In 2019, while conducting a survey of the Carabamba River valley (ca. 150–3,325 m asl) in northern Peru, we identified and surveyed a group of five unreported geoglyphs. Their location and iconography suggest that they date from the Formative period (1800–200 BC) and that they were possibly associated with a form of fertility ritual.

Seven AMS radiocarbon dates (1950–1525 cal BC) from controlled contexts demonstrate Early Formative period occupation in coastal Oaxaca, Mexico. These dated elements from the site of La Consentida include hearths, occupational surfaces, carbon adhering to pottery from a midden, and human bone collagen processed with XAD purification. They were excavated from primary contexts and do not represent redeposited materials. An eighth sample, dated to the Middle Formative period, is considered postoccupational. The diversity of dated deposits and features, their distribution, and their overlapping calibrated ranges indicate settlement by an initial Early Formative period village.

This article presents new settlement survey data from the Izapa center of southern Mesoamerica, a site long known for its corpus of low-relief stelae. These data, which track the changing distribution of population from 1000 BC–AD 100, indicate that the city's population peaked at 5,725 inhabitants. Izapa was the capital of a regional kingdom with more than 40 lower-order monumental centers and a territory that covered at least 450 sq. km. Recent AMS dates confirm the apogee of the kingdom at 300–100 BC, and volcanological reconstruction suggests that a Tacaná volcano eruption corresponds with archaeological evidence of political and demographic disruptions to the kingdom. Patterns at Izapa are contextualized in terms of Inomata and colleagues’ (2014) call for redating Kaminaljuyu, placing the erection of stelae there to after 100 BC, as well as Love's (2018) and Mendelsohn's (2018) responses in this journal. Izapa was an integrated kingdom from 700–100 BC, and “Izapa-style” sculptures were a novel medium of political communication introduced after the polity had been functioning without them for centuries. If Inomata and colleagues' (2014) proposal is correct that low-relief stelae were erected only after 100 BC at other centers in southern Mesoamerica, this was centuries after the practice was established at Izapa.

The marine subsistence economy of the prehistoric people of northern Chile was heavily reliant on fiber technology for the components of nets, lines, and tethers. Despite the significance and the remarkable preservation of fiber artifacts along the arid Atacama coastline, these components have received little direct attention. This case study of fiber artifacts from the Caleta Vitor archaeological complex is the first broad overview of techniques, material usage/preference, and fiber-processing conventions at a northern Chilean Archaic period site. The data presented in this paper indicate gradual change in material preferences over time, shifting from locally available vegetal fiber, which dominates the Archaic period, with small amounts of camelid fiber, to the predominance of camelid fiber in the Late Formative period. This change coincides with the appearance of more complex weaving techniques indicating participation in the previously established textile tradition proposed by Ulloa (2008) as stretching from the Azapa Valley to the Loa River.