This article presents archaeological data on Late Postclassic long-distance trade in central and northern Mesoamerica. Aztec trade goods from the Basin of Mexico (ceramics and obsidian) are widespread, while imports from other areas are much less common, both in the Basin of Mexico and elsewhere. The artifactual data signal a high volume of exchange in the Late Postclassic, and while trade was spatially nucleated around the Basin of Mexico, most exchange activity was apparently not under strong political control. The archaeological findings are compared with ethnohistoric sources to further our knowledge of the mechanisms of exchange, the effect of elite consumption on trade, and the relationship between trade and imperialism.

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 earlier study (Rice 1977, 1978a) purportedly found compositional similarity between raw materials used by modern potters in the northern Valley of Guatemala and Formative period whiteware ceramics from sites in the valley, particularly the major highland center of Kaminaljuyu. The compositional similarity suggested that Formative whiteware was manufactured in the northern valley, and this inference in turn underpinned a model of the development of ceramic craft specialization. Methodological weaknesses in the earlier study cast some doubt on its conclusions. More recent compositional analyses of Formative whiteware indicate that, while whiteware probably was made within the zone from which Kaminaljuyu drew its ceramics, it almost certainly was not made within the northern Valley of Guatemala. The present study highlights some important technical and methodological advances in compositional studies made over the past decade.

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.

New data are presented from a settlement pattern survey of the Tepexi de Rodríguez region of southern Puebla, Mexico, and from excavations of two ceramic Workshops where Thin Orange ceramics, “Teotihuacan's most important trade ware,” were manufactured. Results of the settlement pattern survey reveal that the Tepexi de Rodríguez region, where the trade ware was made, had a flourishing civilization during the Classic period (a.d. 300–750) which enjoyed continuous, intensive contact with Teotihuacan, yet the region was apparently not under the domination of the Teotihuacan state. Data are presented on the techniques of ceramic manufacture, the contexts of pottery production, and the social and economic organization of the potters who made Thin Orange ceramics.

Results of excavations of an Early Classic Maya coastal lime-making site on Placencia Lagoon, Belize, and replicative experiments make it possible to suggest a method by which the ancient Maya extracted lime from marine Shells. Modern small-scale lime production methods are compared with the hypothesized prehispanic method.

Mesoamerican household sites were often deserted gradually, leaving very little de facto refuse for analysis. Starting with archaeological and paleobiological distribution patterns, this study adds a new dimension to the spatial study of two Classic households by plotting chemical concentrations in probable activity areas.

Mesoamerican archaeologists have long realized that agricultural food storage helped support large prehispanic centers, especially in places where food production was seasonally constrained by culture and environment. Yet, past storage has rarely been identified or interpreted accurately at Mesoamerican sites – a dilemma that challenges archaeologists to improve research methods. To meet this challenge, recent ethnoarchaeological research into household maize storage behavior among traditional Puuc Maya farmers has revealed that storage is closely interrelated with daily food processing activities. This information has fostered the development of a storage model (based on houselot spatial organization, activity scheduling, and refuse disposal), providing a framework to interpret the material remains of storage-related behavior affected by diverse maize storage techniques. Excavations within modern Puuc houselots have begun to document feature, refuse, chemical, and botanical patterns that indicate storage places. Together, these storage patterns and their spatial associations in Puuc houselots contribute significant information towards building an archaeological storage method.

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.

In 1984, 29 obsidian artifacts and an unworked nodule from Tikal were attributed to source by visual means and then analyzed by X-ray fluorescence (XRF). We conclude that the considerable within-source optical variability of gray Mesoamerican obsidians makes visual sourcing unreliable at present, although a corpus of descriptions of the optical characteristics of obsidian may eventually provide a way to exclude possible sources. The XRF analysis identified two additional central Mexican sources, bringing to six the number of Mexican obsidian sources represented at Tikal; failed to provide a secure identification for the nodule; supported the succession of Guatemalan obsidian sources utilized by the Southern Lowland Maya previously proposed by Nelson; and suggested other correlations between source, artifact type, and archaeological context.

Two “Directional Count Glyphs” have long been recognized as the indicators of backward and forward chronological reckonings in Maya inscriptions. Their traditional decipherment, following early work by Thompson, is founded upon the reading xok, ‘to count’, for one frequent sign in these glyphs. The present study calls this reading into question by suggesting that all ‘count’ glyphs are read u-ti, spelling the verb ut, ‘come to pass’. This decipherment applies to all known contexts of the glyphs.

Analysis of a collection of lithic artifacts from recent INAH salvage excavations in Azcapotzalco, Mexico, contributes to our understanding of lithic procurement and manufacturing processes, other economic activities, intersite relations, and the decline of Classic civilization in the Basin of Mexico. The results of NAA conducted at the Missouri University Research Reactor on a small sample of obsidian artifacts from the site support the conclusions of visual analysis and growing evidence from other central Mexican sites that at the end of the Classic Period obsidian exchange networks utilizing the Pachuca, Hidalgo, sources were largely replaced by a widespread dependence on the considerably more distant obsidian source of Ucareo, Michoacan. It appears likely that Ucareo obsidian was imported primarily in the form of large polyhedral cores used to produce prismatic blades. Obsidian from the Otumba, State of Mexico, source was also identified by NAA in biface and blade form.

In the summer of 1989, major discoveries were made at the site of Joya de Cerén, El Salvador, where sudden depositions of volcanic ash in a.d. 600 resulted in unusually favorable conditions of preservation. The theoretical framework for the research is household archaeology, the study of prehistoric household groups. Household archaeology, as applied to Cerén can take advantage of the extraordinary preservation to study households in terms of their key activities of (a) production, including food, implements, vessels, and structures; (b) “pooling,” including storage, distribution, maintenance, and curation activities; (c) transmission of knowledge and material goods including access to resources; (d) reproduction in both the biological and sociocultural senses; and (e) co-residence/membership in the functioning residential group. One of the major finds was a possible codex or Precolumbian manuscript.

Hieroglyphic signs T757/788 have several functions in Maya texts, from strictly phonetic to grammatical. The author of this article suggests that a variant of this sign is the logograph for the verb or expression “to record,” which is different from the expression “to write.”

Hieroglyphic inscriptions from Chichen Itza are examined for possible light they might shed on its ethnic and political makeup during the Terminal Classic period (a.d. 800–1000). It is suggested that many of the name glyphs include patronyms known to be important at contact. This continuity of elite occupation is reinforced by decipherment of a title common to many of them ás holpop, a title also known from early colonial Spanish and Maya documents. Finally, a reading of the event of the lintel as yul is suggested. The implications of these readings suggest the genesis of at least some Late Postclassic organizational features in the Terminal Classic. Also arguing against a severe rupture of elite life at the end of the Terminal Classic is the persistence of patronyms in northern Yucatan. Colonial sources make frequent mention of migrations and invasions as the source of the distinctive art and architecture, yet if the arguments herein are correct, there was instead a remarkable stability of ruling families in northern Yucatan. Finally, the dedication of several monuments by different individuals, each having different patronyms and marked by epithets such as “holy,” suggests considerable autonomy of these lesser officials consistent with a segmentary state form of organization.

In this special section we celebrate an unusual kind of anniversary: the publication 50 years ago of Clyde Kluckhohn's “The Conceptual Structure in Middle American Studies” (Hay et al. 1940:41–51). With this short but powerful essay, Kluckhohn indicted Maya archaeology in general, and the massive program of research by the Carnegie Institution of Washington in particular, as something close to “stamp collecting” and the putterings of “slightly reformed antiquarians.” For better or worse, Kluckhohn hastened the demise of what was until that time the most broadly conceived and well executed research program in New World archaeology – the Carnegie's attempt to understand Maya civilization in both its earliest and latest expressions and from a large number of disciplinary perspectives.

This article begins with a historical review of the study of ancient Mixtec civilization and how codices became alienated from the Oaxaca region and culture. Current interpretations of codices' geographic reality, their religious dimension, and the problems of chronology are discussed. Accurate interpretation of the Mixtec codices is shown to be very much dependent on the collaboration of modern Mixtecs, as the inheritors of the ancient culture.

I came in the back door, in 1993. It was the bottom of the Depression, and I happened to be in Washington, D.C., studying engineering in a technical school. One evening a man walked into our course, “Stresses and Strains in Structural Steel,” and asked for the drafting class. My professor told him it was down the hall, so our visitor backed out and apologized–he'd been looking for a draftsperson. In the of 1933 any job opening looked good, so I followed him and insisted that I had the appropriate qualifications. I didn't, of course, but you'd be willing to try anything in those years.