Walter W. Taylor, especially through his 1948 monograph A Study of Archeology, has been a major influence on the theory and methods of American archaeology. His contribution has recently been assessed in a book by a number of students and colleagues, but none of them had first-hand experience with Walt in a fieldwork setting. This is an account of personal experiences with Walt Taylor, beginning in the graduate program at Southern Illinois University (SIU), but focused on a summer National Science Foundation (NSF) project in Zacatecas in 1964 that was designed to study Chalchihuites/Chichimec interactions in a frontier area, and what that fieldwork experience revealed about Walt Taylor as an archaeologist and as a person.

This study deals with pottery production in Huáncito, a Tarascan or Purepecha community in Michoacán, Mexico. The information I have obtained by direct observation during a quarter-century of ethnoarchaeological fieldwork in this town allows me to generate hypotheses to aid in the interpretation of the archaeological record. The main goal of this study is to assist in the interpretation of the material record of ceramic production by means of ethnographic analogy. The observations conducted over a long period of time have given me an invaluable diachronic perspective for understanding many aspects of social change and cultural continuity, including patterns of ceramic manufacture, use, and discard, as well as the use of domestic space and the archaeological visibility of potting activities in the context of the households.

This paper introduces the articles that comprise this Special Issue on Izapa. First, we review early reporting and assessments of Izapa's monuments as well as archaeological investigations undertaken at the site during the twentieth century. Next, we describe more recent developments in interpretation and new archeological excavations and survey data collected during the past two decades. The papers in this Special Issue present new information that contribute to our evolving understanding of Izapa during the millennium that stretches from the Middle Formative period through the Middle Classic period (700 b.c.–a.d. 600). They serve as a status report on our understanding of the still largely enigmatic ancient kingdom, its regional structure, and connections to contemporaneous Isthmian sites.

Two burials excavated at Izapa in 1963 have special green obsidian artifacts made at Teotihuacan. We describe the contexts and contents of these burials and consider the significance of their contents in light of Spence's (1996) model of Teotihuacan exchange of obsidian objects. We interpret the Izapa artifacts as gifted objects indicative of the political independence of Izapa in Middle Classic times.

Flat and curved sticks with longitudinal facial grooves were dredged from the Sacred Cenote at Chichen Itza in the early 1900s. They are similar to specimens recovered from the North American Southwest, where a suggested function was for defense against atlatl darts. By accepting this interpretation, Mesoamerican archaeologists identified such artifacts as fending sticks. Hassig (1992:112–114, 126–127, 2001:810–811) disputes this role, arguing that the sticks were specialized short swords for close fighting. This sword interpretation is not supported by my analysis of the Chichen Itza artifacts or the mural evidence at that site. Defense against atlatl darts is possible but unlikely to have occurred in warfare and, in any case, Maya/Toltec warriors carried shields to protect themselves against darts and other weapons. Fending darts in ritual fights such as an atlatl duel is a plausible scenario, perhaps to prove warrior mettle or as a gladiatorial blood sport. Another possible use is for subduing captives after military victory: a throwing stick to disable humans for later sacrifice.

Extensive investigation at the archaeological site of Izapa in southern Chiapas, Mexico, by the New World Archaeological Foundation yielded few burials at the site's core ceremonial precinct. Those found were located on the acropolis that supports Mound 30a and defines the north side of Izapa Group B. The majority of caches found in this zone date to the Protoclassic Hato and Itstapa phases (100 b.c.–a.d. 250). The shift in mortuary practices ca. 100 b.c. was accompanied by several changes to the site's occupation and architectural patterns. Study of these mortuary traditions provides important insights regarding the reconfiguration of Izapa's political organization at the turn of the millennium. Comparisons of mortuary practices at Izapa with those of neighboring civic-ceremonial centers El Ujuxte, Takalik Abaj, and Kaminaljuyu during the Preclassic and Protoclassic transitions contextualizes the practices found at Izapa at a regional level.

Los habitantes de Monte Albán estaban organizados en una sociedad jerárquica compleja; la integración a la sociedad estuvo determinada por factores sociales, económicos, políticos, así como de género y edad. El objetivo central del estudio radica en identificar la posición social de los niños y su integración como miembros de la comunidad. Con este fin analizamos los patrones funerarios y el uso del espacio en dos unidades domésticas de estatus medio/alto del periodo clásico (200–750 d.C.). De acuerdo con el análisis e interpretación de los resultados, los niños más pequeños fueron enterrados en los patios centrales, algunos en fosas y otros sobre cajetes cubiertos con otro plato. A partir de los cuatro a cinco años se inhumaban bajo el piso de los cuartos y sólo unos cuantos al interior de la tumba familiar. Esta metodología permite conocer las diferencias sociales y de género al interior del grupo social y quizá como reflejo también en la sociedad zapoteca.

We systematically compare methods used for topographical mapping of the archaeological site of Matacanela, located in the Tuxtla Mountains of Veracruz. Specifically, we compare the results of ArcMap 10.2–processed, publically accessible LiDAR-derived data, collected and distributed for no charge by the Instituto Nacional de Estadística y Geografía (INEGI) in Mexico–with the results of traditional topographical mapping, undertaken using a Sokkia total station. These INEGI data are coarse-grained in comparison to many of the pay-for-service LiDAR datasets that have been generated for Mesoamerican sites and regions, such as Caracol (Chase et al. 2011, 2012, 2014), Izapa (Rosenswig et al. 2013), and Tres Zapotes (Loughlin et al. 2016). Here, we consider the two approaches and the type and quality of data achieved by each, as well as the benefits and drawbacks of using either approach alone. We strongly encourage scholars working in Mexico to avail themselves of these data whenever appropriate.

In southern Mesoamerica, the period between 100 b.c. and a.d. 400 saw both the apogee and fall of several powerful Formative-period cities. Previous reports have suggested that conquest from the southeast may have prompted a unique decline at Izapa around 100 b.c., when many neighboring cities were prospering. Over the last five years, new archaeological data has emerged for the Formative to Classic period transition at Izapa. The present work summarizes these updates and highlights recent deposits excavated during the Izapa Household Archaeology Project. These updates raise questions about the Hato-phase intrusion hypothesis proposed by Lowe and colleagues (1982). I close with an alternative proposal that, beginning around 100 b.c., increased network participation and a change in the institution of kingship produced some of the dramatic changes in ceramics and burial patterns observed at the site.

This paper takes Izapa Stela 21, with its vivid portrayal of captive sacrifice, as the point of departure for an analysis of the ways in which acts of aggression were portrayed in Late Formative monuments from a region that includes the Pacific slope and adjacent highlands of Mexico and Guatemala. It considers the social significance of themes of captive sacrifice and violence, and their role within a larger iconographic system designed to accommodate the mutually reinforcing ideas of ideology and coercive power. While clearly laden with implications of political control, subjugation, deference, and fealty, the imagery also alludes to agricultural fertility, the arrival of rain, and broader notions of social order.

This paper reviews the limited evidence for the classification of the script attested at the site of Izapa. Sufficient data for assessing the nature of key formal traits exists, thanks to the more recent documentation of the sculptural corpus (Clark and Moreno 2007). After a review of the archaeological and historical linguistic context, the paper examines the history of research on the classification of the writing systems of Mesoamerica (Justeson 1986; Justeson and Mathews 1990; Justeson et al. 1985; Prem 1973), focusing on the Southeastern Tradition. Three diagnostic traits allow for a narrow assignation of Izapa's script, perhaps unsurprisingly, to the Greater Izapan or Maya-Izapa sub-tradition (Justeson and Mathews 1990; Justeson et al. 1985) of the Southeastern Tradition: the superfixed placement of the bar-and-dot numeral with respect to the day sign cartouche, positional notation for counting, and the use of day sign pedestals. Other traits include the conflation and embedding of signs. The paper concludes that the evidence is, at present, insufficient to distinguish between the two likely options, Mixe-Zoquean and Mayan. Finally, a preliminary signary is provided in the Appendix.

The importance of emblem glyphs to Maya studies has long been recognized. Among these are emblems that have yet to be conclusively matched to archaeological sites. The Water Scroll emblem glyph is one such example, although it appears numerous times in the Classic Maya written corpus between the sixth and the eighth centuries. These many references are found at a variety of sites across the lowlands, attesting to the importance of this ancient kingdom and the kings who carried this title. In the present paper, we review the epigraphic and archaeological evidence and propose that this may be the royal title of the kings who reigned from Altun Ha, in the east central Maya lowlands, in what is now Belize. In so doing, we also begin to reconstruct the dynastic history of the Water Scroll kings, from the vantage of both local and foreign sources.

This paper aims to situate the Late Formative urban center of Izapa, Chiapas, Mexico into the greater discussion of early Mesoamerican writing systems. The elites of Izapa produced elaborate carved stone monuments in an era that bore witness to the fluorescence of three great hieroglyphic programs—the Zapotec, the Epi-Olmec, and the Maya—and, yet, only a handful of glyphs appear in Izapa's monumental corpus. In a discussion that includes Izapan iconoglyphs, possible nominal phrases, and the calendrical inscriptions on Izapa Stela 27, Stela 9, and Miscellaneous Monument 60, this study juxtaposes Izapan visual culture with representational systems to the east and west, and ultimately explores the narrative domains of greatest salience to Izapa's elite: image and cyclical time.

This paper addresses activities carried out in a late-sixteenth or seventeenth century Maya council house (popol nah) just before its abandonment. Structure 719 at the site of Zacpeten in the central Peten lakes district is considered a noble residence remodeled into a council house with an adjacent temple. Excavations revealed quantities of de facto refuse inside the structure's two rooms and around the exterior; recent studies focused on ceramics, lithics, faunal remains, and net sinkers. The back room held abundant lithics and diverse fauna, with evidence of grinding red pigment and snapping obsidian prismatic blades into segments for fashioning arrow points. Pottery and faunal remains indicate feasting, as well as possible use of animal parts in ritual and in making ceremonial objects. The Group 719 complex served as a center of production of various goods and community ritual until its abrupt abandonment, likely in the first decade or so of the eighteenth century.

Between the years of 30 b.c. to a.d. 80, during the Late Formative period, the site of Izapa was flooded by lahars associated with an explosive eruption of the San Antonio volcano (part of the Tacaná Volcanic Complex). Computer simulations suggest that hot pyroclastic flows did not impact Izapa directly, but did impact the region considerably, filling and clogging the Cahuacan and Mixcun rivers with hot debris. The material was quickly saturated by heavy rains and, as the water from the rivers overtopped the obstruction, remobilized in the form of a hot mixture of mud and water known as a lahar (or flood of volcanic origin), which flowed down through the piedmont zone along the Cahuacan, Mixcun-Suchiate, and Izapa rivers. At Izapa, the flood took the form of a 6-m catastrophic wave of mud and water that likely destroyed crops and caused many causalities, surrounding the architectural mounds at Izapa with a muddy landscape. The floods also dramatically affected the rivers downstream, undoubtedly wreaking serious damage to the transport and trade of goods along the coast.

Izapa is famous for its monumental architecture and extensive corpus of carved stelae dated to the Late Formative Guillén phase (300–100 cal b.c.). The site was first established, however, as the capital of a kingdom during the second half of the Middle Formative period (750–300 cal b.c.). Little is known of the first centuries of the site's occupation or how this early kingdom coalesced with Izapa as its capital. In 2012, the Izapa Regional Settlement Project (IRSP) excavated 21 test units and ran 10 radiocarbon accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) dates in order to begin correcting this lacuna. These excavations were the first at the site to screen soil matrices and recover artifact samples that can be quantitatively analyzed.

We undertook excavations in areas north and south of Group B, the original center of Izapa. This work dates the northern expansion of the site's main platform (under Mound 30a) to the Terminal Formative Itstapa phase (cal a.d. 100–300) that resulted in a doubling of the platform's size. Further, we documented that there were three distinct construction episodes in the Terminal Formative expansion and that a central staircase and ramp were built of stone during the second episode. Buried below the Terminal Formative platform expansion was a white clay surface built during the Escalón phase (750–500 cal b.c.) and used through to Guillén times. At the long, linear Mound 62 that defines the eastern edge of Izapa's site core, we documented two episodes of Guillén-phase monumental construction. Buried below this construction fill at Mound 62, a hearth feature and stone alignment are dated to the late Middle Formative based on radiocarbon assays and the results of ceramic analysis. Excavations at Mound 72 and 73 documented that Izapa's E-Group (newly recognized with lidar [light detection and ranging] data) was established in the late Middle Formative period and then significantly augmented during the Guillén phase. The architectural program at Izapa saw its apogee during the Late Formative period, but was first established during the preceding centuries of the Middle Formative. Ten new AMS dates confirm the dating of the Escalón, Frontera, and Guillén phases to 750–100 cal b.c.

Ceramic analysis allowed us to differentiate quantitatively between midden deposits and construction fill through the site's occupation and to recognize domestic versus public spaces during the first centuries of the Izapa kingdom's coalescence. We identify late Middle Formative period middens based on the high density of ceramics in addition to good surface preservation of sherds and a lack of temporal mixing of types. The designation of high-artifact density middens contrasts with the contents of Late and Terminal Formative construction fill with lower ceramic sherd densities and mixing of temporally diagnostic types. Off-mound contexts (where construction fill was mined) had even lower ceramic densities than construction fill and the sherds were very eroded. Analysis of ceramic remains from late Middle Formative period midden deposits also allowed us to infer differences in public and domestic areas of the site during the first centuries of its occupation. Formal and metric variables from these ceramic assemblages identify dish-to-jar ratios that differentiate domestic contexts (with an assortment of vessel forms) from more publically oriented areas of the site (with more serving dishes). The differential distribution of rim diameters of fancy and plain dishes allows us to identify areas of Izapa where domestic activities predominate and indicate that more publically oriented feasting practices occurred at the site center near the main pyramid (Mound 30a) during the late Middle Formative period.

In this article, we consider how the Postclassic Kowoj Maya of the central Peten lakes region of El Petén, Guatemala utilized mana in conjunction with their ritual objects and spolia to mediate between the natural and supernatural worlds. In many cultures worldwide and throughout time, mana (magical or spiritual powers that provide people and objects with a living force) transforms the ordinary into the spiritually powerful. The Kowojs imbued incense burners and buildings with mana, thus facilitating a connection with their ancestors. We examine the manufacturing recipe of a group of incense burners and the civic-ceremonial buildings at Zacpeten to argue that the Kowoj used these objects to mediate among the living, the dead, and the supernatural realms. Ultimately, by empowering these objects with mana, the Kowoj constructed a universe where they regularly communicated with their ancestors and built structures that ensouled their historical consciousness.

Archaeological survey and excavations in the mangrove-estuary zone south of Izapa have generated an understanding of how the environment and human exploitation patterns changed during the Archaic and Formative periods. Archaic-period archaeological remains are not present, but the sedimentary record shows that Archaic people were clearing the coastal-plain forest for agricultural purposes. This activity augmented delivery of sediments to the littoral zone, which expanded the mangrove forest and created a productive environment that could be colonized by Early Formative villagers by around 1600 cal b.c. Population growth during the Early Formative created conditions that favored emergence of specialized pyro-industries, especially salt production, by around 1000 cal b.c. Production intensity increased thereafter, especially during the Late Formative period, coincident with the apogee of Izapa. Salt production became more episodic during the Terminal Formative period, when interior populations were declining to a nadir after cal a.d. 250.

This paper presents new evidence for hierarchy and power among the Classic Maya (a.d. 300–1000) from the northern lowlands. It expands the list of identified emblem glyphs, and, more particularly, focuses on emblems with numerals by questioning their meaning and function in terms of political organization. Furthermore, the paper centers on syntax, especially on the practice of structuring personal names and titles in order to isolate titles and emblem glyphs, as well as to rank individuals and further advance our understanding of ancient Maya political organization. Finally, a dynastic sequence of rulers and noblemen from the Chan or Kan kingdom (most probably Jaina) is proposed, as well as divergent monumental traditions within the northern region and a re-evaluation of interpolity relationships.