This article begins with the assumption that the Mixtec codices were scripts to be performed. It reasons that as “scripts,” they contained clues to guide the performers in their public reading or chanting. It suggests that this reading would have corresponded to Mixtec canons of verbal artistry, and argues that the size and combination of figures in the codices reflect certain elements in the poetics of contemporary Mixtec speech.

Conducting field research in the dense forests of the Peten, northern Guatemala, is as difficult today as it was for A. V. Kidder 70 years ago. However, through the use of airborne and satellite imagery we are improving our ability to investigate ancient Maya settlement, subsistence, and landscape modification in this dense forest region. Today the area is threatened by encroaching settlement and deforestation. However, it was in this region that the Maya civilization began, flourished, and abruptly disappeared for unknown reasons in the ninth century a.d. At the time of its collapse it had attained one of the highest population densities in human history. How the Maya were able to manage water successfully and feed this dense population is not well understood at this time. A project funded by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) used remote-sensing technology to investigate large seasonal swamps (bajos) that make up 40% of the landscape. Through the use of remote sensing, ancient Maya features such as sites, roadways, canals, and water reservoirs have been detected and verified through ground reconnaissance. The results of this preliminary research cast new light on the adaptation of the ancient Maya to their environment. Microenvironmental variation within the wetlands was elucidated and the different vegetation associations identified in the satellite imagery. More than 70 new archaeological sites within and at the edges of the bajo were mapped and tested. The combination of satellite imagery and ground verification demonstrated that the Maya had modified their landscape in the form of dams, reservoirs, and possible drainage canals along the Holmul River and its tributaries. The use of Landsat Thematic Mapper (TM) and Enhanced Thematic Mapper (ETM), 1-m IKONOS satellite imagery, as well as high-resolution airborne STAR-3i radar imagery—2.5 m backscatter/10 m Digital Elevation Model (DEM)—are opening new possibilities for understanding how a civilization was able to survive for centuries on a karst topographic landscape. This understanding is critical for the current population that is experiencing rapid population growth and destroying the landscape through non-traditional farming and grazing techniques, resulting in socioeconomic problems.

The issue of whether elites in societies with developing socioeconomic complexity emerge as a functional response to the needs of the community or emerge in response to opportunistic possibilities of self-aggrandizement is of critical importance to an understanding of the emergence of complex hierarchical societies. Existing ethnographies do not provide adequate observations to enable the competing models to be tested. Original fieldwork was therefore conducted in the Maya area, focusing on communities that had been extremely isolated in the earlier part of this century and that had experienced crises in which elites could be expected to materially aid the community if the primary reason for their existence was a “functional” one. We interviewed a wide range of older individuals representing different statuses in formerly isolated traditional communities. The results are unequivocal. Elites, or incipient elites, provided no aid to their communities in times of crisis other than actions that were designed to enhance the advantages of the elites. We argue that the Maya cargo system constitutes a special case of the broader category of competitive feasting systems found among many ranked societies throughout the world, and that the competitive feast is the main mechanism by which ambitious individuals acquire disproportionate goods, influence, and power.

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 too long, Mayanists working in northern Yucatan have retained a focus on the single site. Although a few recent papers have begun to examine this area in regional terms, the world-systems perspective has yet to be applied. In this paper the world-systems framework is used to examine the post-Teotihuacan core center of Chichen Itza and its hinterland. Various lines of information are combined to achieve the fullest possible picture, including new settlement-pattern data, related ethnohistoric material, and a brief consideration of existing iconographie studies. Comparative examples from contemporary sites in other parts of Mesoamerica are provided to illustrate the systemic interconnections that characterize a “world system.”

Between 1984 and 1989, the San Diego State University Mopan–Macal Triangle Project carried out six extended seasons of fieldwork oriented toward documenting the internal sociobehavioral structure and organization of a representative Classic period community in the southern Maya Lowlands. The project also undertook to delineate the spatial boundaries of several such contiguous communities and to test a selected set of alternative models for Classic period political organization at the local and regional levels. This article summarizes our approach to understanding political organization and presents our preliminary conclusions: a model of the so-called segmentary state type as recently espoused by several researchers best approximates the reality of internal political organization at the single polity level during the Late Classic period of the southern Maya Lowlands.

The typological, modal, and chemical analyses of the pottery from the Petexbatun region of southwestern Peten, Guatemala, are used to establish a regional ceramic chronology and to assess three theories used to explain the Classic Maya collapse of the ninth and tenth centuries a.d. The three explanations are based on: (1) foreign invasion; (2) commercialization; and (3) internal warfare. Each of these theories suggests different changes in the regional ceramic-production and -exchange systems of the Petexbatun. Shifts in the ceramic production system are monitored using a standardization study, while instrumental neutron-activation analysis (INAA) is used to model changes in interregional exchange. The results of these analyses indicate that there was a continuity in the ceramic assemblage from the Late Classic Nacimiento phase (a.d. 600–830) to the Terminal Classic Sepens phase (a.d. 830–950). Together with little change in architectural, mortuary, and other artifactual styles, this finding suggests that no foreign groups invaded the Petexbatun region, and therefore did not lead to the collapse in the Pasion region. The small decreases in pottery standardization and the minor shifts in interregional exchange do not support the second theory that a major reorganization of Maya economy undercut the power base of the Maya elite class. On the other hand, these small decreases in standardization and in the scale of exchange do support the third theory, which suggests that internal warfare between the regional polities disrupted exchange, leading to more localized production. The stability of the ceramic production and exchange systems in the Petexbatun region throughout the collapse also suggests that the political and economic systems were largely disconnected. These findings suggest that internal political processes leading to an increase in competition and to intensified warfare were important factors in the Classic Maya collapse of the Petexbatun region in Peten, Guatemala.

The background, research design, structure, personnel, and history of investigations of the Vanderbilt Petexbatun Archaeological Project are summarized and critiqued. The major findings of each of the dozen subprojects of this multidisciplinary investigation of Maya civilization in the southwestern Peten region of Guatemala are reviewed. Subproject results include important new evidence on Classic Maya history, warfare, ecology, nutrition, cave ritual, social organization, and trade. These are summarized with particular emphasis on the implications of the Petexbatun findings for theories of the decline of southern lowland Maya civilization at the end of the Classic period.

Maya Blue is an unusual blue pigment used on pottery, sculpture, and murals from the Preclassic to the Colonial period. Until the late 1960s, its composition was unknown, but chemists working in Spain, Belgium, Mexico, and the United States identified Maya Blue as a combination of indigo and the unusual clay mineral palygorskite (also called attapulgite). A source of palygorskite in the Maya area was unknown for years; then ethnoarchaeological research in the mid-1960s demonstrated that the contemporary Maya recognized the unique physical properties of palygorskite and used it as an additive for pottery temper and for curing certain types of illnesses. Because of its importance in Maya Blue, pre-Hispanic sources of the mineral were then suggested based on ethnoarchaeological data. One of these sources was the cenote in the town of Sacalum, Yucatan. This paper briefly reviews the history of the Maya Blue research from an anthropological perspective and presents evidence of a second possible pre-Hispanic mining site for palygorskite at Yo' Sah Kab near Ticul, Yucatan. Archaeological and technological approaches have demonstrated the use, distribution, composition, and characteristics of Maya Blue, but ethnoarchaeology has related it to Maya language and culture and to possible pre-Hispanic sources of one of its constituents, palygorskite.

Research in the northeastern Peten region at Holmul and nearest minor centers shows a complex history of public ritual activity from the Middle Preclassic onward. Patterns of public architecture, monumental sculpture, iconography, caches, and burials at sites such as Holmul and Cival document early development of the ideology of Maya kingship. Late Preclassic monumental sculptures adorning large pyramid temples provide immediate and elaborate metaphors for the ancestral patrons of emerging dynasts. Middle Preclassic architecture and caches are encoded with the ideological program of the earliest ruling institutions, incorporating themes of cosmological order; sun, water, and maize deities; the agricultural cycle; and ancestor veneration. All of these early remains are found in the sacred space of the first “E-group” plazas.

Archaeological excavations begun at Mayapan in 1996 require re-evaluation of this site, sometimes disparaged as representing “decadent” Postclassic Maya culture. New discoveries show that the site was an international center that incorporated specific symbols in its art from areas as far away as Central Mexico and Oaxaca. Indeed, there is evidence of trade with both areas. Another important Postclassic trade route connected Mayapan to Yucatan's eastern coast and Peten, Guatemala. These connections are reflected in similar ceramics and architecture in the three areas. Revival of Terminal Classic traditions at Mayapan inspired certain architectural constructions and a stela cult marking Katun endings. The Katun-cycle chronologies of the Colonial period provide intriguing evidence that political events at Mayapan may be linked with the site's architectural history. The “founding” of Mayapan may have occurred earlier than the conventionally accepted date of a.d. 1263 (end of Katun 13 Ahau). The Chilam Balam of Chumayel chronicles use of a 24-year Katun instead of a Katun of 20 Tuns, suggesting that the earliest founding event at Mayapan (Katun 8 Ahau) may date back to the eleventh century a.d. and overlap with the demise of Chichen Itza. Some of Mayapan's earliest architecture is contemporary with Chichen Itza's latest constructions. Several hundred years after Mayapan was founded, there was a renaissance of the Cocom heritage evident in specific architectural forms modeled on those from Chichen Itza.

Excavation of the large elite structures around the Structure 10L-32 plaza at the northeast corner of Group 10L-2, at the south edge of the Acropolis at Copan, supports the view that this group was the residence of the royal family during the Late and Terminal Classic Coner phase. During the hundred years of construction at the uppermost plaza level, structure change and growth follows two patterns: (1) a tendency for subsequent buildings in one place to retain a similar form and probably function, and (2) a trend away from domestic structures to ritual or public buildings. As the buildings around the plaza grew, access to the complex was increasingly limited. The largest two, Structures 10L-32 and 10L-30, were built late in the eighth century by a noble named Chac, who was a close associate, relative, or sibling of Yax Pac. The older Structure 10L-29, on the terrace above the plaza, was dedicated to the worship of royal lineage ancestors. The collapse of this group occurred in two stages, a decline of the nobility early in the ninth century, followed by violent destruction of buildings and monuments sometime before that century ended. This sequence of events may apply to the entire Principal Group and adjacent elite residential areas.

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.

Archaeologists working in the Basin of Mexico have long accepted a chronology in which sequential ceramic phases (Metepec, Coyotlatelco, Mazapan, Aztec I, and Aztec II) define the period between the last stages of Classic Teotihuacan and the immediate antecedents of Late Postclassic Tenochtitlan. The absolute chronology of these phases has remained tentative, and there have been hints of possible temporal overlap between some of them. A series of 37 new radiocarbon dates from three deep, stratified sites in the Basin of Mexico suggest (1) that the traditional sequence of phases is essentially valid; (2) that both Coyotlatelco and Aztec I may have begun significantly earlier than traditionally believed; (3) that there may have been partial chronological overlap between Late Coyotlatelco and Early Aztec I in some parts of the basin; (4) that there was probably little significant temporal overlap between Aztec I and Aztec II; and (5) that the ethnohistorically recognized sociopolitical complexity of the long era in question is amply reflected in a regional ceramic sequence that still requires considerable refinement in both time and space.

A series of highly elaborated burial/offering complexes have been discovered recently in association with seven superimposed monumental constructions at the Moon Pyramid. The archaeological contexts excavated during the past seven years indicate that these dedicatory complexes were symbols of a state religious ideology and communicated sociopolitical information on behalf of ruling elites. Rich artifacts made of obsidian, greenstone, shell, pyrite, ceramics, wood, and textile, as well as abundant skeletal remains of sacrificed animals and human beings, stand out in these unusual ritual deposits. Many of the offerings possess strong connotations of warfare and ritual sacrifice. After describing the five burial/offering complexes and discussing their possible function and religious significance, we conclude that, when the expanding Teotihuacan state orchestrated these monumental constructions, the most important ritual paraphernalia was buried in the new enlargement programs to express the ideology of sacred rulership.

This paper argues that what we and others have termed a “cult of Quetzalcoatl” is more properly viewed as a set of imagery, beliefs, and practices associated with an ideology of leadership. Examination of the architecture and iconography of Chichen Itza and related sites with feathered serpent iconography suggests that these practices were similarly structured and played a similar role in many of Mesoamerica's Tollans, specifically in the investiture of client elites. Many of the structures of the Gran Nivelación of Chichen Itza, particularly the Great Ballcourt, were the loci of such rituals of investiture, especially its military aspect. This common ritual structure supports the idea that Quetzalcoatl may have been central to institutions unifying Mesoamerica from the time of Teotihuacan onward, if not earlier.

The Moon Pyramid is the second largest monument at Teotihuacan and represents a key source of information regarding the state polity and its underlying ideology. It was little known archaeologically until now. Extensive excavations around the pyramid and tunnel operations within its nucleus have discovered an elaborate architectural sequence, including seven overlapping monumental constructions and five burial complexes of sacrificed individuals and sacred animals associated with rich offerings. The excavations in nearby structures and the three-dimensional mapping of the Moon Plaza complex provide valuable new data relevant to better understanding the ancient city, including its foundation and urbanization processes and the ideology of leadership that was materialized by successive monumental constructions.

Maya Lowlands climate researchers have set aside earlier beliefs that Maya civilization flourished in an unchanging environment. Analyses of river discharge, weather patterns, lake-bottom sediments, and settlement patterns reveal a highly variable climate, considerable diversity in local geology and soils, and a wide range of cultural adaptations tailored to distinctive subregional settings. Significant knowledge gaps remain. Among the unanswered questions is how cities in the elevated interior were maintained without natural, permanent bodies of water even during equitable climatic conditions, much less through the episodes of severe drought that have become apparent in studies of past climates. The research reported in this article lays the groundwork for climate studies in the southwestern Yucatan Peninsula.

By a.d. 1350, central-western Mexico was incorporated into the Tarascan state. This irechequa tzintzuntzani (kingdom of Tzintzuntzan) has been known primarily from sixteenth-century documents. With three decades of archaeological, ecological, and ethnohistoric research, it is now possible to propose a model of the emergence of the first archaic state in Michoacan. Critical issues to be addressed include (1) why state formation occurred (and why this form); (2) why even secondary state formation was “delayed” for more than a millennium; (3) why it occurred in the Lake Patzcuaro Basin; and (4) the role of Purepecha ethnicity in the process.

The large series of sacrificial victims excavated from the Feathered Serpent Pyramid (ca. a.d. 200) includes 72 males identified as soldiers. Although most of these wore pendants of imitation human maxillae, four soldiers each had between seven and eleven real human maxillae. Dental dimensions indicate that most, and perhaps all, of these trophies were from males. Dental attrition levels suggest a broader and flatter age profile for the pendants than for the soldiers, with a significantly higher mean age. The oxygen-isotope ratios in the dental phosphate of the pendant teeth, which indicate the geographic origins of those individuals, point to their derivation from three different regions, one of them probably in or near the Basin of Mexico itself. Apparently the soldiers had fought in more than one campaign, and the early interactions of Teotihuacan with more distant societies had sometimes involved an element of violence.