Reddit reviews Ancient Maya: The Rise and Fall of a Rainforest Civilization (Case Studies in Early Societies)

Archeologist Arthur Demarest has been at the forefront of effectively working with the natives around his Mayan digs. He has been able to reduce looting by involving the locals in making money off tourists who want to see the artifacts and excavations intact. He was actually able to recover a looted ball court goal from a remote site in Guatemala because of local "skin in the game". Compare that with another archeologist who went down into the jungles with NASA sat maps and found good stuff (I can't remember the details, but saw a talk he gave NASA when he got back). He tried to carry off a well preserved altar to the capital and the locals became upset that he was trying to steal their heritage. They stripped him and his crew, took all their stuff, and they are lucky to be alive after a dangerous escape from captivity. Those digs don't rely on competition with the locals for funding. This could only lead to big trouble in Darwinland. You must separate the funding of the science from the local trinket sales or the locals may just sell off the tortoises. I'm just saying.

If you want a good source, I'd check out Ancient Maya: The Rise and Fall of a Rainforest Civilization by Arthur Demarest. He does the best job of describing it out of the books I've read.

To summarize, the Classic Period Maya built their society using a unique form of agriculture suited to the rainforest. Rainforest soils are incredibly thin, and most of the nutrients is stored in the plants themselves rather than the sediment. Maya agriculture attempted to mimic the way the rainforest handles nutrients by burning plant mass to create thin fertile soils. They also planted multiple crops together in a way that minimized the damage to the soil. They would allow fields many years to recover after each harvest so as to avoid over taxing the system.

The system was incredibly stable as long as you didn't overdo it. Which is exactly what happened in the Late Classic Period. The Classic Maya city-states of the Peten region had been fighting each other for centuries, but when a stalemate arose between the two major powers (Calakmul and Tikal), other smaller cities began to 'throw their hat into the ring.' There were dozens of different cities at this point all competing to be the next regional power.

This kind of competition was expensive. In addition to devoting resources to the wars, they put lots of resources into new construction projects and festivals. Maya kingship was based on divine right, and the bigger the pyramid and the more impressive the festival the closer that king was to the gods. The problem was that pouring all of these resources into wars and competitive festivals depleted the granaries. So the Maya increased agricultural production, which was a dangerous decision.

Which city collapsed first is still a question for debate, but once it started it swept through the Maya lowlands like a domino rally. A famine broke out and this created refugees. The refugees went to other Maya communities, which were already stretching their resources thin as it was. These communities then too ran out of food and people left them for other communities, and so on and so forth. Pretty much the entire Southern Maya lowlands was depopulated in less than a century.

Other Maya regions like the Guatemala highlands and the Yucatan did fine, mind you. Their civilization actually flourished after the collapse in the Southern Lowlands.

"Thirding" Wallaby's and Rabbit's suggestions, I'd recommend Arthur Demarest's "Ancient Maya: The Rise and Fall of a Rainforest Civilization".