Thirty-eight radiocarbon dates from Mayapan provide new information about the Postclassic chronology of this city. We analyze ceramic frequencies associated with our radiocarbon samples and discuss temporally diagnostic types in the Mayapan sequence. Radiocarbon samples from early construction contexts suggest that the Postclassic center was founded by at least the twelfth century, or possibly the eleventh century a.d. on a modest scale. Additional dates help to assign much of the city's later architecture to the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries a.d., and provide hints of violence, conflict, and abandonment events prior to the final collapse. Our results imply that Mayapan may have begun as a small center while Chichen Itza waned from its dominant political position on the peninsula, and that the establishment of Mayapan as a major regional capital may have been a process that took a century or longer to complete.

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.

Maya elites and commoners intensively occupied the Itzan escarpment, located in the lower Río de la Pasión drainage system of Petén, Guatemala, during the Preclassic and Protoclassic periods. Itzan was colonized during the Xe phase of the Middle Preclassic period, and its occupation intensified during the late Middle and Late Preclassic periods, when elite residential and ceremonial facilities were erected. During the Late Preclassic and Protoclassic periods, the escarpment was dominated by Chaak Ak'al, a large site distinguished by massive pyramids and lengthy wall-like constructions, which undoubtedly served as a polity capital. Subsequent to the Protoclassic period, the locus of activity atop the escarpment shifted back to Itzan, which served as a polity capital through the Late Classic period. From data collected at Itzan, Chaak Ak'al, and other sites of the lower Río de la Pasión drainage system, a picture of regional Preclassic Maya political geography is emerging.

This paper proposes a reinterpretation of the Tepantitla murals long known as the Tlalocan. Taking into account the numerous representations of different kinds of ballgames on these walls, along with the instances of the Maya glyph for pu, pu or pu[h], or “Place of the Reeds” (i.e. Tollan), this paper argues that this mural represents Teotihuacan as prototypical civilized city associated with the beginning of time and the calendar. Further evidence is provided by the images of “Scattering Priests” in the adjacent room, all of whom wear crocodilian headdresses associated with Cipactli, the first day of the central Mexican calendar. In both rooms, images of Tlaloc with hallucinogenic water-lily buds in his mouth reflect associations with the sun, the calendar, and the underworld. The murals of Tepantitla can be interpreted as a coherent program representing the central role of the ballgame in establishing Teotihuacan as Tollan, the place where time began.

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.

This article analyzes the iconography on a ceramic vessel collected from the site of Los Naranjos, Honduras, over 70 years ago by Danish archaeologist Jens Yde. The relatively more naturalistic representation of the scene on the vessel allows us to interpret the motifs called “dancing figures” as relating to a well-documented corpus of Mesoamerican origin mythology. We then turn our attention to the site of Los Naranjos and document the fact that the area of Lake Yojoa closely mirrors the idealized Mesoamerican landscape associated with the place of the earth's creation. Combining this insight with the depiction on the Yde vessel, we suggest that the Cave of Tauleve may have been considered the place of human creation or human emergence.

The authors challenge the argument by other world-system scholars that Lower Central America fell outside the Mesoamerican world-system during the late Postclassic period. Drawing on ethnohistoric and archaeological information, it is argued that native peoples along the Pacific Coast of Central America from El Salvador to the Nicoya Peninsula (Costa Rica) are best understood as part of the Mesoamerican periphery. The Central American peoples south of Nicoya formed both a chiefly world-system of their own and part of the Mesoamerican frontier by engaging in networks of trade and preciosity exchanges with the coastal Mesoamericans in Nicoya and Nicaragua. Support for this argument is based primarily on two “microhistoric” case studies of peoples located on both sides of the Mesoamerican/Lower Central America border, specifically the Chorotegans of the Masaya/Granada area of Nicaragua and the Chibchans of the Diquis/Buenos Aires area of Costa Rica. Archaeological information on sites in both areas and documentation from Spanish colonial sources that refer to native peoples in these areas strongly indicate that the Masaya/Granada peoples were active participants in the Mesoamerican regional network. In contrast, information from the Diquis/Buenos Aires area for this period reveals only weak Mesoamerican ties but strong relations with a Chibchan intersocietal network of chiefdoms.

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.

E-group architectural assemblages, constructed and used for more than a millennium in the Maya Lowlands, are among the most distinctive and enduring forms in Mesoamerican monumental architecture. Since the 1920s, E-groups have been thought to mark the solstices and equinoxes, but more recent investigations have shown that these alignments were rarely accurate. We argue that accurate solar alignment was probably only a minor element, and primarily an early one, of a larger set of metaphorically linked design considerations that included concepts of sacred geography, ritual performance in reference to yearly solar and agricultural cycles, and longer cycles of time, especially katuns, that played a role in Lowland Maya geopolitical structuring.

Phil C. Weigand has devoted his career to the anthropology and archaeology of the most poorly known area of Mesoamerica, “an enormous area of elaborate cultural development [that] has been relegated to unimportance” (Weigand and Foster 1985:5). We refer, of course, to the Occidente or West Mexico, roughly defined by the states of Michoacán, Colima, Jalisco, and Nayarit, often including parts of Guanajuato, Zacatecas, Sinaloa, and sometimes Guerrero. Over the course of his career, Weigand has integrated data from archaeology, ethnohistory, and ethnography to gain a better understanding of western Mesoamerica. This Special Section is an homenaje to Phil that draws together contributions by some of his friends and colleagues who have felt his influence over the years.

The identity of the Classic Maya was expressed through public architecture and the creation of sacred landscape, which incorporated the landscape of creation and the concept of the world tree. Pyramids, plazas, stelae, and ballcourts were important components of this landscape. In the Peten, architectural complexes known as “E-groups” were another component. E-groups are well-known astronomical “orientation calendars” that were first built in the Terminal Preclassic period. Named after Group E at Uaxactun, they consist of three buildings on the east side of a public plaza and a fourth in the middle of the plaza or on the west side. Terminal Preclassic E-groups functioned as solstice and equinox markers. However, their function changed in the Early Classic period, arguably due to influence from Teotihuacan, to a focus on agricultural seasons. In this paper, I argue that pseudo–E-groups were built well into the Late Classic period in the eastern Peten and were a defining architectural complex for the region. The original, functional Terminal Preclassic E-groups were based on ritual activities focused on solar events. By the Early Classic, E-groups had become multipurpose parts of the sacred landscape of public architecture. Late Classic pseudo–E-groups, however, had become nonfunctional for either solar or agriculturally oriented observation. Nevertheless, they had become so deeply embedded into the template of sacred space and architecture that pseudo–E–groups were constructed to reinforce the identity of cities and the validity of their rulers.

Back in the late 1960s and early 1970s, Southern Illinois University at Carbondale was “the” place to be for anyone interested in North or West Mexican studies. J. Charles Kelley, Carroll “Cal” Riley, Campbell Pennington, and Basil Hedrick constituted the cadre of scholars who specialized in the region but also served as mentors and models for what anthropological archaeology could be, even in the pre-Binfordian days. Walter Taylor also was there as an icon of theoretical archaeology. All of these scholars not only believed but also demonstrated that the subdisciplines of anthropology were intimately connected. To pursue one perspective to the exclusion of the other subdisciplines was deemed artificially limiting. Into this milieu came Lewis and Sally Binford during the summers of 1962 and 1963, working on the Carlyle Reservoir project in southern Illinois, which included excavations at Hatchery West, Toothsome, and Galley Pond. At about the same time, they began publishing archaeological theory and methodology that revolutionized the discipline. Only Lew and Sally can say how their time in Carbondale shaped their perspectives but, for me, I'd like to think that the Carbondale experience positively influenced their interdisciplinary work. I well remember discussions with Kelley regarding the new archaeology that he learned under Clyde Kluckhohn at Harvard before and during WWII, in comparison to the other “new” archaeology championed by the Binfords. Riley, Pennington, and Hedrick provided students with opportunities to integrate the archaeological perspective with the ethnographic and historical in material culture studies. The graduate students, including Weigand, Joe Mountjoy, and others, kept the discussion alive.

Since the late 1950s, scholars have analyzed emblem glyphs to better understand the political organization of the Classic Maya (a.d. 300–900/1000). These unique glyphs reflect a certain royal self-understanding, for they were used as a title by the rulers to distinguish themselves from other noblemen within a milieu of growing competition for prestige and power. While this has been well documented in the central and southern lowlands, evidence for the existence of emblem glyphs in northwestern Yucatan—a region defined by certain cultural traits also reflected in the inscriptions—has been scarce. This study not only explores whether and how further emblem glyphs can be detected in the inscriptions of northwestern Yucatan by questioning the traditional definition of this title. It also, as a consequence, sheds new light on royal self-representation and political organization in northwestern Yucatan during the Classic period.

The shaft tomb mortuary tradition is an archaeological construct that encompasses a diverse array of burial practices, many of which now seem to reflect local variations in specific treatments of the dead. Distinctive characteristics of shaft tombs in the Tequila valleys of central Jalisco include the high degree of labor invested in tomb construction, the wealth of offerings found within the tombs, and the occasional association of the tombs with the circular public architecture known as the Teuchitlan tradition. These characteristics have led some researchers to see the Tequila valleys as the “core” of the shaft tomb tradition, in which mortuary practices were most dramatically employed to demonstrate social distinctions. Weigand's survey beginning at the end of the 1960s was designed to understand the settlement system associated with the burial tradition. Various constraints led to the use of surface materials and materials found in looters' pits to associate ceramics with tombs and public architecture. This article discusses ongoing research on the ceramic chronology of the eastern Tequila valleys and specifically those phases that span the use of shaft tombs as a high-ranking form of burial. We can discern three phases across the period of the Late Formative through the Middle Classic.

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.

Este artículo resume los trabajos realizados en El Opeño, Michoacán (ca 1500–1200 B.C.), un sitio arqueológico del Formativo conocido desde 1940. Se trata de un cementerio concebido con arquitectura funeraria, que puede ser antecedente de esa secuencia de tumbas con diferentes diseños, continuada en la tradición tardía de las “tumbas de tiro.” Igual se resumen los objetos encontrados en esas construcciones, haciendo énfasis en la lapidaria hecha en jadeita, procedente de Guatemala, más las semejanzas de figurillas locales, puntas de obsidiana, y esculturas en forma de “U” (los yuguitos), localizados en sitios del altiplano central de México como Tlatilco o Tlapacoya.

In the early 1970s a series of over two dozen unlooted shaft tombs were excavated by the Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia in the valley of Guadalajara, Jalisco. They still provide the most representative sample of a shaft tomb cemetery known from western Mexico, and they are an underutilized resource for demonstrating significant degrees of social inequality. Here we summarize the findings of the original research in light of more recent work in Jalisco. We aim to demonstrate that the Tabachines cemetery in particular provides evidence for significant social inequalities in the society that built these shaft tombs, that there were significant social changes partway through the Tabachines phase, and that the mortuary ritual practiced in the tombs shows some commonalities with other areas of Mesoamerica.

Dental modification, present in 36% of the adult burial sample (N = 61) dating to the Postclassic period at Lamanai, Belize, was analyzed to determine its association with status and sex using both biological dietary indicators (stable-isotope and dental-pathology data) and archaeological indicators (grave location and architecture). There was no association between diet and modification. Males and females shared many of the same modification types, but some were sex-distinctive. The frequency of modification differed by archaeological context. For example, modification was present only in individuals buried in ceremonial structures, presumed to represent high status. Types of modification differed between Belizean sites and those from other regions. These data support the hypothesis that dental modification may have been a means of identification with a lineage, polity, ruler, or region.

The site of Huitzilapa, located northwest of the Tequila volcano, in central Jalisco, is a médium-sized site of the Teuchitlan tradition. An unlooted shaft tomb discovered and excavated at Huitzilapa has provided the most detailed information to date on the funerary customs of the Late Formative period. This article evaluates the place of Huitzilapa in local and regional settlement patterns, updates our understanding of the shaft tomb tradition, and examines whether the Huitzilapa evidence supports the proposition of stratified societies in central Jalsico during the Late Formative period.

Organic materials from the Huitzilapa shaft tomb (calibrated and averaged to date around a.d. 74 [Ramos and López 1996]) were examined for clues to identify the contents of food (or other types of) offerings and determine the constituents of burial accoutrements found on and around the six inhumations found in the two tomb chambers. These materials have been examined by light microscopy and scanning electron microscopy. The food offerings have proven difficult to identify. Only class (fish, insect) or kingdom level identifications (plant, animal) have been possible with available technology. Nevertheless, both the diversity of offering constituents and the quantity offered provide clues about the social status of the individuals interred in the tomb. The fibers of burial accoutrements have been less difficult to identify. Cotton and agave fibers and at least two other tentatively identified fiber types are associated with the interments and represent clothing, burial shrouds, and personal accoutrements. A crumpled piece of amate paper is associated with the high-status individual in the south chamber. This piece of paper is the earliest organic evidence of paper in Mesoamerica. The presence of cotton in the north chamber also suggests that cotton was a high-status item that had limited availability in the Jaliscan altiplano and was restricted to individuals that had achieved recognized social status. The predominance of agave fibers associated with all but one of the interments indicates the preeminence of maguey as the utilitarian fiber in western Mexico during the Late Formative. The association of paper with a male individual suggests that the Late Formative inhabitants of Huitzilapa recognized status differences and observed class differentiation and craft specialization. In addition to these organic, presumably food offerings, textiles, and fiber, a new species of bacterium—Bacillus tequilensis—was discovered in the decomposing material associated with the interments.