A decade of public-works excavations on Flores Island—once Tayza, capital of the powerful Itza Maya confederacy in Postclassic- and contact-period Petén, Guatemala—has recovered large quantities of artifacts but without proper provenience controls. This important center is poorly understood in archaeological terms because of the dense modern construction that precludes systematic investigation. Thus, these excavated materials become critical despite their limitations for insights into the Itza settlement. Convenience samples of the slipped and decorated pottery from the salvage (and other) excavations were analyzed to interpret style and meaning through the combined perspectives of design structure analysis, information exchange, visual rhetoric, literary studies, and semiotechnology. Features examined include forms, types, colors, layouts, and motifs. The spatial distributions of these features over the island were assessed in terms of a quadripartite organization mentioned in Spanish accounts. It is proposed that the southeastern quadrant was the residential area of Itza royal elites, due to the presence of elaborate and innovative polychromes conveying messages of elite power. Pottery in the northern quadrants has more traditional decoration resembling that at mainland sites in the Lake Petén basin, and signals ordinary Itza identity. These differences, and the overall theoretical approach, might be testable on larger, better-excavated samples.

Recent excavations at the ancient Maya minor center of Tutu Uitz Na in the Belize River Valley revealed an especially large—about 20 million shells—Middle Preclassic (900–300 BC) shell deposit underlying the plaza. Although marine shell species make up a small percentage of the assemblage, most shells are Pachychilus spp., a common freshwater snail known in the southern Maya Lowlands as jute. This report describes the architectural context and assemblage of the deposit and compares it to similar examples in the region. We propose that the Tutu Uitz Na deposit provides one of the earliest examples of depictions of the Maya primordial sea in an architectural context.

The site of Tipon, Peru, located about 30 km east of Cuzco, provides an example of Inka knowledge of hydraulic engineering and the civil engineering practices used in the design and operation of the complex water system. The inhabitants of Tipon used river- and spring-sourced surface and subterranean channels to convey, distribute, and drain water to and from multiple agricultural platforms, reservoirs, and urban ceremonial centers. Intricate intersecting surface and subterranean channel systems that combined and regulated water flows from different sources controlled the water to and drainage from 13 terraced agricultural platforms. This design served to maintain different ground moisture levels to sustain specialty crops. Within the site are fountains and multiple water display features requiring sophisticated hydraulic engineering necessary for aesthetic displays. To understand the technology used by the Inka to design the water systems at Tipon, I used computational fluid dynamics methodology and modern hydraulic engineering theory. I made computer models of key elements of the Principal Fountain and the Main Aqueduct to reproduce water flow patterns in these features as intended by Inka engineers’ designs and calculations. The Inka hydraulic technology used complex engineering principles similar to those in modern civil engineering practice centuries ahead of their formal discovery in Western hydraulic science.

Shrines were a regular component of ceremonial architecture in the public plazas of Postclassic Maya centers. Small shrines and natural landmarks such as caves and outcrops at the borders of settlements or in wilderness locations also served, and in some cases continue to serve, as important ritual loci for Maya peoples. These more peripheral locales were not only critical access points to the supernatural, but also served to delineate places. Because these border features, which represent only a given moment in a constantly shifting social and political landscape, are sometimes unmodified or are inconspicuous, they are relatively ephemeral and difficult to identify in the archaeological record. This paper documents a Late Postclassic shrine paired with a natural feature, a small hill, from the site of Tayasal in Petén, Guatemala. We argue that it served as a border shrine. Paired with the small hill, the two embodied a liminal frontier, not only between earthly and spiritual realms but also between settled and unsettled space.

Este trabajo busca profundizar el conocimiento sobre el rol de los sectores intermedios de las quebradas en el entramado social de la microrregión de Antofagasta de la Sierra (Puna meridional argentina) a lo largo del tiempo. A través del estudio de la tecnología cerámica desde una perspectiva diacrónica (ca. 2000-500 aP), haciendo énfasis en los estudios petrográficos de pastas, se investigan los cambios y continuidades en la producción alfarera de la microrregión. Para ello, se presentan los resultados de la investigación realizada sobre el material cerámico proveniente de los sitios de Las Escondidas y Corral Alto, en la quebrada del Río Miriguaca, y Cueva Salamanca 1, en la quebrada del Río Las Pitas. A partir de los análisis realizados, se pudo concluir que existieron cambios en los modos de hacer cerámica a lo largo del tiempo en la microrregión. Se observó que durante el Formativo (ca. 2000 aP) existió un modo de hacer compartido en un área amplia, mientras que durante el periodo Tardío (ca. 800 aP) se dio una fragmentación en las prácticas de producción cerámica en la microrregión. Estos cambios responden a profundas trasformaciones ocurridas en las sociedades puneñas que se comenzaron a gestar tiempo antes del comienzo del período Tardío en un proceso paulatino, complejo y heterogéneo.

Researchers have noted and studied the finely formed manos and metates of the Casas Grandes region of northern Mexico, but little is known about how and where they were produced. During a survey project in 2013, we located a quarry, the first discovered in this region, where grinding stones were manufactured using a suite of stone tools. We report the morphology of the site, the tool kit of the metateros (metate makers), and ethnoarchaeological implications resulting from the study of modern metateros that can aid in the interpretation of prehistoric ground stone quarries.

Through our research at Bahía Yendegaia on the Beagle Channel in southernmost Patagonia—the ancestral territory of the Yagán people—we discovered the first rock art site on Tierra del Fuego Island. The geometric visual images found at Yendegaia Rockshelter present motifs and compositions analogous to those recorded at other sites on the southern archipelago associated with the marine hunter-gatherer tradition. They also show graphic similarities to the rock art paintings attributed to terrestrial hunter-gatherer populations from the Pali Aike volcanic field, located on the north side of the Strait of Magellan in mainland Patagonia. Both, however, display quantitative differences, which suggest that they emerged from different visual traditions but from the same field of graphic solutions. Navigational technology enabled the canoe-faring Fuegian people to have long-distance mobility and to maintain a flow of social information mediated via visual imagery expressed in material forms, such as rock art and expressions of portable art. Ethnohistoric reports suggest a cooperative social interaction more than a competitive one. This cooperative social dynamic would have been necessary for the survival of marine societies in the harsh environmental conditions characteristic of the southern part of south Patagonia.

El registro arqueológico de cazadores-recolectores localizado en ambientes de altura ha sido ampliamente debatido en la literatura mundial. Las discusiones se han centrado en su funcionalidad, cronología, complementariedad con ambientes bajos y significado en los procesos de poblamiento de distintas regiones. Los Andes meridionales cuentan con un amplio espacio cordillerano dentro del cual se emplazan una serie de sitios arqueológicos localizados a aproximadamente 3.000 m snm. Las duras condiciones climáticas de estos ambientes, así como la presencia de estructuras habitacionales, despertó el interés de los investigadores en relación con su funcionalidad, tiempo de permanencia y manejo de los recursos locales. En este trabajo se presenta la información zooarqueológica de cuatro sitios de altura localizados en un sector de los Andes meridionales, en el sur de la provincia de Mendoza, Argentina: El Indígeno, Los Peuquenes, Laguna del Diamante S-4 y Risco de los Indios. El material arqueofaunístico analizado es evaluado a la luz de las características ambientales, los costos de transporte y la funcionalidad de estas locaciones en relación con los circuitos de explotación anual. Los resultados muestran un uso de taxones restringido, con un fuerte énfasis en el guanaco, y un escaso transporte de fauna desde y hacia pisos ecológicos localizados a menor altitud. Todo esto sugiere el uso de los sitios de manera residencial y no como lugares de obtención de presas para su procesamiento y traslado hacia localizaciones más bajas.

Ceremonial architecture of late precontact (A.D. 600-1500) societies of Puerto Rico consists of stone-lined plazas and ball courts (bateys,). Archaeologists use these structures to signify the onset of hierarchical “chiefly” polities and to interpret their regional organization. Problematically, little consideration is given to the costs of their physical construction and the associated organizational implications at local and regional scales. In this paper, we use data gathered through geoarchaeological field investigations to develop labor estimates for the plaza and bateys at the site of Tibes—one of the largest precolumbian ceremonial centers in Puerto Rico. The estimates provide a basis for addressing how these features were constructed at the site and are considered within the broader organizational contexts of incipient polities in the island's south-central region between A.D. 600 and A.D. 1200.

The increasing use of massively parallel sequencing in the study of current and ancient human populations has enabled new approaches to bioanthropological and archaeological issues; however, its application to archaeological samples requires the use of technologies that are not easily accessible outside US and European research centers. To obtain an ancient mitogenome in Argentina, several institutions collaborated to apply massively parallel sequencing and bioinformatic methodologies on an enriched ancient DNA library of an individual from the Beagle Channel (dated 1504 ± 46 years BP), a region of particular interest for this line of inquiry. Phylogenetic reconstruction showed a close relationship with a Yamana from Navarino Island and an individual from Hoste Island (Chilean Antarctic Province): the three shared an ancestor who lived between 203 and 4,439 years ago. These three have mutations reported only for current and ancient individuals from the Beagle Channel, and their relationship with the rest of the D1g sub-haplogroups is unclear. The results obtained here are consistent with the reduction of mobility in the Fuegian archipelago around 4500 years BP that has been proposed based on archaeological evidence.

Both long-distance and localized chemical relationships in pottery and their implications for studies of Gulf lowland exchange can be examined with instrumental neutron activation. New pottery samples from Classic period (A.D. 300-900) contexts in the western lower Papaloapan basin were subjected to chemical compositional analysis. The sample represents three groups, coarse utility jars, common orange slipped serving bowls, and fine paste, higher-value white slipped serving bowls. At an intraregional scale, four localities in the western basin were sampled, but not all proved to be compositionally distinct. A mangrove zone pottery group contrasts compositionally with groups from riverine farmlands to the west. At a larger interregional scale, pottery from neighboring geomorphological areas as well as distant alluvial systems up and down the Gulf lowlands yielded chemically distinct groups. Considerable intraregional trade is suggested, but little is evident at the interregional scale. The interregional analysis is the first integrated overview of Gulf lowland ceramic chemical compositions, and the intraregional analysis begins assessment of Classic period pottery production and exchange within the western lower Papaloapan basin. Methodologically, we use sand sources in the region to determine if differences in tempering of pastes are likely to account for differences in compositional groups.

The origin of the Codex Borgia has been under discussion since it was first published. Although there exists a consensus that it, along with the other manuscripts of the Borgia Group, corresponds to the Mixteca-Puebla style, opinions vary as to its specific provenience within the area where this style is found. The majority of the arguments proposed involve stylistic and iconographic similarities between elements represented in the codex and those found on ceramics and Prehispanic mural paintings, particularly in the Valleys of Puebla-Tlaxcala and Tehuacán, but a direct relation with any aspect of material culture remains tenuous. Recent archaeological excavations in Cholula have provided a large collection of peculiar Postclassic figurines that appear to correspond to the ritual "jars" represented on various pages of the codex. Because the distribution of these pieces is limited to the Puebla-Tlaxcala Valley, and they have not been reported for other parts of Mesoamerica, we suggest that their repeated occurrence in the Codex Borgia provides yet more evidence to claim a Puebla-Tlaxcala origin for this document.

In the Maya region scholars have long noted the connection between solar alignments and radial pyramids at sites such as Chickén Itzá, Dzibilchaltún, and Uaxactún. Just. 26.5 km west-southwest of Chichén Itzá, the site of Ikil also contains a massive radial pyramid, known as Structure 1. In May 2011 investigations at Ikil revealed that this pyramid also figures in a solar hierophany-the sunrise over the pyramid's summit on the days of the solar zenith transit. What is unique, however, is that the observation point for this event is situated inside of a cave to the west of the pyramid. In this paper, evidence is presented that suggests the location of Structure 1 was dictated by the orientation of the cave, and that the physical and ceremonial linkage of these two landscape features created the cosmic hub of Ikil. Furthermore, it is argued that ceremonies marking the solar zenith-a day largely ignored in Euro-Christian calendars-would have been enacted by the ruling class as a way to formalize and sanctify the annual rebirth of the agricultural cycle, while publicly displaying their connection to the divine and thus legitimizing their position of high religious and social status.

Long-term excavations at two large La Quemada hinterland habitation sites provide data for developing population estimates based on ethnographic studies. Calculations based in part on ratio constants of roofed floor area to excavated space are applied to 183 habitation sites in the valley measured in 1974. These data reveal not only the range of population in the immediate valley, but also in major population aggregates around La Quemada during the period of major occupation (ca. A.D. 700). The mean population within the La Quemada core area is estimated as 6,867 (between 4,578 and 9,155) individuals, with an average population density of 38 persons per km2. Population density within three of the largest nearby settlement aggregates ranges around a mean of 209, 136, and 117 individuals respectively per square kilometer.

The first systematic research on the funerary record at the Río Bote 1 (RB1) rockshelter, located next to the Bote River, a tributary of the Santa Cruz River in southern Patagonia, has revealed at least three human burial events dating to the very early Late Holocene and one dating to the middle Late Holocene. The RB1 site appears to have been used for both subsistence and inhumation activities. All of the burials uncovered postdate the deposition of a prominent volcanic ash layer. Technological information indicates that RB1 was used by groups that were also using spaces to the west and south. Mortuary evidence indicates connections with groups living in areas extending from the Última Esperanza region to the Pali Aike volcanic field, at least at the beginning of the Late Holocene. The selection of the same place for multiple burials may explain why so few human burials are known in southern Patagonia from the beginning of the Late Holocene and earlier periods, as it is possible that sites like RB1 are yet to be discovered.

In a study of Middle Preclassic (Conchas phase) ceramics from the site of La Blanca, Love (1989) derived a sequence of four subphases. Here, the focus is on 431 prismatic obsidian blades excavated from the same deposits in order to discern if patterns of change can be discovered in this lithic industry. For each blade, recorded attributes describe blade dimensions and edge wear, as observed through low-power microscopy. Chronological controls were set by ceramic associations. Through the sequence, blades became smaller and more fragmentary, due, we hypothesized, to an increasing scarcity of obsidian. As predicted from these trends, we found that wear patterns became more pronounced through time, and use of a bipolar technology became increasingly important for removing (rejuvenating) worn lateral edges. A definite obsidian-blade sequence emerged, which was investigated through linear discriminant-function analyses.

Early Spaniards reported that the Inka state organized public celebrations involving extravagant banquets and drinking, in addition to singing and dancing. Cieza de León and Cobo noted that large number of llamas were slaughtered for such special celebrations. Although it is understood that food was an integral part of the festivities and that the Inka state used food as a political tool, until recently the meal preparation details for such large gatherings remained unknown. Recent archaeological excavation at Tambo Viejo revealed the presence of earthen ovens, similar in fashion to contemporary pachamanka, that were used for cooking at Inka state public celebrations.

Settlement scaling theory predicts that higher site densities lead to increased social interactions that, in turn, boost productivity. The scaling relationship between population and land area holds for several ancient societies, but as demonstrated by the sample of 48 sites in this study, it does not hold for the Northern Maya Lowlands. Removing smaller sites from the sample brings the results closer to scaling expectations. We argue that applications of scaling theory benefit by considering social interaction as a product not only of proximity but also of daily life and spatial layouts.

This study examines the ritual and socioeconomic significance of animals in ceremonial contexts at Kaminaljuyu, Guatemala. Kaminaljuyu was once the largest and most politically powerful highland Maya center. We compare faunal remains from different contexts, including burials and dedicatory offerings in and around monumental features, to better understand the role of animals in these deposits. We then compare ceremonial activities across Mesoamerica to identify similarities alluding to widely recognized practices. Late and Terminal Preclassic (350 BC–AD 250) ceremonies at Kaminaljuyu contain some of the earliest marine fish recovered from a Maya highland site, demonstrating the ability of early elites to obtain exotic species for special events. Dogs, including perhaps the first evidence for Preclassic hairless dogs in Guatemala, appear in deposits that resemble canine sacrificial offerings in central Mexico. The new faunal data in this study provide a novel perspective on Kaminaljuyu's sociopolitical role in the region.