The article discusses the 1473 civil war between the two polities that formed the capital of the Aztec empire, Tenochtitlan and Tlatelolco, as presented in the Codex Durán. I argue that the literal, European-style rendition of the events of the war includes remnants of the pre-Conquest symbolic thought behind those events' original choreography. The remnants indicate that the war was staged to follow the outlines of the story of the battle between the god Huitzilopochtli (“Hummingbird, Left”) and his sister Coyolxauhqui (“Bells, Painted”) at the mountain site of Coatepetl (“Serpent Mountain”), an allegory for the rise and fall of powerful rulers. I also suggest that the enemy king and his second in command, after being thrown from the Tlatelolco Templo Mayor, were buried in the funerary vessels beside the Great Coyolxauhqui Stone discovered in 1978 at the base of the Tenochtitlan Templo Mayor, proved by the war to be the “true” and only Coatepetl.

This article presents an analysis of the tlacuiloque (scribes) who participated in the production of the Matrícula de Tributos and the Codex Mendoza. I show the relevance of palaeographic analysis for documents in which the writing system is logosyllabic or hieroglyphic and most of the information is iconographic. The Matrícula de Tributos is a pre-Columbian document that recorded the tribute paid to the Mexica empire by conquered towns. It was probably painted during the last decade of Moctezuma's II rulership, although some of its pages may have been produced earlier. Its production shows the work of at least six scribes. Its content was copied by a single artist around 1542 as the second part of the Codex Mendoza, a document created to be sent to the Spanish emperor. I provide evidence of the work of the six scribes in the pages preserved of the Matrícula. I also show that the scribe responsible for folios 6r–11v of the Matrícula painted the entire Codex Mendoza at least 20 years later. I demonstrate these interpretations through comparative analysis of some elements of the iconography and logosyllabic writing in the Matrícula and the Codex Mendoza.

Investigations into the evolution of early religious institutions should emphasize how the ritual manipulation of symbolically charged objects generated shared understandings regarding divine entities among religious communities of practice. This study demonstrates that the origins of two distinctively central Mexican deities—the Old God of Fire and the Storm God—can best be understood through contextual analysis of effigy vessels depicting them during later Formative periods (ca. 600 b.c.–a.d. 100). By presenting new examples of such effigy vessels and assembling contemporary counterparts from other central Mexican sites, we can better appreciate the Formative religious integration of the region and its legacy for the religious systems of later societies. Specifically, the primacy of the Old God of Fire and the Storm God to Aztec dedicatory offerings, and the private/domestic associations of the former and public/monumental associations of the latter at Teotihuacan were elaborations on patterns apparent in Formative ritual practices.

The site of Aguateca, Guatemala, was rapidly abandoned at the beginning of the ninth century a.d. (approximately a.d. 830), leaving a Pompeii-style assemblage scattered on the floors of elite residences. Horizontal excavation of these residences has revealed ancient elite activity and household-level craft-production areas, including in situ evidence for the manufacture of bone and shell artifacts using stone tools. Here, bone/shell-production sequences that identify artifact-crafting stages are combined with lithic microwear analyses using high-power microscopy that identifies lithic manufacturing tools. A combined distributional analysis of lithic manufacturing tools, bone and shell debitage, and finished products reveals the location and nature of bone/shell-artifact manufacture in the households of the Classic Maya elite. The evidence indicates that Aguateca nobility carried out part-time animal-product crafting, the specific nature of which varied among households. Household room-use distributions also hint that both women and men were involved in crafting most animal products.

Archaeological research can draw on material remains to understand the ways that individuals may have expressed their identities in pursuit of specific goals. Here ritual performances in ancient Mesoamerica are considered for their role in shaping identities deployed to gain social and political power. The Late to Terminal Classic period (a.d. 650–960) site of Las Canoas, Honduras, is offered as a case study. In particular, the monumental Main Plaza Group at Las Canoas is examined as a spatial setting for the performance of rituals involving the use of incense burners and ceramic anthropomorphic figurines. These performances are argued to have facilitated the efforts of certain members of the community to take advantage of shifting political and economic alliances in the region and make a bid for power. Ultimately, however, their efforts to establish spiritual and political leadership did not endure.

This is the twenty-fifth Special Section published in Ancient Mesoamerica, and therefore it represents something of a milestone in the history of the journal. The goal has been to present in each special section a collection of related papers from a single project or region or on a selected topic to provide readers a tightly integrated summary of current research and interpretations. Certainly one of the most compelling and provocative special sections we have published was “Urban Archaeology at Teotihuacan” which appeared in vol. 2, no. 1 (1991). This collection of papers featured two stunning articles on the Feathered Serpent Pyramid, then often referred to as the Temple of Quetzalcoatl. Constructed in the early third century A.D., the Feathered Serpent Pyramid, along with the Sun Pyramid and the Moon Pyramid, was one of the three most powerful monuments in the sacred urban landscape of Teotihuacan. Rubén Cabrera Castro, Saburo Sugiyama, and George L. Cowgill (1991) reported on excavations in the 1980s of the Feathered Serpent Pyramid and the investigation of more than 137 sacrificial burials, including more than 70 males identified as soldiers because of associated offerings, discovered at the base of and underneath the pyramid. In the second article, Alfredo López Austin, Leonardo López Luján, and Saburo Sugiyama (1991) presented their brilliant iconographic analysis of the sculptural facades of the Feathered Serpent Pyramid, arguing that the monumental structure was dedicated to the myth of the origin of time and calendric succession, a tangible cosmogonic proclamation that Teotihuacan was “the place where time began.”

The Moon Pyramid is the second largest monument at Teotihuacan and represents a key source of information regarding the state polity and its underlying ideology. It was little known archaeologically until now. Extensive excavations around the pyramid and tunnel operations within its nucleus have discovered an elaborate architectural sequence, including seven overlapping monumental constructions and five burial complexes of sacrificed individuals and sacred animals associated with rich offerings. The excavations in nearby structures and the three-dimensional mapping of the Moon Plaza complex provide valuable new data relevant to better understanding the ancient city, including its foundation and urbanization processes and the ideology of leadership that was materialized by successive monumental constructions.

A series of highly elaborated burial/offering complexes have been discovered recently in association with seven superimposed monumental constructions at the Moon Pyramid. The archaeological contexts excavated during the past seven years indicate that these dedicatory complexes were symbols of a state religious ideology and communicated sociopolitical information on behalf of ruling elites. Rich artifacts made of obsidian, greenstone, shell, pyrite, ceramics, wood, and textile, as well as abundant skeletal remains of sacrificed animals and human beings, stand out in these unusual ritual deposits. Many of the offerings possess strong connotations of warfare and ritual sacrifice. After describing the five burial/offering complexes and discussing their possible function and religious significance, we conclude that, when the expanding Teotihuacan state orchestrated these monumental constructions, the most important ritual paraphernalia was buried in the new enlargement programs to express the ideology of sacred rulership.

Beginning with Building 4, each new version of the Moon Pyramid in Teotihuacan was initiated with a major sacrificial event. These events invariably included human victims, males ranging in age from about 14 to 60 or more years (Minimum Number of Individuals (MNI) = 37). Many display cranial modification and dental decoration. In the earliest offering, Burial 2, the lone human was merely one element in a complex tableau. In subsequent sacrifices, the human victims increased in number and became a major focus of the event. There was also a growing dichotomy among them, with numbers of decapitated victims being included in the sacrifices. Skeletal elements from the pyramid fill suggest still other rituals involving human crania (MNI = 11), but the context of these is not yet clear.

To investigate geographic origins of the sacrificial Burials 2–5 from the Moon Pyramid at Teotihuacan and to reconstruct changes in residence since their childhoods, we analyzed tooth enamel for oxygen- and strontium-isotope ratios and bone just for oxygen-isotope ratios. The combination of these analytical techniques involves both climatic and geological variables, therefore enhancing resolution of geographic identification. Most of the sacrificed individuals appear to have been born in a foreign location. These regions probably include other areas within the Basin of Mexico and the central highlands, as well as the Gulf Coast and the Sierra Madre del Sur. Other possible regions of origin are the southern highlands, the Motagua Valley, and the Maya Lowlands. There is considerable overlap in the oxygen-isotope ratios between the Moon Pyramid and Feathered Serpent Pyramid victims, but each structure contains a group of isotopically distinct individuals. The Moon Pyramid sacrifices include some individuals with high oxygen-isotope ratios, possibly indicating the Gulf Coast or Maya Lowlands, whereas the Feathered Serpent Pyramid contains a distinct group with very low oxygen-isotope ratios, possibly indicating Oaxaca, Michoacan, or the coastal plain and piedmont of Guatemala. The sacrifices in the two pyramids also differ in their patterns of movement. Most of the Moon Pyramid victims appear to have arrived in the city recently, but the majority of those from the Feathered Serpent Pyramid had lived in Teotihuacan for a long time before their death.

The expansionary strategies of Teotihuacano political leaders involved the large-scale manufacture of weaponry and the production of ceremonial items representative of a coherent suite of symbols expressing themes of warfare and sacrifice. Recent excavations at the Moon Pyramid demonstrate that such production activities were undertaken next to the monument, where obsidian was reduced into dart points and eccentrics linked to militarism and sacrificial practices in the art and archaeology of the city. These craft production activities were likely directly administered by state functionaries and formed part of the physical and ideational bases of state political authority. The finished products served as means of direct military coercion and symbolic reification of state authority, materialized through the militaristic offering complexes within the major temples of the city. This study presents a detailed technological analysis of the production activities and contextualizes their social significance by examining their symbolic manipulation in the art and sacrificial offerings of Teotihuacán.