The Puuc region of northern Yucatan was one of the most important areas of Maya civilization during the Terminal Classic florescent period. Despite its importance to Maya prehistory, there is little understanding of the times prior to the great cultural florescence. Eight seasons of research at Chac II provide new information regarding an important Maya center between the Classic and Terminal Classic periods (A.D. 300–800), including the changing nature of influence and contacts with foreign groups reaching central Mexico. The great antiquity of Chac, the presence of numerous substructures, and the variety of architectural styles in the Great Pyramid Plaza suggest that the site was an originator of the Early Puuc architectural style. It is argued that the major ritual offering below the central monument at the Gran Plaza re-creates the “turquoise” hearth reenacting the birth of the Fifth Sun at Teotihuacan. These new data are transforming understanding of the Puuc Maya and their relations with greater Mesoamerica.

In prehispanic Mesoamerica, basic utilitarian artifacts, such as non-obsidian chipped stone tools, have rarely been considered outside the realms of technology or the economics of manufacture and circulation. Yet in recent excavations of residential terraces at the Classic period hilltop settlement of El Palmillo, Oaxaca, we have noted spatial patterning in the distribution of chipped stone tools that parallels variation previously observed in a range of nonlocal goods including obsidian, marine shell, and greenstone. Compared to the inhabitants of terraces situated near the base of the site, the apparently higher-status residents of households residing closer to the hill’s apex not only were associated with a somewhat different assemblage of stone tools and debris, but their chipped stone implements tended to be made on better-quality raw materials. As a consequence, chipped stone assemblages can serve as an additional axis of variation for examining status distinctions in the Classic period Valley of Oaxaca, and potentially elsewhere in Mesoamerica.

In this paper I investigate the community-level articulation of imperial and local political structures during the Inka occupation of the Collagua Province, located in the Colca Valley of highland southern Peru. Combined ethnohistorical and archaeological analysis document the emergence of a hybrid imperial/local political formation in the shift from autonomous rule during the Late Intermediate period (A.D. 1000–1450) to the Inka occupation during the Late horizon (A.D. 1450–1532). Documentary evidence reveals considerable but uneven penetration of Inka imperial institutions across the two ranked moieties that structure local community organization, with remarkably close conformity between Inkaic ideals of rank and hierarchy among the communities (ayllus) of the lower moiety, but greater autonomy among the higher-ranking ayllus of the upper moiety. New data from a systematic survey around the provincial capital documents a decentralized Late Intermediate period settlement pattern associated with fortifications, suggesting segmentary autonomous political organization. The subsequent Late horizon settlement pattern signals overall occupational continuity, but with the establishment of an Inka administrative center and the installation of central plazas and Inka structures at large settlements with local elite domestic architecture. The two data sets combined provide a integrated view of centralized, but locally mediated, Inka administration.

Evidence from preceramic Paleoindian and Archaic time periods in Belize has been recorded over the past quarter of a century by a number of projects. This paper summarizes previously published information and presents new archaeological data in bringing the hunting-and-gathering and itinerant horticultural millennia of this region into a more accurate and comprehensive perspective than has been presented to date. The Paleoindian period includes influences from North as well as South America, with settlement preferences shown for river valleys and near-coastal margins. Cave sites hold particular promise for yielding new and well-preserved remains from this early period. The Archaic, beginning as early as 8000 B.C., is poorly dated until 3400 B.C. and was probably characterized by mobile hunter-foragers. The Late Archaic includes two facets, the Early (3400–1900 B.C.) and the Late (1500–900 B.C.) Preceramic, and represents the first appearance and gradual spread of cultivation together with habitat modification. The period beginning around 1500 B.C. shows intensifying maize cultivation, apparently mobile populations, and also the emergence of well-defined stone tool traditions that trend into the early Middle Preclassic. Ceramics seem to appear unevenly from ca. 1200 to 900 B.C., when the Cunil and Kanocha complexes in western Belize and Swasey sphere in northern Belize are reported.

A precolumbian Maya dock and dam complex was located on the Río Hondo in northwestern Belize near the site of Blue Creek. Survey and excavation showed a range of activities to be associated with the complex, including lithic raw material procurement and manufacture. The discovery also underscores Blue Creek’s role in long-distance commercial exchange involving lowland riverine systems. Large quantities of exotic commodities, including jadeite from the Motagua River valley in Guatemala and stone tools from the industrial manufacturing site of Colhá, Belize, have been recovered from Preclassic and Classic period deposits at Blue Creek, and the site is posited as a vital point of transshipment responsible for the filtering of peripheral resources into the central lowlands. The Blue Creek dock and dam provides a rare glimpse of Maya riverine architecture and offers tangible evidence of infrastructural supports associated with maritime commerce.