The so-called frieze of the Caciques at Tula, Hidalgo, Mexico, is an 8-m-long bench with most of its original polychromed face intact. It formed part of a larger composition that once ran around the perimeter of the Vestibule, a colonnaded hall that served as a foyer for Pyramid B. The composition of profile males is adapted to look as if they are actually marching around the room toward the pyramid. Although Hugo Moedano Koer (1947) identified the figures as caciques or local chiefs, an analysis of architectural setting, subject matter, and ethnohistory suggests instead that the figures represent merchants engaged in rituals related to trade. This new reading demonstrates that Tula had decorative programs paralleling its development as an important center of long-distance exchange during the Early Postclassic period, and that merchants from Tula may have been a plausible prototype for Aztec pochteca.

Teotihuacán was probably laid out from its inception according to a master plan intended to express a specific worldview in material form. It is argued that a proposed measurement unit of 83 cm reveals mesoamerican calendrical numbers such as 52 (x 10), 73, 260, 584, and 819, when applied to city axes and major monuments. The channelized Río San Juan divides the central zone into two sections: the watery underworld to the south, especially represented at the Ciudadela, and to the north the earthly representation of the passage from the underworld to the heavens, where the Sun Pyramid at the center symbolizes a sacred time bundle in the 260-day ritual calendar. The sacrificial burial complex found at the Feathered Serpent Pyramid seems to have been a part of the city-foundation program, and the iconography of the pyramid apparently commemorated this dramatization of the creation of time and space.

Settlement research at Copán, Honduras, since 1984 has produced the largest set of obsidian-hydration dates from excavated contexts available for Mesoamerica (Webster and Freter 1990). Geoffrey Braswell (1992) has criticized the methodology underlying our research, specific associations of our published data, and particularly our reconstruction of a demographic and political decline at Copán that extended well beyond A.D. 900. Braswell has incorrectly characterized the Copan Obsidian Hydration Dating Project’s methodology, and makes many factual errors in assessing the Copán data. In this paper the authors correct these errors, discuss basic issues of obsidian-hydration-dating methodology, and offer new data from Copán to evaluate the efficacy of hydration dating as a method and its potential future application for Mesoamerica as a whole.

Compositional and stylistic analyses of decorated ceramics have provided information about the regional organization of economic systems in the Aztec empire’s core zone, the Basin of Mexico. Late Aztec Black-on-orange ceramics (A. D. 1350–1520) are found at nearly all archaeological sites in the Basin of Mexico, but prior to this study their sources were not verified. This study has investigated whether Black-on-orange ceramics were produced in one or many areas in order to define in greater detail dependent communities’ economic relations with the Aztec empire’s capital. To identify production areas, paste compositions of 85 Late Aztec Black-on-orange ceramic samples were compared using neutron-activation analysis. The analysis distinguished three different production areas in the eastern and southern parts of the Basin of Mexico, indicating that Late Aztec Black-on-orange ceramics represent a style adopted by regional manufacturing centers, and are not products of a single center. Because a number of decorative motifs are exclusive to particular paste groups, the sources of some Black-on-orange vessels can now be identified visually.

Though most archaeological sites studied in South Patagonia are caves and rockshelters, archaeologists have not discussed the function of these sites in the context of a regional settlement system. Research in two small rockshelters with cultural assemblages dating to the Magallanes IV phase allowed me to recognize that it was almost impossible to interpret rockshelter function by applying some settlement-system models. The models of Binford and of Borrero had failed to explain how, despite the small size of these sites and the small number of cultural materials recovered from them, there was evidence of multiple activities, well-made lithic and bone tools, and guanaco-bone specimens of different economic value. I discuss and interpret the function of small rockshelters in the settlement system of the Magallanes IV phase. I assume that Magallanes IV phase hunters developed foraging strategies and used portable tents the same as sixteenth-century southern Patagonian hunters did.

Female figurines from the Cantera phase at Chalcatzingo, Morelos, depict stages of the life cycle: puberty, pregnancy, and child rearing. Contextual data indicate that the figurines were used in female-focused life-crisis ceremonies that created a web of social rights and obligations validated by reciprocal exchanges. These rights and obligations were the means by which power and influence were created, directed, and controlled by particular households. Thus, these figurines and their contexts permit a better understanding of the role of women in the dynamics of social-hierarchy formation at Chalcatzingo, and how the formation of social bonds and patterns of exchange were important in the accumulation of power.

Until recently, an entrenched view of Tiwanaku expansion in the south-central Andes as a primarily cultic phenomenon precluded discussion of state-built ceremonial facilities outside of Tiwanaku’s immediate hinterland of the Bolivian altiplano. However, recent research in the Tiwanaku periphery has found specialized ceremonial architecture that reflects the solidification of central control and the development of a provincial system. Excavation at the Omo M10 site, in Moquegua, Peru, has exposed the only Tiwanaku sunken-court temple structure and cut-stone architecture known outside of the Titicaca Basin. A reconstruction of the Omo temple complex demonstrates direct parallels with Tiwanaku ceremonial centers of the altiplano in architectural form and ceremonial activities. This suggests that patterns of state-centered ceremony and peripheral administration underwent a dramatic transformation with the explosive expansion of the Tiwanaku state during the period known as Tiwanaku V (A. D. 725–1000).

El estudio de la iconografía escatológica producida por los mochicas de la costa norte del Perú prehispánico (ca. 50 A.C.-750 D.C.) coloca en evidencia la presencia de diversos personajes lisiados, y más precisamente figurantes masculinos con un pie o los dos pies faltantes. ¿Cuál fue el significado ideológico y político de este elemento simbólico y su importancia en la dinámica del poder mochica? En las escenas que ilustran el mundo de los vivos, estos lisiados forman parte de un grupo, que he llamado “los Intendentes,” puesto al servicio del dirigente mochica. En las escenas del mundo de los muertos, un lisiado de apariencia esquelética (“el Esqueleto con prótesis”) parece igualmente servir al dirigente fallecido. Poniendo en relación estas representaciones con descubrimientos arqueológicos pertinentes, un análisis contextual permite liberar una figura simbólica mayor de la imaginativa de los mochicas, metonimia del orden social y político, que he llamado el “Personaje del pie amputado.” Pareciera que esta figura pudo simbolizar, a la vez en la iconografía y a la ocasión de ciertas prácticas rituales y de sacrificio, la perennidad de la estructura de poder, especialmente a partir de la fase III y posteriormente. Este tipo de análisis contextual permite estudiar desde un nuevo ángulo los elementos constitutivos de la estructura de poder mochica y da nuevas perspectivas para la comprehensión de la dinámica del poder en las sociedades complejas.

Este artículo analiza el papel de los pinnípedos en la adaptación humana al litoral del archipiélago de Tierra del Fuego, que eventualmente desembocara en los conocidos canoeros magallánico-fueguinos yamana y alacalufe. Primero, se presenta el análisis de restos arqueofaunísticos recuperados en sitios de la costa norte del Canal Beagle, para determinar la importancia del consumo de pinnípedos en relación con su rendimiento energético. Se verifica que, a lo largo de la secuencia cultural de seis mil años de antigüedad descrita para esta región, los pinnípedos constituyeron el principal recurso energético en comparación con aves y guanacos. Segundo, se establece la importancia de los pinnípedos para suplir los requerimientos metabólicos de dietas pobres en carbohidratos y bajo condicionamientos ambientales subantárticos. Tercero, se confirma que el consumo de pinnípedos constituyó una fuente de energía importada al ecosistema humano del litoral, con base en la ecología trófica de estos animales que se alimentan en aguas externas al sistema litoral y la localización conocida de las loberías lejos del Canal Beagle. Las implicaciones de estos hallazgos son (a) el incremento de la capacidad de carga humana sobre el ambiente litoral debido a la importación de energía, (b) la independencia de las poblaciones de pinnípedos con respecto a la actividad humana, la que garantizó un suplemento estable de animales para la población del canal, y (c) una explicación para las altas densidades que estos pueblos alcanzaron y para su rápida extinción una vez que los stocks de pinnípedos fueron drásticamente reducidos por loberos europeos y norteamericanos en los siglos XVIII y XIX.

The consumer aspect of stone-tool manufacture is an important factor for lithic studies concerned with craft specialization and exchange systems. The dynamic nature of stone-tool production/exchange/use systems can be understood through a technological analysis of producer site assemblages and a functional and technological examination of consumer sites. Chipped-stone assemblages from the producer site of Colhá, Belize, and the consumer site of Santa Rita Corozal, Belize, indicate opposing but interdependent roles within the same exchange system. Preclassic formal tools such as the oval biface and stemmed macroblade were manufactured at workshops in Colhá and exhibit a high degree of specialization and standardization in manufacture. These formal tools were then exchanged beyond the chert-bearing zone of northern Belize to consumer sites such as Santa Rita. Once these formal tools entered the consumption sphere they were used, broken, discarded, or recycled into a variety of second-order expedient tools.

Recent excavations of the Spanish Colonial Maya communities of Lamanai and Tipu, Belize, combine with extensive ethnohistorical research to provide guidelines for the location of other Historic-period sites in the region. We present brief case studies of community-location data from the ethnohistorical record, followed by observations regarding survey expectations and approaches appropriate to identification of Spanish Colonial-period sites. Though rooted in Belize experience, the strategies outlined should prove applicable throughout the Maya Lowlands, and perhaps beyond the region's borders as well.

Investigaciones preliminares en Tecoh, Izamal, Yucatán, sitio a donde aparentemente fue traslada la cabecera del señorío de Ah-Kin Chel, han aportado nuevas evidencias sobre los acontecimientos que afectaron a la comunidad maya durante los primeros años de la dominación española. Algunas casas construídas a la manera occidental y que pertenecieron a la nobleza indígena constituyen ejemplos relevantes de la arquitectura civil del siglo XVI en México, y ponen de manifiesto la importancia que esta clase aún mantenía en la sociedad. El temprano abandono de Tecoh, resulta de gran valor para las investigaciones, pues las construcciones coloniales sufrieron pocas modificaciones y las prehispánicas no fueron totalmente arrasadas.

A model of late pre-Inka political geography of the region surrounding Cajamarca, in the north highlands of Peru, is presented. This model, based on ethnohistoric data and archaeological research, can be projected back through time to help delineate the culture history of the Cajamarca ethnic group. Several chiefdoms emerged during the Late Intermediate period, following a time of sociopolitical disintegration. The region that became the Inka province of Cajamarca had been occupied by five or six chiefdoms during the latter part of the Late Intermediate period. The data are equivocal on the subject of whether political centralization had developed in the region before the Inka conquest, but suggest that at least some form of confederation existed. Comparison with other regions of the Peruvian Highlands reveals that the Cajamarca ethnic group was modest in population, but controlled a very large area. Other groups, such as the Wanka and Lupaqa, appear to have been undergoing a similar process of sociopolitical centralization. The Inka reorganized the region upon its incorporation into the empire, creating an economic and religious center for several surrounding provinces.

En el curso de las investigaciones sobre el Paijanense de la costa nor-peruana, se estableció un programa de experimentos de talla de las puntas de proyectil llamadas puntas de Paiján. Diez experimentos de talla fueron realizados con implementos y materiales locales y sistemáticamente documentados: definición de las fases del proceso, tiempo de trabajo, recuento y descripción de todas las lascas-desechos, pesos, características de los productos obtenidos al fin de cada fase. Los resultados proporcionan información de orden económico sobre una actividad importante de los paijanenses y tienen consecuencias socio-culturales. Estos resultados se aplicarán al estudio de talleres arqueológicos ya recolectados. La ausencia de fauna terrestre de gran tamaño en los restos alimenticios de los sitios de vivienda y la morfología especial de las puntas sugieren que aquéllas han sido empleadas para atravesar peces marinos de tamaño mediano a grande, los cuales se encuentran en los basurales arqueológicos.

La región pacífica de Colombia presenta numerosas áreas inexploradas a lo largo de su litoral costero y tierras bajas. La región sur es la más conocida gracias a la importancia arqueológica de las zonas de Tumaco y La Tolita (Ecuador). Al norte de Tumaco recientemente se exploró la región del bajo Río Patía (Nariño). A traves de este trabajo se observaron asentamientos precolombinos relacionados con dos fases culturales: (a) fase Buena Vista y (b) fase Maina. Los pobladores precolombinos de estas fases se adaptaron básicamente a las áreas bajas de la llanura aluvial selvática y la región costera del sur de Colombia. Hacia finales del período de Desarrollo Regional costero, la fase Buena Vista (ca. 70–500 D.C.) culturalmente se encuentra relacionada con las fases tardías de El Morro y El Balsal de la secuencia establecida para la región de Tumaco (Nariño). Estas fases a su vez forman parte del período tardío “decadente” de la tradición Tumaco-La Tolita (ca. 400 A.C.-500 D.C.) de la costa sur de Colombia y norte del Ecuador. Igualmente, la fase Buena Vista se relaciona con la fase Guadual (ca. 200–600 D.C.) de la cuenca de los ríos Santiago y Cayapas, en el norte de la costa ecuatoriana. Posteriormente, la llegada de nuevos grupos al bajo Patía se representa por asentamientos de la fase Maina datados hacia el 880 D.C., hasta, probablemente, el contacto europeo. Esta fase se caracteriza primordialmente por una industria alfarera sencilla y poco decorada en relación con la cerámica de la fase anterior. Algunos de los sitios tardíos a su vez podrían corresponder a asentamientos de grupos Sindagua que ocuparon el área al tiempo de la Conquista y la Colonia, en los siglos XVI y XVII.

Data from the U. S. Naval Observatory annual astronomical almanacs (1970–1992) in “correlation” with the Maya Calendar Round (CR) sequence indicate that the Dresden Codex lunar table (51a-58b) very probably counted simultaneous sequences of both lunar and solar eclipses on the same set of day names. The contemporary sequence of day names in the CR and the astronomy consistent with it parallels Classic-period Maya observational experience between 9.16.0.0.0 and 9.17.0.0.0.

The recent discovery of a cache of 48 Nasca severed heads provides archaeologists with the largest-known associated and provenienced corpus of this material. Although recovery of the skulls was conducted as a salvage operation and the wider spatial context of the find is still unknown, preliminary physical anthropological analysis of the skeletal material, along with archaeological comparison of the cache, provide valuable information on the nature and role of head-hunting in ancient Nasca society of the south coast of Peru.

Using evidence of dress modes, metallurgy, mortuary structures, and language, Anawalt (1992) presents a model of the impact of Ecuadorean trading colonies on West Mexican prehistory. But the model is built on inaccurate data about the Tarascans, and simplifies, to the point of distortion, the prehistory of the region. Furthermore, by linking the hypothesized Ecuadorean colonies to a semi-mesoamerican quality that is assumed to characterize West Mexico, Anawalt perpetuates a normative, typological approach to the definition of Mesoamerica and the study of cultural interaction.