Abbreviated Neutron Activation Analysis (NAA) was carried out on a sample of obsidian artifacts from the Terminal Formative to early Late Classic period site of Palo Errado, located in the southern Gulf lowlands of Veracruz, Mexico. Our understanding of Classic period obsidian economies in the southern Gulf lowlands has been largely informed by studies of the political economies of the highland Mexican cities of Teotihuacan and Cantona, which appear to have controlled the Pachuca and Otumba, and Zaragoza-Oyameles obsidian sources, respectively. However, the NAA results from Palo Errado indicate that while the local obsidian economy was dominated by prismatic blade technology utilizing Zaragoza-Oyameles obsidian, five additional highland Mexican sources were used during the Early Classic period. The presence of Ucareo and the use of Otumba in core-blade reduction, for instance, set Palo Errado apart from contemporary sites in the southern Gulf lowlands. Temporal variation in quantity of supplemental obsidian sources and their use in different reduction technologies suggest that consumers at Palo Errado had access to abundant Zaragoza-Oyameles obsidian of a quality high enough to facilitate the production of fine prismatic blades. At the same time, however, they continued to participate in exchange networks that tied them to other areas of central Mexico, independently from other contemporaneous sites in the southern Gulf lowlands.

A Chimú-Inka ceramic-manufacturing center, dating ca. A.D. 1470-1532, has been located in the Jequetepeque Valley of northern Peru. An analysis of a large sample of molds and over-fired sherds from the site indicates that the potters produced both local and Inka-derived forms—primarily mold-made utility wares. Since Inka aryballoid bottles were produced here, their production, and presumably their use, was more akin to utility wares for commoners than to ceremonial/administrative ware for the elite. Although there were numerous potters involved in the production of large numbers of vessels, the production was not organized with strict division of labor, but rather with each individual potter working on most stages of production.

Five seasons of archaeological fieldwork at the Maya lowland site of Rio Azul are summarized. The site is an urban center located on the Rio Azul. The locality was occupied from at least 900 B.C. to ca. A.D. 800. Farming villages gave way ca. 150 B.C. to communities that built large platforms, and the urban center was established about A.D. 200. Rio Azul apparently was conquered by Tikal ca. A.D. 380 and became a frontier city and commercial center. Strong influence from Teotihuacan is indicated. A hiatus in the sixth century A.D. evidently represents a period of civil wars. Rio Azul was reoccupied and then overrun again in the ninth century by northern Maya groups. Once more reoccupied, it was finally abandoned ca. A.D. 880. Evidence for ancient cultural institutions also is summarized.

Ancient Mesoamericans were making rubber by at least 1600 B.C, mixing latex from Castilla elastica trees with juice from Ipomoea alba (morning glory) vines. The combination of ethnographic, archaeological and mechanical data presented in this text illustrate that ancient Mesoamericans had fully developed this process, and consciously tailored the mechanical properties of rubber to suit requirements of specific applications by altering the ratio of latex to I. alba juice. Our data focus on rubber balls, sandal soles, and rubber bands for hafting and joining. Elasticity, the mechanical property that defines the ability of a rubber ball to bounce, is maximized with a 1:1 volume ratio of latex to I. alba juice. Rubber with high wear resistance, vital to the life and functionality of a sandal sole, can be created by mixing C. elastica latex with 25 percent I. alba juice by volume. Unprocessed C. elastica latex, without I. alba juice, is the material best suited for joining applications, such as adhesives or hafting bands, where strength and ability to absorb shock is of the greatest importance. Tribute data from sixteenth-century codices substantiate that rubber was processed for specific applications within the Aztec empire—rubber and latex goods were processed and constructed in the C. elastica-bearing regions, and then shipped to the capital for use or further distribution.

This research consists mainly of introducing the hydroarchaeological method, especially as related to issues of drought. The article outlines how this multidisciplinary method can provide insights into the success and failures of an archaeological site, in this case the Maya site of Palenque. We also detail convincing evidence that shows that the Maya of Palenque did not leave their city because of deficiencies of water, as some paleoclimatologists and archaeologists have asserted. The first logical step toward understanding any settlement’s water system is to use basic hydrologic methods and theory and to understand the local watershed. There is great potential for watershed-climate modeling in developing plausible scenarios of water use and supply and of the effect of extreme conditions (flood and drought), all of which cannot be fully represented by atmosphere-based climate and weather projections. The research demonstrates how the local watershed, land-use, and ecological conditions interact with regional climate changes. The archaeological implications for this noninvasive “virtual” method are many, including detecting periods of stress within a community, estimating population by developing caps based on the availability of water, and understanding settlement patterns, as well as assisting present local populations in understanding their water cycle.

The intellectual, artistic, and architectural accomplishments of Maya elites during the Classic period were extraordinary, and evidence of elite activities has preserved well in the archaeological record. A centuries-long research focus on elites has understandably fostered the view that they controlled the economy, politics, and religion of Maya civilization. While there has been significant progress in household archaeology, unfortunately the activities, decisions, and interactions of commoners generally preserve poorly in the archaeological record. Therefore, it has been challenging to understand the sociopolitical economy of commoners, and how it related—or did not relate—to elite authority. The exceptional volcanic preservation of the site of Cerén, El Salvador, provides a unique opportunity to explore the degree to which elites controlled or influenced commoner life. Was society organized in a top-down hierarchy in which elites controlled everything? Or did commoners have autonomy, and thus the authority to decide quotidian, seasonal, and annual issues within the village? Or was there a mixture of different loci of authority within the village and the region? Research at Cerén is beginning to shed some light on the sociopolitical economy within the community and in relation to elites in the Zapotitan valley. A domain in which there was considerable commoner-elite interaction in the Cerén area was the marketplace. Elites and their attached specialists provided products, and commoners decided which marketplace they would attend to exchange their items. Evidence from Cerén also suggests that there were numerous other domains of authority within the community that had no detectable control or influence from outside. For instance, people in the village decided what crafts or specialized agricultural products to produce as surplus to be exchanged within the community for different products from other households. Cerén community members acted independently as individuals, as households, or in other domains within the community. Understanding the multiple layers of authority at Cerén sheds light on the sociopolitical organization in one non-elite Classic period Maya community.

To date, 81 stemmed and barbed preceramic (Archaic) points (8000–900 B.C.) have been identified in Belize. Fifty-four are Lowe points; 21 are Sawmill points. Four more are provisionally classified as Allspice and two as Ya’axche’ points. These stemmed bifaces are frequently beveled on alternate-opposite edges and demonstrate variable degrees of resharpening and reworking, which affects blade shape and tool size. Numerous functions have been attributed to these artifacts; specifically, they have been called spear points, dart points, harpoons, and knives. Metric data from these bifaces, limited macrowear and microwear analyses, and design features, such as barbs and alternate-opposite edge beveling, have been used to interpret likely tool functions. Results suggest that Lowe points were affixed to throwing/thrusting spears and also served as knives, whereas the Sawmill points were used as spear-thrower dart points and as knives. New dating information suggests that alternate-opposite edge beveling and consequently beveled bifaces may be much older than 2500–1900 B.C., which is the date currently assigned to these specimens.

This paper presents studies and discussions of pottery-making practices during the Late period (ca. A.D. 900—1450) in Northwestern Argentina. It stems from an extensive archaeological research project carried out in the middle sector of the Abaucán Valley, Province of Catamarca, Argentina. Pottery production during this period is evaluated through the study of technological choices and technical identity, as well as its relationship to the technical behaviors developed by potters. The analysis of a large sample of ceramic sherds, complete vessels, and overfired sherds indicates that the potters produced a very narrow repertoire of ceramic forms (bowls, urns, and ollas) using local raw materials and technology, the latter with a strong hold in the area. Pottery production during the Late period was carried out in household contexts, becoming increasingly intensified and concentrated with the appearance of Inkas in the region. Additionally, some ideas are discussed concerning the technological choices of ancient potters during this period, and the implications for technological studies in archaeological ceramics.

This article examines changes in ritual practices during the Epiclassic period in central Mexico. It presents data recovered from recent excavations of a shrine discovered in Lake Xaltocan in the northern Basin of Mexico. Pottery and AMS dates place the construction and use of the shrine in the Epiclassic period. The shrine was first built during or soon after the collapse of the Teotihuacan state. With the decline of Teotihuacan and the emergence of competing centers, ritual practitioners began human sacrifice: the remains of over 30 individuals were documented, including 13 complete severed crania. This practice suggests conflict as the political landscape became decentralized. Despite how broader processes may have affected behavior, the shrine, ritual practice was fundamentally local. We present archaeobotanical evidence of offerings of food, incense, and flowers that elucidates the microlevel nature of ritual at the shrine.

The limited excavation of rural houses in the Mexican highlands has made it difficult to understand the structure of urban-rural economic relationships during the Classic period (A.D. 150 to 650), when many of the large cities at Teotihuacan, Cholula, and Monte Albán first developed. This paper examines economic consumption at Operation 7, a Late Classic rural residence located 11 km outside of the large center of Cholula, Puebla. The results show that Cholula was not the only, or even the primary, distribution center for goods consumed at Operation 7. Multiple procurement networks were operating during the Late Classic period to provision rural households with the goods they used. The recovery of a large number of imported ceramics and other goods with strong Teotihuacan affinities suggests integrated market networks, rather than solar market systems, operated to circulate goods throughout rural areas in Central Mexico. Comparative analysis of domestic assemblages is employed to identify differences in economic consumption that can be used to reconstruct the participation of rural households in regional distribution networks centered on their urban neighbors.

The ceque system of Cuzco was composed of at least 328 shrines (huacas) organized along 42 hypothetical lines (ceques) that radiated out of the city of Cuzco, the capital of the Inca. Ethnohistoric research indicates that the system was conceptually linked to, and essentially reproduced, the fundamental social, political, spatial, and temporal divisions of the Cuzco region and Inca society. As such the ceque system is one of the most complex, indigenous Prehispanic ritual systems known in the Americas. This article summarizes the basic organizational features of the ceque system according to ethnohistorians and reviews the current literature. Archaeological data document the likely positions of 85 shrines and the probable courses of nine ceques in Collasuyu, the southeast quarter of the Cuzco Valley. The courses of the nine Collasuyu ceques are then compared with predicted courses set forth in current models of the system. The findings suggest that numerous internal inconsistencies, if not errors, exist in the seventeenth-century documentary source that describes the ceque system and that the courses of the ceques may have varied far more than is suggested in the literature.

Results of physico-chemical analysis of samples of rock paintings and blue and green pigments from the Atacama Desert (northern Chile) allow us to incorporate a new technology, pigment production, to processes of mining and copper production, which until now have been related only to lapidary and metal working. Archaeological contexts associated with paints and pigments, as well as information available from historical times, allow us to suggest hypotheses about their importance in sharing networks of late prehispanic times (A.D. 900—1550) and after Spanish contact. In these times, the production and circulation of pigments would have closely connected the Upper Loa region to the Lípez region in south-western Bolivia and other regions of the Atacama Desert.

Pottery in contexts that predate the entrance of Arawak societies to the Antilles (500 B.C.) by at least one millennium demand a reassessment of the introduction of this technology to the islands. We summarize the available evidence of what we term the Pre-Arawak Pottery horizon and address the social implications of the introduction of such technology to the insular Caribbean, based on the role of pots as tools. We show that this early pottery is more widespread than originally thought, extending from Cuba to Hispanola and perhaps to Puerto Rico and the Lesser Antilles as well. We argue that the paucity of early ceramic contexts discovered thus far could have resulted from the consideration of pottery as intrusive in Pre-Arawak contexts and because of its technological and stylistic overlap with wares associated to the Ostionoid series (A.D. 600-1500) of the Greater Antilles. Based on this evidence, we conclude by suggesting that some of the post-Saladoid manifestations that have been identified in the islands could have resulted from a multifocal development of these pre-Arawak cultures rather than simply from the divergent evolution of Saladoid societies as has been argued thus far.

Los sitios con entierros humanos y evidencias de actividades residenciales, situados en sectores sobreelevados del paisaje, son un rasgo característico del patrón de ocupación prehispánica de la Cuenca del Río Negro. El estudio de algunos de estos sitios y, sobre todo, de los restos humanos en ellos recuperados, ha sido empleado por numerosos investigadores para explorar las diversas formas en las cuales los cazadores-recolectores se relacionaron con la muerte y discutir problemas de carácter social tales como prácticas rituales y religiosas, patrones de movilidad y procesos vinculados con la complejidad social. Aportamos aquí información cronológica y contextual de varios sitios en donde coinciden espacialmente los productos materiales de actividades domésticas y prácticas mortuorias, y discutimos las posibles relaciones entre ambos tipos de registro. Sobre la base de la información preexistente y de nuevos datos, retomamos el problema relativo a la interpretación y conceptualización de estos sitios y discutimos las nociones de cementerio y área formal de entierro. Finalmente, proponemos que estos sitios, ocupados de manera recurrente durante el Holoceno Tardío, pueden definirse como lugares persistentes (sensu Schlanger 1992) y que su configuración actual es el resultado de una compleja confluencia de condicionantes de índole religiosa, social y ambiental.

In prehispanic Mesoamerica, basic utilitarian artifacts, such as non-obsidian chipped stone tools, have rarely been considered outside the realms of technology or the economics of manufacture and circulation. Yet in recent excavations of residential terraces at the Classic period hilltop settlement of El Palmillo, Oaxaca, we have noted spatial patterning in the distribution of chipped stone tools that parallels variation previously observed in a range of nonlocal goods including obsidian, marine shell, and greenstone. Compared to the inhabitants of terraces situated near the base of the site, the apparently higher-status residents of households residing closer to the hill’s apex not only were associated with a somewhat different assemblage of stone tools and debris, but their chipped stone implements tended to be made on better-quality raw materials. As a consequence, chipped stone assemblages can serve as an additional axis of variation for examining status distinctions in the Classic period Valley of Oaxaca, and potentially elsewhere in Mesoamerica.

A model of late pre-Inka political geography of the region surrounding Cajamarca, in the north highlands of Peru, is presented. This model, based on ethnohistoric data and archaeological research, can be projected back through time to help delineate the culture history of the Cajamarca ethnic group. Several chiefdoms emerged during the Late Intermediate period, following a time of sociopolitical disintegration. The region that became the Inka province of Cajamarca had been occupied by five or six chiefdoms during the latter part of the Late Intermediate period. The data are equivocal on the subject of whether political centralization had developed in the region before the Inka conquest, but suggest that at least some form of confederation existed. Comparison with other regions of the Peruvian Highlands reveals that the Cajamarca ethnic group was modest in population, but controlled a very large area. Other groups, such as the Wanka and Lupaqa, appear to have been undergoing a similar process of sociopolitical centralization. The Inka reorganized the region upon its incorporation into the empire, creating an economic and religious center for several surrounding provinces.

The archaeological site of Galindo, located in the Moche Valley, is one of the most important Late Moche (ca. A. D. 600—800) centers on the North Coast of Peru. The site was once thought to have been occupied only after the nearby Huacas de Moche, the paramount Middle Moche (ca. A. D. 300–600) center in the valley, was abandoned. Recent radiocarbon dates from the Huacas de Moche, however, indicate that it continued to be occupied well into the eighth century A. D. This paper presents data on the occupational history of Galindo recently obtained during the Galindo Archaeological Project (GAP). These data, along with similar data from the Huacas de Moche, present a new understanding of the occupational history of the Moche Valley during the first half of the Middle Horizon (A.D. 600–1000).

A masonry and adobe construction called the “Area I Palace” was excavated by the authors at the site of El Palenque (SMT-llb), located near San Martín Tilcajete in the Ocotlán district of the Valley of Oaxaca, Mexico. The Area I Palace covered 850 m2 and consisted of nine interconnected structures, one of which was an elaborate residence that measured 16 m by 16 m and had eight rooms arranged around an interior patio. Several additional platforms and two paved courtyards were probably more ceremonial in nature. There is evidence that multiple work groups were involved in the construction of the palace. The associated ceramics and four radiocarbon samples indicate that the palace was built at the beginning of the Late Monte Albán I phase (300–100 B.C.) and abandoned in the first century B.C. It is argued that the Area I Palace is one of earliest known examples of a Zapotec quihuitào or royal palace.

Recent theoretical work has underscored the importance of multiple strategies in the dynamic political and economic landscapes in which archaic states developed. This research emphasizes how the interaction among various non-state polities drives the growth of political centers within a region. It is in this context that numerous intermediate peer-polities emerged, and, on rare occasions in a few places around the world, it is the context of state development. War and trade have emerged as particularly important forms of strategic interaction in the theoretical literature, representing strategies of both cooperation and competition between and within complex, non-state polities. In this paper we present a detailed case study that tests and illustrates one of these theoretical propositions. We examine the role of trade in this process of social evolution as evidenced in the northern Titicaca Basin ca. 500 B.C.—A.D. 300. Based on intensive analyses of a large excavated data set, we suggest that the emergence of one regional center, called Taraco, is strongly linked to strategic participation in local and long-distance exchange networks.

The Terminal Classic period (ca. AD 800–1000) in the Southern Maya Lowlands witnessed a precipitous decline in the erection of carved stone monuments, a decline that corresponds to shifts in political ideologies and the disappearance of many prominent royal dynasties. Although Southern Lowland sites are often considered peripheral to the events and innovations occurring elsewhere in Mesoamerica during this time, a recently discovered stela, Stela 29, at the site of Ucanal in Peten, Guatemala, underscores the active role of the site in broader political movements in the ninth century. Our iconographic, textual, and stylistic analysis of this stela, in concert with other Terminal Classic monuments from the site, reveals a vernacular cosmopolitan aesthetic whereby local Classic Maya styles were infused with images and elements that referenced connections with peoples from northern Yucatan, the Gulf Coast, and Central Mexico.