Many societies use architecture for symbolic expression, and often buildings or other constructions constitute maps of a culture's worldview. Archaeological identification of such ideational expressions is receiving renewed attention, in the Maya area as in many other regions. Excavations in 1988-1989 in Groups 8L-10 through 8L-12, Copán, Honduras, were designed to examine a particular model of ancient Maya site planning and spatial organization, in which the principles of architectural arrangement and their directional associations derive from Maya cosmology. This paper describes the model and its archaeological evaluation at Copán and discusses interpretive implications of the specific results obtained, in the context of other ongoing studies in epigraphy, iconography, and archaeology.

A 500-year record of changes and continuities in structures defined as ceremonial has been discovered in the Qhuna phase (5000-4400 B. P.) of Late Preceramic period Asana in the Moquegua drainage of southern Peru. These are the earliest known ceremonial structures in the south-central Andes, and their existence raises new questions about the trajectory of cultural change in the region. In its earliest construction around 4800 B. P., the ceremonial complex appears to be a “dance ground,” similar to the sometimes-enclosed spaces used by ethnographically known mobile foragers for periodic feasts and social exchanges. By 4500 B. P., however, the complex appears to be more formal in its construction, with a clear inside-outside dichotomy of feature placement and presumed activity performance. In this paper, the structural features of the ceremonial complex are described, compared to other, roughly contemporaneous expressions of ceremonial structures in the Andes, and their function interpreted.

Coca-leaf chewing results in absorption of part of its cocaine content. Following absorption, cocaine and/or its stable metabolic product benzoylecgonine (BZE) may enter the chewer's hair follicles and subsequently be incorporated into the hair shafts. This article reports that a recently developed radioimmunoassay is capable of detecting BZE in hair samples from ancient, spontaneously mummified human remains. Results are provided from tests on hair samples of 163 individuals, representatives of populations from seven different cultures living at coastal and low valley sites in northern Chile during the past 4,000 years. These indicate that coca-leaf-chewing practices began in this area about 2,000 years ago. The practice seems to have been common in several subsequent cultural groups. In one of these—Maitas Chiribaya—the majority of both adult men and women indulged in this practice. Coca-leaf-chewing women probably transferred BZE to their fetuses and nursing infants.

Analysis of plant remains recovered from excavations at Copán in western Honduras has provided substantive data regarding agroeconomic systems of the prehistoric inhabitants. The time span of the deposits ranges from the Gordon/Uir phase (900-400 B. C.), which may have been non-Maya, to the Coner phase (A. D. 700-900+), which encompasses the collapse of the Classic Maya cultural manifestation in the valley. Several traditionally recognized mesoamerican cultigens were identified including corn, beans, and several species of Cucurbitaceae. In addition, remains of a number of economic tree species were discovered, suggesting a reliance on arboriculture as part of the subsistence strategy. Pine charcoal predominated in all deposits and may have been the preferred wood for fuel and construction. Analysis of edible-plant-species distributions from low- and high-status Late Classic dwellings using the Shannon-Weaver index revealed that elite individuals had a higher diversity of available foods, a situation that may have led to nutritional stress among lower-status individuals and, ultimately, social unrest.