On April 27, 2002, while walking in the garden of his home in Cambridge, one of the premier American archaeologists of the twentieth century was taken from us suddenly, by massive heart failure, at the age of 89. Gordon R. Willey was appointed the first Charles P. Bowditch Professor of Central American and Mexican Archaeology and Ethnology at Harvard University in 1950 at the tender age of 37, without ever having set foot in Mesoamerica. In later years Willey happily introduced himself to people as a “Maya archaeologist,” but his importance transcends his long and distinguished career in that area.

Despite more than two decades of extensive and highly productive research programs by a series of institutions and individuals focusing specifically on the Preclassic archaeology of the Belize River Valley, understanding and appreciation of the region's ceramic tradition and interpreted culture history today effectively remain based on, and dependent on, unmodified conceptual formulations from the 1940s through the 1960s. These incorporate a view of the zonal Preclassic ceramic sequence as the physical embodiment of a uniform and even unitary local producer–consumer system tied directly and genetically to the later Classic and Postclassic Maya inhabitants of the region. In this paper, we question both these assumptions and the soundness of the conceptual constructs (ceramic complexes) and framework (ceramic sequence) on which they are based. We examine the content and analyze the composition of the Belize Valley Middle and Late Preclassic ceramic complexes as dynamic, composite, producer–consumer circulation assemblages rather than as static, synthetic archaeological units, and we conclude that they reflect a much more complex socioeconomic, cultural, and sociopolitical landscape than has yet been recognized and appreciated by other investigators. We propose the presence and interaction within the valley during the Middle and Late Preclassic of at least two distinct dialectal, ethnic, or ethnolinguistic groups, and we argue that the local cultural tradition emerging in the area by the ceramic Protoclassic represented a ranked amalgamation of these. The paper also presents the first comprehensive and complete type-variety typologies for the Middle through Late Preclassic ceramic complexes of the upper Belize Valley, incorporating both new data from the 1980s and 1990s and substantive revisions of earlier work by J. E. S. Thompson and James C. Gifford.

Wooden figurines, idols, and scepters are commonly depicted as paraphernalia in Classic-period ritual iconography, but few examples of these objects exist. In 1999, a small wooden figurine was recovered from a cave near the Late Classic center of Muklebal Tzul in the Maya Mountains of southern Belize. It probably represents an ancestral deity or historical figure. Its recovery from a cave is appropriate. Caves functioned as arenas for legitimizing ancestral relationships through mediation with earth-focused deities. Combining analysis and interpretation of the archaeological context with a reading of documentary sources, we review the role of ancestor figurines in Maya society and offer interpretations of how this and similar objects functioned in Classic-period Maya religion and ritual.

Pre-Hispanic America's most celebrated literary monument, the Popol Wuj, was written in the 1550s, although our only copy is an early-eighteenth-century text by the Dominican friar Francisco Ximénez. We lack direct information about the Popol Wuj's authors. Some scholars have proposed that the indigenous scribe Diego Reinoso was its creator. However, Reinoso wrote another K'iche' document, the Título de Totonicapan, and a close examination of that text learns that he disapproved of the political faction represented in the Popol Wuj. Its advocates were a lineage called Nim Ch'okoj, Great Kinkajou. Dennis Tedlock has suggested that the Nim Ch'okoj were the Popol Wuj's composers. They introduce themselves at the end of the text as the Fathers and Mothers of the Word. A scrutiny of both documents and early Colonial papers reveals that, by the 1550s, a political conflict was under way between the two highest offices in the K'iche' power structure: the Keeper of the Mat and the Vice-Keeper of the Mat. The Popol Wuj seems to have supported the first faction, and the Título de Totonicapan supported the second faction.5 My translation here is tentative. Wachib'al(al) means “image” or “depiction” but also “representative.” The author may actually refer to a drawing in a pictographic document or may want to say that, through these offices, the three main chinamit were represented in the power structure of Ismachi, and later in that of Q'umarkaj.

Blowguns (or blow-guns) have been depicted on pre-Columbian pottery, mentioned in Maya myths, and are still used to hunt small game and birds in many parts of the Americas. This paper surveys the history of the blowgun in Mesoamerica and documents the manufacture and use of the blowgun in Jacaltenango, Guatemala, where it is used to hunt birds.

Like other rulers in the ancient world, Classic Maya kings needed to legitimize their power. They did so by adopting the name of the sun deity, K'inich, thus identifying themselves with the celestial authority of a potent supernatural being. However, Classic Maya kings used the name of the sun god in two different ways: to name the individual self of the king, and to identify his socially defined person. The individual self of a king was always linked to a defined aspect of the sun god. The person of the king was always referred to using a simple K'inich prefixed to a rigid designator. These two modes of reference also show differences in usage. Prefixed K'inich name elements are mostly omitted in external references because they refer to a socially defined person who is not perceived as such in antagonistic areas. But the K'inich referring to a king's self is employed in external references.

This paper examines Nahua words found in both the Maya codices and the monumental texts. These words, spelled with syllabic signs, occur for the most part in contexts associated with foreign influence: Nahuatl deity names and words for “helmet,” “tribute,” and “heart.” One word—“and then”—is a conjunction used frequently in discourse. Sound correspondences between these loan words and the Nahua sources suggest an Eastern Nahua dialect as the likely source during the Classic period. Thus, Mexican influence in the Maya area, frequently attributed directly to Teotihuacan, may in fact have come by way of Nahua-speakers settled in the Gulf region. The epigraphic evidence establishes that Nahua speakers were influential in Mesoamerica far earlier than previously believed.

Recent research into the Teuchitlan tradition continues to improve our understanding of western Mexico's relationship to the rest of Mesoamerica. The tradition is defined on the basis of its distinctive public architecture, yet little research has been done to explore the significance of these temples for political organization. I propose that a more emic analysis of the political system can clarify the relationship among architecture, ritual, and political elites in Late Formative (300 b.c.–a.d. 200) Jalisco. I make use of indigenous ceramic dioramas; recent excavation data from Llano Grande, Jalisco; ethnohistoric accounts of the Xocotl Huetzi festival of the Postclassic and Contact periods; and ethnographic accounts of similar celebrations to propose a maize-focused interpretation of ritual and rulership in the Teuchitlan tradition.

Mesoamerican studies have long focused on the well-known pre-Columbian game ullamaliztli, its architectural context, and its possible variants. But other games can be identified, among them the stick game from Teotihuacan and a handball game depicted at Dainzù. Despite a large chronological gap, the handball game at Dainzu can be related to the present pelota mixteca, taking into account other artifacts. It may also be associated with the palangana-type ballcourts, thus modifying our interpretations of the ballgame architectural context.