Wider WorldAD 1100–1550 · Ake, Yucatán, Mexico
Families lived among fallen Maya city ruins in Mexico for 450 years
Around AD 1100, families built 96 house mounds among the ruined buildings of Ake and stayed until Spanish authorities probably moved them out in the later 1500s.
In brief 3 key points
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- Families built 96 houses among the fallen buildings of a Maya city.
- The town lasted from about AD 1100 until the later 1500s.
- Pottery and one radiocarbon date support the dates of occupation.
Families lived among the fallen buildings of the Maya city of Ake, in Mexico's Yucatán, from around AD 1100 to 1550. They built houses from the rubble, kept shrines in the ruins and buried their dead there. Earlier researchers had seen the site as largely empty after its collapse.
Roberto Rosado-Ramirez of the University of Virginia did the study. It is published in the journal Latin American Antiquity. He argues that the true break in Maya history came with European colonial rule, and not with the fall of the Classic cities.
Offerings left on crumbling stairs
Ake once centred on a paved plaza of 2.5 hectares, ringed by seven giant buildings. A road 13 metres wide ran 32 km east to the regional capital of Izamal. Between AD 1000 and 1100, long droughts and regional fighting broke the local governments of northern Yucatán.
Over time, gravity, rain, roots and burrowing animals turned the big buildings into piles of rubble. That rubble holds the evidence. On the bottom step of Structure 2, archaeologists found a black-on-cream tripod plate dated to AD 1000–1300, buried by fallen stone.
Near the summit of the same building lay three clay animal figurines from AD 1200–1550. A man's burial turned up in the debris over the stairs of Structure 13. People left all of these after the buildings had already crumbled.
Earlier researchers read such finds as gifts from pilgrims who visited a dead site now and then from the city of Mayapan. Rosado-Ramirez reads them differently. In his view, a ruin and an empty place are not the same.
Houses built on blocks from the old buildings
Around AD 1100, families moved inside the walled centre and built 96 small mounds among the fallen buildings. The mounds averaged 45 square metres, and each carried a house of poles and thatch. At least 75 percent used carved blocks taken from the old ruins as foundations.
At least 76 of the mounds formed 12 house groups. This is the same layout seen in extended-family compounds across Maya towns. Around the houses, the excavators found grinding stones, rubbish heaps, pottery bowls, spindle whorls and animal bones.
Excavations at 17 mounds produced pottery dated to AD 1100–1550. One rubbish deposit was also radiocarbon dated, a method that measures the decay of carbon in organic remains. It gave a date of AD 1116–1218.
Five small shrines stood among the houses. Three sat at the foot of ruined buildings, and two stood on top of rubble. One had a fragment of a carved stone slab from about AD 600 at its centre. It also held the most pieces of clay incense burners found at Ake so far.
People burned incense, left offerings and buried community members inside the ruins. The study argues that, to the Maya, the broken buildings still housed gods and dead rulers.
The ruins drew wildlife too. Soil and moisture gathered in the rubble and gave plants and burrowing animals a home. Local residents today name trees around the site, such as ha'abim and chakté', which supply poles for thatch houses. Rosado-Ramirez argues that armadillos, rabbits, iguanas and bees lived among the stones, spreading seeds and making honey.
The town ended in the second half of the 1500s. A letter of 1567, signed by 17 Maya officials from the Motul area, names a governor of Tichake, a place name connected with Ake. Ake then drops out of a major set of Spanish reports on Yucatán.
Rosado-Ramirez reads this as a sign that Spanish authorities forced the residents into a new town. This relocation policy was called congregación.
About 350 people live at Ake today, in a town named Ruinas de Aké. Locals play baseball and football in a field bordered by ancient walls. A Catholic church stands on top of a Maya pyramid.
Sources (1)
Peer-reviewed paperfrom University of Virginia
- Ruined Maya city was never empty: families lived among its fallen buildings for 450 years (Archaeology News)
Paper: Rosado-Ramirez, R., Latin American Antiquity, 2026
Edited by Guiseppe Weijermars
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