A legendary figure in Maya archaeology, Edwin M. Shook, passed away at his home in Antigua, Guatemala, on March 9, 2000. Ed was one of the most prodigiously active figures in Mesoamerican archaeology during the twentieth century and may well have worked at more archaeological sites than any other Mesoamerican scholar. His career spanned more than 60 years and included associations with luminaries such as Alfred V. Kidder, Sylvanus Morley, Tatiana Proskouriakoff, Ledyard Smith, and Gustavo Stromsvik, to name just a few. In addition to his many outstanding contributions as a scholar, Ed will be remembered for his generosity and friendship. He was a friend and mentor to many generations of Mesoamerican field workers in archaeology, ethnography, and the natural sciences. No one fortunate enough to have spent an evening in his company will forget his enthralling stories of adventure, exploration, and discovery.

This paper analyses the imagery on two different Zapotec ceramic forms: an open-ended cylinder and an effigy vessel, both from the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto. In this study, I propose that the figures on these objects represent impersonators of the Zapotec storm god Cocijo. The impersonators would probably have been rulers playing the role of this god and are carrying out a ritual associated with the agricultural cycle of corn. A comparative method that combines historical archaeology, ethnography, and iconographic analysis reveals clues to the function and significance of the vessels. The study leads to the conjecture that these objects were used in connection with blood offerings during corn-harvest rituals. These conclusions address the nature of ancient Zapotec religion and cosmology and provide evidence that the Zapotec performed rain and fertility rituals associated with the corn harvest similar to those of other cultural groups in Mesoamerica.

Rubber had important utilitarian, symbolic, and ritual roles in ancient Mesoamerica. Among the latter is the use of rubber balls as burnt offerings. This paper examines characteristic iconographic manifestations of rubber-ball offerings in Mesoamerican art. One of these, the spiral, seen in the Postclassic Maya codices, is shown to have had greater temporal and geographic distribution than previously thought. Another is the Standard Rubber Offering, a widespread motif in Mesoamerican art that links rubber balls to feathers and rope bindings. In considering why rubber balls were shown bound in rope, the paper examines the physical properties of natural rubber. Understanding the iconographic nuances of rubber balls as ritual offerings sheds new light on the symbolism of rubber balls in ballgame scenes and allows identification of certain images as rubber balls that were previously unrecognized.

This article presents the chronological framework used to reconstruct the political history of the ancient Lowland Maya site of Xunantunich in the upper Belize River valley. Extensive excavations from 1991 to 1997 by the Xunantunich Archaeological Project produced the ceramic, architectural, and epigraphic data needed to place the site within a temporal context. Refinement of the Barton Ramie ceramic chronology was the first step toward clarifying the Xunantunich chronology. Seriation of well-known Spanish Lookout types and modes from stratified deposits established a framework for understanding Late and Terminal Classic assemblages. Twenty-two radiocarbon samples place these ceramic complexes in absolute time. Obsidian hydration and masonry techniques were found to be less reliable chronological markers. The results indicate that Xunantunich emerged as a regional center during the Samal (A.D. 600–670) and Hats' Chaak (A.D. 670–780) phases of the Late Classic period. Arguably, this rapid growth and florescence was initiated under the auspices of nearby Naranjo. Although the polity achieved political autonomy in the following Tsak' phase (A.D. 780–890) of the Terminal Classic period, civic construction diminished and rural populations declined until the site collapsed sometime during the late ninth or early tenth century.

Adrián Recinos's correlation of Kaqchikel Maya and Spanish dates in the Annals of the Kaqchikels contains numerous errors, and there are several scribal and calculation errors in how both the 260-day and 400-day Kaqchikel Maya calendars were used within the manuscript. These are dating problems that stem from errors by the scribes in their attempt to adapt to a European counting and documentation system and their inexperience with the Kaqchikel Maya calendars. In addition, unique citation marks and two scribal errors shed light on the existence of earlier documents and subsequent effects on the later time counts of the Kaqchikel Maya calendar system. This paper adjusts the previous correlation by Recinos and extends it from 1570 until 1603. Moreover, by highlighting and correcting the internal errors, this paper offers a caveat to scholars when reconstructing the histories, events, and social relations of past Mesoamerican peoples and scripts without regard for internal errors.

In this issue's Special Section we present the first of a two-part series on studies of ancient climate change in the Maya area. Since the time of Ellsworth Huntington (1917, 1924) and Karl Sapper (1931), Mesoamericanists and Mayanists in particular have been aware of the possibility that climate change played a role in the fortunes of ancient Maya civilization.

The series of papers on climate change published in this issue are the result of the symposium “Environmental Change in Mesoamerica: Physical Forces and Cultural Paradigms in the Preclassic to Postclassic,” held at the 63rd Annual Meeting of the Society for American Archaeology in March 2000 in Philadelphia. The authors bring their expertise in paleoclimatological studies to bear on the Maya Lowlands and Highlands from the beginning of the Holocene to the Postclassic and modern times. The studies reveal that climate has changed during the past 4,000 years to a considerable degree that correlates in a reasonable way with archaeological periodizations. Several climate-change models are presented as an effort to understand better past cultural and natural events.

Palynology provides a record of past environmental change in the Maya Lowlands. The underlying principles are simple, but, as with all proxies, there are limitations. During the late glacial period, environmental change was governed by climate, which was cooler and much drier and supported sparse temperate vegetation. The early Holocene epoch was warmer and very wet in the southern Lowlands when mesic tropical forests predominated, while the northern Yucatan Peninsula was edaphically dry until eustatic sea level rose. The modern distributions of plant associations and climatic gradients were established at the end of the early Holocene. Climatic variability continued throughout the Holocene. However, the ability of palynology to identify climatic events is hindered after the Maya became numerous in the Lowlands. Then, multidisciplinary studies provide a better interpretation of events, especially during the late Holocene. Pollen records poorly reflect cyclical droughts seen in isotopic records, as natural vegetation has adapted to these fluctuations.

During the years 2000 and 2001, a project was carried out to determine the paleoclimate in the Valley of Guatemala. There were two main objectives: (1) to compare and contrast the Highland data with that already obtained from the Maya Lowlands and the Caribbean region; and (2) to understand the relationship between climate and the disappearance of lakes and irrigated agriculture at the archaeological site of Kaminaljuyu in the Valley of Guatemala. Sediment cores have been recovered from Lake Amatitlan and the extinct Lake Miraflores associated with Kaminaljuyu. The samples have been transported to the United States for radiocarbon dating and for analysis of microfossils and pollen content. The paper summarizes the work and the results of the analysis obtained to the present.

Much has been learned from the basin of the Candelaria River, Campeche, Mexico: the fabric of a densely settled pre-Historic landscape, including impressive ceremonial centers; the logistics of an ancient entrepôt; the process of exploitation of dyewood and chicle in historic times; as well as the doubtful results of the mid-twentieth-century colonization of an “empty” forested basin. It also yielded the first evidence of more or less intensive pre-Hispanic wetland agriculture in the Maya region and the remains of a profuse network of fluvial transportation from prehistoric times to the present. This article presents recent evidence regarding the management of the river system itself by means of barriers, or “dams,” which facilitated agriculture in the wetlands upstream and extensive canoe travel. These structures seem to be elaborations or imitations of the numerous natural barriers already in the stream. Two models help explain context and function. It has become apparent that the human interventions into the wetlands and the river system are to be seen less as great attainments of civilization than as fairly desperate expedients in the face of climate change.

Drought and drought-induced famine are recurring phenomena in Mesoamerica that have devastated populations in the region repeatedly during the past two millennia. Although it is counterintuitive to conceive of the idea that volcanic eruptions anywhere in the world might affect the lives of people in Mesoamerica, we examine the reports of drought and famine during the period A.D. 1440 to 1840 and compare them with known, large volcanic eruptions. We then apply non-parametric statistical techniques to determine whether the coincidences seen between worldwide volcanic eruptions and Mesoamerican drought within the following two years were due to random chance or whether there was a direct, mathematically verifiable correlation. We find a direct correlation to a probability of 56 in 100 million. We conclude that due to its unique geographical position, Mesoamerica was repeatedly devastated by drought and subsequent famine between 1440 and 1840 due to the indirect climatic effects of large volcanic eruptions that could be located anywhere in the world.

Since the late 1950s, scientists have used sediment cores from lakes on the Yucatan Peninsula to explore the complex interactions among climate, environment, and ancient Maya culture. Early paleolimnological studies generally assumed that late Holocene climate was invariable. Consequently, paleolimnologically inferred environmental changes that occurred during the past 3,000 years or so—for example, forest decline and soil erosion—were attributed wholly to anthropogenic activities such as land clearance for agriculture and construction. Recent high-resolution, proxy-based paleoclimate records from continental and insular sites around the Caribbean Sea contradict the assumption of late Holocene climate stability. Instead, these core data suggest that regional drying began about 3,000 years ago and that the past three millennia were characterized by variable moisture availability. Paleoclimate inferences from Lakes Chichancanab and Punta Laguna, northern Yucatan Peninsula, indicate that drought events over the past 2,600 years were cyclical. These dry events, thought to have been driven by solar forcing, appear to have occurred approximately every two centuries (about 208 years). The driest period of the late Holocene occurred between A.D. 800 and 1000, coincident with the Classic Maya Collapse. We review the history of paleolimnological studies in the Maya Lowlands, discuss the difficulty of differentiating climatic signals from anthropogenic signals in late Holocene lake sediment profiles, and assess current understanding of past climate changes in the region based on regional lacustrine sediment studies.

During the spring of 1998, an El Niño event produced harsh drought conditions in much of Mexico, including the Maya area. Similar events surely occurred in the distant past. This paper reports on investigation of chronological correlations between El Niño event sequences as suggested by glacial ice-core data from Quelccaya in the Peruvian Andes, historical-severity-ranked El Niño event sequences, and historical drought documentation for the Maya area. Positive correlations between Andean ice-core data sets and historical sequences were expected to provide evidence for earlier discrete El Niño event sequences as far back as A.D. 470 that could be used as proxy data to reconstruct annual El Niño events affecting southern Mesoamerica, including the Maya Classic through Postclassic periods. Correlations of these data sets proved inconclusive, suggesting the need for alternative approaches toward reconstructing discrete El Niño sequences for the Maya area.