The Mayan culture is often thought to typify the Latin American archaeological experience. Whether this is due to its grand pyramids and archaeological 'ruins' deep in the dense jungle, or to the amount of attention it receives in popular culture, the Mayan culture has raised the profile of Latin American archaeology and fuels much of the tourism industry in the Yucatán peninsula.The height of Mayan culture occurred between about AD 200 and 900. Despite this rather definitive date range, it is important to remember that the Maya appeared very early in Mesoamerican prehistory and Mayan people continue to thrive in Mexico and Guatemala today. Mayan agricultural techniques include rotating slash-and-burn agriculture and raised field systems. These systems provided a great deal of the food which was required to maintain the Mayan urban lifestyle. Corn was the main crop used to support large centres such as Chichén Itzá, Tikal and Palenque. One of the most impressive developments of Mayan culture is their system of mathematics. There is evidence that it was workable into the millions of numbers and it was also used heavily in the Mayan calendar system. The Mayan mathematical system uses groupings of 20, unlike the system used in many parts of the world today, which uses groupings of 10.

The complete abandonment of many Mayan cities in the late 9th century AD is one of the great archaeological mysteries of Latin America. Some researchers suggest that it was internal pressures of expansion that caused this decline, while others suggest external pressure from other cultures was to blame. All that is really known is that this abandonment occurred rather quickly, and left much of the Mayan territory ripe for expansion by other Mexican cultures, such as the Aztec and Mixtec.

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