The aim of this paper is to use the example of one type of pre-Hispanic Nahua song, the teponazcuicatl, or “log-drum song,” to present the problems that arise in the classification of preconquest Nahua verbal art identified by sixteenth century Europeans according to Western criteria of categorization as songs, poetry, or the verbal component of performances. A close examination of this genre, focused on its relationship with performance and, particularly, with pre-Hispanic theater, provides insights into how sixteenth century scribes' interpretation of Nahua oral discourse and the graphic arrangement of the alphabetically transcribed text influenced in the way Nahua culture and discourse are perceived.

High-magnification use-wear analyses create datasets that enable microeconomic studies of lithic consumption and household activities that complement macroeconomic studies of lithic production and exchange to collectively improve our reconstructions of ancient economies. In recent decades, compositional and technological analyses have revealed how certain obsidian sources and lithic technologies were exploited, produced, and exchanged in Mexico's central highlands region during the Formative period (1500 b.c.–a.d. 100). This article presents use-wear analyses of 275 lithic artifacts from four sites in northern Tlaxcala—Amomoloc (900–650 b.c.), Tetel (750–500 b.c.), Las Mesitas (600–500 b.c.), and La Laguna (600–400 b.c. and 100 b.c.–a.d. 150)—to compare household activities with lithic technologies and evaluate their roles in regional economies. Blades were used for subsistence and domestic crafting; maguey fiber extraction for textile production increased over time, especially in non-elite households. The preparation and consumption of meat acquired by hunting and other methods increased slightly over time, and bipolar tools were used as kitchen utensils. Bloodletting was practiced with two variations of late-series pressure blades, but these and other tools were neither exchanged as nor used to craft prestige goods, often viewed as driving forces of Formative economies in Mesoamerica.

Recent in-depth research on the Nahua Corpus Xolotl, as well as on a large variety of compatible sources, has led to new insights on what were “boundaries” in preconquest Nahua thought. The present article proposes that our modern Western concept of borders and political boundaries was foreign to ancient Mexican societies and to Aztec-era polities in general. Consequently, the article aims to add a novel angle to our understanding of the notions of space, territoriality, and limits in the indigenous worldview in central Mexico during preconquest times, and their repercussions for the internal social and political relations that evolved within the Nahua-Acolhua ethnic states (altepetl). Furthermore, taking its cue from the Corpus Xolotl, the article reconsiders the validity of ethnic entities and polities in ancient Mexico and claims that many of these polities were ethnic and territorial amalgams, in which components of ethnic outsiders formed internal enclaves and powerbases. I argue that in ancient Mexico one is able to observe yet another kind of conceptualization of borders/frontiers: “enclosures with inclusion,” which served as the indigenous concept of porous and inclusive boundaries, well up to the era of the formation of the so-called Triple Alliance, and beyond.

In this issue we present the second part of the special section on recent research on Late Aztec Otumba, Tepeapulco, and Teotihuacan by Thomas H. Charlton, Deborah L. Nichols, Cynthia L. Otis Charlton, and their colleagues. The background to this research was discussed by those authors in our previous issue (Charlton, Nichols, and Otis Charlton 2000), and, as I pointed out in the introduction to the first part (Fowler 2000), a distinct advantage provided by the Otumba research is that the data generated allow us to assess general models proposed for the origin and development of city-states in the Basin of Mexico during the last few centuries before the Spanish Conquest. To summarize briefly, two general models have been proposed—one emphasizing economic symbiosis and craft specialization and the other focusing on regional political competition among elites. The Otumba data and analyses allow us to perceive and explore further valid aspects of both models.

This study is an iconographic analysis of ballcourt markers from the Late/Terminal Classic Maya site of Tenam Rosario, Chiapas, Mexico. The squatting posture of the two figures depicted on these markers, while rare in Lowland Maya art, is compared to Late Postclassic images of the earth deities Tlaltecuhtli and Tlaloc from Central Mexico. Contemporaneous examples of this posture are presented from the Gulf Coast site of El Tajin where squatting figures are associated with the rain god specifically and with the themes of ballgame sacrifice and regeneration in general. Tlaloc imagery in Classic Maya art is related to blood sacrifice as a complex, which includes both ritual warfare and autosacrifice. These forms of sacrifice are discussed as engendered categories in both Classic Maya and Aztec society. The Tenam Rosario markers are found to express themes that are consistent with ballgame symbolism throughout Mesoamerica, while conflating male and female aspects of blood sacrifice as regenerative ritual.

The recent discovery of an ancient Late Classic ceramic production facility in a valley floor, east of the current capital of Cobán in Guatemala, reveals a new ceramic form and provides data concerning regional chronology. Among the remains are thin, mold-made fragments identified as ceramic plaques that have epigraphic information providing a Long Count date for the first time in the Alta Verapaz region. These data correlate with the preliminary ceramic sequences and assist with understanding political-economic interactions that occurred at a time of societal collapse within the southern lowland region.

This paper introduces the articles that comprise this Special Issue on Izapa. First, we review early reporting and assessments of Izapa's monuments as well as archaeological investigations undertaken at the site during the twentieth century. Next, we describe more recent developments in interpretation and new archeological excavations and survey data collected during the past two decades. The papers in this Special Issue present new information that contribute to our evolving understanding of Izapa during the millennium that stretches from the Middle Formative period through the Middle Classic period (700 b.c.–a.d. 600). They serve as a status report on our understanding of the still largely enigmatic ancient kingdom, its regional structure, and connections to contemporaneous Isthmian sites.

This article presents a preliminary, revised life history of Punta Laguna, Yucatan, Mexico, and considers in detail the site's relationship to nearby communities. More specifically, this article presents the results of a type-variety analysis of the cumulative palimpsest of ceramics excavated at the site between 2017 and 2022. Unlike initial studies conducted in the 1980s, the current study suggests that Maya peoples occupied Punta Laguna continuously or recurringly from 600/300 b.c. through a.d. 1500/1550. Punta Laguna is therefore usefully understood as a persistent place. By offering a composite life history of Punta Laguna, this article aims to augment current understandings of the complex social, political, and economic landscape of the northeastern Yucatan Peninsula. It also considers the utility of archaeological studies of persistent places to scholarship on urban sustainability and suggests that research investigating the connections between early occupation and site longevity may prove a fruitful avenue of study. Finally, this article argues that investigations of persistent places may provide a counterweight to the more common focus on collapse and thereby offer a more comprehensive understanding of the Maya past—one that emphasizes the vitality of the Maya present.

This article explores the symbolism of the petate in light of an unprecedented archaeological discovery. Excavations carried out in a Classic context in northern Michoacán revealed the impression of a petate marking the location of a burial. In addition, the lower section of the burial pit was covered over with andesite slabs, including one with grid-like and spiral incisions. After a brief overview of the ancient and modern uses of the petate and relevant archaeological evidence, I present the data that allow the testing of different hypotheses, in particular the symbolization of power through the petate. Contextual analysis suggests that both the woven mat and the incised slab served as thresholds, if not barriers, between the world of the living and the underworld. I propose that the petate was placed over the grave to serve as a regulator, ensuring that entities were properly separated and that they remained in their respective places. As such, it was an object protecting the cosmic order. I further suggest that the petate may have acted as a temporal gate, guaranteeing the continuous exercise of authority and argue that it was, as a finished object, endowed with power.

A series of figurines, known in the archaeological literature as Mazapan-style, was recently discovered at the site of El Palacio, Michoacan, Mexico, in strata radiocarbon dated from the Early Postclassic (a.d. 900–1200/1250). Considered diagnostic markers for Early Postclassic cultural and economic dynamics, these artifacts raise questions regarding the role of this settlement at both regional and interregional scales prior to the rise of the Tarascan state. We study the specimens found at El Palacio through a thorough examination of the archaeological contexts, technological and iconographic characteristics, and compare them to cases from the literature. By demonstrating their local production and their association with other artifacts or iconographic traits characteristic of the Early “Postclassic international style,” we bring new elements to the definition of these artifacts and underline the capacity of local elites to connect culturally and economically with other regions of Mesoamerica.

Las construcciones que forman parte del asentamiento prehispánico y colonial de Tecoh se encuentran ubicadas parcialmente en el municipio de Sitilpech y también dentro de la hacienda Yokdzonot (Figura 1). En el Atlas Arqueológico de Yucatán (Garza Tarragona y Kurjack 1980:122) aparece identificado con el número 21 dentro de la Hoja 16Q-d(8) y se encuadra dentro de los asentamientos de Rango IV de su tipología. Este grupo viene definido de la siguiente forma: “se caracterizan por una gran variedad. En ellos se encuentran desde conjuntos aislados de dos o tres plataformas hasta asentamientos de amplia extensión y numerosas estructuras, pero con muy poca arquitectura monumental” (Garza Tarragona y Kurjack 1980:37).

This essay considers the possibility that the Matrícula de Tributos was made from a collection of folios that incorporates material from several related documents, some from as early as the eve of the Spanish invasion in 1521, and others from as late as the 1560s. The diverse styles identifiable throughout the manuscript, as well as the many interventions of different kinds in its pages, support this claim. This article further asks whether the Matrícula de Tributos might be the last extant exemplar of a larger group of taxation-related documents that circulated through Mexico on the eve of the Spanish invasion and well into the second half of the sixteenth century. Finally, the essay considers the possibility of placing the Matrícula de Tributos within the context of documents that kept or presented a record of pre-Conquest tributary practices for purposes that may have been as diverse as presenting evidence of past tributary obligations or as a means to assert authority and other political claims among the surviving native elite.

Most representations of Tezcatlipoca, the supreme sorcerer of Late Postclassic central Mexico, come from the codices of the Mixteca-Puebla tradition. This important deity was also represented, however, in statues, wall paintings, bas-reliefs, as well as head-shaped ceramic pieces, the latter of which are little-known and poorly studied. In this study, we offer a detailed analysis of one of the best examples of Tezcatlipoca head-shaped ceramic pieces sheltered in the Bilimek Collection at the Weltmuseum in Vienna. We compare the Tezcatlipoca effigy head of Vienna with similar pieces from the Colección Fundación Televisa in Mexico City, the Museo Regional de Cholula, and the Museo del Valle de Tehuacán, all representations being fine examples of the Eastern Nahua artistic tradition. The similarity between the iconography on the Tezcatlipoca pedestal in Vienna and the murals of Ocotelulco and Tizatlan, Tlaxcala, are particularly striking, sharing representations of skulls, hands, and a motif we have identified as a mirror. We also analyze in detail the links between the iconography of Tezcatlipoca with that of the Macuiltonaleque. Finally, we propose the possibility of a ritual use of these ceramic vessels, associated with the ingestion of pulque in the framework of a Tezcatlipoca drinking cult.

At Chan Chich, Belize, archaeologists have encountered Terminal Classic artifact scatters and piled artifact deposits in elite residential compounds near the epicenter of the site. This article presents a detailed comparison of four artifact deposits’ contexts and compositions to highlight similarities and differences among them. Commonly classified as “problematic deposits” in the field, all four examples considered here formed directly on floors or steps. Although they exhibit compositional variability, all four deposits appear to be abandonment-related features, which unknown actors deliberately created, specifically targeting elite residential architecture rather than monumental public structures in the site core.