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.

The health of the Colonial-period Maya from Tipu, Belize, was evaluated using a skeletal series to explore differential effects of European contact by sex. Variables addressed were nutrition and disease patterns, reproductive patterns, and occupational stress. Results suggest that females enjoyed fewer childhood health disruptions, likely as a result of greater genetic buffering. No evidence of male preferential treatment was observed. Frequencies of indicators were similar to those reported for precontact Maya. Markers of adult activity patterns, including timing of parity, were also comparable to those of earlier groups. These findings support the cultural continuity with the Postclassic suggested by the archaeological and ethnohistorical records at Tipu.

Maya codex-style ceramics are among the most highly sought antiquities for collectors because of the fine art and extraordinary mythological scenes depicted on the pottery; yet the source of these ceramics has remained elusive. Recent archaeological explorations by the Regional Archaeological Investigation of the North Peten, Guatemala (RAINPEG) project at the site of Nakbe, Peten, have discovered codex-style ceramics in archaeological context. The hieroglyphs and painted scenes on the ceramics demonstrate the authenticity of the art style. Neutron activation analyses of the ceramics indicate that subtle differences in the ceramic corpus can be detected between proximal sites such as El Mirador and Nakbe. These data also indicate that codex-style ceramics were not manufactured in a site-specific workshop, but originate in a variety of production areas. While most codex-style vessels appear to have been manufactured within the immediate area of the extreme north-central Peten, several codex-style vessels that depict scribes are consistently similar in chemical composition to the codex-style pottery from Nakbe. The presence of fine painted codex-style pottery from modest plaza groups suggests a wider distribution of high-quality ceramic artifacts from among varied levels of economic, social, and political status of ancient Maya society. This accounts for the extensive looting of low-housemound complexes throughout the northern Peten.

In the 1960s, the Teotihuacan Mapping Project (TMP) focused an ambitious, multiyear survey program on the pre-Columbian urban center of Teotihuacan. In addition to creating a highly detailed map, the TMP made systematic records of surface remains and collected nearly one million artifacts from roughly 5,000 provenience tracts. Taken together, the spatial, descriptive, and artifactual data collected by the TMP still constitutes one of the most extensive and most detailed records in existence for any ancient city. This paper characterizes and provides an update on TMP surface observations, particularly as they exist in digital format. Several analytical case studies illustrate substantive ways in which these data have been used in the decades since the TMP survey to investigate the culture and history of ancient Teotihuacan. The utility of extensive surface survey data for investigating key urban organizational elements such as neighborhoods and social districts is briefly considered, along with the growing importance of the TMP collections and records as increasingly large parts of Teotihuacan are lost to urban sprawl and destructive agricultural practices.

Analysis of paleoethnobotanical remains from the Yaramela site in central Honduras has provided insights into subsistence activities, resource-extraction preferences from surrounding ecological zones, and the transfer of plant materials through interregional exchange networks during the Formative and Late Classic periods. Remains of maize (Zea mays) and squash (Cucurbita sp.) were found as well as the wood of a number of tree species, for example, pine (Pinus sp.), oak (Quercus sp.), fig (Ficus sp.), timber sweet (Licaria sp.), and guanacaste (Enterolobium cyclocarpum). These woods were obtained from the upland pine-oak savanna, the tropical deciduous forest of the Comayagua Valley, and the circum-riverine community along the Humuya River. In an unusual discovery, the wood of cashew (Anacardium cf. occidentale) was found in Middle Formative contexts. This, most likely an introduced domesticate from South America, appears to be the earliest record of Anacardium for Honduras. Paleoethnobotanical data along with root-processing artifacts indicate a diversified subsistence pattern based on domesticates of Mesoamerican and South American origin.

In 1992 we conducted an intensive archaeological surface survey in and around the modern town of Yautepec, Morelos, Mexico. Our goals were to determine the size and extent of the Aztec-period city of Yautepec, and to gather data on its spatial organization. This article describes the methods used and the results obtained toward achieving the first goal. Aztec Yautepec covered approximately 209 ha; this area is partly covered by the modern town and partly by open fields. Late Postclassic settlement was clustered around a structure that today is the largest known Aztec palace in central Mexico. We generate ethnohistoric and archaeological population estimates for Yautepec and discuss the city in relation to other Aztec urban settlements in Morelos and the Basin of Mexico.

The earliest uses of Olmec greenstone (jadeite, greenstone, schist, green quartz, and others) accelerated the interregional exchange of technology and raw materials. These relationships provoked asymmetry between polities of different parts of Mesoamerica and within Olmec sites. There were stronger relationships between the Gulf Coast and Chiapas. In general terms, greenstone artifacts display an evolutionary process similar to ceramics and basalt sculpture in the emergence of complex society during terminal Early Formative times. This paper focuses on the exchange of technological choices and asymmetry between Gulf Coast of Mexico and the rest of Mesoamerica.

Monument 65, thus far the largest sculpture discovered from the almost completely destroyed site of Kaminaljuyu, has much to tell us about the enigma of this ancient city. Carvings on two sides of the flat tablet resonate with the most sacred concepts of the “Miraflores” people of Late Preclassic Kaminaljuyu. Partly because of the highly problematical picture further field archaeology can provide of Kaminaljuyu—a picture already problematical—but also because of the inherent value of a comparative orientation, I employ an explicitly comparative approach in order to speculate about the ideology encoded on the monument. According to such a comparative perspective, the depictions identify Kaminaljuyu rulers as conventional world- or cosmos-creators and sustainers, functions realized by the sacrifices of royal proxy victims or “twins” of the ruler. The captive scenes, shown on Side A, represent the duality of rulership expressed in a twinship of first, immortal “priest” or administrator—the ruler in his religious role—sacrificing a victim representing a first ideal man or “king,” and, by virtue of this, representing the ever-dying or magical fertility of the polity. On Side B, the creation seems to be manifested or metaphorized by the axis mundi.

The role of human ecology in a Mesoamerican context requires both rigor and imagination to assess the sophistication and accomplishment of the many diverse groups sharing its varied resources. Three overlapping and complementary ecological orientations from recent literature found generally elsewhere—outside the culture area—are (1) resilience and vulnerability of communities and their landscapes, (2) economic tasking logics, and (3) complexity trajectories. Mesoamerica charted a unique economic, political, and ideological course when compared to the Old World, one significantly affected by its environmental opportunities and constraints. Brief attention is given to lessons learned.

Differential access to faunal resources (meat) is one index of socioeconomic inequality that traditionally has been considered but rarely investigated in ancient Mesoamerica. Recent excavations in residential contexts at the Classic-period hilltop terrace site of El Palmillo, in the Valley of Oaxaca (Mexico), have produced a large faunal assemblage from a set of different households. Terrace-by-terrace comparisons reveal spatial variability in the distribution of faunal remains, with the gradient of access running from households near the base of the hill to contexts near the site's apex. Residents of households near the top not only had more overall access to meat but greater access to specific species. Nevertheless, these gradations in access to fauna are not as strikingly marked as architectural differences between various residential units at the site, nor do they coincide entirely with patterns of architectural variation or the distribution of portable wealth items such as obsidian and green stone. Socioeconomic inequality appears to have been manifested through multiple dimensions at pre-Hispanic El Palmillo, with the overarching variation not easily definable into two or three categorical divisions or classes.

Households, communities, and society exist in a mutually constituting relationship, shaping and being shaped by one another. Daily life within households can have political dimensions and affect societal organization. Research at the Maya farming community of Chan in Belize demonstrates how households shaped their lives, history, and politics for 2,000 years (800 b.c.–a.d. 1200). We examine the households of Chan's leaders and the social, economic, political, and religious relationships between leading households and other households across the community to show how novel forms of political practice arose through household interaction. Community leaders and households across the community developed community-focused ritual practices and group-oriented social, economic, ideological, and political strategies that were critical in the development of their community, were distinctive from normative individual-focused political practices of the Classic Maya kings, and may have influenced the later development of more diverse political strategies in the Maya area in the Postclassic period.

How does state-level political organization develop in small polities located in peripheral areas? The Pusilha Archaeological Project, which has completed two field seasons, is studying political and economic development at the ancient Maya city of Pusilha, Toledo District, Belize. Pusilha emerged in the Early Classic period (a.d. 250–600) as a small regional polity, but throughout much of the Late Classic period (a.d. 600–800) it may have been influenced by larger neighbors such as Copan and Caracol. Our goals are to study both the political and economic trajectories of the site to better understand processes of integration and state formation from the perspective of a marginal, second-order polity. Our research entails (1) the detailed epigraphic and iconographic study of the 46 monuments known from the site, (2) systematic mapping of the entire 6- to 9-km2 city, (3) test-pitting operations in non-architectural contexts, (4) excavation and consolidation of select structures, and (5) artifact analyses. During the 2001 and 2002 field seasons, described in this report, we conducted systematic survey of a 1.5-km–long transect through the site core, mapped many additional groups at the site, excavated 24 test pits in various architectural groups, excavated and consolidated a partially destroyed structure occupied during the Postclassic period, developed a multi-phase ceramic chronology, and analyzed the many hieroglyphic inscriptions that describe Pusilha's 700-year–long dynastic and mythological history.

For several decades, little research has been directed towards understanding the beginnings of complex society in the Teotihuacan Valley. Recent archaeological investigations at the Early–Middle Formative site of Altica provide a fresh perspective on dating the initial establishment of agricultural villages, early social and economic differentiation, and the development of intra-and interregional exchange networks to test comparative models of political economy.

The fourth millennium b.p. in the Maya lowlands provides an interesting case, with mobile, aceramic peoples documented, while ceramic-using villagers lived in other parts of Mesoamerica. Rather than ask why ceramic containers and village life took so long to reach the Maya lowlands, the question can be inverted to posit that a mixed horticultural-foraging adaptation was so effective that it persisted longer than elsewhere. I propose that the so-called 4.2 ka b.p. event was the ultimate cause of increased sedentism and the first adoption of ceramic containers in a limited number of regions of Mesoamerica. My musings are grounded in the comparisons of data from the Soconusco region of southern Mexico and evidence from northern Belize at Colha and Pulltrouser Swamp, as well as the Freshwater Creek drainage. I assume that proximate behavior must account for local adaptations and different rates of change in each region of Mesoamerica. Therefore, regional adaptation in northern Belize during the Late Archaic period provides the evidence with which to reconstruct local adaptation. Excavations and regional reconnaissance document a distinctive orange soil horizon at Progresso Lagoon associated with patinated chert tools and an absence of ceramics. Stone tool assemblages from the preceramic components of three sites in the region indicate a spatial separation of tool use and resharpening at island versus shore. Starch grains recovered from these stone tools indicate that preceramic peoples in northern Belize harvested maize and several other domesticated plant species. These data are consistent with local paleoenvironmental studies that document an extended period of horticultural activity during the fifth and fourth millennia b.p. prior to the adoption of ceramics. Lithic assemblages and associated dietary information from multiple sites provide glimpses of the data necessary to reconstruct Late Archaic period adaptation from a single locale. Such data will be required to understand the proximate causes for the transition to a more settled, village life.

Construction histories of ancient Maya monumental centers have long been used to interpret the growth and decline of Lowland Maya polities. Changes in the built environment at monumental centers reflect labor appropriation by ruling elites and may indirectly serve to gauge changes in political clout over time. Consequently, the precision and accuracy with which archaeologists measure these changes take on increased importance when assessing the ancient Maya political landscape. Recent excavations in the monumental core of La Milpa, Belize, have generated new data that call for a re-assessment of the center's historical trajectory. Our data indicate that La Milpa had a larger Late Preclassic foundation, likely grew much more incrementally through the Classic period, and persisted centuries longer than previously understood. The apparent persistence of occupation into the tenth century a.d. challenges the traditionally accepted dates for La Milpa's abandonment, and, the ceramic sequence upon which it is often based.

This article explores the materiality of the colors of some Nahua codices from pre-Columbian Mexico, comparing data obtained from two bodies of evidence: scientific investigation—through macroscopic inspection and physicochemical studies—and historical accounts. In doing so, this article shows that the Colonial period literature contributes to the understanding of the creation process of the codices and their chromatic palettes, in particular regarding some coloring materials, the identification of which still remains a challenge for scientists. The comparison carried out in this article also elucidates certain aspects of the historical texts on Mesoamerican colors, which were previously poorly understood or misinterpreted.

According to ethnohistoric sources, northeastern Michoacan became incorporated into the eastern frontier of the Tarascan empire during the mid-1400s. At that time, the region was multiethnic in character, with enclaves of foreigners living within communities as well as making up whole communities. Recent investigation in the Ucareo-Zinapecuaro source area uncovered evidence of an earlier foreign enclave consisting of two settlements in the Ucareo Valley whose ceramics are distinct from those of neighboring sites while indistinguishable from those of Epiclassic Huamango in the Acambay region of the Toluca Basin. The implications of these data alongside Ucareo obsidian exploitation and its role in the construction of the Protohistoric Tarascan–Aztec frontier are considered along with the results of preliminary chronometric dating.

Excavations of a ceremonial ballcourt, undertaken at the Lowland Maya center of Pacbitun in western Belize, have provided details about ancient construction techniques and major diachronic structural changes to this special class of Precolumbian architecture. Some of the identified building alterations may have necessitated changes in the manner of playing the sacred Maya game at Pacbitun. A brief description of the excavations and construction history is provided. Analysis of artifactual remains from the ballcourt indicate it was built during the Late Preclassic period (100 b.c.-a.d. 300), but substantially altered in form during the Late Classic period (a.d. 550–900). The importance of the ballgame in the southern Lowlands is noted, and the particular significance of the Pacbitun court is discussed.

Recent archaeological and geological surveys, combined with a neutron activation analysis, have located a new obsidian source in San Luis in the Department of Santa Bárbara of Western Honduras. From the Early Preclassic through Late Classic periods, the ancient inhabitants of the neighboring region of La Entrada acquired obsidian from San Luis and Source Y directly from outcrops and nearby streams in the form of small cobbles. These cobbles, due to their small size, were employed exclusively for the unspecialized production of percussion flakes, using a bipolar technique, for household consumption. Political boundaries played an important role in the distribution of certain imported commodities having a high exchange value: among others, Ixtepeque obsidian. It is our belief that political control over the distribution of Ixtepeque obsidian was confined more to smaller spatial configurations than to the suggested territorial political control of the segmentary states in the Maya lowlands. The distribution of goods with lower exchange values, such as the San Luis and Source Y obsidian, may have escaped political control. Small obsidian cobbles from San Luis and Source Y were apparently not distributed over long distances, but were rather essentially local resources.

No evidence of writing in the form of inscriptions or documentary records has been found at Teotihuacan, the most populous, urbanized, and mercantile society of its period in Mesoamerica (circa a.d. 500), although it had close contact over several centuries with other cultures that had developed writing systems. What do exist are glyphic signs that form part of the iconography of mural paintings and pottery decoration. Analysis of over a thousand of these artifacts suggests that the Teotihuacanos developed an unusual notational system comprising, at present count, about 120 signs. This article discusses the sign system and the ways in which it was used to supplement the information conveyed pictorially by Teotihuacan art.