George L. Cowgill had a major influence on the study of the ancient city of Teotihuacan and the development and promotion of quantitative methods in archaeology. His wit, teaching, and research influenced many in the profession. We draw on two published autobiographical works (Cowgill 2008a, 2013a), some unpublished autobiographical notes (Cowgill 1983), his many publications, and our own associations with George.

Based on stratigraphic excavation data and associated radiocarbon dates we argue that the pre-Hispanic city of Cerro Jazmín, in the Mixteca Alta region of Oaxaca, underwent a period of political change between the Late Formative (300 b.c.–a.d. 50) and the Terminal Formative periods (a.d. 50–300). This shift is reflected in the city's layout and in the timing of construction and use of two different monumental sectors. During the city's Late Formative occupation, we found evidence of more exclusionary feasting activity taking place in a secluded monumental sector called the Sunken Courtyards near the hilltop. In the Terminal Formative, however, monumental construction expanded in the more accessible Tres Cerritos sector where larger and accessible public areas were the focus of activity. We argue that changes in the city's layout, along with the differing patterns of feasting, suggest that the city's leaders went from a more exclusionary form of government to a more collective political strategy during the Terminal Formative period. Despite of these efforts monumental construction largely stopped and the city's population declined by the start of the Classic period (a.d. 300).

Siguiendo los registros jeroglíficos de los que disponemos, pareciera que los gobernantes del glifo emblema de la cabeza de serpiente, asentados primero en Dzibanche y posteriormente en Calakmul, establecieron una organización político-social basada en la rígida autoridad del k'uhul ajaw que encabezaba la dinastía. Sin embargo, considerando la amplia distribución de referencias que indican eventos llevados a cabo en diferentes entidades políticas bajo la supervisión del gobernante de Kaan y las alusiones a distintas entidades corporativas fuera de la capital pero vinculadas al glifo emblema dinástico, sugiero una posible organización política establecida desde la entidad capital pero ejecutada en “la periferia” por distintos grupos de poder. Con base en lo anterior, propongo que éstos eran los verdaderos encargados de mantener los preceptos decretados desde la cabecera dinástica sin necesidad de la presencia física del k'uhul Kaan ajaw.

Throughout the world, past and present, social organizations develop to cope with restricted water sources. Relying on traditional archaeology, labor estimates, and ethnographic data, the Palenque Pool Project set out to better understand a series of interconnected artificial water features located in the western sector of this Classic Maya site. Here, we detail our 2014–2015 fieldwork. First, there is consideration that the Picota Group was a civic-ceremonial center first established in the Early Classic period (a.d. 250–500), one km to the west of the “downtown” nucleus of the site. A review of labor estimates for the construction of architectural features of the Picota Group follows. We then explore the ethnographic component, comparing similar pool configurations investigated in the highland Tzotzil community of Chamula in 2015. The article concludes with a theoretical discussion of how and why social organizations evolve to manage water resources in the region, with reference to ethnographic information from highland Tzotzil communities.

A series of figurines, known in the archaeological literature as Mazapan-style, was recently discovered at the site of El Palacio, Michoacan, Mexico, in strata radiocarbon dated from the Early Postclassic (a.d. 900–1200/1250). Considered diagnostic markers for Early Postclassic cultural and economic dynamics, these artifacts raise questions regarding the role of this settlement at both regional and interregional scales prior to the rise of the Tarascan state. We study the specimens found at El Palacio through a thorough examination of the archaeological contexts, technological and iconographic characteristics, and compare them to cases from the literature. By demonstrating their local production and their association with other artifacts or iconographic traits characteristic of the Early “Postclassic international style,” we bring new elements to the definition of these artifacts and underline the capacity of local elites to connect culturally and economically with other regions of Mesoamerica.

The Maya area has long been characterized as a mosaic of polities large and small, with cultural connections, linguistic dialects, ethnicities, and economic networks that shifted, expanded, and contracted over time. In this paper, we examine different ways of constructing boundaries. From physical demarcations in the landscape to habitual practices of interaction and affiliation, the lines that tied and divided were both unstable and multiple. We draw on definitions and theories from anthropology, history, and geography to review the concepts of borders, frontiers, and boundaries and their implications for the Maya area over the long term.

Recent research carried out at the Maya site of Nakum, located in northeastern Guatemala, has brought about the discovery of a large collection of ceramic artefacts. This substantial assemblage, apart from monochrome ceramics, includes fragments of polychrome vessels that are decorated with elaborate iconographic scenes and painted hieroglyphic texts. Most of them date to the Late Classic period (ca. a.d. 600–800), which represents the peak of the pre-Columbian Maya civilization. The style of these ceramics, their iconography and accompanying glyphic texts, supplemented in many cases by mineralogical and physicochemical analyses of the ceramic samples, indicate that Nakum was part of a broad and complex network of political and economic interactions between various sites and polities of the southern Maya lowlands in the Classic period. During the first part of the Late Classic period, Nakum seems to maintain close relations with Naranjo, probably serving as its vassal at least from the reign of its renowned king Aj Wosal. After the victory of Tikal over Naranjo in the first part of the eighth century, Nakum shows closer cultural and political connections with Tikal. Nevertheless, towards the end of the Classic era, when we observe the profound collapse of lowland Maya civilization, Nakum elites gain political independence from their former overlords.

The Maya archaeological site of Ucanal is located in Peten, Guatemala, close to the contemporary border with Belize. In pre-Columbian times, the site also sat at the frontiers of some of the largest political centers, Naranjo in Peten, Guatemala, and Caracol, in Belize. Entangled between these dominant centers and with ties to peoples in the Upper Belize Valley, the Petexbatun region in Guatemala, northern Yucatan, and elsewhere, Ucanal was a critical convergence zone of political and cultural interaction. This paper synthesizes archaeological research by the Proyecto Arqueológico Ucanal to underscore the ways in which this provincial polity, identified epigraphically as K'anwitznal, maneuvered within and between different cultural affiliations and political networks. We find that the site's role as a political frontier during the Late Classic period was more of a bridge than an edge. During the later Terminal Classic period, the K'anwitznal kingdom gained independence, but continued to serve as a critical convergence of influences and interaction spheres from throughout the Maya area and beyond.

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.

In this study, we offer a relational approach to theorizing boundaries for the Maya, adapting Mills’ (2018) concept of “boundary objects” as a means of understanding how people and things bridge or cross boundaries and were critical for developing and maintaining allied relations. We trace a network of sites on both sides of the Guatemala–Belize border dating to the Terminal Classic and Postclassic, which are generally characterized as times of increased conflict, movement and migration of people, and disruption in dynastic succession with an emphasis on shared governance. We examine the introduction of northern-style traits in the eastern Maya lowlands during the Terminal Classic and Postclassic periods, including circular and colonnaded buildings and distinctive portable goods such as molded-carved ceramics, phallic and turtle effigies, and other material forms. We suggest that during fractious periods in Maya history, northern traits were implicated in boundary crossing negotiations and entangled relations, which included marriage alliances with “foreigners” as a means of elite legitimation.

This study examines the intersection of political, cultural, and linguistic differences in the archaeological study of boundaries. The Late Postclassic and Early Colonial periods (a.d. 1350–1525) in the Maya lowlands are known for political instability and the formulation of new identities, especially in the northern region of the Peten Lakes District (Guatemala) to the greater Rio Hondo drainage (Belize). This article approaches the theoretical formulations of archaeological borders from the perspective of lithic technology, focusing on small projectile points recovered from numerous sites in the subregion. Analysis of data suggests differences in resource acquisition, material preference, and production during a time of historically fluid interaction and occasional conflict in the Peten-Belize area. Such information adds to our understandings of political frontiers of Late Postclassic polities from a social and economic perspective that is often ignored.

Colonialism came late to northern Guatemala. The Spanish began to establish missions in the Peten Lakes region in the early 1700s, nearly 200 years after initial contact with the Mayas. Excavations in 2011–2012 at the Mission San Bernabé revealed European goods, nonnative animal species, and burial patterns that marked a new lifestyle. Who lived at the Mission San Bernabé, and where did they come from? The Spanish resettled indigenous populations to facilitate the colonization process; however, isotopic data are inconsistent with large population movements. Instead, strontium and oxygen isotope values in the tooth enamel and bones of individuals buried at the mission suggest a mostly local population. The data suggest in-migration from Belize, a region under nominal Spanish control, but with pre-Hispanic ties to the Peten. Changes did not come from migrants crossing a border; instead, the border itself moved and brought the colonial world to the Peten Mayas.

Having fled the violence of the Caste War in Mexico (1847−1901), the San Pedro Maya occupied nearly two dozen small villages in the forests of western British Honduras and the northeastern Peten from the 1850s to the 1930s. With no physically demarcated borders between British Honduras and its neighbors present prior to the late 1880s, archival and archaeological data demonstrate that the San Pedro Maya moved freely through the lightly populated forests of the area. Ultimately, however, the San Pedro Maya's ambivalence toward the border between British Honduras and Guatemala provided the Belize Estate and Produce Company (BEC) with an excuse to evict them from their villages in the 1930s. In this article, we present archival information and archaeological data from Kaxil Uinic, a small San Pedro Maya village in British Honduras, to examine the following issues: the conflicting views of the border held by the San Pedro Maya and their colonial counterparts; the evidence for ties between Kaxil Uinic and Icaiche, Mexico; and the roles chicle smuggling and commercial logging had in the eviction of the San Pedro Maya from BEC lands.