The precolonial communities of the Caribbean archipelago were not insular. The discontinuous natural resource distribution, the maritime orientation of the Caribbean Amerindians, and the complexities of regional social interaction ensured that the precolonial Caribbean islandscape was dynamic and highly interconnected. This report explores the socicultural behavior and intercommunity exchange relationships of the inhabitants of the Lesser Antilles. It combines related archaeological case studies encompassing the procurement and exchange of: (1) raw materials and utilitarian goods with a wide spatial and social distribution, (2) goods with high stylistic visibility and presumed social function as markers of identity or status, and (3) prestige goods with profound ceremonial value. The study of these objects reveals overarching social and ideological dimensions to Caribbean life. Data suggest that social relationships manifest themselves at different levels and through distinct rhythms while taking on various material guises during the Ceramic age Amerindian occupation of the Caribbean islands (400 B.C. to A.D. 1492). While there is great potential in unraveling interaction networks through the careful study of distribution patterns, the incorporation of ethnohistoric and ethnographic information is imperative to elucidate the web of social relationships underlying these material manifestations.

Market economies are notoriously difficult to identify in the archeological record. This is particularly true in the subtropical Maya lowlands of Mexico, Guatemala, and Belize because most utilitarian items and consumables were made of highly perishable materials. We explore the hypothesis that ancient marketplaces can be identified through analysis of chemical residues in soils from open and easily accessible spaces in and about ancient Maya cities. We compared soil chemical signatures from a credible ancient marketplace location in the specialized trade center of Chunchucmil, Yucatan, Mexico to those from a modern marketplace at Antigua, Guatemala. We found extraordinarily high concentrations of phosphorus and zinc in the soil of Chunchucmil's proposed marketplace and the same high concentrations correlate well with food preparation and vegetable sales areas at the modern marketplace. These methods hold promise in resolving the vexing question of how large ancient Maya urban populations were sustained.

This report examines 10,845 lithic artifacts from the rapidly abandoned city of Aguateca, Guatemala, to elucidate elite artistic and craft production in Classic Maya society. The methods used include high-power microwear analysis. The results suggest that significant numbers of Maya elite, both men and women, engaged in artistic creation and craft production, often working in both attached and independent contexts. The royal family and other elite households produced many artistic and craft items, including wood carvings and hide or leather goods. The scribe inhabiting Structure M8-8 carved stelae for the ruler, and the high-status courtier/scribe living in Structure M8-4 emphasized the production of shell and bone objects and other royal regalia in a courtly setting. Clearly, Aguateca was a center of part-time production of both utilitarian and luxury goods as well as of consumption. Classic Maya elite men and women artists/craft producers possessed multiple social identities and roles, which in turn implies a more flexible and integrated system of Classic Maya elite participating in attached and independent craft production more than is usually proposed.

Despite the political fragmentation of Central Mexico following the breakup of the Teotihuacan state, the Epiclassic Coyotlatelco ceramic style was widespread in the Basin of Mexico and adjoining areas. Instrumental neutron activation analysis (INAA) was used to determine sources of Coyotlatleco pottery from Teotihuacan in collections made by the Teotihuacan Mapping Project and from rural sites in the Teotihuacan Valley. A sample of Mazapan, Early Postclassic pottery from rural sites also was analyzed. The INAA results indicate that most Coyotlatelco serving vessels consumed at Teotihuacan and in rural villages in the Teotihuacan Valley were locally made with few imports from elsewhere in the Basin. Following the decline of the Teotihuacan state Epiclassic polities in the Basin of Mexico had an “inward” economic orientation. During the Early Postclassic rural villagers continue to mostly consume locally made Mazapan pottery. We discuss implications of these findings for models of the Postclassic political economy and the Classic to Postclassic transition.

This report presents the results of a compositional study using laser ablation-inductively coupled plasma-mass spectrometry (LA-ICP-MS) to examine central Mexican obsidian procurement at four sites dating to the Formative and Classic periods. The study demonstrates LA-ICP-MS to be a highly accurate obsidian sourcing technique, with results that are directly comparable to instrumental neutron activation analysis. It documents a shift circa 600 B.C. in which Middle Formative villages in Tlaxcala began to obtain obsidian almost exclusively from sources located in the Mesa Central, when they had previously obtained approximately 50 percent from Mesa Central sources and 50 percent from sources located in the Sierra Madre Oriental. This shift broadly coincided with the development of large regional centers in Tlaxcala-Puebla and suggests a linkage between the local political evolution occurring at this time and increased interactions with the Mesa Central economic sphere, including the Basin of Mexico. Obsidian workshop dump deposits next to Teotihuacan’s Moon Pyramid, dating to a millennium later, demonstrate the continued reliance on predominantly Mesa Central sources but also diversified procurement that drew on several sources. The Teotihuacan deposits exhibit the preferential utilization of particular sources depending on the types of implements being produced.

Alternative models of residential mobility have been proposed to explain the development and spread of Tiwanaku influence across the south central Andes. Within the Osmore drainage, the rich Moquegua Valley has been hypothesized as the site of a significant colonization event (or events) whereby both the natural and human landscape was transformed and integrated into the expansive Tiwanaku state. In this research, the impact of altiplano colonization is inferred from temporal and spatial patterns of genetic variation within and among native groups. Mitochondrial DNA haplogroup frequencies are used as the measure of genetic variation. The haplogroup data are determined for Moquegua Valley archaeological samples (Chen Chen site; A.D. 785-1000) and are compared to published data from 58 other ancient and contemporary native groups. The results support temporal and spatial genetic continuity in the south central Andes for the last 1,000 years. Contemporary Aymara speaking groups are exceptions to this pattern, perhaps because of recent population decline. While the altiplano colonization hypothesis is not rejected, moderate gene flow and relatively large population sizes likely characterized much of south central Andean prehistory regardless of the contribution from Tiwanaku colonization events.

Figurines and figurine fragments excavated at Aguateca, Petén, Guatemala, have unprecedented contextual information. Because the site's epicenter was rapidly abandoned, we have recovered whole and reconstructible figurines from floor contexts in elite residences. In contrast to most Maya sites, these figurines are part of assemblages that were in use or storage when the structures were abandoned, providing a unique opportunity to investigate their function and use. In addition, numerous figurine fragments were recovered from middens associated with these structures. In conjunction with the figurines found on floors, these fragments point to a domestic use of the figurines. The distributions of the in situ figurines in the elite residences suggest that they were used and possibly made by the women of these households. The study of this data set contributes to our understanding of Late Classic elite household activities and social and gender roles. A preponderance of male figurines, many of them warriors, may be related to this center's frequent engagements in warfare.

Urban settlement in the western lower Papaloapan River basin in the Gulf lowlands was dispersed and likely employed intensive gardening near domiciles. Land surrounding homes also may have played a symbolic role in these agrarian societies. Water works—formal ponds associated with temple platforms and other prominent structures as well as with many residential mounds—support the idea of symbolic as well as practical functions in land use around buildings. Dispersed occupation occurs in low elevations suited to recessional planting, a technique that takes advantage of dry season ground moisture in low areas where rain and flood waters recede as the water table drops. We analyze elevational zones to show greater settlement density in the low-lying Blanco River delta than in higher elevations upriver. Analysis of distances between archaeological residences and wetlands and drainages shows that residences generally were close to seasonally flooded areas. We also highlight anthropogenic qualities in the alluvial landscape, offering a land use perspective distinct from other views of agricultural intensification. The settlement pattern is compatible with Mesoamerican forms of urbanism.

Temples provide sanctuary, a home for the gods, a place to worship, a stage for ceremonies, a depository for offerings, and a place to redistribute goods. Finally, temples provide an arena for political competition. The role of Maya temples, however, is not so clear. Inscriptions, when present, detail who built some temples, but not if nonroyals built them, if they were built for specific gods, and why the Maya built so many. The presence of several temples in any given center might indicate that various groups built them and that they served as arenas to compete for status, prestige, and power. If this were the case, then people may have had a choice at which temple to worship and support. To explore the politics of temple construction, I compare temple size, location, construction patterns, and ritual deposits at temples at the secondary center of Yalbac, Central Belize. Preliminary results from temple looters' trenches have exciting implications regarding temple histories in the southern Maya Lowlands during the Late Classic period (ca. A.D. 550-850).

Prehispanic socioeconomic organization along the Andean coast is often understood with the “horizontality” model. In this scenario, coastal communities engaged in specialized economic activities and exchanged for products of other specialized communities. Throughout the lower reaches of the Osmore drainage on the south coast of Peru, settlement distribution and both residential and mortuary assemblages of Late Intermediate period Chiribaya partially reflect this pattern. However, investigations at the site of Wawakiki do not support a strict pattern of specialization, demonstrating that some communities along the intervalley coast emphasized a diversified production strategy. This practice appears late in the Chiribaya cultural sequence established for the Ilo valley, and it appears to have constituted part of a socioeconomic response to increasing hardships between about A.D. 1200-1400. Late Chiribaya populations responded to the combined effects of demographic growth and diminishing agricultural potential by (1) expanding into the relatively unpopulated intervalley coast, and (2) placing greater emphasis on diversified community level production along the coast. These results indicate that the variation observed in socio-economic organization should be interpreted within a more historically contingent and dynamic framework than that offered by a general model alone.

The site of Yaxchilán (Chiapas, Mexico) is one of the best-known Classic Maya cities, despite relatively little stratigraphic excavation. The dynastic history of the site is recorded in numerous legible inscriptions and was worked out more than 30 years ago by Tatiana Proskouriakoff (1963, 1964) in her epoch-making historical interpretations. A historical puzzle left by Proskouriakoff and later investigators is a 10-year gap (A.D. 742-752) between the death of a Late Classic king, Shield Jaguar II, and the accession of his successor and son, Bird Jaguar IV. Various explanations have been offered for this interregnum, often suggesting a rival heir to the throne, as Bird Jaguar was the son of his father's late, secondary, foreign wife. Nevertheless, no evidence has been put forth concerning a child by the king and his earlier, primary wife, a woman known as Lady Xok. This paper reexamines the epigraphic evidence by applying what is now known about Classic Maya grammar and the canons of Classic Maya literature to an inscription on the house of Lady Xok. Viewed from this perspective, a well-known inscription yields the name of the missing heir, and other evidence suggests the nature of his fate and the reason he did not take the throne.

Maya Blue is an unusual blue pigment consisting of a clay-organic complex of indigo and the unusual clay mineral palygorskite (also called attapulgite). Used on pottery, sculpture, and murals from the Preclassic to Late Colonial periods largely in Mesoamerica, blue was the color of sacrifice and ritual. Did the palygorskite used to make Maya Blue come from a restricted source in Yucatán like Shepard, Arnold, Arnold and Bohor believed, or from widespread sources like Littmann argued? This report presents the results of a pilot study comparing INAA and LA-ICP-MS analysis of 33 palygorskite samples collected from different parts of the Maya area. These data reveal that it is possible to discriminate mineral source locations, and that it should be possible to determine whether the palygorskite used to make Maya Blue came from widespread sources or was traded widely from one or a few sources. Consideration of contextual information such as agency, landscape and language suggest that the Shepard/Arnold/Bohor hypothesis is more plausible than that of Littmann. No matter which hypothesis is supported, however, each has significant implications for the relationship of the diffusion of Maya Blue (or the knowledge of its production) to Maya social organization.

The introduction of the type-variety system as a means of classifying Maya ceramics had considerable success in promoting communication among researchers. There was hope that it would prove to be possible to devise a single unitary system of ceramic analysis based on type-variety. We believe that such a hope was doomed to failure. Ceramic complexity is too great to be subsumed in any single typological system. Attempts to incorporate the many variables involved within a type-variety analysis have usually resulted in neglect of some and the loss of important information. Instead, we advocate the use of multiple systems of classification. We suggest that at least three separate classifications should be done based on (1) surface finish, (2) vessel shapes (forms), and (3) pastes. For ceramics having highly decorated vessels, another separate classification of decoration is desirable. A final and vitally important objective is to investigate covariation among the classifications of shape, surface, decoration, and paste. We believe that these relationships can be seen more clearly by the use of multiple classifications than by incorporating all into a single typological system in which such variation is all too often hidden.

This paper presents the results of a recent petrographic study of Monte Albán grayware pottery. Using INEGI bedrock maps, optical mineralogy, and sedimentary petrology techniques, I demonstrate that the organization of gray-ware production changed greatly through time at Monte Albán. During the Late-Terminal Formative period (Monte Albán I-II), the majority of the gray wares consumed at Monte Albán were probably imported to this hilltop center from some distance. Furthermore, I found the paste composition of this pottery was highly variable, suggesting that many small-scale part-time specialists were engaged in gray-ware production at this time. With the transition to the Classic period (Monte Albán III-IV), the organization of gray-ware production may have changed dramatically and nearly all of the gray wares recovered from Monte Albán were probably produced at this hilltop center. At the same time, we see extensive evidence of specialized gray-ware production at Monte Albán from both survey and excavation data.

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.

This paper presents the results of obsidian characterization analyses for Middle and Late Postclassic sites in the Yautepec Valley of Morelos, central Mexico. A large sample (N = 390) of obsidian blades from excavated domestic contexts at the site of Yautepec and from surface collected contemporary sites were assigned to a quarry source using X-ray fluorescence (XRF), and a subsample was also analyzed with instrumental neutron activation analysis (INAA). The use of XRF allowed the authors to expand the number of artifacts initially analyzed by INAA. These larger samples of sourced material prove essential to answering research questions regarding regional economies, particularly with regard to issues such as production and exchange. This study demonstrates the complementarity of XRF and INAA and the specific advantages inherent in each of these techniques.

Among the most ubiquitous “functionally identifiable” archaeological artifacts found in the Belize Valley are so-called ceramic “censer horns” or “three-prong incensarios,” sometimes glossed in the literature as “chile mashers” or “pestles.” Since their original identifications in the 1920s, they generally have been regarded as incensarios—or ceremonial objects—and used regularly as indicators of private or public ritual activities. The authors have examined many of these sherds and the restorable vessels represented; adhering residues; the reported depositional contexts; and their functional contextual associations, and submit that the vessels, sherds, and formal types represented had little if anything to do with ceremonial activities, public or private, but were in fact portable domestic braziers or braseros, and are primarily indicative of household or personal domestic activities rather than personal, familial, or corporate ritual observances. In actuality, two distinct classes of three-horned burner stands do exist and can be distinguished by appearance, intactness, and context. We describe and discuss both classes, and reiterate that although previously used to identify household shrines, religious activities, or other ideo-ritual observances, the majority of these vessels had little or nothing to do with anything other than warming beanpots, beans, or hands, or keeping away biting insects.

This report presents the results to date of a three-year archaeological investigation of the Postclassic and early Spanish Colonial Mixtec City of Yucundaa, PuebloViejo de Teposcolula, Oaxaca. It is the first project in Oaxaca to focus specifically on a major prehispanic city and its dramatic transformation during the first three decades of the colonial period. Given the dearth of conventional historical documentation relating to Yucundaa, the site itself serves as a “primary text,” the major source of information regarding its development and operation. The project attempts to define the major components of the settlement, and to examine each as comprehensively as possible in order to form a coherent view of the city's structure and function. At the conclusion of the third season, the encouraging results serve to demonstrate the utility of a well-planned excavation program that from its inception attempts to examine an entire Postclassic-Colonial settlement and the great transformation occurring there between A.D. 1521 and 1550. The research methods, as well as information and insights derived from the project, will provide stimulus and a useful model for the study of other Mesoamerican urban settlements.

A long-standing understanding of the Maya highlands suggests that the Postclassic period was characterized by increased warfare and conflict over the preceding Classic period, as seen in settlement patterns and defensive features. Based on recent archaeological work in Guatemala's western highlands, we argue that the archaeological evidence does not support this conclusion; defensive characteristics are also common in the Classic period. Drawing on examples from the Huista-Acatec region of the Cuchumatán Mountains, a typology of defensive characteristics is presented, along with comparative examples elsewhere in the Maya highlands. We suggest that these material correlates of defensibility, while showing that conflict was a central concern in both the Classic and Postclassic periods, lay the foundation for future studies of warfare in the Maya highlands. These insights have implications for the study of settlement pattern defensibility beyond the Maya highlands, including the construction and use of defensive feature typologies, the appropriateness of categorizing societies as either peaceful or militaristic, and the wider identification of cultural continuity.

In this bioarchaeological study of Classic Maya subsistence, we analyzed porotic hyperostosis, dental caries, and stable isotopes on skeletal remains recovered from 118 burials at Piedras Negras, Guatemala. The abundant porotic hyperostosis and dental caries at Piedras Negras, coupled with a high mean δ13C (mean -9.2 ± 1.0‰) provide evidence for high levels of maize consumption. The isotope data show slight differences among social status groups. Chronological changes in diet are more evident. The Early Classic (A.D. 350-625) skeletons are characterized by moderate heterogeneity in isotope ratios relative to skeletons of the Yaxche phase of the Late Classic (A.D. 625-750). In Yaxche phase skeletons, a prosperous time for Piedras Negras, δ13C and δ15N are homogenous, with an emphasis on dietary maize and terrestrial fauna. In Chacalhaaz times (A.D. 750-825) isotope signatures became much more diverse, with some individuals consuming less maize and/or more freshwater fish. We attribute these changes to significant perturbations in the system of food production and distribution at Piedras Negras in the late eighth century, a process that may have been linked to the disintegration of dynastic kingship at the site and its collapse.