The study in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics of the earliest history of native Latin Americans falls into two distinct periods. The first, associated with an interest in the ancient Mexican and Peruvian civilizations, can be divided into two stages: the 1920s to the early 1940s, when Soviet scholars first acquainted themselves with antiquities from the region and used them for historical parallels; and the late 1940s and early 1950s, when Soviet historians turned to an analysis of Latin American materials. The second period went through three stages: the first, from the early 1950s to the early 1960s, mainly was dominated by Yury Knorozov, who was engaged in deciphering the language of the Maya, and Rostislav Kinzhalov, who studied their art and culture. During the second stage, the early 1960s to the mid-1970s, more scholars and research institutions undertook studies of the early cultures of Latin America. The thematic range became wider as well, covering—besides Mesoamerica and the central Andean region—the Intermediate region and the Caribbean. The third stage, which started in the late 1970s and continues to the present day, witnesses ethnographers and archaeologists pooling their efforts in studying the region. There were several conferences in which specialists engaged in various fields of Latin American studies participated. Their contacts with foreign colleagues became wider; Soviet archaeologists and ethnologists took part in fieldwork in Latin America. The primary aims today are to introduce Soviet readers to archaeological materials from a number of cultural-historical regions (such as the southern fringes of Mesoamerica, Amazonia, the southern Andes, etc.), to detail Soviet studies of cultural complexes and historical processes in ancient America, and to compare them to the processes that took place in the Old World, with the aim of establishing shared historical “laws” and patterns.

Color differences between the original illustrations in the Codex Mendoza and the facsimile most widely used by scholars can be calibrated using a standard set of Munsell soil color charts. The discrepancies are potentially misleading about the presence and origin of some pigments used and the cultural significance of what is being shown in the document.

The last 20 years have seen a great increase in the awareness of and interest in ancient Maya graffiti. Such graffiti have recently been rediscovered at the site of Plan de Ayutla, in the Lacanjá river basin of Chiapas, and add to the known Maya corpus. The Plan de Ayutla graffiti exhibit a diversity similar to that found at other Maya sites, including production by specialists as well as non-specialists, and themes ranging from daily activities to ceremonial events.

Presentamos una estrategia metodológica para la ubicación temporal de estilos alfareros que combina el análisis contextual y el tratamiento estadístico del conjunto de datos radiocarbónicos disponible. El análisis abordó tres grupos de alfarerías con una amplia expresión regional e importantes afinidades estilísticas: San José, Hualfín y Molinos, representativos de los inicios del período Intermedio Tardío en la región valliserrana del Noroeste argentino. Se trabajó con una muestra exhaustiva de 28 fechados, evaluando diferentes grados de certeza en la asociación muestra-evento, y discriminando la asociación entre los eventos datados y los conjuntos cerámicos. Este tratamiento de los fechados permitió jerarquizar aquellos más confiables y seleccionar una submuestra cualitativamente superior. Los datos depurados se emplearon para evaluar la hipótesis sobre la cronología tardía de los estilos mediante modelación estadística bayesiana. Como resultado se pudieron detectar datos anómalos y ubicar el lapso aproximado de la producción de los conjuntos estilísticos entre los siglos once y catorce dC, momentos que se asocian a desarrollos locales preincaicos. Asimismo, se establecieron tendencias diferenciales entre los tres grupos estilísticos considerados, observando antigüedades mayores para Hualfín y Molinos.

We conducted a paleoparasitological study on sediment samples from two trash pits and a cesspool, collected during an archaeological assessment of a building located in the historic downtown of the city of Córdoba, Argentina. People have used these premises for residential and commercial purposes since the beginning of the seventeenth century, although the samples analyzed correspond to nineteenth-century contexts. Light microscopy examination revealed the presence of parasite eggs of whipworm (Trichuris sp.), possibly roundworm (Ascaris lumbricoides), and tapeworm (taeniid). The presence of these fecal-oral and food-borne transmitted helminths supports other lines of evidence that indicate poor sanitation and hygiene habits and inadequate food processing, which may have contributed to the high incidence and mortality of gastrointestinal diseases recorded at that time. The paleoparasitological data agree with the historical information on the health status of the populations that inhabited the city of Córdoba in the past, especially in relation to their habits and diet.

Production and consumption of pottery tempered with fresh volcanic ash peaked in the Late to Terminal Classic periods in the Maya lowlands. Differences in the type of volcanic inclusion and vessel form indicate that the pottery was produced in multiple locations by different groups of potters. In this article, we characterize pottery from household contexts at Baking Pot, Belize, using thin-section petrography and neutron activation analysis (NAA) to document mineralogical and chemical variability and determine provenance. The pottery was produced by adding fresh volcanic ash to a micritic clay. The petrographic and chemical data indicate that this paste recipe was produced locally in the Belize Valley. Variation in the paste recipes used is likely due to both production differences and postdepositional alteration. We argue that it is critical to use both petrography and NAA to understand pottery production and provenance in the Maya region.

Archaeological and ethnohistorical investigations in the south of the Colombian Plateau, in the Eastern Highlands, suggest that before European contact Guatavita was an important Muisca chiefdom—largely because of the prestige conferred by the presence of ceremonial centers in their territories, especially around the lakes in the hills surrounding the Guatavita-Guasca Valley. The fame of Lake Guatavita as the most important Muisca shrine was fueled by Spanish chronicles during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, which described it as the core of mass offering ceremonies or of lavish rituals for the chief's investiture, which fed both the story and the myth of El Dorado. This article presents the results of the archaeological survey done around the lake. The type and distribution of the material culture suggest that there was a shrine where small-scale ritual offerings took place, rather than conspicuous celebrations.

Traditionally, historians believed that taking captives was a major goal in Mexica warfare, and this tendency has even been given as a reason why the Spanish conquistadors defeated the Mexica. Although historians have largely revised these conclusions, the perception that captives were important to Aztec strategy and warfare persists. In this article I argue that the need for captives was not great enough to affect Aztec military strategy or battlefield conduct. First, rituals only needed a small number of victims, which could easily be acquired through the normal course of battle, and thus did not constitute a specific objective. Second, Mexica strategy focused on economic objectives, rather than captive taking. Finally, individual warriors were not well equipped to take prisoners. Although captives played a vital role in Mexica society, the practice should be thought of as opportunistic, rather than strategic.

Este trabajo se focaliza en el análisis espacial intrasitio del material lítico procedente de un montículo de tierra del sitio arqueológico Pago Lindo (Departamento de Tacuarembó, Uruguay). Se realizaron análisis tecnológicos y distribucionales (vecino más cercano, K de Ripley y modelos kernel) que permitieron caracterizar distintas fases de ocupación y uso del espacio entre 3021 ± 32 y 690 ± 35 años 14C aP. Se reconoció una tecnología predominantemente expeditiva en la que no se observaron cambios significativos a través del tiempo. Los resultados de los análisis distribucionales muestran patrones heterogéneos que responden al uso diferencial del espacio en la estructura monticular. Los patrones agrupados, observados principalmente en microlascas, permitieron identificar sectores donde se localizaron espacios domésticos cuya ocupación y gestión de residuos contribuyó al crecimiento del montículo. También se reconocieron sectores donde las agrupaciones del material lítico tienden principalmente a la aleatoriedad, y que corresponden a episodios constructivos planificados. Esto es congruente con el modelo de crecimiento espaciotemporal discontinuo de las estructuras monticulares —basado en la alternancia de momentos de abandono y momentos de uso— pero también con episodios constructivos intencionales.

Amazonia and the Guianas possess exceptional potential for ethnoarchaeological studies because of the precolumbian heritage of modern-day Amerindian people. Surprisingly, minimal scholarship of this nature has been conducted in the South American lowlands. On the French Guiana coast, Maillard, a small Palikur village, was abruptly abandoned in 1990. I initiated an ethnoarchaeological study to pinpoint important differences between the interpretation of archaeological and ethnographic data. I recorded the topography of features and remains, compiled an inventory of artifacts and the contents of discard areas, inventoried the cultivated trees present, and described the characteristics of the surroundings. After analyzing the data using classical methods of archaeological inference to obtain a complete reconstruction of the village and the customs of its inhabitants, I invited the chief into his now-abandoned village to describe the settlement as it was while inhabited. In the twenty years since, I have made several visits to track the natural degradation of the site. This ethnoarchaeological approach shows that archaeologists dealing with field data can make many mistakes. Conversely, ethnographic accounts are distorted by the cultural rules and interdictions of interviewees. This experiment suggests the need for prudence in our interpretations and hypotheses, especially in the tropical lowlands, where archaeological preservation is particularly poor.