Between 1984 and 1989, the San Diego State University Mopan–Macal Triangle Project carried out six extended seasons of fieldwork oriented toward documenting the internal sociobehavioral structure and organization of a representative Classic period community in the southern Maya Lowlands. The project also undertook to delineate the spatial boundaries of several such contiguous communities and to test a selected set of alternative models for Classic period political organization at the local and regional levels. This article summarizes our approach to understanding political organization and presents our preliminary conclusions: a model of the so-called segmentary state type as recently espoused by several researchers best approximates the reality of internal political organization at the single polity level during the Late Classic period of the southern Maya Lowlands.

The creation of a state religion and ethnicity is both the product of fundamental changes occurring in the control of political and economic resources as states emerge, and an instrument by which rulers, still aggregating power, establish cosmic orders demanding obedience to the state. This article considers the means by which the Tarascan royal dynasty appropriated, altered, and redefined various historical traditions in the creation of their new worldview during the emergence of the protohistoric Tarascan state (a.d. 1350–1520).

Iconographic analysis of the Prehispanic stone sculpture of West Mexico (Jalisco, Colima, Nayarit, and Michoacan) has revealed several iconographic themes, which are interpreted using ethnographic analogy with the Huichol Indians and other groups, as well as ethnohistorical information from West Mexico, central Mexico, and other areas. A total of seven iconographic themes have been identified: (1) human heads, (2) human skulls, (3) double figures, (4) anthropozoomorphic figures, (5) anthropomorphic braziers, (6) horned figures, and (7) hunchbacked figures. One shared meaning that appears in one form or another in most themes is fertility. It is proposed that these sculptures were sacred objects whose possible function was to symbolize the deified ancestors or deities that were ultimately responsible for rain and agricultural fertility.

La cultura que habitó en el cañón de Bolaños, situado en el suroeste de Zacatecas y el noreste de Jalisco, fue el producto de un movimiento expansionista del desarrollo cultural asentado en la cuenca del lago Magdalena (ubicada en la zona colindante al cañón) cuyo interés era establecer una interrelación comercial con los habitantes del área de Chalchihuites (ubicada al noreste del cañón de Bolaños).

La ocupación de la región se inició alrededor del comienzo de la era cristiana; conservó el patrón de asentamiento, el arquitectónico y el complejo funerario de la cultura de la Cuenca de Magdalena y adoptó el estilo decorativo de la cerámica de la cultura de Chalchihuites. Participó en las redes comerciales de la región intercambiando diverses productos.

El desequilibrio sociopolitico y económico mesoamericano sucedido alrededor del primer milenio, repercutió drásticamente en las rutas comerciales e indirectamente en la cultura del río Bolaños, provocando paulatinamente el abandono de la región alrededor del siglo XII de la era cristiana.

Although it has long been clear that craft specialists were present in Late Classic Lowland Maya society, it has proven difficult to identify chipped-stone lithics actually used in craft production. This article outlines a model, based on design theory, that can be used to identify the attributes of tools likely to have been used by lapidary and carpentry craft specialists, and tests it against an assemblage of tools analyzed through microwear analysis from Late Classic assemblages from the central Peten lakes region.

This study analyzes the imagery and writing carved on a “genealogical register” found in an elaborate tomb recently discovered at the northern end of the Valley of Etla in Oaxaca. Known as Tomb 5, the elaborate mausoleum contains architecture, sculpture, and murals pertaining to Period IIIb in the Valley of Oaxaca sequence. The carved stone inserted into the tomb at a later date, during Period IV, clearly establishes lines of descent from a venerated ancestor. The carving depicts a dead lord and provides information including the year and day of his death, which are given in 52-year and 260-day cycles, as well as information about his immediate descendants, including a young son and a mature daughter. Associated texts tell not only the calendar names of these family members but also, in the case of the son and daughter, their family-lineage name and their birth-order names. The writing also gives the birth and death dates of the lord's offspring; information that indirectly reveals their ages at the time of their father's death. Image and text complement each other by giving distinct information about the family lineage of a venerated ancestor.

Maya codex-style ceramics are among the most highly sought antiquities for collectors because of the fine art and extraordinary mythological scenes depicted on the pottery; yet the source of these ceramics has remained elusive. Recent archaeological explorations by the Regional Archaeological Investigation of the North Peten, Guatemala (RAINPEG) project at the site of Nakbe, Peten, have discovered codex-style ceramics in archaeological context. The hieroglyphs and painted scenes on the ceramics demonstrate the authenticity of the art style. Neutron activation analyses of the ceramics indicate that subtle differences in the ceramic corpus can be detected between proximal sites such as El Mirador and Nakbe. These data also indicate that codex-style ceramics were not manufactured in a site-specific workshop, but originate in a variety of production areas. While most codex-style vessels appear to have been manufactured within the immediate area of the extreme north-central Peten, several codex-style vessels that depict scribes are consistently similar in chemical composition to the codex-style pottery from Nakbe. The presence of fine painted codex-style pottery from modest plaza groups suggests a wider distribution of high-quality ceramic artifacts from among varied levels of economic, social, and political status of ancient Maya society. This accounts for the extensive looting of low-housemound complexes throughout the northern Peten.

It was not so long ago, even in my own work, that Teotihuacan art was explained in terms of Aztec meaning (Pasztory 1973). Yet its unique composite character, combined seemingly endlessly from a limited set of signs, was also apparent quite early; and the basic cluster of imagery was defined by many, including Hasso von Winning (1987) and Laurette Séjourné (1956). Their aim was to group the signs around deities or at least into motif clusters. A major division everyone has tried to make is between fertility and war imagery. That notion, too, is Aztec derived, with the twin temple dedicated at Tenochititlan to Tlaloc, the rain god, and to Huitzilopochtli, the war god. We have hung on to this distinction as an intellectual life-belt even though even a cursory study can show that water and war imagery are often intermixed. In a short but provocative article, Kubler (1967) suggested a structural and linguistic reading of Teotihuacan art focusing on images that stand as nouns (main figures) and others as adjectives or adverbs (borders, costumes, etc.). In a long study full of excellent observation, Langley (1986) analyzed the signs and their clustering in the most sophisticated manner so far. The only shortcoming of his study is his search for writing at Teotihuacan and an unwillingness to accept it for what it is: a nonnarrative system of art.

This article presents an analysis of the role played by architectural sculpture in creating directional focus in the buildings and plazas of Teotihuacan, Mexico. The sculptural programs of the Pyramid of the Feathered Serpent and the Palace of the Sacred Birds, one early in the city's building history, and the other late, are compared. Architectural form and decoration are shown to work together to engage the viewer and to manipulate the viewer's relationship to sacred and elite space.

Within the decorative borders that frame the painted murals of Teotihuacan, artists constructed a unique landscape. Stylized natural imagery is frequently organized according to recurring patterns. A medallion form, for instance, sometimes surmounted by a face or headdress, may be the representation of a supernatural being that floats freely, unfettered by the constraints of gravity. Disembodied hands, painted in association with this form or as components of other structures, dispense riches that fall in carefully measured streams.

This article is concerned with an analysis of the structure of mural paintings at Teotihuacan. It describes the preeminent role of borders that circumscribe Teotihuacan murals and breaks down the corpus of these borders into several different categories. Finally, it suggests how content and form may be combined to make a symbolic statement.

No evidence of writing in the form of inscriptions or documentary records has been found at Teotihuacan, the most populous, urbanized, and mercantile society of its period in Mesoamerica (circa a.d. 500), although it had close contact over several centuries with other cultures that had developed writing systems. What do exist are glyphic signs that form part of the iconography of mural paintings and pottery decoration. Analysis of over a thousand of these artifacts suggests that the Teotihuacanos developed an unusual notational system comprising, at present count, about 120 signs. This article discusses the sign system and the ways in which it was used to supplement the information conveyed pictorially by Teotihuacan art.

This article describes an elaborate “theater-type censer” found around a burial in a residential apartment compound of the Late Xolalpan phase excavated at Teotihuacan. It consists of a richly dressed human figure associated with representations of plants and food, clouds and flowers, and butterfly symbols. Its context and the associated elements attached to the censer evoke fire, death, and fertility symbolism.