This report examines 10,845 lithic artifacts from the rapidly abandoned city of Aguateca, Guatemala, to elucidate elite artistic and craft production in Classic Maya society. The methods used include high-power microwear analysis. The results suggest that significant numbers of Maya elite, both men and women, engaged in artistic creation and craft production, often working in both attached and independent contexts. The royal family and other elite households produced many artistic and craft items, including wood carvings and hide or leather goods. The scribe inhabiting Structure M8-8 carved stelae for the ruler, and the high-status courtier/scribe living in Structure M8-4 emphasized the production of shell and bone objects and other royal regalia in a courtly setting. Clearly, Aguateca was a center of part-time production of both utilitarian and luxury goods as well as of consumption. Classic Maya elite men and women artists/craft producers possessed multiple social identities and roles, which in turn implies a more flexible and integrated system of Classic Maya elite participating in attached and independent craft production more than is usually proposed.

This report presents the results of a compositional study using laser ablation-inductively coupled plasma-mass spectrometry (LA-ICP-MS) to examine central Mexican obsidian procurement at four sites dating to the Formative and Classic periods. The study demonstrates LA-ICP-MS to be a highly accurate obsidian sourcing technique, with results that are directly comparable to instrumental neutron activation analysis. It documents a shift circa 600 B.C. in which Middle Formative villages in Tlaxcala began to obtain obsidian almost exclusively from sources located in the Mesa Central, when they had previously obtained approximately 50 percent from Mesa Central sources and 50 percent from sources located in the Sierra Madre Oriental. This shift broadly coincided with the development of large regional centers in Tlaxcala-Puebla and suggests a linkage between the local political evolution occurring at this time and increased interactions with the Mesa Central economic sphere, including the Basin of Mexico. Obsidian workshop dump deposits next to Teotihuacan’s Moon Pyramid, dating to a millennium later, demonstrate the continued reliance on predominantly Mesa Central sources but also diversified procurement that drew on several sources. The Teotihuacan deposits exhibit the preferential utilization of particular sources depending on the types of implements being produced.

Maya Blue is an unusual blue pigment consisting of a clay-organic complex of indigo and the unusual clay mineral palygorskite (also called attapulgite). Used on pottery, sculpture, and murals from the Preclassic to Late Colonial periods largely in Mesoamerica, blue was the color of sacrifice and ritual. Did the palygorskite used to make Maya Blue come from a restricted source in Yucatán like Shepard, Arnold, Arnold and Bohor believed, or from widespread sources like Littmann argued? This report presents the results of a pilot study comparing INAA and LA-ICP-MS analysis of 33 palygorskite samples collected from different parts of the Maya area. These data reveal that it is possible to discriminate mineral source locations, and that it should be possible to determine whether the palygorskite used to make Maya Blue came from widespread sources or was traded widely from one or a few sources. Consideration of contextual information such as agency, landscape and language suggest that the Shepard/Arnold/Bohor hypothesis is more plausible than that of Littmann. No matter which hypothesis is supported, however, each has significant implications for the relationship of the diffusion of Maya Blue (or the knowledge of its production) to Maya social organization.

Both long-distance and localized chemical relationships in pottery and their implications for studies of Gulf lowland exchange can be examined with instrumental neutron activation. New pottery samples from Classic period (A.D. 300-900) contexts in the western lower Papaloapan basin were subjected to chemical compositional analysis. The sample represents three groups, coarse utility jars, common orange slipped serving bowls, and fine paste, higher-value white slipped serving bowls. At an intraregional scale, four localities in the western basin were sampled, but not all proved to be compositionally distinct. A mangrove zone pottery group contrasts compositionally with groups from riverine farmlands to the west. At a larger interregional scale, pottery from neighboring geomorphological areas as well as distant alluvial systems up and down the Gulf lowlands yielded chemically distinct groups. Considerable intraregional trade is suggested, but little is evident at the interregional scale. The interregional analysis is the first integrated overview of Gulf lowland ceramic chemical compositions, and the intraregional analysis begins assessment of Classic period pottery production and exchange within the western lower Papaloapan basin. Methodologically, we use sand sources in the region to determine if differences in tempering of pastes are likely to account for differences in compositional groups.

In this bioarchaeological study of Classic Maya subsistence, we analyzed porotic hyperostosis, dental caries, and stable isotopes on skeletal remains recovered from 118 burials at Piedras Negras, Guatemala. The abundant porotic hyperostosis and dental caries at Piedras Negras, coupled with a high mean δ13C (mean -9.2 ± 1.0‰) provide evidence for high levels of maize consumption. The isotope data show slight differences among social status groups. Chronological changes in diet are more evident. The Early Classic (A.D. 350-625) skeletons are characterized by moderate heterogeneity in isotope ratios relative to skeletons of the Yaxche phase of the Late Classic (A.D. 625-750). In Yaxche phase skeletons, a prosperous time for Piedras Negras, δ13C and δ15N are homogenous, with an emphasis on dietary maize and terrestrial fauna. In Chacalhaaz times (A.D. 750-825) isotope signatures became much more diverse, with some individuals consuming less maize and/or more freshwater fish. We attribute these changes to significant perturbations in the system of food production and distribution at Piedras Negras in the late eighth century, a process that may have been linked to the disintegration of dynastic kingship at the site and its collapse.