner of Yucatán, are in a natural process of recovery after the land was cleared of forest and used for the cultivation of henequen from the end of the nineteenth century up to the 1990s (González-Iturbe et al. Reference González-Iturbe, Olmsted and Tun-Dzul2002). Although the flora and fauna in Ake nowadays may be similar to the ones prevalent in the precolumbian era, it may not be presently as diverse and abundant as it was in the Postclassic.

Between AD 1100 and 1550, the forest of Ake would have been made up of the remnants of plant species that grew previously in Classic period forest gardens and agricultural fields. Local people state that various tree and plant species common in human projects grow in and around the ruins of Ake today. Trees like ha’abim, chakté’, k’anchunup, and e’lemuy are essential to assemble pole-and-thatch buildings. Trees such as waaxim, tsalam, and káatsim provide firewood for cooking and keeping households warm. Chili peppers, piñuela, and wild papaya are foods for humans and animals. Those species could have been part of the bulk of the vegetation in the Postclassic. A diverse plant population would have thrived in Classic period house lots and pathways, areas covered by anthropogenic paleosols with high phosphorus concentrations. People would have intervened in the blooming of ancestral forest gardens, encouraging the growth of some plant species and weeding out others. Soils, humus, and humidity accumulated in the rubble of ruined buildings, creating shelter and food for burrowing animals, mammals, reptiles, birds, and insects. Animal bones found in Postclassic trash deposits in the site’s epicenter indicate that at least deer and wild turkeys were hunted and eaten in Ake. Contemporary people have observed many different animals on and around the ruins of Ake for decades and it is likely that those and other animals were also part of Ake’s Postclassic community. Armadillos, rabbits, toads, coatis, iguanas, squirrels, and doves, along with humans, must have dispersed vegetation seeds in the site’s epicenter. Bees must have collected pollen from such trees as ts’its’ilché and plants like tajonal to produce honey, an essential exchange good in Postclassic Yucatán (Andrews Reference Andrews1993). Venomous snakes, like coralillo, wolpoch, and tzabcán, must have been feared and avoided by humans and other animals. The human-plant-animal engagements that took place in Ake’s epicenter fostered the recovery of flora and fauna populations after the drought conditions that characterized the end of the Classic era.

During the Postclassic, the ruins of Ake drew people from the outskirts to the epicenter for practical and ideological reasons. After hosting a large urban population for centuries, the city center contained many elements to sustain life: recyclable materials, water, rich soils, and diverse plant and animal populations. After AD 1100, the ruins of Ake also attracted people to the city center to connect with past generations. Women, men, and children were able to see and touch carved stones taken from the ruins of Classic period buildings in the foundations of their houses (Figure 7). These spolia were stones with a life force capable of making a difference in the world (Houston Reference Houston2014:91). People constantly found artifacts on the ground while walking across the walled enclosure and in their house lots and farming plots. These old materials, which once established relations with Classic period peoples, were time-bound pieces. Whenever Postclassic people looked at older carved stones in the foundations of houses, shrines, and pathways, or used recycled artifacts, they would be reminded of the Classic period residents of Ake, who may have been their ancestors. For the households living in Ake, recycling old material culture was probably a strategy to establish connections with ancestors as well as an economical reuse of available materials. Thus, reusing ancestral places, carved stones, lithics, and ceramic artifacts may have been an attempt to transfer history and enliven contexts dating to AD 1100–1550. Finally, Ake’s ruined epicenter attracted people from the outskirts and kept them in place because this was still a sacred place in the Postclassic era. Monumental buildings were in ruins but continued to be god houses, sacred mountains, places of creation, and cosmological anchors, as suggested by the offerings placed within them. The central plaza no longer hosted massive gatherings, but it remained a holy space, the center of Ake and of the Maya universe. No other settlement within a 30 km radius had the monumentality and configuration of Ake’s epicenter, which was only surpassed by Izamal (Burgos Villanueva and Palomo Carrillo Reference Burgos Villanueva, Carrillo, Berrón and Ruz2018). The ruins of Ake, as well as those of many other ancestral cities in northern Yucatán, were vibrant because they had the power to congregate life and matter, and to territorialize community in the Postclassic era.

Figure 7.

Examples of the reuse of limestone blocks taken from ruins: (a) carved monument reset in a pathway in between ruins; (b) block from monumental building reused as a metate. Photographs courtesy of by Roberto Rosado-Ramirez. (Color online)

The end of the Postclassic community of Ake came about sometime between AD 1567 and 1580. In a 1567 letter written in Yucatec Mayan using Latin characters, a group of 17 Maya officials from the Motul polity in northwestern Yucatán requested that the king of Spain send more Franciscan friars to their communities. The Maya officials who signed this document were from towns located within a 16 km radius of the town of Motul, itself 10 km to the north of Ake. Among the signing officials was Jan Pech, “batab and Governor of Tichake.” According to ethnohistorian Sergio Quezada (Reference Quezada2014:134), this place-name corresponds to Ake. This reference suggests that, by the mid-sixteenth century, Ake was an Indigenous community immersed in the Spanish colonial regime. Ake, however, is not mentioned in the comprehensive Relaciones Geográficas de Yucatán, a collection of reports describing the population, history, and economics of the Indigenous settlements dispersed in the Spanish-controlled areas of the Yucatán Peninsula. This suggests that the people living in Ake may have been relocated to a yet unknown town as part of the Spanish congregación policy. The Spanish invasion of the Yucatán Peninsula therefore forced the deterritorialization of Ake’s Postclassic community.

Final Comments

This article examined the territorialization of a Postclassic community in Ake, an ancestral place in the northern Yucatán Peninsula. The collapse of political authority in Ake around AD 1000–1100 led to the ruination of the Classic period urban infrastructure at the site. However, political collapse and ruination did not bring about abandonment. Because ruins indexed ancestors and deities, they drew people, houses, shrines, and meaningful objects to them. The ruins of Ake compelled people to make offerings of ceramic vessels and figurines, as well as the bodies of community members, in their rubble. Ruins accumulated soils and humidity, and thus plants and animals were attracted to them as well. In the Postclassic era, Ake was an assemblage of ruins, animals, vegetation, and ancestors, in addition to Indigenous women, men, and children. These human and nonhuman entities were enmeshed in repeated acts of interdependence, commemoration, and cooperation. Rather than abandonment and emptiness, vibrancy and dynamism were the hallmarks of Ake toward the end of precolonial Maya history. The end of this community came about in the second half of the sixteenth century, when Spanish invaders forcibly relocated Ake’s residents to a colonial town, prompting a deterritorialization process.

This study offers a glimpse into a Maya perspective on ruins for the AD 1100–1550 era. This Indigenous perspective, which was relational and non-anthropocentric, conceived of ruins as vibrant entities in more-than-human communities. Ruination changed the appearance and added meaning to urban architecture. For the ancestral Maya, ruination may have afforded different interactions between people, ancestors, animals, plants, and ruins. A change in appearance and use did not necessarily mean that all Maya cities were abandoned; indeed, the period AD 1100–1550 was not an era of pervasive abandonment in the Yucatán Peninsula. Instead, it was a time of population continuity and changing settlement patterns in the northern Yucatán. Narratives of widespread abandonment in northern Maya history should not focus on the end of the Classic period but rather on the era of European colonialism.

Today, Ake is a rural community of around 350 inhabitants. Local women, men, and children interact with the ruins of ancestral Maya buildings in different ways, from processions to the Catholic church built on top of a Maya pyramid, to baseball and soccer games organized in a field bordered by the remains of ancestral Maya buildings. These ruins attract tourists and archaeologists from near and afar year-round. The ancestral ruins are so essential to the community’s identity that the modern town is named after them: Ruinas de Aké. The different communities that have assembled in Ake over time challenge us not to take ruination as the end of the story for the ancestral Maya cities of northern Yucatán.