This paper examines Nahua words found in both the Maya codices and the monumental texts. These words, spelled with syllabic signs, occur for the most part in contexts associated with foreign influence: Nahuatl deity names and words for “helmet,” “tribute,” and “heart.” One word—“and then”—is a conjunction used frequently in discourse. Sound correspondences between these loan words and the Nahua sources suggest an Eastern Nahua dialect as the likely source during the Classic period. Thus, Mexican influence in the Maya area, frequently attributed directly to Teotihuacan, may in fact have come by way of Nahua-speakers settled in the Gulf region. The epigraphic evidence establishes that Nahua speakers were influential in Mesoamerica far earlier than previously believed.

The Late Classic Maya abandonment of the Copan Valley, Honduras, began in the ninth century a.d. and lasted approximately 250–300 years. The relationship between local ecological setting and residential group abandonment is examined by applying event-history analysis to the known occupation spans of 140 residential mound groups, dated by obsidian hydration. Late Classic households in ecologically vulnerable sections of the Copan Valley—as measured by slope, soil type, and natural vegetation—had significantly higher risk of abandonment than households in more ecologically stable settings. Abandonment risk rises sharply in all regions at the end of the seventh century a.d. Both computerized agricultural simulations and settlement demographic reconstructions indicate that increased levels of agricultural intensification necessary to meet the subsistence needs of Copan's growing population would have led to large-scale erosion in upland areas and a significant reduction of soil fertility in all regions of the valley at that time. Mound-group abandonment patterns tend to support the hypothesis that environmental degradation played a dominant role in the collapse of the Copan polity.

This article reviews new evidence suggesting that Tikal and its allies controlled trade along the Pasión River during the latter half of the Early Classic period (ca. a.d. 460–550) and the possible impacts this had on geopolitical interaction. Recent data in the Candelaria Caves and other Pasión River sites showed the strong influence of Tikal during this time period that could indicate that they were active agents in interregional trade between the Maya highlands and lowlands. A quantitative reevaluation of the Pennsylvania lithic collection does demonstrate an important change in Tikal's importation of both obsidian and jade during the Early Classic period. Together, the stylistic changes in the locally manufactured ceramics and the drastic increase of lithic raw materials at Tikal strongly suggest that Tikal was directly or indirectly controlling the Chixoy-Pasión trade route at this time. After the defeat of Tikal by Caracol in a.d. 562, it apparently lost this influence, ceasing to be a strong agent in jade and obsidian production and exchange, instead becoming a wealthy consumer.

This study of saltmaking in coastal Michoacan underscores the value of ethnoarchaeology as a tool for assessing ancient saltmaking activities. Common salt (sodium chloride) was a strategic resource of great importance for Mesoamerica during pre-Hispanic and Colonial times. This study deals with salt production in La Placita and neighboring areas of coastal Michoacan and Colima, in western Mexico. The primary goals are to document traditional saltmaking techniques—in particular, the material culture, organization of work, ecological setting, and levels of production observed in the study area, as well as the importance of salt manufacture and trade for the area's economy and culture over time. Ethnographic observations together with ethnohistorical and archaeological data shed light on the pre-Hispanic production, use, and commerce of salt in the coastal area of Michoacan, one of the least studied regions in Mesoamerica. There are three types of sites in the study area: (1) sites where salt is currently being produced; (2) abandoned sites where salt production was carried out until some fifty years ago; and (3) archaeological sites where salt may have been produced and/or distributed in ancient times. The material evidence of salt production consists of: (1) terreros, or mounds of leached soil; (2) eras, or solar evaporation pans; and (3) specialized pottery types. Finally, this paper uses archaeological and historical evidence, as well as oral traditions, to discuss ancient salt exchange and trade networks.

This paper provides data on the salt industry along Guerrero's Costa Chica and on itinerant salt trading conducted by highland Nahuatl villagers. The findings are compared with studies of salt production elsewhere in Mesoamerica, and the nature and quality of oral-historical sources are evaluated. Based primarily on extensive ethnographic fieldwork, the paper explores technical and social-organizational features of salt production and marketing useful for model building among archaeologists and ethnohistorians. In crossing disciplinary boundaries the paper raises methodological issues of concern to scholars who attempt to reconstruct historical or contemporary Mesoamerican cultural and economic patterns.

Perishable structures of pole and thatch construction are abundant in both modern and ancient settlements in Mesoamerica. This essay uses archaeological, ethnographic, and historic data from coastal Chiapas, Mexico, to define the features of such elusive buildings and to examine ways of demonstrating sequential occupation. The emphasis throughout is on investigating perishable structures in both their social and environmental settings.

The examination of the internal frontiers between ancient Maya polities is a topic that has received little focused attention. This article explores various topics associated with frontiers and frontier communities, including: (1) how they might be located archaeologically; (2) what their material correlates might be; and, (3) what we might expect in terms of their sociopolitical characteristics. Special attention is paid to the role that collective memory plays in both the definition and reaffirmation of territorial limits and in the production and reproduction of frontier identities. The ancient Maya center of Minanha is used as a case study.

Intensive agriculture was a key feature in the development of early complex societies in the Basin of Mexico. In this paper, I review the theoretical underpinnings of archaeological understandings of agriculture change, its relationship to culture change, and how these theoretical perspectives have shifted between top-down and bottom up perspectives. Next I examine current knowledge of intensive agriculture within the dynamic context of the Formative or Preclassic period. The paper concludes with a discussion of how our models and theories of the complex interplay between intensive agriculture and political economy to explain the change from village-based societies to states and cities outstrip available data in the basin.

A comparison of regional archaeological sequences for eastern and southern Mesoamerica should indicate if there were times of contemporaneous transcultural punctuated cultural developments. Punctuated developments in the form of cultural intensifications or destabilizations (cultural collapses) may imply external cultural stimulation, such as diffusion of ideas and/or technology, or natural external factors resulting from general climatic instability. Such information is relevant to understanding systems dynamics of cultural transformation from small-scale, egalitarian societies to ones characterized by stratification and ranked social orders.

Despite more than two decades of extensive and highly productive research programs by a series of institutions and individuals focusing specifically on the Preclassic archaeology of the Belize River Valley, understanding and appreciation of the region's ceramic tradition and interpreted culture history today effectively remain based on, and dependent on, unmodified conceptual formulations from the 1940s through the 1960s. These incorporate a view of the zonal Preclassic ceramic sequence as the physical embodiment of a uniform and even unitary local producer–consumer system tied directly and genetically to the later Classic and Postclassic Maya inhabitants of the region. In this paper, we question both these assumptions and the soundness of the conceptual constructs (ceramic complexes) and framework (ceramic sequence) on which they are based. We examine the content and analyze the composition of the Belize Valley Middle and Late Preclassic ceramic complexes as dynamic, composite, producer–consumer circulation assemblages rather than as static, synthetic archaeological units, and we conclude that they reflect a much more complex socioeconomic, cultural, and sociopolitical landscape than has yet been recognized and appreciated by other investigators. We propose the presence and interaction within the valley during the Middle and Late Preclassic of at least two distinct dialectal, ethnic, or ethnolinguistic groups, and we argue that the local cultural tradition emerging in the area by the ceramic Protoclassic represented a ranked amalgamation of these. The paper also presents the first comprehensive and complete type-variety typologies for the Middle through Late Preclassic ceramic complexes of the upper Belize Valley, incorporating both new data from the 1980s and 1990s and substantive revisions of earlier work by J. E. S. Thompson and James C. Gifford.

Research on the emergence of social complexity and state economies tends toward an understanding of either political economies or market economies as the privileged economic form and with producer specialization emerging contemporaneously with the state. Markets and political control need not be seen as oppositional; rather, they are part of the continuum of multiple strategies elites use to create the larger political economy of a state. The Late Postclassic period Tarascan state is known for its strong centralizing tendencies, and an overview of previous research indicates political involvement in various aspects of the larger economic coordination of metal, obsidian, and agricultural production and distribution. Tarascan state ceramics are highly distinctive in form and decoration. Ethnohistoric evidence suggests that they were produced under court control, yet no direct evidence for ceramic production has been found in the Tarascan core, the Lake Patzcuaro Basin. A mix of compositional and statistical analyses of the ceramic assemblage from Urichu, Michoacan, Mexico, indicates that ceramics were not under centralized political control but, instead, were produced at a local level and distributed using the market mechanisms of the larger mixture of economic strategies on the part of the Tarascan political elite.

Investigations of Classic period (a.d. 400–900) settlement in the El Paraíso Valley, western Honduras, have identified a pattern of paired centers that suggests a previously unrecognized model of political organization in the Maya area. In the El Paraíso Valley, the largely contemporary, equally-sized, and proximate centers of El Cafetal and El Paraíso differ radically from one another in their spatial organization, construction techniques, architectural embellishment, use of open space, and portable material culture. Analysis of these differences suggests that El Cafetal was inhabited by an autochthonous population while El Paraíso was founded under the auspices of the Copan dynasty as an administrative outpost. We suggest that the juxtaposition of these two sites results from a regional strategy of sociopolitical integration implemented by Copan rulers that was adapted to the ethnically diverse regions along the edge of the Copan kingdom.

Archaeologists working in the northern Maya lowlands have faced persistent problems in establishing chronological precision and accuracy. In particular, it has proven difficult to create multi-phase chronologies for the Late and Terminal Classic periods. Investigators at Xkipche, a small Puuc site southwest of Uxmal, have employed both seriation and the typological approach to ceramic chronology. The results of the ceramic seriation suggest great persistence from the second century until a.d. 1100, a continuity that is not supported by the Type-Variety approach to chronology. This report begins by reviewing the ceramic data, and then turns to another archaeological material, obsidian. Procurement patterns and production technology are discussed for the 182 obsidian artifacts collected during the first five seasons of the Projekt Xkipche. These data are compared with similar information gleaned from other sites in the northern Maya lowlands. Results of this obsidian analysis conflict with the absolute chronology proposed for the Xkipche ceramic sequence. Finally, a compromise ceramic chronology is proposed, one that is consistent with both obsidian and architectural data. This proposed chronology divides the seemingly monolithic Cehpech ceramic complex into three phases: Early Cehpech (a.d. 550–700); Late Cehpech (a.d. 700–900/950); and, Terminal Cehpech/Sotuta (a.d. 900/950–950/1000).

The Petexbatun Regional Cave Survey (PRCS) is the first large cave study to be undertaken as part of a major archaeological expedition. The survey's primary objective was assessing the extent to which surface architecture at Dos Pilas was configured by features in the sacred landscape. All three of the major architectural complexes at the site had a direct relation to caves, and a number of important secondary buildings and even residential units were deliberately laid out to incorporate caves. Excavation revealed evidence of Preclassic utilization of all of the major caves, indicating that their status as sacred landmarks had been established long before the eighth century florescence of the site. The importance of the caves in site configuration was mirrored in the artifact assemblage. Despite the survey's much smaller size, the cave investigations recovered 20–50% more of the overall assemblage at Dos Pilas in an array of artifact categories. A review of the archaeological literature suggests that the importance ascribed to caves at Dos Pilas in both site configuration and local economy can be found elsewhere and probably reflects a much wider pattern of utilization.

Following the military campaigns of conquest in sixteenth-century Yucatan, the Order of Friars Minor Observant assumed the task of controlling, by culture conversion, the indigenous Yucatec Maya. The fundamental vehicle for this program of social engineering was the built environment of the mission, composed of the chapel, atrium, and friary, and the associated village. Archaeological remains of mission sites are horizon markers for the earliest phases of permanent Hispanic presence on the peninsula, ca. 1545–1572. Mission villages specify locations where the friars reorganized pre-Hispanic Maya settlements according to Spanish sociopolitical norms. Increasing complexity in mission-chapel architecture marks the stages of this reorganization. In this article, I discuss the historical origin of the friars' policies and the context of their implementation in Yucatan; model the spatial, temporal, architectural, and behavioral variables the Franciscans employed to extend and maintain Hispanic hegemony; provide comparative data from seventeenth-century New Mexico and La Florida; and outline a general theory of Franciscan activity in the New World.

The reconstruction of time is a central concern all archaeologists must address in their research; few, however, are fully aware of the potential of all the dating methods at their disposal. For this reason, this paper summarizes the developmental history and current level of field application of obsidian-hydration dating. It (1) reviews how this dating technique was first discovered and applied, (2) details our current knowledge of the process of hydration and which variables affect its rate, (3) discusses the relative advantages and limitations of the three primary approaches employed to construct hydration chronologies, and (4) presents a protocol for its future application in Mesoamerica. The synthesis of this body of hydration-dating research may help archaeologists more constructively decide how and when to apply this unique and versatile dating technique to their specific research questions by providing the information and guidelines necessary for recovering pertinent field data.

In this paper, we analyze the distribution of Late Postclassic (A.D. 1250–1500) architecture and associated artifacts of the Maya site of Caye Coco, Belize. Artifact density and distribution suggest that different buildings served different functions and reflect a range of domestic and non-domestic activities at the island. An assessment of the labor investment required to build the seventeen structures at Caye Coco provides evidence of the degree of social hierarchy at this site, as many more people would have been required to build its elite residences than could have lived in them. The shift in the focus of architectural construction to the island at Progresso Lagoon in the Late Postclassic contrasts with the predominance of construction on the west shore during the Terminal Classic period. This trend reflects the emergence of a new political center among the lagoon settlements. It also may suggest an increased concern with aquatic transportation of trade goods during the Postclassic period, as Caye Coco is the most prominent island of the lagoon, which connects directly to the Caribbean Sea. The architecture at Caye Coco suggests that Late Postclassic political organization of northeastern Belize was more hierarchical than has been previously documented. This paper is the first systematic effort to quantify architectural labor investment and size distribution at a southern lowland Postclassic Maya site in order to address the issue of sociopolitical hierarchy.

Although the topic has received recent attention, relatively little is known about how pre-Hispanic Mesoamerican communities were internally organized and interconnected. In this paper, we examine that question from the perspective of the Classic-period settlement of El Palmillo, in the Valley of Oaxaca, Mexico. Previous studies of the valley have postulated that communities often were (and still are) subdivided into barrios, although the modes of integration for those segments are less fully defined. Along these lines, we have previously identified commoner and higher-status houses at El Palmillo (along with associated artifactual and architectural inventories). We also have noted that different commoner houses were involved in distinct suites of craft activity, thereby indicating a degree of economic interdependence among these units. Here we expand our analysis to domestic offerings, which we found to vary across the excavated houses. Adapting a perspective from Durkheim's distinction between mechanical and organic solidarity, we find an expected organic (hierarchical) relationship between the offering assemblages of the higher-status residences and the offerings in commoner house lots. At the same time, we see another axis of variation in domestic offerings that appears more organic (nonhierarchical) in nature. The latter axis of variation at El Palmillo has a clear spatial component, in support of previous hypotheses that barrios or spatially defined social segments were important in Valley of Oaxaca pre-Hispanic communities. At El Palmillo, the definitional features of these social segments appear to have been ideological as well as economic.

Conflicting Colonial accounts of the Aztec conquest of Oztuma are resolved by correlating new archaeological data, a collection of Early Colonial documents from the town of Ixtepec, and other better-known sources. The correlation of archaeological and ethnohistoric data suggests that, contrary to some interpretations of the histories of the Aztec Empire, the Aztec fortress of Oztuma was separate from and contemporaneous with a Chontal fortified site known by the same toponym, and that the Chontal of Oztuma were not exterminated by the Aztecs during the rebellion of 1487. Instead, Chontal Oztuma maintained internal political cohesion while integrated into the Aztec hegemony. The Aztec and Chontal sites together formed the defensive line of the imperial frontier facing the Tarascans. This study represents a shift in focus in Aztec studies from the Aztec imperial core to its constituent hinterlands, emphasizing the complexity of political and strategic interactions.

Las Ruinas de Arenal is a small “major” Lowland Maya center located at the southwest edge of the upper or western Belize Valley. This paper presents a preliminary description of Las Ruinas in formal, spatial, and temporal terms and reports the results of two short seasons of archaeological investigations carried out there in 1991 and 1992. Some aspects of the site's likely cultural, historical, and sociopolitical significance also are discussed.