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to a growing picture of subsistence after the collapse of Teotihuacan in which maize was deemphasized and may have been replaced by amaranth and other foods.

Since Acosta's work in the 1940s, relief carvings of serpents entwined with partially skeletonized personages on the coatepantli at Tula have frequently been identified as images of the Nahua Venus deity, Tlahuizcalpantecuhtli. Comparing these Toltec sculptures with this deity's iconography in Late Postclassic to Colonial period manuscripts, however, provides no support for this identification. Based on the northern Mesoamerican cultural connections of the Toltecs, the author suggests parallels between the coatepantli reliefs and the public display of ancestral and sacrificial human remains at Chalchihuites sites. Identification of the coatepantli figures as venerated ancestors from an ancestral cult is also supported by iconographic and archaeological evidence from Tula. Parallels to the coatepantli images in depictions of both living elites and ancestors juxtaposed with serpents from other Mesoamerican art traditions bolster this interpretation. On the basis of the evidence, the author hypothesizes that the skeletonized figures at Tula symbolize deceased kings and honored warriors rather than conquered foes.

Drawing inspiration from the work and legacy of Elizabeth Brumfiel, I develop a case study about the lives and religious practices of Maya farmers at the Chan site in Belize, to demonstrate how farmers were neither the dopes, dupes, nor mystified masses of Maya state level ideologies. I use this case study to rethink anthropological theories that attempt to explain the role of state level ideologies in the production of inequality and power, particularly ideas about ideology and false consciousness that are often bundled together and referred to as the ‘dominant ideology thesis.’

On January 16, 2001, on a gravel road in the Maya Mountains of Belize, one of archaeology's most prolific and colorful superstars was fatally injured in the crash of his rental car. Having endured for 82 years despite cancer, heart attacks, a near-drowning, and double bypass surgery, the seemingly indestructible “Scotty” MacNeish was taken from us by accident. Had he lasted 102 years, I would still consider his death premature.

-Yolia is one of the principal indigenous terms present in Christian Nahua terminology in the first decades of European contact. It is employed for “soul” or “spirit” and often forms a doublet with ánima in Nahuatl texts of an ecclesiastical, devotional, or secular nature. The term -yolia/teyolia has also lived a rich and fascinating life in scholarly literature. Its etymology (“the means for one's living”) is strikingly similar to that of the Spanish word ánima, or “soul.” Taking into account the possibility that attestations of the seemingly pre-Hispanic -yolia can be identified in some of the written sources, we have reviewed historical, linguistic, and anthropological evidence concerning this term in order to revisit the Nahua concept of the “soul.” We also scrutinize the very origin of -yolia in academic discourse. This analysis, based on broader historical and linguistic evidence referring to both pre-Conquest beliefs and Christianization in sixteenth-century central Mexico, is the point of departure for proposing and substantiating an alternative hypothesis about the origin of -yolia. Our precise focus has been to trace and pinpoint a pervasive Christian influence, manifest both in indigenous Colonial texts and conceptual frameworks of modern scholars interpreting them. We conclude that -yolia is a neologism created in the early Colonial period.

In the absence of historical records, ethnography, or artistic depictions, fortifications provide one of the best forms of evidence for insight into the nature of warfare within past societies. Excavations into the monumental stone perimeter wall, 1.5 km in circumference, at Muralla de León in the Peten Lakes Region have dated its initial construction to the first two centuries of the Late Preclassic period (400–200 b.c.). Investigation into this apparent fortification offers new insight into Maya settlement and monumental construction in relation to warfare in this era, as sociopolitical complexity became increasingly widespread across the southern lowlands. Calculations of affordances of movement across the local landscape using geographic information systems and Circuitscape inform a spatial statistical analysis of fortification at Muralla de León, performed to test a hypothesis of defensive functionality for the encircling perimeter wall. A separate affordance of movement analysis at a regional scale locates the site within probable intersite paths of travel. The research indicates a significant, but not exclusive, defensive intent underpinning the Preclassic form of the main wall system. Thus, the system was built in part as a fortification, restricting movement toward the interior, while facilitating other uses such as hydraulic control and possibly trade.

Rubber had important utilitarian, symbolic, and ritual roles in ancient Mesoamerica. Among the latter is the use of rubber balls as burnt offerings. This paper examines characteristic iconographic manifestations of rubber-ball offerings in Mesoamerican art. One of these, the spiral, seen in the Postclassic Maya codices, is shown to have had greater temporal and geographic distribution than previously thought. Another is the Standard Rubber Offering, a widespread motif in Mesoamerican art that links rubber balls to feathers and rope bindings. In considering why rubber balls were shown bound in rope, the paper examines the physical properties of natural rubber. Understanding the iconographic nuances of rubber balls as ritual offerings sheds new light on the symbolism of rubber balls in ballgame scenes and allows identification of certain images as rubber balls that were previously unrecognized.

In a rather complex argument brought forth in 1993, Ross Parmenter tried to identify one of the place signs in the center of the Lienzo de Ihuitlan, called “Water” by Alfonso Caso (1961) as the place sign for the village of Tulancingo. This identification was mainly based on the fact that several of the royal couples associated with the place “Water” in the Lienzo de Ihuitlan also appear scattered around the dominant central church on the Lienzo de Tulancingo, which was photographed for the first time in 1974 by Jesús Franco Carrasco in the village of San Miguel Tulancingo. The same argument was presented by Carlos Rincón Mautner (1994). There is strong evidence, however, indicating that the place sign “Water” represents the village of Ihuitlan itself and that the Lienzo de Tulancingo originally came from the village of Ihuitlan.

Analysis of the two largest southern Maya lowland metal assemblages, from Lamanai (n = 187) and Tipu (n = 99), Belize reveals that Mesoamerican and European technologies were negotiated through the processes of recycling objects to create new forms and juxtaposing objects of different provenances for bodily ornamentation. Lamanai's occupants began acquiring metal as early as a.d. 1100 and then engaged in on-site metallurgy as early as a.d. 1450, continuing into the early seventeenth century. Tipu was a nexus for metals between the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. At both sites, metal objects were recovered primarily from human burials and midden deposits. A program of typological study and compositional analysis revealed forms shared between the sites but evidence of on-site metallurgy is supported only at Lamanai. Metals from these Maya communities, both centers of Spanish reducción, demonstrate that the southern Maya lowlands was by no means a “refuge” from Spanish aggression.

Investigations at Xunantunich indicate that this major Belize River Valley site rose rapidly to regional prominence during the Late Classic Hats' Chaak phase (a.d. 670–780). While the social, political, and economic reasons for Xunantunich's relatively late and rapid rise are still not fully understood, it has been suggested that this ascent was a direct result of either a patron-client relationship with, or owing to direct control by, the larger primary center of Naranjo in neighboring Guatemala. In this paper, we evaluate previous arguments for this proposed dynamic relationship between the two sites, and we discuss the political implications of more recently acquired data in our assessment of this relationship.

Ancestral Maya engineered wetland fields and canals in floodplains for plant cultivation and water management. Canals and reservoirs, however, also provide aquatic resources to supplement agriculture. Maya created multi-trophic ecological aquaculture by modifying the waterscape to increase the amounts of foods and useful materials, such as fish, turtles, waterfowl, and reeds. While archaeological and ethnographic investigations across the Maya area explore aquatic constructions, technology, and foodstuffs, they have not focused on aquaculture. In the western Maya lowlands, including the site of Mensabak, Chiapas, Mexico, ancestral Maya modified floodplains around lakes and rivers for farming fish and aquatic resources near their settlements and fields. These extensive modifications for ecological aquaculture enhanced the productivity and resiliency of natural ecosystems. The domesticated waterscapes near the ritually important Mirador Mountain at Mensabak also followed pan-Mesoamerican beliefs in origin mountains that generated water, plants, and fish for humans. Importantly, Maya integrated subsistence is illuminated by research on domesticated landscapes and ecological aquaculture that examines a range of resources rather than just plants. Certainly across Mesoamerica, ecological aquaculture allowed people to intensify production of “farms” of aquatic species, particularly fish.

The Formative-period site of Altica in the Patlachique Range poses many methodological problems when designing an excavation strategy. Three millennia of erosion, twentieth-century chisel plowing, and modern reforestation efforts have destroyed or disturbed most surface architecture above the local tepetate bedrock. As such, in the early stages of the Altica Project, the primary concern was the detection and identification of subsurface features, especially deep pits as found at other Formative sites. Although Altica is located at the top of a low, flat ridge, strong localized rain frequently flooded the terraces of interest for days, making it impossible to detect subsurface features using the most common prospection techniques. Because of these practical and taphonomic limitations, we relied on magnetic gradient prospection. This technique had never been applied to an early village site in the Basin of Mexico. This paper presents the methods used, discusses various difficulties encountered during prospection, applies interprets the results of the magnetic gradient study using results from excavation and aerial multispectral remote sensing. We discuss how the method might be applied to similar Formative sites to remotely detect indicators of anthropogenic activity, including subsurface features.

This paper presents an analysis of the size and spatial organization of text segments and anthropomorphic figures on Classic Maya polychrome vases. Based on a sample of 110 vases that contain both text and images and are complete enough to measure the relevant variables, I demonstrate that a single set of canons for the sizes and placements of text segments and images, separately and with respect to one another, characterizes vessels throughout the polychrome-producing area. Both texts and images exhibit a three-level hierarchy of sizes, with standardized ratios of the primary-to-secondary level and of the secondary-to-tertiary level. Concurrently, significance is added to these sizes through vertical and horizontal arrangement on the vessel surface. This analysis confirms statistically what visual analysis has broadly speculated about in terms of proportion, scale, and similarities between styles. Data are also provided that illuminate issues in the method and meaning of scene layout and the representation of active and inactive figure illustration.

This article documents the transition from the Late Classic to Postclassic periods at Río Amarillo, a hinterland outpost of the Copan polity, and at an associated residential group, Site 5, in the Río Amarillo East Pocket of the Copan Valley. Late Classic period evidence indicates that the site of Río Amarillo operated as an administrative center for the Copan polity with the likely objective of increased agricultural production for the burgeoning population in the Copan Pocket. In the Terminal Classic period, Río Amarillo shared the fate of Copan, with evidence indicating it was burned and sacked. However, unlike the Copan Pocket, many residential groups remained occupied during the Early Postclassic. Here we focus on Site 5. An unbroken occupation from the Late Classic through to the end of the Early Postclassic period, as this site provides a window into an existence without the requirements of tribute given to their western neighbor. We hypothesize that the smaller settlement size and higher amount of rainfall in this valley pocket, as well as a richer and more diversified environment, were important factors in the survival of some of its population.

The Nahua-speaking area of Postclassic central Mexico was composed of many city-states, which consisted of a nucleated and urbanized central area where the major political and economic centers were located, and a predominantly rural area where most of the people lived. This outlying area and its small communities had to be governed, and this paper identifies, from ethnohistorical sources, the most likely tasks of local government and the local officials responsible for carrying them out. Special attention is given to the role of the local nobility, where present, and of their equivalent, when not; to overseers of labor, and to leaders of the all-important labor squads which built and maintained the urban centers. The custodians of wealth and those most likely to have been military or ritual leaders are identified.

Recent excavations at Tula Chico, the monumental center for Tula's earliest settlement, revealed a long and complex history of occupation, beginning with its initial settlement in the Middle Classic period by Coyotlatelco peoples, when much of the region was under Teotihuacan's direct control. During the Epiclassic period, a program of monumental construction began that developed the monumental complex seen today over a period of about 200 years. Although Tula Chico was superseded by Tula Grande, the monumental center for the Early Postclassic city, it continued to be occupied and maintained until its destruction by fire. Tula Chico and Tula Grande show evidence of clear cultural continuity in ceramics, architecture, and sculpture, including “Toltec style” sculpture characteristic of Tula Grande that is present in temporally early contexts at Tula Chico.

During a recent underwater archaeological survey of the Arroyo Pesquero, members of the Proyecto Arqueológico Arroyo Pesquero discovered an extraordinary and unusual archaeological specimen made of mottled brown and white jadeite. This artifact, most likely dating to the Middle Formative period (900–400 b.c.), is significant for two reasons. Firstly, because this object is the first find discovered at the site during a systematic archaeological investigation and thus has archaeological provenience and, secondly, because of the iconographic elements it possesses and its one-of-a-kind form. This article begins with a short background on the Arroyo Pesquero site, including its discovery, history of looting, and archaeological investigations. We then briefly describe the present investigation and the discovery of the artifact itself. This is followed by a description of the artifact—its form, iconography, and its possible functions. We conclude with some comments on the specimen within the framework of Middle Formative Olmec iconography.

The Canek Manuscript describes a visit by Fray András de Avendaño y Loyola, two Franciscan companions, and ten Maya sacristans from the town of Tipu to the towns of Chacan on the western shore of Lake Peten Itza and Noh Peten (Tah Itza or Tayasal) on the island that today is Flores, Peten, Guatemala. This visit probably occurred in January or February, 1695, two years before the Spanish conquest of Noh Peten. The four-folio manuscript is a fragment of a larger document, the remainder of which is lost. The Franciscan author, a lay brother, was probably Fray Alonso de Vargas. This contribution places the manuscript in its ethnohistorical context, describes it content, and discusses its significance.

Salvage excavations along the right of way of a 2 km stretch of proposed highway crossing the northern part of the Postclassic city of Tula, Hidalgo utilized a multi-phase investigation strategy, featuring pedestrian survey and exploratory test-pitting. This fieldwork led to extensive excavation in five localities, which uncovered significant portions of both elite and non-elite residential compounds, a possible administrative structure, and two temples, one of which is the earliest example of a twin temple pyramid in western Mesoamerica. The diversity of structures and corresponding functions encountered in excavation are comparable to those found in previous excavations that suggest the city was organized into barrios, each with its own political, religious, social, and other institutions that mimic those of the larger urban polity. While these investigations confirm previous evidence of considerable destruction of the ancient city in recent decades, they also demonstrate that significant portions are still intact.