The Carnegie Institution of Washington's 1924–1937. Uaxactun Project, one of the first large-scale excavations in the Maya area, established the role of dirt archaeology in Maya studies. The archaeologists who worked on this pioneering project developed many field methods and approaches that remain in use today. A review of the project and of the careers of its participants shows the critical role the Carnegie Uaxactun Project has played in the history of Maya archaeology.

The idea of collective or social memory is explored in this paper as a way to understand ancient Maya ritual behavior. The theoretical characteristics of collective memory are defined and a strategy to operationalize the theory of collective memory using archaeological remains is presented. Two archaeological examples from the sites of Minanha and Zubin in west central Belize are discussed in terms of how they fit this new model. Finally, the social motivations that underlie this behavior are examined.

Recent research on pre-Hispanic Maya water management has revealed a diverse array of water-control techniques that were employed in the Maya Lowlands. Since much of this research has focused on water management for consumption and agriculture, other forms of water management—namely, for drainage and flood control—remain poorly understood. This report describes the various water-control techniques dedicated to drainage and flood control at Late Classic Copan, Honduras (a.d. 600–900), and explores the social implications of this form of water control. Technological variation in water control throughout urban Copan and between Copan and Palenque, the other major Maya center where drainage and flood control have been investigated, suggests that water management at Copan may have been organized differentially across the urban center.

Swidden agriculture in Mesoamerica is commonly associated with the hot and humid lowlands and with small isolated communities. Charcoal-rich sediments discovered in Tlaxcala, however, suggest that it was practiced in the cold highlands in the Formative and Classic periods. The headwaters of the Xilomantla drainage incised a nine-meter deep channel shortly before 200 b.c., in response to increased runoff from slopes degraded by agriculture. It was filled back within a few hundred years with sands and muds containing recurrent laminae of charred plant matter that reflect the annual burning of secondary scrub in fallowed fields. A gully in the La Ladera drainage received high inputs of charcoal from the surroundings of a nearby settlement between ca. a.d. 400 and 900. The farming practices inferred from these deposits have no exact ethnographic analog. They inflicted lasting environmental damage, but were upheld for several centuries despite changes in settlement patterns.

We use excavations of low-status houses to explore Postclassic political and economic transformations in the lower Río Verde Valley, Oaxaca. Following the collapse of Classic period political institutions, commoners experienced greater economic and political autonomy. Residential excavations at Río Viejo indicate that commoners took advantage of the absence of regional authority to gain greater control over surplus craft products, especially cotton thread, as well as access to social valuables and long distance trade. By the Late Postclassic period, the region was once again dominated by powerful rulers. Yet household excavations at Tututepec show that Late Postclassic commoners continued to control some surplus craft production and had access to social valuables like copper and polychrome pottery via market exchange. We argue that Late Postclassic political relations were a product of negotiations among elites and commoners that in part reflect the greater economic autonomy and political power that Early Postclassic people had acquired.

A critical review of the history of research devoted to the Great Goddess of Teotihuacan shows that over the past twenty years, and in several publications, this goddess has been transformed gradually into a universal nature deity, has received the title “Great,” and has been regarded by many authorities as the principal deity of Teotihuacan. This has become accepted even though, in my judgment, the goddess was created through a highly speculative line of argument, fusing several different iconographic complexes under that name, and despite the fact that the greater part seem to have nothing to do with each other. As a consequence, the concept of this omnipotent goddess has become a serious obstacle holding back the progress of iconographic research on the Teotihuacan supernatural world. The discussion here reaches the conclusion that in place of a Great Goddess, we are able to identify at least six different gods and goddesses, several among them not yet subjected to analysis.

This paper discusses a little understood spelling practice of Mayan hieroglyphic writing, the use of full phonetic complementation of logograms, and some implications derived from this practice, particularly when compared with similar practices in other logosyllabic scripts from around the world (e.g., Egyptian and Luvian), which suggest that such practice existed in association with semantic classifiers. Also, a preliminary distinction between two types of semantograms is made: semantic classifiers and semantic determinatives. Previous discussions of both types of signs are reviewed, and it is proposed that the two are more widespread and important in Mayan writing than previously thought. The implications of these results are clear: Mayanists, particularly epigraphers, need to pay more attention to this distinction in their decipherment efforts, as well as in any future philological and paleographic endeavors. The paper concludes with a proposal for the interrelationship between the stylistic evolution of graphemes and the development of semantic classifiers and determinatives.

Teams from the Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia (INAH) and the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) have put forth a new chronology for Chichen Itza that challenges recent scholarly opinion favoring a date of roughly a.d. 800/850–1000/1050 for the so-called “Toltec” or Modified Florescent occupation. The new chronology instead argues for the placement of this occupation between a.d. 950–1150, a span favored by scholars prior to the 1970s. This paper presents a critique of the ceramic, radiocarbon, and stratigraphic foundations of these arguments, arguing that, on present evidence, Chichen Itza experienced a tenth-century florescence. Although the site may very well have been occupied into the next century, at present we have no absolute dates after a.d. 1000 and no evidence for later monumental construction. Furthermore, arguments for a proposed hiatus or discontinuity at the onset of the Modified Florescent period are rejected in favor of a model of continued development of Toltec ideas from the late ninth century onward.

The form and organization of urban architecture is examined at the central Mexico site of Xochicalco to reconstruct aspects of both its internal community structure and regional political organization during the Epiclassic period (A.D. 700-900). Analysis of the site's defensive architecture provides unique information about the city's internal design. Dry moats, walled roads, and steep terrace facades subdivide the community into a series of population segments that on the basis of both size and architecture type resemble ward divisions found in central Mexico cities at the time of Conquest. Furthermore, Xochicalco does not have a single defensive perimeter characteristic of a strongly centralized polity; instead, it possesses a series of defensive precincts located on the hills and ridges adjacent to Cerro Xochicalco that are equivalent in form and redundant in function. The model that best approximates the segmentary nature of this structure is that of a regional confederacy dominated by Xochicalco during the Epiclassic.

The Chajoma were a major Late Postclassic polity in highland Guatemala. Referred to as the Akajal or Akul in the Annals of the Cakchiquels and Popol Vuh, their territory previously has not been fully defined. Based on a small group of sixteenth-century documents preserved in the records of a later litigation, it is now possible to identify the origins of the Chajoma, approximate the time of their arrival in their new territory, and define the extent of their territory. Combined with information on archaeological sites associated with this occupation, we can provisionally characterize the polity's composition and estimate its population.

We report the results of chemical sourcing of obsidian artifacts from Tres Zapotes using X-ray fluorescence analysis. This is the first obsidian sourcing study for this major Olmec and Epi-Olmec center in which samples are drawn from secure archaeological proveniences specifically assigned to Early, Middle, Late Formative, and Protoclassic periods. We employed a stratified random sampling strategy to select 180 obsidian artifacts from excavated assemblages, supplementing the random sample with another 24 specimens drawn from rare visual categories. Consequently, we are able to characterize changes in the relative importance of different obsidian sources in the political economy of Tres Zapotes across the critical transition from Olmec to Epi-Olmec society with greater confidence than has been possible for the Gulf lowlands while extending our observations to the full sample of 5,713 visually characterized obsidian artifacts—2,695 of which come from the well-dated Formative contexts examined in this article. Our study confirms the absence of obsidian from Otumba and from Guatemalan sources in the excavated Olmec assemblage in favor of sources from eastern Puebla and Veracruz, supporting a model of overlapping autonomous networks for obsidian procurement at Gulf Olmec sites. Presence of the Guatemalan San Martín Jilotepeque source in Epi-Olmec contexts may relate to the reestablishment of trans-Isthmian contacts, while increasing prevalence of Zaragoza-Oyameles obsidian from eastern Puebla marks the beginning of a long-term trend. Although more even representation of obsidian sources in Epi-Olmec contexts is consistent with the hypothesized transition from an exclusionary Olmec political economy toward a more “corporate” system associated with power sharing among factional leaders at Tres Zapotes, neither Olmec nor Epi-Olmec elites monopolized a particular obsidian source or technology.

Evidence from sites in the lower Ulua valley of north-central Honduras, occupied between a.d. 500 and 1000, provides new insight into the connections between households, craft production, and the role of objects in maintaining social relations within and across households. Production of pottery vessels, figurines, and other items in a household context has been documented at several sites in the valley, including Cerro Palenque, Travesía, Campo Dos, and Campo Pineda. Differences in raw materials, in what was made, and in the size and design of firing facilities allow us to explore how crafting with clay created communities of practice made up of people with varying levels of knowledge, experience, and skill. We argue that focusing on the specific features of a particular craft and the crafter's perspective gives us insight into the ways that crafting contributed to the reproduction of social identities, local histories, and connections among members of communities of practice who comprised multicrafting households.

This article offers a revision of the chronology and settlement history of Tula, Hidalgo, synthesizing information obtained from numerous investigations and 68 radiocarbon and seven archaeomagnetic dates. Tula Chico's earliest settlement appeared while the region was under the control of Teotihuacan as one of many hilltop Coyotlatelco settlements in the region. The monumental center at Tula Grande did not appear until after Tula grew to power, presumably with the consolidation of the other Coyotlatelco polities. Extensive exposure of residential structures in numerous localities have revealed a widespread pattern of barrios containing households exhibiting a wide range of social status that enjoyed access to a wide variety of luxury items including the first reported objects of gold. Tula Grande and the Tollan phase city appear to have already been abandoned and in ruins prior to the arrival of Aztec II peoples. The Late Aztec period occupation shows a preoccupation with Tula's ruins that parallels similar evidence from the Templo Mayor excavations suggesting it was indeed the place the Aztecs called Tollan.

Recent archaeological settlement pattern research in the 550 sq km Comayagua Valley in central Honduras has documented considerable variation in the political structure of one ranked society over a 2,500-year period of prehistory. Data presented suggest that this Lenca and proto-Lenca culture group underwent at least five major political restructurings during this time as a response to the local, regional, and interregional political climate on the southeast Mesoamerican periphery. Such variability calls into question traditional models postulating a lack of complexity or adaptive flexibility for indigenous cultures of lower Central America.

Epigraphic and functional comparisons of carved monuments in highland and coastal Oaxaca are used to address questions concerning (1) the origin and development of writing in southwestern Mesoamerica, (2) macroregional interactions, and (3) past linguistic affiliations of coastal groups. Given the scarcity of known inscriptions, particularly along the littoral of Guerrero and Oaxaca, it is concluded that the writing system in the coast is derived from central (Zapotec) Oaxaca and that the littoral did not play a role in the origins of writing in Mesoamerica. Since most of the inscribed material presently available from the coast dates between a.d. 600 and 900, relatively few traces of interregional contacts can be detected by means of epigraphy. Discernible interactions include contact with post-Teotihuacan sites in the central highlands via Guerrero; central Oaxaca through intermediate regions like Sola de Vega and Miahuatlan; and Tabasco, the latter apparently the result of migrations. The close epigraphic similarities between the coast and central Oaxaca suggest that groups speaking Chatino and other languages of the Zapotecan family had a wider distribution along the littoral in former times.

Survey and excavation conducted by Stoner and Nichols (2019) at Altica, located in the Basin of Mexico, recovered nearly 29,000 pieces of obsidian, most of which apparently came from the nearby Otumba source. Formal classification followed by attribute analysis revealed a number of distinct lithic industries represented in the collection, although most are represented by finished objects that do not appear to have been produced on site. Most of the material consists of flakes probably used as unmodified, informal tools and produced on expedient cores consisting of some nodules but mostly percussion blades, spent cores, and other artifacts recycled as secondary cores. I propose that Altica acquired its obsidian from workshops possibly located in an area where they apparently existed in later times and may have during the Early–Middle Formative, as well. Virtually all of the obsidian in the collection appears to have been used for domestic or subsistence activities and was not involved in production or exchange systems believed to have existed at that time. Two unusual caches containing macronodules provide some evidence to the contrary, suggesting that Altica may have been a transshipment center.

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.

Costume is one of the most significant forms of material culture in ethnographic contexts, yet remains of cloth are extremely rare at most archaeological sites. Artifacts that typically relate to textile production include spindle whorls and bone tools. This paper summarizes results of analyses of a large corpus of whorls and a remarkably extensive assemblage of bone tools from the Early Postclassic site of Santa Isabel in Pacific Nicaragua. Ethnohistoric sources identify several Mesoamerican groups as living in the region during the Postclassic period, with the Oto-Manguean-speaking Chorotega likely candidates for the cultural group at Santa Isabel. Textiles were probably made from cotton, among other plant fibers. In addition to cloth production, we consider the importance of spinning thread for fishnets and hammocks.

Recent research into the Teuchitlan tradition continues to improve our understanding of western Mexico's relationship to the rest of Mesoamerica. The tradition is defined on the basis of its distinctive public architecture, yet little research has been done to explore the significance of these temples for political organization. I propose that a more emic analysis of the political system can clarify the relationship among architecture, ritual, and political elites in Late Formative (300 b.c.–a.d. 200) Jalisco. I make use of indigenous ceramic dioramas; recent excavation data from Llano Grande, Jalisco; ethnohistoric accounts of the Xocotl Huetzi festival of the Postclassic and Contact periods; and ethnographic accounts of similar celebrations to propose a maize-focused interpretation of ritual and rulership in the Teuchitlan tradition.

More than four decades ago, instrumental developments, such as those involving neutron activation and X-ray florescence, began to generate relatively large quantities of data from the analysis of archaeological materials. These data served as the basis for many models of long-distance exchange as a means of explaining the development of cultural complexity. I review aspects of this early history and the how use of compositional data is now more directed toward localized investigations of economic activity. Even with this refocus of research interest, studies involving material characterization appear to be declining. Using traditional citation, personal experience, and highly selective examples, I discuss the use of analytical techniques for studies of long-distance trade, as it developed and now confronts interpretive difficulties that are inherent in the data and rendered more so by use of abstract constructs and resource limitations.