Archaeologists have long noted the presence of green obsidian artifacts in a number of Maya sites and have recognized that they were manufactured from the obsidian of the Pachuca source in central Mexico. Viewed as evidence of Teotihuacán influence, these finds were initially explained in economic terms as commodities in an exchange of goods that had a substantial impact on the economies of the Maya and on the development of the obsidian industry in Teotihuacán. However, when the contexts of the finds are examined it becomes clear that the significance of the artifacts was more symbolic than economic. The forms include prismatic blades, bifacially worked points and knives, needles, sequins, and some eccentrics. These are often recovered from ritual contexts, in association with other evidence of Teotihuacán influence. They apparently served to express a variety of relationships with Teotihuacán, ranging from actual Teotihuacanos proclaiming their identity to the attempts of Maya elite to forge some social affiliation with the city. Although most of the finds of green obsidian consist of only one or a few pieces, some contexts, such as the tombs of mounds A and B at Kaminaljuyú, produced more substantial amounts. Nevertheless, despite these occasional impressive finds, green obsidian does not seem to have been a major import, and it is clear that the Teotihuacán obsidian industry had largely attained its Classic-period structure before the Maya demand developed. Although the flow of central Mexican obsidian to the Maya region was not negligible, it could not in itself have had a major effect on either economic system.

This article reports on archaeological and geomorphological research carried out by the 1988 Río Verde Formative Project in the lower Río Verde Valley, Oaxaca, Mexico. The research suggests that the region was only sparsely inhabited prior to 500 B. C. During the Late/Terminal Formative (400 B. C.-A. D. 250), however, survey data suggest that the lower Río Verde Valley experienced considerable population growth. Excavations at the sites of Cerro de la Cruz and Río Viejo yielded evidence for emerging status inequalities during the Late Formative leading eventually to the rise of complex social organization by the Classic period (A. D. 250-900). Two preliminary explanations are offered for the seemingly late occurrence of large populations with complex social organization in the region. The explanations focus on environmental change and interregional social interaction, respectively. Evidence for the exploitation of coastal habitats is also discussed, since the use of marine and estuarine resources could alter the implications of both explanations of societal change.

Recent research on prehispanic water management throughout the Americas has made significant contributions to our understanding of the diversity of adaptive systems employed in regions where water is seasonally scarce, such as the Maya Lowlands. Since much of this workfocuses on large-scale technologies, the political and economic consequences of these systems for smaller social units remain poorly understood. Social dynamics associated with less-intensive forms of water use and control are investigated at Late Classic (A.D. 600–900) Copán, in a water-rich setting of western Honduras. Ethnographic, iconographic, and archaeological datasets suggest that lagoons located in Copán’s urban residential sectors may have been conceptualized, utilized, and maintained as communal property with ancestral ties by the inhabitants of surrounding domestic groups. By shifting the scale of analysis from the polity to the community level, these lagoons can be viewed as forms of communal property that created an economic and ideological basis for local social integration but offered limited opportunity for the centralization of power through monopolistic control. Yet, toward the end of the Late Classic, the appropriation of water-related dynastic symbolism and possibly ritual seems to have provided nonroyal elites with a means for creating local social identities, which undercut and eroded royal authority.

The artifact assemblage recovered in a sealed undisturbed context inside a ceremonial building (Structure 12) in the ancient village of Joya de Cerén (A. D. 600), a Classic Period site located on the Southeast Maya Periphery, has been particularly enigmatic and difficult to interpret. This assemblage consists of small portable worn objects, some of which show physical and chemical damage consistent with having been previously discarded prior to being carefully curated in a ceremonial building, suggesting that they were collected in antiquity. A review of the ethnographic literature reveals that contemporary Maya ritual practitioners routinely collect small portable objects, many of which are Pre-Columbian in origin, as personal sacra. This practice of “ritual collecting” serves multiple purposes including: 1) the acquisition of divining tools, 2) personal verification of divine election, and 3) evidence to one's community of supernatural sanction for a change in social status. Through engaging in this practice, social actors create and manipulate power in local ritual systems that exist outside of the control of contemporary institutionalized religions. It is suggested that collecting may represent an alternative avenue to supernatural power for past, as well as present-day, rural ritual practitioners.

The Late Preclassic to Classic period (400 B. C.-A. D. 900) Maya community of La Milpa, Belize, has recently revealed an ancient water and land-use system. As demonstrated at other southern Maya Lowland sites, the Maya created a microwatershed to store and convey water during the four months of seasonal drought. In addition to water conservation measures associated with reservoirs, deliberate channelization, diversion weirs, and postulated fields, the importance of rainy-season erosion control is indicated. Given the ancient population densities identified in the Maya area, coupled with the seasonal scarcity of water, we posit a “skill-oriented” economy.

The role of seed crops in the Maya diet is well understood. The role of root crops in the ancient Maya diet has been controversial, with some scholars suggesting they were staples, and others arguing they were not cultivated at all. Research in the 1990s found occasional manioc plants in kitchen gardens within the Classic period Cerén village, leading to the interpretation that manioc did contribute to the diet, but was not a staple. Recent research outside the village encountered sophisticated raised-bed monocropping of manioc over an extensive area. This area was harvested essentially all at once, about a week prior to the eruption. An estimated ten tons of tubers were harvested. The various uses of manioc include consumption as food, exchange with other settlements, fermentation, drying and storage as a powder, and as an adhesive. It is possible that many or all these alternatives were being followed. At Cerén manioc was a staple, not just an occasional adjunct to the diet. Because Cerén is toward the wet end of the ideal range for manioc cultivation, other areas of the Neotropics that receive less than 1,700 mm of precipitation may be more suitable for manioc cultivation than Cerén.

Este artículo analiza el papel de los pinnípedos en la adaptación humana al litoral del archipiélago de Tierra del Fuego, que eventualmente desembocara en los conocidos canoeros magallánico-fueguinos yamana y alacalufe. Primero, se presenta el análisis de restos arqueofaunísticos recuperados en sitios de la costa norte del Canal Beagle, para determinar la importancia del consumo de pinnípedos en relación con su rendimiento energético. Se verifica que, a lo largo de la secuencia cultural de seis mil años de antigüedad descrita para esta región, los pinnípedos constituyeron el principal recurso energético en comparación con aves y guanacos. Segundo, se establece la importancia de los pinnípedos para suplir los requerimientos metabólicos de dietas pobres en carbohidratos y bajo condicionamientos ambientales subantárticos. Tercero, se confirma que el consumo de pinnípedos constituyó una fuente de energía importada al ecosistema humano del litoral, con base en la ecología trófica de estos animales que se alimentan en aguas externas al sistema litoral y la localización conocida de las loberías lejos del Canal Beagle. Las implicaciones de estos hallazgos son (a) el incremento de la capacidad de carga humana sobre el ambiente litoral debido a la importación de energía, (b) la independencia de las poblaciones de pinnípedos con respecto a la actividad humana, la que garantizó un suplemento estable de animales para la población del canal, y (c) una explicación para las altas densidades que estos pueblos alcanzaron y para su rápida extinción una vez que los stocks de pinnípedos fueron drásticamente reducidos por loberos europeos y norteamericanos en los siglos XVIII y XIX.

The 2005 articles by Stoltman et al. and Flannery et al. to which Neff et al. (this issue) have responded are not an indictment of instrumental neutron activation analysis (INAA) but, rather, of the way Blomster et al. (2005) misuse it and of the hyperbolic culture-historical claims they have made from their INAA results. It has long been acknowledged that INAA leads not to sources but to chemical composition groups. Based on composition groups derived from an extremely unsystematic collection of sherds from only seven localities, Blomster et al. claim that the Olmec received no carved gray or kaolin white pottery from other regions; they also claim that neighboring valleys in the Mexican highlands did not exchange such pottery with each other. Not only can one not leap directly from the elements in potsherds to such sweeping culture-historical conclusions, it is also the case that other lines of evidence (including petrographic analysis) have for 40+ years produced empirical evidence to the contrary. In the end, it was their commitment to an unfalsifiable model of Olmec superiority that led Blomster et al. to bypass the logic of archaeological inference.

Neutron activation and statistical analyses establish source ascriptions for 201 obsidian artifacts representing Preclassic, Classic, and Postclassic period contexts in the Gulf Coast region of Mexico. Zaragoza-Oyameles, Puebla, and Pico de Orizaba, Veracruz, are the most common sources, but procurement patterns and technology shifted during the archaeological sequence. Comparative information is discussed for all periods, but especially the distribution of Zaragoza-Oyameles obsidian in the Classic period is examined. The distribution network for this obsidian served several regions. The importance of long-distance obsidian distribution for Teotihuacán is called into question.

In this article the widely accepted proposition of a direct correlation between the historically attested Inka expansion during the fifteenth century and the archaeologically recorded appearance of Inka-style ceramics is tested. Excavation of an Inka-type house in Caquiaviri, once a provincial capital of the Inka state in the southern Lake Titicaca area, revealed a stratigraphic sequence with both typical Inka pottery and local ceramics. Radiocarbon dates show that the lowermost strata accumulated before the middle of the fifteenth century, when Inka ceramics were already in use. This, together with several other radiocarbon dates from northern Chile, demonstrates that the archaeologically observed ceramic period does not correlate with the historically recorded conquest.

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.

Se describe una secuencia cultural y natural correspondiente al Pleistoceno tardío-Holoceno, identificada a unos cinco kilómetros al sur de los Vilos en la costa sur de la región semiárida de Chile, asociada a actividades humanas y fauna fósil. Se desarrollaron excavaciones de control vertical y horizontal para localizar las evidencias paleontologicas y arqueológicas in situ. Se harnearon con agua cerca de 217 m3 de sedimentos lacustres y fueron recuperados por flotación los materiales orgánicos. Tres columnas estratigráficas fueron muestreadas para análisis sedimentológico, microfaunístico, palinológico y paleontológico.

En un primer paso se definió la Formación Quebrada Quereo (Cuaternario) que consta de seis miembros emplazados en un relleno depositado en una fosa tectónica. La ocupación humana, y su interacción con la variabilidad ambiental, faunística y florística, durante el Pleistoceno Superior-Holoceno, es analizada con un criterio multidisciplinario. Se propone un esquema de correlación entre la secuencia de unidades lito-cronoestratigráficas, las condiciones paleogeográficas y bióticas, la secuencia de eventos geomorfológicos y los niveles de la secuencia cultural. El nivel Quereo I (> 11.400 años A.P.) presenta evidencias de probable origen humano asociadas a caza de Equus sp. Condiciones de aridez, al término del Pleistoceno, habrían acelerado la sobreexplotación de megamamíferos (nivel Quereo II) por los 11.100 ± 150 a 9.370 ± 180 A.P. Posteriormente, condiciones sociales y ambientales favorables reactivaron el hábitat de Quereo, representadas por una ocupación Arcaica Tardía (nivel Quereo III), datada en 2.475 ± 90 años A.P., y otra agrocerámica (nivel Quereo IV), fechada en 1.280 ± 75 años A.P.

This paper analyzes the expansion of the Inka state into the Lake Titicaca Basin of the south-central Andes. While the expansion of the Inka state can be modeled in general terms as a type of core-periphery transformation typical of all preindustrial empires, I argue that the particular cultural context in which it developed determined the nature of its expansion strategies. This context was characterized by a nonmarket political economy in which reciprocal, redistributive, and nonmarket trade mechanisms predominated. Archaeological and historical data indicate that the Inka occupation was characterized by profound changes in the local political economy in the Titicaca Basin. I argue that the lack of market systems in central Andean society was a key factor that affected the strategies of imperial control in this major Inka provincial territory, promoting highly intrusive labor and population control mechanisms. This historical context differed from other areas of the Prehispanic Americas, such as central Mexico, where market systems promoted tribute-in-kind strategies that involved less intrusive strategies of imperial expansion.

The focus of this study is on a khipu—a knotted—string recording device-from the Chachapoya region of the northeastern Andes of Peru. The khipu was one of 32 khipus discovered, along with some 220 mummy bundles, in 1996 in a half-dozen chullpas (burial houses) built into a rock-overhang overlooking a lake, called Laguna de los Cóndores, near the town of Leymebamba (Department of Amazonas). The cultural materials found with the mummies and khipus date from the pre-Inkaic Chachapoya culture (ca. A. D. 800-1450), through the Inka occupation of the region and on into the early colonial era. It is argued that the khipus stored with the dead represented tomb texts, which contained information pertaining to the history of the mummies and the social groups descended from them. One of the khipu samples (UR6) is interpreted as a combined biennial calendar and census of the tribute payers in Chachapoya territory, around Laguna de los Cóndores, in late Prehispanic times. It is argued that khipu UR6 was the source of information from which the first colonial census in the region was drawn up by the Spanish administrators, in 1535.

The Maya “collapse” began shortly after A.D. 750, and the events associated with this transition period would play out over the next three centuries. Many factors contributed to the collapse, not the least of which was the trend toward widespread power sharing that began in the eighth century, when lesser nobles, particularly the lords of secondary centers, began to acquire more wealth and political autonomy. The examination of secondary centers, particularly in frontier zones farthest from the polity capitals, offers an advantageous perspective from which to document the events leading up to the collapse and to explore the nature of the collapse itself. Sometime near the beginning of the eighth century, Minanha, one of these secondary centers, emerged as a petty royal court in the frontier between the contracting Naranjo and Caracol polities. After a century of apparent sociopolitical and socioeconomic success, Minanha’s royal residential compound was willfully buried, some of its most important facades and stelae were destroyed, and the center went into rapid decline. The rise and fall of Minanha are discussed with respect to regional politics, as well as the broader ninth-century “collapse” of the southern Maya lowlands.

An increasing number of publications supports the autonomous development of dense sedentary populations with advanced social organization throughout Amazonia in spite of abundant archaeological, ethnographic, physical, and biological evidence for environmental limitations to sustainable intensive exploitation of the varzea as well as the terra firme. Three articles in recent issues of Latin American Antiquity dispute the validity of the data collected during three decades of survey by participants of the Programa Nacional de Pesquisas Arqueológicas na Bacia Amazônica, which indicate that surviving indigenous groups perpetuate settlement and social behavior adopted at least 2,000 years ago, when the widespread use of pottery makes it detectable. Correction of the misunderstandings contributing to this "revisionist" assessment is essential because uncritical acceptance of the conclusions not only conflicts with ecological and archaeological evidence, but provides support for the unconstrained deforestation of the region.

This article balances current understandings of the political landscape of Postclassic Mesoamerica through a conjunctive analysis of the archaeology and ethnohistory of the Mixtec Empire of Tututepec in the lower Río Verde region of Oaxaca. Tututepec has long been known from ethnohistoric sources as a powerful Late Postclassic imperial center. Until recently, however, little has been known of the archaeology of the site. We discuss the founding, extent, chronology, and aspects of the internal organization and external relations of Tututepec based on the results of a regional survey, excavations, and a reanalysis of ethnohistoric documents. Tututepec was founded early in the Late Postclassic period when the region was vulnerable to conquest due to political fragmentation and unrest. Indigenous historical data from three Mixtec codices narrate the founding of Tututepec as part of the heroic history of Lord 8 Deer “Jaguar Claw.” According to these texts, Lord 8 Deer founded Tututepec through a creative combination of traditional Mixtec foundation rites and a strategic alliance with a highland group linked to the Tolteca-Chichimeca. Archaeological and ethnohistoric evidence indicate that Tututepec continued to expand through the Late Postclassic, growing to 21.85 km2, and at its peak was the capital of an empire extending over 25,000 km2.

Se describen y analizan los patrones funerarios del sitio chinchorro Morro 1, localizado en la costa norte de Chile. Se excavaron 134 inhumaciones. Se identificaron los tres patrones funerarios conocidos para esta cultura: (a) cuerpos con momificación artificial, que corresponden a entierros secundarios y múltiples, (b) cuerpos cubiertos con arena, y (c) cuerpos sin tratamiento de ningún tipo. Estos dos últimos patrones constituyeron enterramientos individuales y primarios. Se evalúa si la práctica de la momificación artificial compromete a todos los individuos de la cultura chinchorro, o si por el contrario, hay mecanismos selectivos donde cierta categoría de individuos fueron sometidos a este tratamiento. Se concluye que fetos, neonatos, lactantes y niños presentan las más altas frecuencias de momificación artificial, y la mayor complejidad en los procedimientos empleados. Esta práctica se inicia con esta categoría etaria a los 7000 a.P. y finaliza también con neonatos y niños después de los 4000 a.P. Mientras que entre los 5500-4000 a. P. se encuentran cuerpos de todas las edades con momificación artificial.

This is a study of agricultural intensification on the household scale in a Mixtec cacicazgo of Oaxaca, Mexico, during the Postclassic period (A.D. 800–1521). Through archaeological, ethnohistorical, and ethnographic methods this study investigates the roles of the state and the independent farming household in the emergence and operation of intensive agricultural systems, and agricultural terracing. I present data on two Postclassic houses and residential and agricultural terraces excavated at the site of Nicayuju in the municipality of San Juan Teposcolula, Oaxaca. Artifact and architectural data are reported. Ethnographic information is presented and used to create a model for terrace construction that is tested against the terrace excavation data presented in this article. It is argued that Robert Netting’s agrarian smallholder model may characterize the social organization of intensive agricultural production in prehispanic Mixtec society and that intensification may have functioned without direct state direction. The application of the agrarian smallholder model in Prehispanic Mesoamerica is significant in that it suggests that long-lasting and environmentally viable methods of agricultural production may originate and operate at the household and community levels.

Recent debate about the development of complex societies on the north coast of Peru has turned on the relative importance of marine vs. terrestrial resources and the extent to which different resource zones are upset by El Niño/Southern Oscillation (ENSO) events. While ENSO events are cited frequently as having important consequences for Prehispanic Andean societies, in fact there are few archaeological data about the nature of cultural responses to a specific ENSO event. Archaeological data from two Chimu settlements in the Casma Valley, Peru—Quebrada Sta. Cristina and Manchan—document the occurrence of a fourteenth-century A.D. ENSO event and some of the cultural responses to that prehistoric El Niño.