The role of craft producers in past economies provides information that helps contextualize the role of economies in broader sociopolitical systems. Through this examination of lowland Maya lithic producers in the Late to Terminal Classic period (a.d. 600–890), this article explores the centrality of economic activities in integrating craft producers into larger regional political communities and simultaneously buffering them against regional political conflicts. Through a study of lithic extraction and production at Callar Creek Quarry, Belize, this article examines the relevance of crafting activities in the minimization of economic uncertainty. These data indicate that lithic reduction served to diversify economic activities for lithic producers, and thus minimized economic risk. The use of economic activity to minimize risk provides evidence for the continuity of small-scale householders. This illustrates the independence of economic activities from political frameworks, and suggests that economic diversification serves as a critical stabilizing force for rural Classic-period Maya residents.

During the last decade, archaeological investigations carried out by the Mérida Region Archaeological Project through the National Institute of Anthropology and History have focused on the peripheral sites of the current municipality of Mérida. In this article, we will focus on the northeast section covering a polygon that has an area of 7.19 km2, where rural minor sites such as Oxmuul, Cuzam, and Polok Keej are located. This area was explored in various seasons as a result of archaeological salvage and rescue projects, carrying out archaeological prospecting with the aim of creating cartography, systematic excavations, and descriptive analysis of archaeological materials. One of the objectives was to understand and interpret the social organization of the ancient peripheral communities in relationship higher ranking sites such as T'ho and Dzibilchaltun. The results obtained are presented diachronically in order to explain the role that these sites played within the political economy of the region, which turns them into complex rural sites towards the end of the Classic period.

This paper explores the nature of community leadership within the Late–Terminal Classic Maya site of Sayil, Yucatan, Mexico. The distribution of political and religious activities—as represented archaeologically by cylindrical stone monuments (“altars”) and Oxkutzcab Applique censers—is examined. It is argued that such activities are dispersed into the upper ranks of Sayil society, rather than concentrated in the royal, ruling sector. It is further argued that the residential areas in which political and religious activities were concentrated may have been the loci of lineage heads of Sayil, who maintained important leadership roles despite attempts at centralization by the rulers.

In the Mesoamerican archaeological literature, collections of material regarded as somehow anomalous according to the archaeologist's expectations are often referred to as problematical deposits (PDs). Their problematical aspect originates in the researcher's current state of knowledge of the particular site, not in past behavior. PDs are site-specific, provisional classifications, and need further study to determine the function or intent of the activity that created them. A sample of 223 features designated as PDs by the University of Pennsylvania Museum's Tikal Project is examined here in an approach to understand their intent. A typology of the sample, based upon content, date, and variables of recovery context, indicates three principal intents broadly summarized as ritual, political, and site maintenance, and a category of PDs without intent. The study of PDs demands a wide-ranging approach. It provides an opportunity to reevaluate inadequate ideas and gain new insights into past cultural behavior.

During the 1970s, excavations at El Zapotal revealed a Late Classic period ossuary with multiple burials, sumptuous funerary offerings, and life-sized terracotta sculpture individually on a par with the Chinese national treasures from Xi'an. Less known are murals adorning a U-shaped banquette centering on the monumental clay sculpture of a skeletal Death God.

Wyllie, through the assistance of Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia, Veracruz, produced drawings of the now deteriorating paintings. The murals form part of a larger narrative program integrating sculpture, architectural elements, burial offerings, and human osteological remains connected with Mesoamerican underworld stories of creation.

Blowguns (or blow-guns) have been depicted on pre-Columbian pottery, mentioned in Maya myths, and are still used to hunt small game and birds in many parts of the Americas. This paper surveys the history of the blowgun in Mesoamerica and documents the manufacture and use of the blowgun in Jacaltenango, Guatemala, where it is used to hunt birds.

In southern Mesoamerica, the period between 100 b.c. and a.d. 400 saw both the apogee and fall of several powerful Formative-period cities. Previous reports have suggested that conquest from the southeast may have prompted a unique decline at Izapa around 100 b.c., when many neighboring cities were prospering. Over the last five years, new archaeological data has emerged for the Formative to Classic period transition at Izapa. The present work summarizes these updates and highlights recent deposits excavated during the Izapa Household Archaeology Project. These updates raise questions about the Hato-phase intrusion hypothesis proposed by Lowe and colleagues (1982). I close with an alternative proposal that, beginning around 100 b.c., increased network participation and a change in the institution of kingship produced some of the dramatic changes in ceramics and burial patterns observed at the site.

The British Museum's Aztec atlatl is one of their most famous Mesoamerican objects, yet it has not been studied as a weapon in light of current knowledge of spear-throwers, and the details necessary to do so have not been published. Close examination and experimental replication shows that although it is ornately decorated, it is a serviceable spear-thrower. While evidence of actual use of this specimen is ambiguous, we can at least accept the form as an example of working weapons of Contact period Mesoamerica. The actual effects and circumstances of atlatl use against the Spanish and others are difficult to judge from surviving accounts. The iconography of the decoration, as in other instances, associated this atlatl with elite warfare and deities of war and sacrifice.

This article presents the results of an integrative program of salvage archaeology in response to two comprehensive modern construction projects within the limits of the Early Postclassic city of Tula, Hidalgo. Exploratory excavation at eleven different localities encountered remains of residential compounds and other prehispanic structures in all localities, collectively spanning the Epiclassic through Late Postclassic periods and yielding extensive ceramic, lithic, and faunal remains from domestic and ritual contexts including over 250 human and animal burials that included evidence of contact with other areas of Mesoamerica. Some 36 radiocarbon dates were obtained from ceramically dated contexts that span c. 1,000 years of occupation and support the current ceramic phase chronology for Tula.

Investigations in the site core of Cahal Pech have recovered a range of data reflecting Terminal Classic Maya activity at this Belize Valley site. The materials, which were recovered in a tomb, a burial, and in epicentral plaza deposits, include a diverse assemblage of cultural remains including whole and partial vessels, projectile points, obsidian blade fragments, deer antlers, figurines, pottery flutes, spindle whorls, and jade beads. Similar deposits at other Maya sites in western Belize have been interpreted as evidence for de facto refuse or rapid abandonment. Contextual analyses of the Cahal Pech data suggest that the deposits are more likely associated with post-abandonment activity such as pilgrimage from the still-occupied periphery of the site.

In pre-Columbian times the famous dance drama, known as the Rab'inal Achi, but whose indigenous name is Xajoj Tun, ended in a human sacrifice. A comparative study of the native documents shows that the victim, an important prisoner of war, died by being shot with arrows. The tun dance was part of a larger festival, which served propagandistic aims. The ritual of the arrow sacrifice highlighted crucial political moments, for example, when new lords were installed, titles were handed out, or glorious battles that led to the power and hegemony of one or more ruling lineages were commemorated. In the case of the Rab'inal Achi, it is the heroic past of the Toj lineage, rulers in Late Postclassic Rab'inal, that proves to be the main subject. Interestingly, when focusing on the language used to describe the arrow sacrifice, we see that the victim, who was tied to a scaffold, a stake, or a column, was considered game, and the archers as hunters. The stake had a symbolic meaning, as well. It represented a tree of life, a tree we have come to know as the World Tree growing in the center of the earth and holding up the sky. In the Rab'inal Achi, that tree, the place where the Warrior of K'iche' is shot, is named the Maize Tree, the same fictitious tree that is depicted on the Tablet of the Foliated Cross of Palenque.

Despite the recognition by many scholars of the high esthetic value of Jaina-style figurines, they present a number of analytic problems. Their functions remain obscure, and their role in Late Classic period Maya society has not been adequately examined. Throughout southeastern Mesoamerica, with few exceptions, all figurines and fragments are found in domestic contexts, mostly trash heaps; on Jaina, most examples come from graves. This article addresses the question of Jaina exceptionalism. It places its unique features in the broader context of Terminal Classic political and economic developments that were sweeping across the northern Maya Lowlands. Here I argue that the use of figurines in domestic rituals determined their appropriateness for placement in a particular grave, rather than the age, sex, or occupation of the deceased.

The Spaniards established several congregaciones or missions in central Petén, Guatemala, shortly after the 1697 conquest of the region to help control local indigenous populations. Recent investigations at the church and community of Mission San Bernabé revealed details about the entangled relations of Mayas and Spaniards. Foucault's four technologies of domination help explicate these power relations as they were played out in the small settlement and the church at its center. Material culture differed in many ways from that of the pre-conquest Itzas, but was clearly predominantly “Maya.” Spanish-style goods and burial patterns were found as were hybrid ceramic wares, the Spanish-style artifacts most common in an elite residence, reflecting that Maya elite acted as brokers with the Spaniards. The occupants also incorporated Spanish domesticates into their diets. Some changes likely resulted from various ethnic groups residing in the same settlement, but others were the product of indigenous adaptations to the situation of contact. Nevertheless, it is clear that the mission anchored a number of strategies of domination that subdued the occupants of San Bernabé.

This paper reviews the limited evidence for the classification of the script attested at the site of Izapa. Sufficient data for assessing the nature of key formal traits exists, thanks to the more recent documentation of the sculptural corpus (Clark and Moreno 2007). After a review of the archaeological and historical linguistic context, the paper examines the history of research on the classification of the writing systems of Mesoamerica (Justeson 1986; Justeson and Mathews 1990; Justeson et al. 1985; Prem 1973), focusing on the Southeastern Tradition. Three diagnostic traits allow for a narrow assignation of Izapa's script, perhaps unsurprisingly, to the Greater Izapan or Maya-Izapa sub-tradition (Justeson and Mathews 1990; Justeson et al. 1985) of the Southeastern Tradition: the superfixed placement of the bar-and-dot numeral with respect to the day sign cartouche, positional notation for counting, and the use of day sign pedestals. Other traits include the conflation and embedding of signs. The paper concludes that the evidence is, at present, insufficient to distinguish between the two likely options, Mixe-Zoquean and Mayan. Finally, a preliminary signary is provided in the Appendix.

Classic hieroglyphic texts do not describe Maya political organization, nor do colonial documents, forcing archaeologists to look elsewhere for clues. I propose that continuities in calendrically-based geopolitical rhetoric are recognizable in imagery and literary devices that can be traced from Preclassic/Formative times into the Colonial period. Imagery revolves around God K, k'awiil, and manikin scepters. The Classic manikin scepter materializes God K/K'awiil as a symbol of legitimate rulership, particularly at accession; the Postclassic analogue in the Dresden and Paris Codices is a God K effigy head, God K also symbolizing k'atuns. Related literary devices are kennings, specifically the took'-pakal or “flint-and-shield,” which appear in Classic texts and in the Chilam B'alam books in the context of defeat in warfare, the latter particularly referring to k'atun wars. Interrelated concepts, including obsidian, mirrors, serpents, and one-legged deities in the Popol Vuh and in Mexico (Tezcatlipoca), amplify these proposed continuities.

Two ballcourts at the major Classic site of La Milpa are of similar age but different design, a circumstance found only rarely elsewhere. Differences in playing surface and alley plan suggest that different kinds of ballgame were played during the Terminal Classic period on these courts.

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.

Analyses of grinding tools at Cerro Portezuelo provide an unusual opportunity to study changing subsistence priorities. Evidence in the Teotihuacan and Mezquital Valley indicates that established patterns of dependence on maize may have been interrupted during the Epiclassic and Early Postclassic periods. Grinding tool collections in both locations contain unusually high frequencies of closed-surface grinding tools (trough metates and mortars), which are less efficient for intensive maize grinding than the open-surface tools commonly used during both the Classic and Late Postclassic periods. While analyzing the Cerro Portezuelo grinding tool collection presents many problems because of imprecise chronology, this collection also contains an unusually high frequency of closed-surface tools that can be attributed to its Epiclassic and Early Postclassic inhabitants. Thus, Cerro Portezuelo contributes to a growing picture of subsistence after the collapse of Teotihuacan in which maize was deemphasized and may have been replaced by amaranth and other foods.

This paper presents new evidence for hierarchy and power among the Classic Maya (a.d. 300–1000) from the northern lowlands. It expands the list of identified emblem glyphs, and, more particularly, focuses on emblems with numerals by questioning their meaning and function in terms of political organization. Furthermore, the paper centers on syntax, especially on the practice of structuring personal names and titles in order to isolate titles and emblem glyphs, as well as to rank individuals and further advance our understanding of ancient Maya political organization. Finally, a dynastic sequence of rulers and noblemen from the Chan or Kan kingdom (most probably Jaina) is proposed, as well as divergent monumental traditions within the northern region and a re-evaluation of interpolity relationships.

Sluyter (1993) makes some useful points, but his criticism of Drennan's arguments is unsound. Sluyter is incorrect in thinking that there is no limit to the distance from which human bearers could carry food staples at a net energy profit. Drennan did not take into account that feeding bearers meals supplied at way stations is more efficient than requiring them to carry all their food with them, and he is unrealistic in thinking that a center will rarely procure food from a distance too great to allow more than half of what is procured to reach the center. At least during shortages, food may be procured at a much smaller net energy profit. Nevertheless, Drennan is correct in arguing that there is a limit beyond which (other things being equal) no further increase in procurement radius can increase the food potentially available to the center.