Investigations at the Ramaditas site (Guatacondo Valley, northern Chile) were successful in the discovery of small quantities of ancient metallurgical slag, copper ore, and metal from sealed archaeological contexts dating to the first centuries B. C., and in the discovery of adjacent off-site furnace ruins that appear to be contemporaneous. Laboratory tests are positive in identifying both the surface and subsurface slag as a copper smelting by-product. These results are significant in that they demonstrate that copper smelting and metal manufacture were taking place in the Atacama in antiquity, constituting the first conclusive proof of what many Chilean scholars have anticipated since the early 1970s. These results support the view that the mining of minerals and the winning of metals played a valuable role in the economy of the first sedentary villages of interior Chile, in the foothills and valleys that rim the Atacama desert.

Temporal changes in material culture normally have been used by archaeologists to reconstruct the cultural history of an area or site. In the case of the Caribbean, shifts in artifactual style have been used to trace prehistoric migrations and interactions between different cultural groups. Unfortunately, there have been few attempts to explain these changes in terms of the social structures of these cultures. This paper reviews the archaeological evidence for cultural change in eastern Puerto Rico and proposes a model to explain it. Basically, the model suggests that changes in material culture in Puerto Rican prehistory are related to the development of social complexity. Shifts in decoration and types of artifacts are seen as an attempt by elite groups to have greater control over the symbolism represented in the artifacts in order to acquire and maintain their power. These changes are not abrupt, but gradual, as social organization evolves from simple to more complex chiefdoms.

The function of elite Maya architecture should not always be interpreted literally, for it may also reflect metaphorical and semantic extensions best studied through iconography, hieroglyphic texts, ethnohistory, and ethnography. This holistic approach is employed to help resolve puzzling features of the Cross Group sanctuaries at Palenque, Mexico. The Cross Group likely served as the setting for symbolic sweatbaths, probably involving effigies of supernaturals under the care of Kan Balam, the Palenque ruler who commissioned these structures. This and other arguments situate such information within an understanding of metaphor in Maya architecture.

A spatial analysis of rock art located within the lower Pecos region of southwest Texas and northern Mexico reveals the presence of a recurring motif that depicts anthropomorphic figures passing through an opening in a serpentine arch. An extensive review of the ethnographic literature and archaeological record of cultures within Mesoamerica and the Gran Chichimeca indicates that this motif is widespread and generally associated with specific beliefs about the shamanic journey into the spirit world. Based on analogies drawn from the ethnographic literature, the lower Pecos region motif can be interpreted as a pictographic representation of the shamanic journey made by Archaic Chichimecans into the spirit world. The evidence also indicates that the cosmologies of the cultures within Mesoamerica and the Gran Chichimeca were well established in the Chihuahuan Desert at least 4,000 years ago.