George Hasemann, Head of the Archaeology Section of the Instituto Hondureno de Antropología e Historia (IHAH), passed away in Tegucigalpa, Honduras, on October 8, 1998, at the age of 54, after a five-year struggle with cancer. He is survived by his wife and colleague Gloria Lara Pinto de Hasemann and children Ana Eugenia, Jose Enrique, Diana, and Dawn.

Excavations beneath the Copan Acropolis provide the most complete record known for the origins and development of an Early Classic Maya royal complex (ca. a.d. 420–650). Beginning at the time of the historically identified dynastic founder, the earliest levels include the first royal compound, centered on a small talud-tablero platform, a vaulted tomb that may be that of the founder, and an adjacent tomb that may be that of the founder's wife and dynastic matriarch. The timing and development of architecture provide evidence of the founding and growth of Copan as the capital of a Classic-period polity during the reigns of the first seven kings (a.d. 426–544). By the reigns of Rulers 8–11 (a.d. 544–628), the Early Classic Acropolis covered about the same area as its final version in the Late Classic. Documentation of specific Acropolis buildings provides evidence of the external connections that reinforced the authority of Copan's Early Classic kings. Building sequences reflect the perpetuation of political power by using important locations as symbolic links to the sacred past. The Early Classic Acropolis also provides new evidence for the beginnings of palace architecture that have important implications for the origins of Maya state-level organizations. Overall, the findings from the Early Classic Copan Acropolis promise to significantly advance our understanding of the origins and development of Maya state systems.

Classic lowland Maya censers can be described in terms of two general categories, image (or effigy) and non-image. The function and meaning of these incensarios is approached through consideration of their embellishment, symbolism, and contexts of use and recovery. It is suggested that in Peten and some adjacent areas, Classic image censers were part of the paraphernalia of divine kingship, associated with termination rituals and a royal funerary cult. Non-image and particularly spiked censers were more associated with birth/renewal, earth, rain, and calendrical rituals involving fire drilling. Their use became widespread in the lowlands during the Terminal Classic period, with the “collapse” of divine kingship and elite power.

Ritual contexts at Laguna de On Island are identified in two structures that form part of a single household cluster in the central area of the site. The features and artifact assemblages of these structures indicate that a continuum of domestic-to-ritual debris is found at each location. Variation in the content of these assemblages is used to identify the degree of ritual activity and the function of each structure. Structure I is identified as a dwelling where ritual activity was conducted. Structure II is identified as a specialized household shrine or oratory. This examination of the contexts for ritual practice at Laguna de On addresses the issue of “secularization” of Postclassic Maya religion and the connection between status and ritual at a small, rural, Postclassic community.

The name “Street of the Dead” used to designate Teotihuacan's main avenue originates from a Nahuatl notation on a sixteenth-century map. Though this “story” is often deemed apocryphal, I argue in this paper that oral tradition preserved conceptual information that may not be archaeologically recoverable. Support for this position comes from comparative cultural analysis of Mesoamerican mortuary bundles as they are expressed in ritual and iconography. Crucial to this argument are the well-known stone masks of Teotihuacan. A case is made that the masks originally served as the faces of oracular mortuary bundles. The likely existence of mortuary bundles at Teotihuacan generates organizational models for the city in which lineage emerges as a fundamental element and suggests new insight into status differentiation and the iconography of power at Teotihuacan.

In this paper, we present a complete list of eclipses documented in the Mexica manuscripts. We use this list together with information in the chronicles to outline a possible method used by Mexica chronologists for linking historical with retrodictable cosmic events that were deliberately chosen to fit historical circumstances. Solar events, particularly eclipses, figure prominently in a scheme that stresses the recurrence of like-in-kind events positioned at multiples of the Xiuhmolpilli (52-year) cycle. Thus, both the foundation of the empire and calendrical adjustments related to the fictional chronology of World Ages are connected to eclipses that were visible at Tenochtitlan and that fell either at the solstices or the equinoxes.

Lack of draft animals is often considered to have been an impediment to urban growth in Mesoamerica. Transport, however, was only one of several factors that influenced the growth of cities. This paper contrasts the effects of energetic efficiency differences between horses and human porters with productivity differences between European and Mesoamerican agricultural systems. Depending on strength and nutritional requirements, horses may be from one to five times as efficient as human porters. Furthermore, horses compete with humans for food. Where the horse played a major transport role, one-third of available, arable land was devoted to oat production. With this in mind, I compare maize versus wheat productivity to show that a unit of land in Mesoamerica could support up to twice as many people as the same unit of land in Europe. Thus, the transport advantage enjoyed by European cities is essentially offset by a more intensive agricultural system in Mesoamerica.

La región del cañón de Bolaños estuvo habitada por sociedades que acostumbraron enterrar a sus muertos en tumbas de tiro. El hallazgo de uno de estos monumentos funerarios sellado proporcionó el conocimiento integral del ritual funerario dentro de esa región.

This issue's special section presents three papers with important new data on the Formative-period village of K'axob, Belize. Until very recently, our knowledge of Formative Mesoamerican villages has been heavily weighted toward that of the highlands (Flannery 1976). These papers on K'axob go a long way toward redressing that imbalance.

Excavations in Formative and Early Classic contexts at the Maya site of K'axob have produced a sample of 2,568 worked-shell ornaments crafted from both marine and freshwater species. Predominantly shell beads, the sample also includes unique pendants, figurines, and tinklers. A high frequency of unfinished beads in Middle Formative and early Late Formative midden contexts provides strong evidence of localized shell working and trading connections with the Caribbean. Personal adornment crafted from shell is an important item in many burials, including those of children. The most lavish disposal of shell, however, occurs in one of the earliest Middle Formative interments at K'axob. An adult male—who may have been a “founder” of K'axob—was buried with 2,019 shell beads. Through time, fewer individuals were buried with worked shell as the intricacy of shell working became more elaborate and possibly iconic of roles of authority. Interpretation of archaeological patterns indicates that shell beads can provide significant insight into the construction of social identities.

Mortuary interments from Formative and Early Classic deposits of the Maya site of K'axob, northern Belize, show significant variation in four aspects: burial position, number of interments within a burial facility, incidence of secondary interments, and types of associated burial accoutrements. Burial data for more than 100 individuals of both sexes and all age grades indicate that these changes over time are significant. The implications of these patterns for heightening our understanding of mortuary ritual are explored in depth. Evidence suggests that tightly wrapped seated and flexed burials represent the Late Formative onset of more protracted rituals involving prolonged displays of ancestors. Terminal Formative mortuary deposits featuring collections of curated ancestor remains indicate the “gathering of ancestors,” generally at a locale at which a monumental structure was later built. Sex and age distributions within multiple interments (both primary and secondary) reflect the familial character of burial locales, particularly at the centrally located Operation I. Burial accoutrements demonstrate the connectivity of K'axob to general cosmological armatures of Maya society. Increasingly individualized artifacts indicate the socially diacritical role of burial offerings.

Occupation of the lowlands by groups of Mayan-language speakers during the Archaic and Formative periods is poorly understood, partly because of a lack of sufficient data. This problem is exacerbated by the fact that early deposits often are discovered at the base of deep test excavations and, as such, yield a “window” to the past that is limited in terms of understanding settlement colonization, growth, and differentiation. The southern portion of the site of K'axob, which is located in northern Belize, contains substantial Middle and Late Formative period construction that is relatively accessible under Classic-period plaza surfaces. The results of seven large-scale excavations conducted in both large and small platform complexes are reported here. A suite of radiocarbon assays and ceramic analysis indicate initial construction at K'axob shortly after 800 b.c. Ceramic complexes presented here are typified by a diversity of Middle Formative pottery types (devoid of jar forms), followed by Late Formative pottery featuring a significant increase in vessel volume and local innovations in surface finish. At K'axob, Middle Formative domiciles were large and well equipped, and they featured a separate ancillary kitchen structure to the west. Around 200 b.c., settlement expanded from a nuclear Middle Formative core, and differentiation in residential construction became apparent. A significant aspect of Formative domestic architecture is the inclusion of human remains, which reveal longitudinal trends in the elaboration of mortuary ritual indicative of ancestor-linked social and economic differentiation.