Systematic survey of 1,000 km2 in a mountainous zone of the Mixteca Alta in Oaxaca, Mexico, has produced detailed architectural data at a large number of pre-Hispanic settlements. One unusual architectural form, circular stone foundations, apparently dates to the Late Postclassic period. Comparisons to similar architectural forms described in the archaeological and ethnographic literature of Mesoamerica and in the Mixtec codices suggest that they may have been sweatbaths. Analysis of their regional distribution and site contexts leads to interesting conclusions about additional contexts for sweatbath ritual. The symbolic link between royal birth, marriage, and sweatbath ritual is clear in the Mixtec codices. An additional use may have been in rituals affirming community identity and marking community boundaries. We suggest a further connection to the use of sweatbaths in Mixtec toponyms and their association with sacred places on the Mixtec landscape, both of which reflected the importance of marriage alliance and female royal inheritance in the territorial strategies of Postclassic Mixtec kingdoms.

The Bilimek Vessel is among the most remarkable pieces of portable Aztec sculpture, and it contains an unusually complex body of imagery concerning starlore and cosmic battle. The Bilimek Vessel and other Aztec sources reveal that the alcoholic beverage pulque was well integrated into Aztec concepts of warfare and mythology. To the Aztec, pulque was identified with the souls of dead warriors and the starry night sky. The many figures appearing on the Bilimek Vessel represent star beings attacking the sun. At least three and probably four of the depicted deities are identical to the sky bearers appearing in the year-bearer pages of the Codex Borgia (see Seler 1963) and Codex Vaticanus B (see Seler 1902–1903). It is noted that much of the iconography and calendrics appearing on the Bilimek Vessel concerns the completion of the 52-year cycle and the New Fire ceremony, an event that symbolized the cosmic battle between the sun and the fearsome tzitzimime star demons of darkness.

Hieroglyphic inscriptions from Chichen Itza are examined for possible light they might shed on its ethnic and political makeup during the Terminal Classic period (a.d. 800–1000). It is suggested that many of the name glyphs include patronyms known to be important at contact. This continuity of elite occupation is reinforced by decipherment of a title common to many of them ás holpop, a title also known from early colonial Spanish and Maya documents. Finally, a reading of the event of the lintel as yul is suggested. The implications of these readings suggest the genesis of at least some Late Postclassic organizational features in the Terminal Classic. Also arguing against a severe rupture of elite life at the end of the Terminal Classic is the persistence of patronyms in northern Yucatan. Colonial sources make frequent mention of migrations and invasions as the source of the distinctive art and architecture, yet if the arguments herein are correct, there was instead a remarkable stability of ruling families in northern Yucatan. Finally, the dedication of several monuments by different individuals, each having different patronyms and marked by epithets such as “holy,” suggests considerable autonomy of these lesser officials consistent with a segmentary state form of organization.

From the Preclassic on, architectural complexes with defined functions were built in the Maya lowlands as a reflection of societal complexity and of the centralization of power in the hands of a sovereign with divine rights. Two of these types of complexes—acropoli and astronomical commemoration complexes—complement each other, as a model for a new generation of elites with ideas of grandeur and with the vision to realize ambitious projects. Thus, in Tikal and Uaxactun, the acropoli and the astronomical commemoration complexes (also called Group E) were built. These, together with other evidence for political, economic, and artistic progress, led the sites to become powerful centers that radiated prosperity and wealth.

The names of many pictorial manuscripts from ancient Mesoamerica honor collectors, politicians, scholars, or institutions of the “Western” world or the national elite, alien to the people who created them and the region to which they refer. Different usages in designating these codices and lienzos have introduced some confusion in the nomenclature. Here, a new set of names is proposed that is more in conformity with the contents of the documents and closer to the Mesoamerican culture.

Archaeological research in the Maya lowlands has identified special deposits that offer essential information about the abandonment of Classic Maya centers. We argue that some of the “problematical deposits” associated with terminal architecture may be more accurately described as peri-abandonment deposits since they temporally and behaviorally relate to the activities associated with the final use of ceremonial space. Here, we describe several peri-abandonment deposits that were identified in Group B at the site of Baking Pot, located in western Belize. Using detailed stratigraphic and contextual information, artifact assemblages, and calendar dates recorded on polychrome vessels recovered in the deposits, we describe the nature of activities associated with the formation of peri-abandonment deposits at Baking Pot in the eighth to ninth centuries. We find patterning in the spatial locations of deposits in the corners of plazas and courtyards at Baking Pot, with variability in artifact assemblages between specific deposits.

The description and analysis of materials from on-floor deposits that reflect the final activity before site abandonment are key to making a determination as to what happened during the Maya collapse around a.d. 900. On-floor deposits recovered at Caracol, Belize indicate that factors like warfare, the breakdown of the site's market system, and heightened social tensions were in play prior to the abandonment of the site. In an attempt to understand the meaning of these deposits, we first examine why on-floor remains constitute an important data class for archaeology. We next look at the kinds of artifactual materials that are recovered in these deposits and then at the locations and nature of on-floor deposits at Caracol. Finally, we offer our thoughts on what they represent in the broader Maya context.

The Izalcos Pipil were pre-Hispanic residents of the Río Ceniza Valley of western El Salvador and had clear linguistic ties to the Aztecs and other Nahuas of central Mexico. Both archaeological and documentary data are presented that show strong evidence that the Izalcos Pipil also maintained Nahua social and political institutions. The Izalcos Pipil emphasized characteristics of Nahua social practices that depend on dynamic mobility on the landscape to articulate discrete cultural elements, and these characteristics are observable in Izalcos inter- and intrasite settlement organization and the distribution of Nahua settlement in southern Mesoamerica. The degree of mobility on the landscape was shown in the internal organization of sites, architectural arrangements, and the relationships among sites and is indicated in historical documents. Pipil concepts, institutions, and boundaries provided the foundation for the Spanish colonial political economy. This region became a jewel in the Spanish Crown in part because of prodigious cacao production that the Izalcos Pipil established long before Spanish contact. The degree of nucleation before and after conquest did not change dramatically, but the analysis of mobility showed that even though some elements of patterning appeared superficially the same, underlying causes were fundamentally different. The most important conquest-induced change was the transition to capitalism, which created a static, disarticulated landscape of nucleated settlements, enclosures, and private property that discouraged human movement. The tensions between these two contrasting systems of landscape use heightened with the passage of time.

In this article, we consider how the Postclassic Kowoj Maya of the central Peten lakes region of El Petén, Guatemala utilized mana in conjunction with their ritual objects and spolia to mediate between the natural and supernatural worlds. In many cultures worldwide and throughout time, mana (magical or spiritual powers that provide people and objects with a living force) transforms the ordinary into the spiritually powerful. The Kowojs imbued incense burners and buildings with mana, thus facilitating a connection with their ancestors. We examine the manufacturing recipe of a group of incense burners and the civic-ceremonial buildings at Zacpeten to argue that the Kowoj used these objects to mediate among the living, the dead, and the supernatural realms. Ultimately, by empowering these objects with mana, the Kowoj constructed a universe where they regularly communicated with their ancestors and built structures that ensouled their historical consciousness.

Ancient Costa Ricans in the Arenal area exhibited extraordinary persistence in landscape use and social memory, in spite of repeated catastrophes caused by explosive volcanic eruptions. The Cañales village on the south shore of Lake Arenal was struck by two large explosive eruptions during the Arenal phase (500 b.c.–a.d. 600). Following ecological recovery, the village was reoccupied after each of these eruptions. I argue that the people who reoccupied the village were direct descendants of pre-disaster villagers due to the fact that they reinstated use of the same path to the village cemetery. While previous interpretations emphasized ecological reasons for village reoccupation, I suggest that a dominating reason for reoccupation was to re-establish contact with the spirits of deceased ancestors in the cemetery. The living and the spirits of the deceased constituted the functioning community. The refugees re-established processional access to their cemetery as soon as possible, perhaps even before the village was reoccupied. Archaeologists rarely discover evidence of ancient pilgrimages. However, the combination of remote sensing and detailed stratigraphic analyses allow them to be detected in the Arenal area. Villagers created and perpetuated social memory by regular linear ritual processions along precisely the same path, in spite of challenging topography and occasional regional disasters obscuring the path. This recognition has implications for the arguments of sedentism versus residential mobility during the Arenal phase.

This paper applies structuration theory and semiotics to interpret the results of a recently completed total coverage pedestrian survey to the east of Yaxuna, Yucatan. Data from this survey suggest that a social group centered at the site of Tzacauil vied for political clout in the Late Preclassic period through the construction of a triadic acropolis 3 km from Yaxuna. This group also initiated but did not complete a new experimental construction: a long-distance causeway between the two sites. A central facet of structuration is the instability of social practice. Rules can be altered when transposed to new contexts, while durable resources, such as causeways and acropolis groups, do not ensure the solidity of the coalitions they are meant to represent. Despite an outlay of labor never again seen to the east of Yaxuna, Tzacauil had a rather short occupation. Though they never completed the causeway, the people of Tzacauil did succeed in transforming the conventional understanding of causeways. These events support a semiotic approach since they show that materiality is contingent: it has a potential that people may or may not work to realize.

Much has been learned from the basin of the Candelaria River, Campeche, Mexico: the fabric of a densely settled pre-Historic landscape, including impressive ceremonial centers; the logistics of an ancient entrepôt; the process of exploitation of dyewood and chicle in historic times; as well as the doubtful results of the mid-twentieth-century colonization of an “empty” forested basin. It also yielded the first evidence of more or less intensive pre-Hispanic wetland agriculture in the Maya region and the remains of a profuse network of fluvial transportation from prehistoric times to the present. This article presents recent evidence regarding the management of the river system itself by means of barriers, or “dams,” which facilitated agriculture in the wetlands upstream and extensive canoe travel. These structures seem to be elaborations or imitations of the numerous natural barriers already in the stream. Two models help explain context and function. It has become apparent that the human interventions into the wetlands and the river system are to be seen less as great attainments of civilization than as fairly desperate expedients in the face of climate change.

Multiple studies conducted over the past few decades have recognized the necessity of rainwater collection and storage as a critical aspect in the evolution of Maya civilization. Few of these efforts, however, have emphasized the importance of managing water resources at the household level. Data are presented from two central lowland sites—the dispersed hinterland community of Medicinal Trail and the urban center of Yaxnohcah—that elucidate the function of small reservoirs and associated landscape modifications in residential water management. Despite differing physical geographies and trajectories of urban development, residents of both communities were clearly engaged in water management activities based, at least in part, on the creation and use of small reservoirs. Decentralized household water management practices appear to have been temporally and spatially widespread components of Maya civilization beginning in the Preclassic period.

The Postclassic period in central Mexico was characterized by enormous population growth and expansion of settlement, but the timing of the onset of these processes has been poorly understood. Obsidian tools from residential contexts at the Late Postclassic village of Cihuatecpan in the Teotihuacan Valley have been analyzed to determine the extent of hydration, and thus the amount of time elapsed since the tools were manufactured. Estimated dates of manufacture range between a.d. 1221 and 1568, consistent with ethnohistoric accounts of the timing of establishment of Cihuatecpan and other rural villages, and their abandonment in the Early Colonial period. Ceramics found in the same contexts as the obsidian tools include Black-on-orange types, such as III, which may have come into use in the thirteenth century. This experiment in relative and absolute dating accords with other current research, indicating a needed revision of traditional chronologies toward an earlier onset of major processes.

Research on the Lowland Maya Hiatus that focuses solely on the inscriptions on monuments is too limited to provide information about its causes, nature, and consequences. I consider the hiatus at Tikal using additional evidence from architecture, settlement patterns, caches and burials, domestic artifacts, and inscriptions on portable objects. A preliminary conclusion is that Tikal's long hiatus can be regarded as part of a sequence of internal political development rather than due to conquest from outside. The displacement and destruction of inscribed and plain stone monuments was an ongoing phenomenon at Tikal. It was present from Terminal Preclassic times and occurred with increasing frequency until the beginning of the late Late Classic period. Monument destruction may have come to a halt then under a series of powerful rulers. The setting of inscribed stone monuments and wooden lintels continued for another two centuries until the disappearance of dynastic rule itself.

Four species of monkeys may have lived in the Maya region in pre-Columbian times: two howler monkey species, the spider monkey, and possibly the capuchin. Simians also played an important role in Maya creation myth and cosmology, and are frequently represented on Maya pottery and in glyphic texts. Scholars disagree, however, on which monkeys are depicted. Here we provide an analysis of 142 monkey images on 97 pots, focusing especially on Classic-period lowland polychromes. Multiple physical characteristics of the primates are considered, along with cultural traits, to provide appropriate biological and cultural contexts and artistic conventions necessary to their interpretation. Besides the well-known scribal roles (attributed to howlers and “Monkey-Men”), we conclude that monkeys commonly take on pictorial and non-pictorial roles that involve carrying or bringing goods such as tribute or cacao. In contexts of liminality, these creatures are often charged with transcending natural and social realms.

Interaction between the Gulf Coast Olmecs and various regions of Early Formative Mesoamerica remains debated and poorly understood. In Oaxaca, models have been dominated by neoevolutionary epistemology; interaction between the Valley of Oaxaca and San Lorenzo has been characterized by emulation or peer polity models. Data from the Valley of Oaxaca, the Nochixtlán Valley, and the Gulf Coast demonstrate that San Lorenzo was at a different level of sociopolitical complexity than its contemporaries. Previous comparisons between Olmec-style pottery in the Gulf Coast and Valley of Oaxaca are found to be problematic, and have led to the impression that Oaxaca villagers produced more of this pottery than did the Olmecs. Neutron activation analysis demonstrates the Gulf Coast Olmecs exported ceramics to Mixtecs and Zapotecs in Oaxaca, while receiving few if any pots in return, suggesting that new models and theoretical perspectives must be applied to understanding the relationships between Oaxacan chiefdoms and the nascent Olmec state at San Lorenzo. An agency perspective explores what Mixtec, Zapotec, and Olmec groups may have taken from these interactions and relationships and acknowledges both local and Gulf Coast understandings of “Olmec.” Such relationships may be characterized more by acquisition between regions, with San Lorenzo as a superordinate center.

The transition from the Late Archaic to the Late Early Formative period witnessed profound changes in the Maya lowlands. In addition to the establishment of the first settlements and agrarian communities, this critical phase of cultural development heralded the introduction of ceramics, saw changes in lithic technology, gave rise to inter-regional trade and exchange, and witnessed the introduction of a complex symbolic system expressed on portable objects. In this article, we synthesize data collected over the past several decades by various archaeological projects in western Belize to provide an overview of the cultural changes that unfolded during the Late Archaic to Late Early Formative period in the Upper Belize River Valley. We also provide evidence indicating that it was during this critical transitional period that we begin to see the establishment of several cultural traditions that became uniquely lowland Maya.

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.

Chultunes — underground pits carved into bedrock — have been reported by the hundreds in the Maya region, yet debate on their principal use continues to this day. Since chultunes have not yielded solid data to answer the questions posed by Maya archeologists, they are sometimes not completely excavated or reported in detail. This article presents a review of previous work on chultunes in the Maya lowlands, followed by the presentation of new data from six chultunes excavated at archaeological sites in northwestern Petén, Guatemala. I argue that, although these underground features were primarily used for utilitarian purposes, there is strong evidence that chultunes also had ritual importance to the ancient Maya. The variability in the shape, size, and associated cultural materials, including macrobotanical remains, justifies further in-depth investigations of chultunes. Archaeologists should consider investigating these features more systematically, as a larger comparative sample of chultunes could aid in assessing whether there are local patterns of construction, use, and reuse. Thus, excavations of these features should be encouraged.