known of the Americas in this period, save what can be determined from archaeology. In North America, the Mississippian culture was in a continued state of decline. The city of Cahokia had experienced gradual decline since the 1200s, possibly due to contributory factors such as depletion of resources, climatic change, war, disease, social unrest and declining political and economic power. The final abandonment of the city may have taken place some time between this decade and 1400. Radiocarbon dating of wash material from Mound 55 give a date of around 1350, which can be taken as the time the mound was last used. Other Mississippian sites which went into decline after this decade, from about 1350 on, include the Kincaid Mounds and the Moundville site. In the case of the latter, the decline was marked by a loss of the appearance of a town and a decrease in the importation of goods. Although the site retained its ceremonial and political functions, some of the mounds were abandoned while others lost their religious importance altogether. In Central America, the Mayans, who centuries earlier had suffered a serious decline, were ruled from a capital in the Yucatan Peninsula called Mayapan. Other pre-Columbian civilisations, however, were on the rise. The precursors to the Aztecs, the Mexicas, had recently founded their capital city of Tenochtitlan. They also had occasional skirmishes with the nearby Mixtec civilization. Notes According to Fossier (p 89), a number of yeomen had benefited by the disappearance of many of their neighbours, as they were able to take over their empty farmlands and were then in a position to pay the going wages. However, while Hollister (p 285) and Soto (p 71) argue for the plague's positive socio-economic effects, Fossier (p 89) further suggests these were offset by state intervention in the form of royal taxation and wage restrictions. Edward III's issuance of the Ordinance of Labourers in 1349 limited the steep rise in wages that resulted from the plague, and the yeomen who had previously benefited now found themselves "deprived by royal ordinance of their essential workforce". The enforcement of such wage restrictions in 1351–1359 was to provoke serious unrest in Cheshire and Oxfordshire in that decade, while increased taxation in France caused similar discontent culminating in the Jacquerie (Fossier, p 89–90). References Bibliography Delbrück, Hans et al. History of the Art of War. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1990.