This paper examines the understudied role of reading and oral performance in Maya “scribal” imagery from the Late Classic period (a.d. 600–900). Although many studies consider the ways in which Maya artists represented the production of text and image, few systematically examine how textual reception was rendered in Maya art. With this in mind, the present essay considers one specific motif that recurs on painted drinking vessels: the image of a seated figure in front of a codex book. A systematic review of this imagery reveals the limits of conceptualizing these figures as “scribes,” a term which implicitly privileges the acts of painting and writing (tz’ihb). The majority of the figures who appear with books do not hold writing implements. Instead, they make a variety of gestures to texts that likely encode distinct forms of oral performance. Writers and readers can also be tied to separate deities and regalia, which suggests that this division is an emic distinction with implications for the hierarchy of Maya courts. The emphasis on speech and textual interpretation in scribal imagery demonstrates the value of embracing a more flexible, orality-based notion of aesthetics in studies of Maya imagery and non-Western material culture more broadly.

En este texto realizamos una revisión del espacio ritual de dos celebraciones que tienen una historia profunda entre los pueblos indígenas de Mesoamérica, la ceremonia ritual de los Voladores y el Juego de Pelota. A partir de la indagación en evidencias arqueológicas, históricas y de la experiencia de la ritualidad, exponemos los principios comunes en la diversidad de estas celebraciones rituales. Consideramos la perspectiva de los practicantes contemporáneos para incluir su conocimiento sensitivo a la discusión, esto es, un punto de vista emic que complementa el abordaje etic de los principales aspectos documentados de estos rituales. Proponemos que, como opuestos complementarios, ambos rituales constituyeron un medio para que sus practicantes lograran transitar entre los niveles del cosmos. El ritual de los Voladores es metáfora y experiencia de acceder a los niveles superiores, mientras que el Juego de Pelota lo es de acceder a los niveles inferiores. Estas celebraciones requieren del sacrificio y de un estado latente de muerte que demanda de sus practicantes una rigurosa preparación y conocimiento de las normas rituales. Concluimos observando que, a pesar de las profundas trasformaciones históricas, la pervivencia de estas celebraciones expresa los esquemas organizativos de las cosmovisiones mesoamericanas, manifiestas en la experiencia de los complejos y elaborados programas rituales indígenas.

This paper analyzes a specific genre of colonial Maya literature: the prophecies found in the so-called Books of Chilam Balam, written in the Maya language during the colonial period. These texts predict events related to 20-year periods known as k’atun. A comparative examination of these prophecies reveals that while some are of clear Maya origin, others gradually incorporate Christian concepts and even direct references to Catholic texts. I propose a typology of three distinct kinds of prophecies: traditional, transitional Christianized, and overtly Christianized. This classification is supported by linguistic and structural analysis, including the presence of loanwords, shifts in grammatical constructions, changes in prophetic structure, and the semantic transformation of key terms. Traditional Maya prophecies primarily express concerns with good governance by local rulers; in contrast, Christianized prophecies reinterpret similar passages to foretell the authority of a universal Christian God. Rather than approaching these texts from a purely historical or philological perspective, this study adopts an anthropological–linguistic lens. It considers the prophecies as literary and ideological efforts by Maya authors and scribes to reframe their pre-Hispanic past and make sense of their transformed world under colonial rule.

Over the past few decades, understandings of cuisine in the Maya area have been radically amplified with the use of new techniques. Some methods offer the opportunity to directly connect artifacts and features with plant foods. The recovery of microscopic food residues from sediments, artifacts, and human teeth has revealed not only a broad list of ingredients but a wide array of practices and recipes. Here, we draw on our previous paleoethnobotanical research across the Maya Lowlands to develop an understanding of Classic-period cuisines, integrating new evidence from the Southern Lowlands.

We consider the emergence of elite foodways and how elite gastronomic practices factored into broader political maneuvers and private performances. We also tentatively suggest a taxonomy of local traditions that did not conform to a strict elite “grammar.” By addressing commonalities and departures from a core and canonic elite cuisine, we highlight how local elite expressions reified culinary norms but also manifested fluidity and flexibility in culinary practice. Paralleling work with other types of elite artifact assemblages, we illuminate how privileged actors drew on broader cultural logics to make their cuisines intelligible, yet also locally improvised in significant ways.

While ethnographic observation has revealed nuances of ground stone production techniques and practical uses, there has been little theorizing about the archaeological exchange and movement of these goods or their deeper social meanings. In previous research, we obtained secure geochemical signatures for an ancient Maya ground stone tool assemblage by sourcing granite outcrops in Belize, enabling us to trace the provenience of certain archaeological assemblages. To understand the exchange mechanisms by which ground stone tools moved around the landscape, we explore three non-mutually exclusive models. We outline our expectations of material correlates for the archaeological record based on these exchange hypotheses and evaluate our assemblages against these expectations. This work helps broaden understandings of the organizational importance of ground stone tool production, exchange, and usage within ancient Maya society, critical first steps for investigating the socioeconomic dimensions of these tools.

Regional survey of the Mountain Pine Ridge Forest Reserve, Cayo, Belize by the Rio Frio Regional Archaeological Project has revealed an expansive, ancient Maya granitic-rock extraction and ground stone tool crafting industry distributed across an 11 km2 region. To date, 16 extraction-workshop sites of varying size and compositional complexity totaling 100 ha or 1 km2 have been identified through a combination of ground-based reconnaissance and aerial LiDAR survey. This article introduces the two largest recorded to date, Buffalo Hill Quarries and Moshy’s Hill. Discussing them, we present an overview of the common attributes of the Mountain Pine Ridge quarry workshops including types of extraction sites (quarry pits, strip mines, and cut faces), structural components (bedrock pits and erected blocks), cached tools (hammerstones and pics), and discarded products (half-loaf and full-loaf forms and metates) found at them. As the type of sites presented here are new to archaeology, the article concludes with a series of questions to guide future work.

This article outlines our research into granite use by the ancient Maya of the Alabama Townsite—a Late to Terminal Classic (ca. a.d. 700–900) rapid-growth community in East-Central Belize, part of the Eastern Maya Lowlands. One of our initial hypotheses regarding the seemingly sudden appearance of the town toward the end of the Late Classic period focused on granite as a staple resource exploited by its residents. We highlight current results of local geological surveys and related spatial, geochemical, and petrographic studies; preliminary analyses of surface-collected and excavated archaeological assemblages and architectural elements; and attempts at community-engaged experimental archaeology. We conclude that while ancient Alabamans did not extract granite as a staple resource for export, which could have fueled the community’s growth, they nonetheless valued granite in many ways, which we highlight in our discussion.

Research on ground stone tools has expanded exponentially over the years. Here, I present the context of the initial work on granite sourcing that connected archaeological sites in Guatemala to sources in Belize. I also attempt to put into perspective the subsequent research that has been carried out, much of which is reported and elaborated in this Compact Section.

Archaeological interest in analyses of ground stone tools (GST) was minimal until fairly recent times. Often these typically heavy artifacts were noted, but not collected as parts of archaeological assemblages. Most archaeologists did not recognize that GST were sometimes manufactured and could be considered in light of chaîne-opératoire lithic theory, in the same manner as their flaked-stone counterparts. The articles in this Compact Section are focused on a newly discovered granite ground stone quarry and manufacturing area in Belize. The subject is exceptional for two reasons: (1) granite ground stone quarries have not yet been studied elsewhere and (2) this is the first ground stone quarry to be discovered in Belize. The Mountain Pine Ridge batholith quarries are compared with previous quarry studies in the U.S. Southwest, Mexico, and Guatemala and suggestions made for future avenues of research in Belize.

Between 2012 and 2014, a crew from the Pacbitun Regional Archaeological Project (PRAP) excavated a small mound located on the western periphery of the Pacbitun site, a medium-sized ancient Maya center located in west-central Belize. That mound consisted of a thick deposit of granite sand and debitage, revealing a record of the production of several thousand granite tools dating to the Late Classic period. Since those excavations, a total of 22 similar mounds have been recorded, with 11 tested. All tested mounds reveal a similar material record representing periodically used working platforms where granite tools were shaped and finished during the Late Classic period. The recorded granite debris mounds are distributed over an area of 1 km2 some 500 m from Pacbitun’s core, an area that we suggest represents a community of attached, part-time specialists making granite tools on a seasonal basis. Given the scale of granite tool production, we suspect this community made tools not just for local consumption, but also for consumption outside of Pacbitun as part of a strategy to navigate the dynamic political Late Classic landscape of the Belize River Valley.