Similarities in certain paintings and sculptures created by pre-Conquest and early Colonial Aztec artists strongly suggest that the original identities and nature of the tzitzimime changed over the decades following the Spanish conquest. These images support textual evidence that Spanish authors, typically mendicants and clergymen, quickly conflated the tzitzimime with the Devil and his servants, in the process demonizing and ultimately masculinizing them as well. Whereas the most important tzitzimime were apparently female in pre-Hispanic times, Colonial authors writing after the mid-sixteenth century described them as exclusively or predominantly male. The potential for the tzitzimime terrorizing people during periods of crisis, when the sun's continued passage through the firmament was perceived as doubtful, became the sole focus of late-Colonial descriptions of the role and attributes of the tzitzimime. In pre-Hispanic times, in contrast, the most important tzitzimime were ambivalent creator deities whose generative powers rendered them capable of preventing and curing illness as well as causing harm. In the beginning, the tzitzimime apparently were female, the principal tzitzimitl, Citlalinicue, having passed on her powers to her daughters and granddaughters. These descendants included the goddess Cihuacoatl who, like the goddess Citlalinicue, was the patroness of parturient Aztec women and midwives and closely associated with the souls of women who had died in childbirth. Itzpapalotl is another example, to which we can add Tlaltecuhtli, Coatlicue, and Coatlicue's four self-sacrificing sisters. It was probably not until the Aztec government was in a position to rework official history that the national male deity Huitzilopochtli was inserted into Aztec stories of the creation in his manifestation as Omitecuhtli, “Bone Lord.” Like other tzitzimime, however, Omitecuhtli was petitioned to heal the sick, especially children, and was subsequently called upon to bestow his generative powers on newly elected government officials. These magical powers were embedded in the tzitzimime's garments. Their capes and skirts were decorated with skulls and crossbones that were often combined with symbols of stars and, occasionally, stone knives. This explains why petitions for a tzitzimitl's assistance were apparently made at a stone platform bearing these same designs. The platforms represented the sacred capes and skirts that, legend suggests, were the essence of the gods. Midwives and curers of both sexes probably made special use of these platforms, which provided them direct access to the tzitzimime. Materializing the sacred garments that embodied the generative essence of the tzitzimime provided the Aztec with a means of petitioning their assistance in averting illness and cosmic destruction.

Explanations for the emergence of the Aztec state need to consider changes in the climate and the potential effects resulting from these changes on the productivity of the lake network in the Valley of Mexico. Change in the human ecosystem is a complex process of interactions between multiple cultural variables and the environment. In this study, I examine the nature of three primary resources, fish, salt, and waterfowl, available for Early Aztec–period exploitation within the valley lake system. The intensification of lacustrine resource exploitation appears to be correlated with changing climatic conditions that occurred about a.d. 1150. Although the focus of this study is be on the cause-and-effect relationship between culture and environment, it is acknowledged that the environment is just one factor that must be considered to fully understand initial Aztec development.

Colonial chroniclers marveled at the quality and variety of textiles produced at the Postclassic center of Cholula. As a principal market center, textiles were produced for tribute and exchange, and other woven goods were manufactured for local consumption. This paper examines ethnohistorical and archaeological evidence to interpret the technology, materials, scale, and social relations of textile production. Original spindle-whorl data from the UA-1 domestic compound is contrasted with other whorls from Postclassic Cholula and from other sites in central Mexico. Results of this analysis indicate the complexity of pre-Columbian textile production and the significance of spinning and weaving in economic and social reconstructions of the past.

The origin of the words $lsquo;cacao$rsquo; and $lsquo;chocolate$rsquo; and their use in the reconstruction of the early history of Mesoamerica, remain very controversial issues. Cambell and Kaufman (1976, American Antiquity 41:80–89), for example, proposed that the word $lsquo;cacao$rsquo; originated from Mixe–Zoque languages, thus possibly representing Olmec traditions. According to this argument, other Mesoamerican languages, including Nahuatl, borrowed the word as a symbol of prestige and Olmec influence. Other researchers claim the word $lsquo;chocolate$rsquo; represents a more recent neologism, a possible Maya–Nahuatl hybrid, due to the late appearance of the word in central Mexico's Colonial sources. We refute the putative Mixe–Zoque origin of $lsquo;cacao$rsquo; and provide linguistic evidence to propose that $lsquo;cacao,$rsquo; like $lsquo;chocolate,$rsquo; is a Uto-Aztecan term. Analysis of these words highlights general and particular evolutionary trends that originate from the Uto-Aztecan language family. In addition, we show that these two words were initially used as descriptive terms to refer to the shape of the plant's bean and the techniques of drink preparation. Etymological evidence verifies the use of a Mayan term for cacao as early as the Classic period (fourth century a.d.). This early appearance of the term in Mayan and the later diffusion of the Nahua word throughout all of Mesoamerica correlate with additional data to support the conclusion that Teotihuacanos spoke Nahuatl.

This article presents a study of ceramic production in San Marcos Acteopan, a small village in the southern part of the state of Puebla, Mexico. Field observation and interviews with the families of two potters document the different steps of the ceramic production process. The approach is ethnographic and aims at better understanding ancient ceramic production. Special emphasis is given to raw material acquisition and paste preparation to provide comparative data for analysis of archaeological material and clay preparation strategies. This study adopts the perspective of ceramic ecology, which situates the information on ceramic production in environmental and socioeconomic contexts.

Tikal caches frequently contain a wide variety of marine materials such as shells, fish bones, and stingray spines (Coe 1990; Maxwell 1996). Beyond the possible use of stingray spines as bloodletters, however, little attention has been given to the role of these objects in ritual. Numerous caches contain the remains of toxic animals, including stingrays, porcupine fish, cone shells, and potentially toxic corals and sponges. Intriguingly, these objects are found in the greatest frequencies dating to the period from a.d. 562 to 695—known as the Tikal hiatus—beginning immediately following the defeat of Tikal by Caracol and ending with the ascension of Ruler A. It is proposed toxic marine objects were employed in rituals at Tikal and these rituals were most important during the hiatus period.

An interdisciplinary approach to Late Classic Maya polychrome-painted ceramics from Buenavista del Cayo and Cahal Pech, Belize allows for preliminary observations relevant to a better understanding of elite pottery production and use in the western Belize Valley. The combination of typological and contextual data from archaeological investigations of ceramics along with art-historical stylistic analyses and ceramic-paste chemical-composition data identifies ordinary and special-purpose vessels excavated from palace-midden contexts as having been created in the same elite-oriented or “palace” workshop(s) at Buenavista del Cayo. The method allows for the identification of unslipped, monochrome, and polychrome pottery excavated from “palace” contexts at nearby Cahal Pech as products of the “palace” school workshop(s) at Buenavista del Cayo, which implies movement of the ruling elite of the site between the two locales. The method also allows for the identification of a group of multiphase special-purpose ceramics excavated from Buenavista del Cayo “palace” middens whose chemical divergence from the other “palace-school” pottery provides evidence for the existence of different ceramic-paste recipes existing simultaneously within the same “palace” ceramic school or pottery tradition.

For much of this century, scholars have tended to dismiss the Madrid Codex as a resource because of the large number of apparent scribal errors in the hieroglyphic text of the manuscript. An examination of naming patterns and attribute distribution with respect to the codical deities, however, reveals that many of these so-called errors are patterned in meaningful ways. These patterns suggest that our view of the Maya pantheon as consisting of a series of discrete entities with distinct conceptual domains is a Western construct, rather than a valid representation of pre-Hispanic Maya ideology. Reference to ethnohistoric sources from both within the Maya area and elsewhere in Mesoamerica (e.g., accounts from central Mexico) provides a model for conceptualizing Maya deities as members of overlapping complexes or clusters, each composed of a small number of underlying divinities characterized by various aspects, or manifestations.

The Maya haab, the 365-day solar year, ended with a 5-day period called “Uayeb.” According to Bishop Diego de Landa, preparations for the commencement of a New Year began during the Uayeb period of the preceding year. This paper concerns the events and ceremonies encompassing the beginning of a Cauac year and discusses the parallels between Landa's descriptions of these events and certain figures and activities portrayed in several almanacs of the Madrid Codex. Based on the calendrical structure of these almanacs, we argue that they pertain specifically to Uayeb-related ceremonies for a single year within the 52-year cycle, beginning on a day 13 Cauac.

In a rather complex argument brought forth in 1993, Ross Parmenter tried to identify one of the place signs in the center of the Lienzo de Ihuitlan, called “Water” by Alfonso Caso (1961) as the place sign for the village of Tulancingo. This identification was mainly based on the fact that several of the royal couples associated with the place “Water” in the Lienzo de Ihuitlan also appear scattered around the dominant central church on the Lienzo de Tulancingo, which was photographed for the first time in 1974 by Jesús Franco Carrasco in the village of San Miguel Tulancingo. The same argument was presented by Carlos Rincón Mautner (1994). There is strong evidence, however, indicating that the place sign “Water” represents the village of Ihuitlan itself and that the Lienzo de Tulancingo originally came from the village of Ihuitlan.