The Michoacán-Guanajuato volcanic field (MGVF) hosts >1,400 monogenetic structures younger than 5 Ma. Here we focus on the Malpaís de Zacapu Late Holocene cluster located in the western part of the Zacapu lacustrine basin, situated in the heart of native Purepecha province. The Malpaís de Zacapu comprises four distinct eruptions: the Infiernillo lava flow emitted at ~1450 b.c.; Malpaís Las Víboras, a purely effusive eruption at ~1000 b.c.; the Capaxtiro compound lava flow at ~150 b.c.; and the most recent eruption, the Malpaís Prieto lava flow at ~a.d. 900. Although these lava flows are not inhabited today, they were densely populated in pre-Hispanic times (before a.d. 1521), especially during the Milpillas phase (a.d. 1200–1450). Volcanological studies (geochemical studies and detailed mapping using high-resolution DEM from LiDAR) allowed us to characterize these eruptions in terms of their magma source (rock chemical composition, mineral assemblage), age (radiocarbon and paleomagnetic dating), magnitude and dynamics (volume, morphology of the deposits), as well as lava flow emplacement duration. The findings allow us to infer the potential impact that these eruptions had on the pre-Hispanic settlement history of the area.

This article presents a compositional analysis of metal artifacts from the Postclassic period (a.d. 1100–1450) city of Mayapan, Yucatan, Mexico. We document metallurgical production at R-183, an elite residential group and one of the most significant archaeological contexts associated with metalworking at Mayapan. Salvage excavations in 1998 recovered a small cache containing 282 copper bells, two miniature ceramic vessels filled with metal, and production debris including loose casting sprues and miscast bells. Metallographic analysis of a small copper bell and wire fragments from the cache reveals lost-wax casting production techniques. X-ray fluorescence spectrometry (XRF) of metal artifacts provides insight into the range of metals used by the R-183 metalworkers, which included copper-lead, copper-tin, and copper-arsenic alloys, and how these alloys compare to assemblages recovered from other contexts at the city. Our findings strongly suggest the use of remelting and casting techniques, likely utilizing remelted metals of both West and central Mexican origin, together with the use of imported goods made from a range of copper alloys.

El período de aproximadamente tres siglos (600–900 d.C.), que corresponde al epiclásico, fue el escenario de una notable expansión de los asentamientos en la cuenca de Zacapu y sus alrededores. Si bien la zona parecía carecer de núcleos monumentales mayores equivalentes a los que se conocían en las regiones vecinas del Bajío o del sur de las tierras altas michoacanas, los trabajos recientes en la parte noroeste del Malpaís de Zacapu cambian esta concepción. Los datos proporcionados por medio del LiDAR y nuevos trabajos de campo revelaron complejos monumentales de dimensiones inéditas para la zona que estructuran una red de asentamientos menores distribuidos en un amplio territorio. Estos descubrimientos ofrecen nuevos datos sobre la arquitectura pública y doméstica de la época. La distribución de estos asentamientos y su relación con áreas dedicadas a la explotación de recursos agrícolas y mineros permiten vislumbrar un sistema más complejo e integrado, el cual pudo tener elementos comunes al de un altepetl. El objetivo de este artículo es presentar esta nueva información y reevaluar, a partir de ella, la organización territorial del período considerado.

In seeking continuities and disjuncture from the precedents of past authorities, the Mesoamerican emergent ruling class during the Formative period were active agents in directing changes to monumental space, suggesting that memory played a vital role in developing an early shared character of Maya lifeways (1000 b.c. to a.d. 250). The trend is most visible in the civic ceremonial complexes known as E Groups, which tend to show significant patterns of continuity (remembering) and disjuncture (forgetting). This article uses the northern lowland site of Yaxuná in Yucatan, Mexico, to demonstrate the use of early selective strategies to direct collective memory. While there are E Groups in the northern Maya lowlands, few Formative period examples are known, making Yaxuná a critical case study for comparative assessment with the southern lowlands. One implication of the Yaxuná data is that the broader pattern of Middle Formative E Groups resulted from sustained social, religious, political, and economic interaction between diverse peer groups across eastern Mesoamerica. With the emergence of institutionalized rulership in the Maya lowlands during the Late Formative, local authorities played a significant role in directing transformations of E Groups, selectively influencing their meanings and increasingly independent trajectories through continuity and disjuncture.

In this article we analyze the content and form of 58 stone monuments at the archaeological site of Lacanjá Tzeltal, Chiapas, Mexico, which recent research confirms was a capital of the Classic Maya polity Sak Tz'i' (“White Dog”). Sak Tz'i' kings carried the title ajaw (“lord”) rather than the epithet k'uhul ajaw (“holy lord”) claimed by regional powers, implying that Sak Tz'i' was a lesser kingdom in terms of political authority. Lacanjá Tzeltal's corpus of sculptured stone, however, is explicitly divergent and indicates the community's marked cultural autonomy from other western Maya kingdoms. The sculptures demonstrate similarities with their neighbors in terms of form and iconographic and hieroglyphic content, underscoring Lacanjá Tzeltal artisans’ participation in the region's broader culture of monumental production. Nevertheless, sculptural experimentations demonstrate not only that lesser courts like Lacanjá Tzeltal were centers of innovation, but that the lords of Sak Tz'i' may have fostered such cultural distinction to underscore their independent political character. This study has broader implications for understanding interactions between major and secondary polities, artistic innovation, and the development of community identity in the Classic Maya world.

The spatial contexts of effigy censer and figurine molds at Mayapan, Yucatan, Mexico suggest a tightly controlled industry in which elite representatives of state government and religious orders exerted oversight over production and distribution. Attached artisans at Mayapan made these and other restricted goods for residents of palaces and patrons of the city's public buildings. The study of effigy ceramic production reveals that, like earlier, Classic period Maya kingdoms, Postclassic elites also sponsored the crafting of symbolically charged goods. This finding expands understanding of Postclassic period economic organization, which is best-known for its expansive regional market exchange. The limited distribution of effigy censers and figurines further attests their primary use in the context of state-sponsored ceremonies and, to a lesser extent, high-status mortuary settings. Unlike other places and times in Mesoamerica, neither figurines nor effigy censers are representative of household-scale religious practice for the majority of urban residents at Mayapan.

Recent research conducted in northern Michoacan, west Mexico, has yielded significant new datasets that can be used to reconsider the occupation of this region in the Postclassic period (a.d. 900–1541), prior to and during the rise of the Tarascan state. LiDAR data, in particular, has facilitated reassessment of the archaeological record and its implications concerning the population and social dynamics of this region. In this article, I combine data collected through traditional field-based research with LiDAR-derived data to reassess the population aggregation that occurred during a.d. 1250–1450 in the Zacapu Basin, resulting in the formation of a large urban system. Compared to prior population estimates and interpretations regarding the urban structure of the Zacapu Malpaís sites, the integration of these datasets enables both an increased scale of analysis and finer resolution, thus providing a clearer picture of one of the earliest episodes of urbanization in west Mexico.

Across many decades of Maya archaeology, the study of war has typically been focused on its geopolitical, systemic, evolutionary, and structural implications. We argue these approaches stand to benefit from deeper interrogations of practice. Such a perspective shifts scholarly attention toward the ways in which Maya peoples prepared for and engaged in combat, and how they administered the outcomes of war. Deploying this approach requires the study of tactics, strategy, fortifications, materiel, landscape, embodiment, and a host of other related factors. With the issue of practice at the forefront of our analysis, we demonstrate how the study of war has been “blackboxed” in Maya archaeology, then undertake a comparative analysis to highlight how digging into the details of past martial practice enriches debates in Mesoamerican studies regarding the role of war in the rise and disintegration of states.

Drawing on modern ethnography, scholars often characterize ancient Maya religion as “covenants” involving human beings generating merit through ritual activity in order to repay a primordial debt to the gods. However, models based on modern ethnography alone would not allow us to recognize the impact on Maya religions of those Christian discourses of debt and merit that accompanied sixteenth-century colonization. This article attempts to historicize our understanding of indigenous Mesoamerican theologies by examining how early Colonial indigenous language texts describe moral and ritual obligations to the gods in terms of their societies’ economies. The specific case study here compares two contemporaneous sixteenth-century K'iche' Maya texts: the Popol Wuj by traditionalist K'iche' elites and the Theologia Indorum by the Dominican friar Domingo de Vico. Comparison of these texts’ use of exchange-related lexicon illustrates that the traditionalist theological discourse of the Popol Wuj, which emphasizes reciprocal obligations between different beings within an ontological hierarchy, came to exist alongside Christian K'iche' discourses with a more mercantile religious language of spiritual debt payment. It is argued that these results have potential implications for our assessment of ethnohistorical sources on indigenous theology from elsewhere throughout Mesoamerica as well.

Among the numerous archaeological remains that recent LiDAR flights revealed in Guatemala and Mexico, agrarian features are the most abundant. Archaeologists today are compelled to revise their paradigms in terms of methodology and assessment of environmental appropriation for agriculture. The Malpaís de Zacapu in west Mexico is one example. Besides the discovery of a substantial Epiclassic occupation near the well-documented Postclassic urban centers of the area, LiDAR imagery brought to light a deeply modified agrarian landscape and thereby dramatically changed our understanding of human settlement in this lava flows complex.

Focusing on the northern part of the Malpaís, this study uses archaeogeographical and soil science methods to assess ancient farming systems and their evolution. We updated the archaeological and soil maps of the area, combining traditional field survey techniques and LiDAR-derived data interpretation. This allowed us to identify residential zones and a wide range of associated agrarian features adapted to the variety and agronomic challenges of volcanic soils. We further implemented a production-consumption model to reconstruct agricultural strategies from the Epiclassic to the Middle Postclassic period, from self-reliance to the necessity of supra-local agricultural inputs, possibly foreshadowing the Tarascan state tribute system.

En la cuenca lacustre de Zacapu a lo largo de su ocupación prehispánica (100 a.C. a 1450 d.C.), la dacita, una roca de origen volcánico, fue un recurso estratégico dentro de la economía regional, con el cual los antiguos habitantes de la zona elaboraron una serie de artefactos líticos ligados tanto a actividades de subsistencia y artesanales como rituales. Las investigaciones iniciadas en 2011 en dos minas-taller del yacimiento de dacita del Cerro Vicente expusieron una explotación extensa y organizada en torno a este recurso. En 2015, a partir de la cobertura LiDAR, se identificó un tercer complejo minero con evidencias de una explotación a cielo abierto y subterránea, esta vez en el yacimiento de Las Minas. Con el fin de comprender los mecanismos de explotación de la dacita, se ha llevado a cabo un análisis espacial de este sitio con distintas escalas de aproximación, para caracterizar las evidencias materiales vinculadas con la actividad extractiva. La combinación en nuestra investigación de la información que aporta el LiDAR y la proveniente de la prospección en el campo, nos ofrece un panorama completo del yacimiento, su organización espacial y funcional en un contexto más amplio como un paisaje prehispánico de extracción.

Although studies of warfare are now common in Maya archaeology, much remains to be learned about strategy, tactics, and various other practical factors in the process of making war. An emphasis on the concrete and practical is necessary to both acknowledge agency and understand how conflict relates to the human experience. Through an examination of documentary and archaeological data in a comparative framework, I elaborate on practices of Maya fortification construction and how the creation of a martial landscape ties into relations of power during the Late Postclassic/Early Spanish Colonial period (a.d. 1200–1600). During this period, in the region of Mensabak, Chiapas, Mexico, Maya peoples fortified a peninsula according to principles of defense-in-depth. In other words, they created layers of fortification to slow and stall an attack. My analysis reveals how the creation of a martial landscape shaped local culture by incorporating elements of sacred geography and ritual landscape to perpetuate social inequality.

In the absence of historical records, ethnography, or artistic depictions, fortifications provide one of the best forms of evidence for insight into the nature of warfare within past societies. Excavations into the monumental stone perimeter wall, 1.5 km in circumference, at Muralla de León in the Peten Lakes Region have dated its initial construction to the first two centuries of the Late Preclassic period (400–200 b.c.). Investigation into this apparent fortification offers new insight into Maya settlement and monumental construction in relation to warfare in this era, as sociopolitical complexity became increasingly widespread across the southern lowlands. Calculations of affordances of movement across the local landscape using geographic information systems and Circuitscape inform a spatial statistical analysis of fortification at Muralla de León, performed to test a hypothesis of defensive functionality for the encircling perimeter wall. A separate affordance of movement analysis at a regional scale locates the site within probable intersite paths of travel. The research indicates a significant, but not exclusive, defensive intent underpinning the Preclassic form of the main wall system. Thus, the system was built in part as a fortification, restricting movement toward the interior, while facilitating other uses such as hydraulic control and possibly trade.

En el siglo dieciséis, la conquista española se extendió rápidamente hacia lo que hoy se conoce como el occidente de México. A partir de 1522, el reino tarasco sucumbió frente a los españoles y con ello iniciaron su proyecto de colonización y expansión territorial. Desde las primeras décadas, los españoles moldearon las actividades cotidianas para asegurar el control sobre las poblaciones indígenas, incluyendo la evangelización y promoviendo la explotación económica de los nuevos territorios.

Uno de los primeros pasos fue reorganizar el patrón de asentamiento de las poblaciones tarascas. En vísperas de la Conquista, los tarascos habitaban en pequeñas aldeas situadas en las cumbres y laderas de las montañas. Los españoles modificaron el patrón de asentamiento a través de dos medidas principales: en primer lugar, el desplazamiento de los antiguos asentamientos (pueblos viejos) a los valles o llanuras cercanas, con el fin de evitar que los sitios se convirtieran en fortalezas; en segundo lugar, los españoles reagruparon a la población en centros más grandes, conocidos como congregaciones.

Más allá de la distribución espacial de los lugares, esta transformación afectó por completo la configuración del espacio y repercutió en la relación existente entre los pobladores y el paisaje y con ello en la geografía sagrada. A partir del ejemplo de la localización de dos pueblos en el norte del estado de Michoacán—el sitio prehispánico Mich. 68-El Caracol y el pueblo colonial Mich. 415-Las Iglesias, descubiertos gracias a la obtención de imágenes LiDAR del Proyecto Arqueológico Uacúsecha—discutiremos las características de la distribución espacial antes y después de la Conquista y sus implicaciones en la relación existente entre la sociedad, el paisaje y la cosmovisión de la población.

The structure of power underlying the hegemonic control Chichen Itza held over the Northern Maya Lowlands has been debated for decades. In this article, we present the idea of a dominant discourse on masculinities, which played a fundamental role in both practice and on a symbolic level among the strategies designed to support this emblematic pre-Columbian capital. Our discussion of archaeological evidence will focus on spaces where men are represented, where they would meet and carry out rituals. We contend that gallery-patios such as Structure 2D6 served as instruction and socialization locales for groups of warriors. The architectural configuration of this building is very similar to a series of venues at Chichen Itza and other Mesoamerican cities. In these spaces, associated iconography depicts male individuals in processions and ritual practice, including sacrifice and self-sacrifice. We argue that the gallery of Structure 2D6 was a semi-public, performative space, whose theatricality combined the central alignment of a sacrificial stone and a throne or altar with the presence of several patolli boards carved into the building's plaster floor. Chemical analyses of plastered surfaces testify to intense activities taking place around all three of these features.

A careful reading of the battle in the Bonampak murals offers new insights into eighth-century strategies for warfare, and the importance of overwhelming force in both aggression and deterrence. These same two strategies were critical during the Spanish invasion, especially in defense of freshwater resources. The murals of Bonampak provide insights into the Maya battle, including the emphasis on teamwork in execution of battle tactics and the seemingly contradictory emphasis on the individual, in terms of hieroglyphics. Despite exhaustive study of the paintings, the potential consideration of color-defined and pattern shields also may reveal groupings of warriors previously unrecognized in both battle and presentation of captives. Sixteenth-century accounts by Spanish invaders confirm a practice that includes defense of water sources along the coast of Yucatan, with details that can be evaluated regarding eighth-century Maya practice.

Zooarchaeological data are presented to examine aspects of animal resources utilization at Chichen Itza and Isla Cerritos during the Terminal Classic. Through the review of zooarchaeological records, a differential pattern emerges based on contextual and environmental origins of the identified taxa, highlighting the ritual importance of coastal species at Chichen Itza. In addition, the transportation network of animals and animal parts from the peninsular interior to Isla Cerritos and coastal areas towards Chichen Itza is outlined. The reviewed zooarchaeological evidence of both settlements represents the first effort to rethink and heighten understanding of the relationship between the northern Maya capital and its coastal outpost during the Terminal Classic, profiling the diverse environments being exploited and differential utilization in the coast and the interior of the Northern Lowlands.

Studies of the ancient economy associated with the Classic and Postclassic periods of Maya civilization show that, in order to explain it, the market economy model has been widely used, where economic transactions were carried out in marketplaces. In this type of economy, goods are exchanged based on an agreed value that takes into account supply and demand. However, other types of exchange, such as tribute and centralized redistribution, could have been used in those transactions instead of a market economy. This article analyzes the role that tribute and centralized redistribution may have played during the heyday of Chichen Itza between the tenth and eleventh centuries. This site seems to have used its powerful military supremacy to extract tribute from sites and regions it conquered militarily and politically as they experienced their collapse. In addition, the archaeological evidence suggests that Chichen Itza made political as well as economic alliances in different regions of the Maya Lowlands in order to obtain sumptuous goods. These commodities were used by members of the elite to reinforce the power structure and consolidate social relations among the different individuals who inhabited that community located in northern Yucatan.