I was born in October 1939, the oldest of three children. Dad was an agricultural economist employed by the U.S. Department of Agriculture; Mom was a stay-at-home mother and part-time school librarian, with a vivid imagination and strong literary and historical interests, and our home was full of books. Since the 1780s, five generations of my father's family had owned and worked the same farm in western Maine, and that was where Dad was born and grew up. My mother's parents immigrated to America from Germany in 1884 and 1890; they met in Montana, worked a homestead there, and eventually became cattle ranchers in Alberta. After 1910, they took up a less rigorous life of farming in Connecticut and along the shore of Lake Cayuga in upstate New York, and it was there that Mom was born.

This paper reexamines the art and architecture of the Upper Temple of the Jaguars, Chichen Itza, in light of new unpublished digital images of Adela Breton's copies of the murals. Following discussion of the construction date of the building and previous interpretations of the murals, examination of costume, setting, and house form suggests that rather than depicting mythic or symbolic episodes, these murals illustrate actual military encounters between Chichen and its enemies. The occasion for their production seems to be the utilization of the Upper Temple of the Jaguars by a specific sector of Chichen Itza's military, perhaps for rites of investiture. This sector is argued to have been associated with the Cloud Serpent, either as the title of its leader or as a patron deity, and the structure itself is perhaps related to later Nahua buildings associated with penitential rites involving warfare and investiture.

The earthworks of Tikal have long been understood as the most extensive example of defensive architecture in the Maya Lowlands, with the ditch and embankment seen as part of a system of defense anchoring the north and south territorial limits of Tikal to impassable bajos on its flanks. New survey and excavation data suggest that the extent and course of the earthworks are not consistent with the demarcation of the north and south limits of the polity, and that the morphology of the feature is not consistent with a well-conceived or finished defensive construction. Here we present a hypothetical model of the earthworks as a limestone filtration trench that could have been used to collect subsurface water to mitigate the effects of canicular drought or to support off-season agriculture.

Coba represents a major Classic period Maya urban center. Archaeological investigations have suggested a complex socioeconomic integration apparent in the heterogeneity of the size, shape, and quality of architecture while demonstrating a clear demarcation between commoner and elite compounds in addition to a complex system of raised roads (sacbeob). Results of the 1974–1976 mapping efforts at Coba revealed a generalized concentric settlement pattern with elite compounds concentrated at the core. In their analysis of the settlement patterns at Tikal, Guatemala, Arnold and Ford challenged this concentric model. Their analysis of labor investment in structures within the 9 km2 core area of Tikal suggested, in contrast to Coba, a scattered rather than a concentric pattern of high-status architecture. Using a geographic information system (GIS), we tested our concentric model hypothesis for Coba by applying Arnold and Ford's work investment parameters. Our results confirmed the presence of a concentric pattern of high-status architecture at Coba closest to the core that differed from Arnold and Ford's findings of a scattered pattern in Tikal. These unique and discrete findings suggest that all major cities in the Maya area may not possess identical settlement patterns. To support our findings indicating urbanism, we also make a detailed analysis of the Coba and Calakmul demographics focusing on the Late Classic period.

Painted ceramic vessels of the Late Classic Maya, depicting scenes of the royal court, provide an entry into understanding the courtly community as an institution built on relationships and embodied through lived practice. By examining these ceramics both as circulating objects, representing the materialized form of courtly values, and as vehicles for imagery that conveys idealized representations of the court hierarchy and how it was enacted, archaeologists may more profoundly integrate material and iconographic investigations. Assertions of identity and status are examined through the ways in which they are “contained” by these decorated vessels and emerge as characterized by a series of simultaneous unifications and oppositions. A focus on bodily behaviors and interactions, and the ways in which objects played courtly roles in their own right, yields an animated understanding of a dynamic court and a larger perspective on the enactment of identity and difference in Classic Maya contexts.

Over the past four decades the interpretive capacity of lithic analysis in Mesoamerica has changed dramatically. Lithic studies have grown from simple artifact descriptions to a powerful approach for studying and interpreting pre-Hispanic economy. The linchpin for this change was the development of the lithic technology approach (Collins 1975; Crabtree 1968; Flenniken 1981) and its use in asking culturally meaningful questions about the Mesoamerican past (Sheets 1975; Spence 1967). The utility of this approach is as obvious to those who employ it, as it is elusive to those who do not. It involves the recovery, analysis and interpretation of flaked stone residues, that is, the large and small flakes and chips produced when stone tools are manufactured and used. Moreover, it is the study of the mundane to view the mundane, and obtain a window onto the economic patterns of everyday life. The reward from studying thousands of ordinary flaked stone remains comes from the insight it provides for reconstructing and modeling past economic behavior.

The marketplace was an important institution for household provisioning and elite resource conversion in pre-Hispanic Mesoamerica. Despite their importance, marketplaces are difficult to identify because exchange relationships are generally invisible in the archaeological record. This study examines the evidence for marketplaces at the Epiclassic period site of Xochicalco, Morelos, Mexico. It explores the role of craft production in the marketplace as a possible indicator of market activity. Excavations in a suspected market area at Xochicalco uncovered evidence for the production of obsidian prismatic blades on the floor of a public plaza. The results of these explorations are discussed and it is concluded that craft production can be a useful indicator for market activity if production debitage is found in primary contexts in public plazas.

For much of their history, prismatic blades were a relatively scarce item whose restricted occurrence suggested they functioned as prestige or luxury items. Some time prior to the Postclassic period, however, they became a widespread, ubiquitous, and mundane commodity in Mesoamerica, as indicated by ethnohistorical accounts as well as archaeological evidence. This occurred around the same time that blademakers began to prepare core platforms by pecking and grinding, a labor intensive process whose advantages are presumed to have played the primary role. The specific causal relationships involved, however, appear to pertain less to factors of increased productivity on the part of individual blademakers than to those of skill, as suggested by comparisons between core/blade technology used in areas close to obsidian sources and those used at sites further removed from the sources.

Obsidian prismatic blades were widely traded across Mesoamerica during the Early and Middle Formative periods. However, it was not until the Late Formative period (400 b.c.—a.d. 100) that prismatic blade cores began to be exchanged extensively. Although it is generally accepted that the trading of blades preceded the trading of cores by almost 1,000 years, little is know about the structure of blade trading during the Early and Middle Formative periods. We describe three distributional models for the trade of obsidian prismatic blades: whole-blade trade, processed-blade trade, and local-blade production. These models were evaluated using obsidian consumption data from Oaxaca, the Basin of Mexico, and Tlaxcala. The results indicate that Formative period blade trade involved different forms over time and space.

Esta es una síntesis de las principales características organizativas de la secuencia de explotación de la obsidiana verde del yacimiento de La Sierra de Las Navajas (Pachuca), de las culturas teotihuacana, tolteca y azteca. El uso de este vidrio volcánico se relaciona directamente con el desarrollo económico, militar, religioso y comercial de las organizaciones estatales del centro de Mesoamérica. En cada etapa cultural, identificamos los principales procesos de manufactura de instrumentos, armas y objetos religiosos en los talleres del yacimiento, así como la permanencia de los mineros, talladores y cargadores. El análisis diacrónico de la organización de la explotación y la distribución de la obsidiana verde con el desarrollo de la sociedad, nos permite detectar los cambios substanciales en la estrategía de obtención de esta importante materia prima.

This paper provides a reanalysis of a specialized biface workshop at Coyotlatelco-phase (a.d. 650–800) Teotihuacan excavated by Evelyn Rattray in 1979. Although Teotihuacan had already declined as a major center prior to this phase, the resident population was still being serviced by a variety of craftsmen, including knappers. The remains of an obsidian workshop at Hacienda Metepec give insight into workshop production within Epiclassic-period Teotihuacan. A single workshop produced between 4,700 and 8,700 projectile points similar in shape to San Marcos points. The homogeneous workmanship indicates a single knapper, perhaps over several years of effort.

The interpretation of craft activity in Mesoamerica has been hindered by difficulties in recognizing and defining the archaeological signatures associated with obsidian blade production and consumption. Theoretical advances and experimental approaches have improved our understanding, but few studies have investigated the role of obsidian blade production in craft activity using empirical data from archaeological assemblages. The present study addresses this problem by presenting an analysis of obsidian flakes and blades recovered from a workshop refuse context at Kaminaljuyu, Guatemala. Technological and use wear analyses suggest that core-shaping by-products in the form of irregular percussion and pressure blades were used in craft activity. Fine blades were underrepresented in the assemblage, suggesting that cores or blades left the workshop as finished goods. These analyses demonstrate that the actual behavior of artisans likely did not conform exactly to the dichotomous theoretical categories of production and consumption that archaeologists routinely use.