Investigations at Punta Canbalam on the Gulf Coast of Campeche reveal it is probably the largest of several important but underreported trading sites on the pan-Mesoamerican maritime trade route. The coastline has been unstable for the last thousand years, subjecting the site to sea level changes and repeated episodes of beach erosion and redeposition. The relatively dense scatter of temporally mixed, highly weathered sherds and other artifacts on an exceedingly narrow, modern beach indicates that it is all secondarily deposited and that its original location was offshore. An interdisciplinary team is beginning to recognize clues in its environmental and cultural contexts as to where this peripatetic site was originally located and the extent to which it depended upon exchanges of salt, petty commodities from inland, and canoe-borne exotics from afar. This predominantly Terminal Classic and Early Postclassic site likely served as a port of entry for obsidian, jade, fine-paste ceramics, and other goods for the nearby inland city of Chunchucmil. It also probably supplied the interior with marine and estuarine food and ornamental and ritual products in exchange for inland agricultural products and other items.

The term “Protoclassic,” employed regularly but inexplicitly in the literature of lowland Maya archaeology, has become increasingly nebulous and ambiguous in both meaning and usage. This paper reviews the history and use of the term and presents a formal redefinition of the Protoclassic as a ceramic stage based explicitly and exclusively on ceramic criteria. Some suggestions regarding future use of the term also are offered. The paper further addresses and resolves a number of persisting questions regarding Protoclassic orange wares, including problems concerning the actual existence of the “Aguacate ceramic group.” and the relationships of Aguacate-group pottery to other emergent orange wares of the terminal Late Preclassic and initial Early Classic periods. The nature and significance of the “Holmul I Style,” the “Floral Park Ceramic Sphere.” and the relationships of the two to each other and the larger, redefined “protoclassic” ceramic stage also are examined. A spatial distribution for protoclassic ceramics considerably expanded over what has ever been reported previously is described, and Chronometric data are presented to support a revised chronology for the protoclassic ceramic stage. Finally, ceramic data are offered that suggest a real subdivision of the protoclassic ceramic stage into an early, emergent facet originating entirely within Late Preclassic lowland traditions, and a later, fully “Classic” facet corresponding to the early Tzakol (Tzakol 1) ceramic horizon.

The following paper examines archaeological variability in community organization of sites in the parroquia de Yaxcaba. Yucatan, Mexico, from a.d. 1750 to 1847. Using historical and archaeological evidence, the course of political-economic change in Yucatan is followed from the recovery of the Indian population in 1750, through the Bourbon reforms and Independence from Spain, to the Caste War of Yucatan in 1847 in order to assess its implications for continuity or discontinuity of Maya adaptive patterns. Three settlements—a pueblo, a hacienda, and an independent rancho—were intensively mapped to reveal patterns of house lots, streets, features, plazas, and public architecture. Differences in spatial organization among the settlements can be specifically linked to variation in population growth, tax structure, and land stress coincident with changes in the colonial regime. Variation in household production strategies and the choice of tactics that minimize subsistence risk were largely dependent on the community's degree of integration with the colonial system. The evidence from Yaxcaba suggests that two key processes are particularly important in determining articulations between rural and urban areas: disenfranchisement from the means of production and the extension of credit. These two processes affect variation in the relations of production that partly explain how communities either become entangled in or remain apart from political-economic change.

The site of Cuello in northern Belize provides a long ceramic sequence from the early Middle Preclassic, ca. 1200 b.c., to the Late Preclassic, sometime in the fourth century a.d. Excavations begun at Cuello in 1975 were completed in 1993. The initial controversy concerning the chronological placement of the earliest pottery of the Swasey and Bladen complexes is challenged by examining the 1992 and 1993 excavated material in a “blind analysis,” without benefit of stratigraphic information. The results demonstrate conclusively the stratigraphie priority of Swasey ceramics below Bladen, which in turn lie below pottery of the Middle Preclassic Lopez-Mamom complex. Cuello operated within the homogeneous Mamom ceramic sphere during the Middle Preclassic and within the Chicanel ceramic sphere during the Late Preclassic. The ultimate breakup of the Chicanel sphere resulted in Cuello's adherence to the older ceramic traditions, while other Maya sites had begun the production of polychrome pottery. Cuello represents one of the best-known Middle Preclassic Maya sites yet investigated, and it provides an important perspective on this poorly understood time period in the Maya lowlands.

Analysis of Early Formative ceramics from the site of Paso de la Amada, on the coast of Chiapas, Mexico, yields a refined sequence for the period 1400–1000 b.c. A simple key has been developed to classify midden assemblages. Its utility for creating chronologically sensitive groupings is confirmed by multidimensional scaling of 32 units. The refined ceramic sequence provides a basis for investigating short-term sociopolitical dynamics during the Early Formative period.

This study simulates vulnerability to famine and food poverty among peasant households in the Basin of Mexico two decades after the Conquest. Using demographic and cadastral data recorded in the Códice de Santa María Asunción (Tepetlaoztoc), vulnerability is assessed by comparing household and patio-group (household compound) food production to consumption needs at the same scales, Modeling of food production of the principal subsistence crops (maize, beans, and maguey) uses the soil types noted for each field in the Asuncion document and a production model that accounts for soil-productivity differences. Both typical and poor years are modeled. Household and patio-group food needs are based on the codex data for each individual in the community. The study reveals that 60% of the population was at risk of famine in a poor year and that up to 16% would have suffered food poverty in a typical year. Nevertheless, even in a poor year, 40% of the population would have had adequate-or-better nutrition. Thus, this analysis supports contrasting views of early Contact-period nutrition. Because of the unequal distribution of food-production resources in Nahua society, some commoner households were usually adequately fed, while others normally suffered chronic undernutrition. Patio groups represent a possible response to this situation, as analysis by patio group indicated reduced vulnerability to food poverty. Land per capita ratios appear to be the best explanation of the differences in food poverty and famine risk among the households or patio groups.

Since 1984, the Ek Balam Project has been investigating the organization and developmental history of a large Maya polity in the northeastern part of the Yucatan Peninsula. The survey included both urban Ek Balam, the largest regional center during the Late Classic period (a.d. 600–900), covering a minimum of 12 km2, and its rural hinterland. One result of this project has been the construction of a preliminary ceramic history of the region, the subject of this report. Evidence supports a sequence of occupations extending from the Middle Preclassic through the Hispanic period (600 b.c.–a.d. 1600). The ceramic sequence, constructed from a type-variety analysis of more than a quarter of a million pieces of pottery from surface survey and excavations, consists of six preliminary ceramic complexes. This ceramic analysis extends our understanding of Maya cultural development in the northern Maya lowlands to a largely unknown area of the peninsula.

In this paper I present new, surface-collected ceramic data from the previously little-known Chikinchel region in northeast Yucatan. My goals are twofold: first, to expand the utility of surface-collected materials by suggesting a technological approach (paste analysis) to classify small or eroded sherds; and second, to place Chikinchel into the larger spatial and temporal framework of the northern Maya lowlands. The ceramic analyses presented here span the Late Formative through Spanish Colonial periods. Diachronic changes in the regional distributions of the different wares that compose the Chikinchel ceramic inventory are demonstrated and discussed in terms of larger processes occurring across the peninsula.

The period preceding the Terminal Classic florescence in the Puuc region of Yucatan, Mexico has not received adequate research attention. Recent comprehensive site survey and excavation at Chac II (Chac) are exploring Puuc origins and have begun to redress the lack of chronological understanding regarding the region by independently linking architectural styles to ceramic sequences via a program of absolute dating. Results to date suggest that Chac was a significant Early Classic center (a.d. 300–600) that also experienced a major Late Classic (a.d. 600–800) occupation. Multiple lines of chronological evidence, including buildings with a mix of early architectural styles and associated pre-Cehpech and Cehpech ceramics (a.d. 800–1000) within sealed architectural and stratigraphic contexts, suggest a period of architectural transition and the antecedents of Cehpech ceramics dating to the sixth century. These new chronological data and associated evidence for foreign contacts perhaps reaching to central Mexico argue for the assignment of a Middle Classic period (a.d. 500–700) to the region, with broad evolutionary implications for Puuc origins and pan-Mesoamerican contacts.

A major impediment to understanding the Terminal Classic to Early Postclassic transition in northern Yucatan has been the lack of a reliable ceramic chronology defined from stratigraphic contexts at the site of Chichen Itza. The temporal relationship of Cehpech and Soluta ceramics is central to resolving the issue of the correct chronological placement of Chichen Itza. The results of stratigraphic excavations at Yula, a small site 5 km south of Chichen Itza, provide the strongest evidence to date that Cehpech and Sotuta ceramics were contemporaneous. Statistical analysis of pottery composition by stratum confirms a positive correlation between Sotuta and Cehpech, which are clearly differentiated from earlier pottery. Rather than following a linear sequence in which Cehpech precedes Sotuta, as suggested by R. E. Smith and other early researchers, these two slatewares represent coeval regional variation. Thus, the major occupation of Chichen Itza dates not to the Early Postclassic, but to the Terminal Classic. The results of this research contribute toward the redefinition of the Terminal Classic and Early Postclassic periods in the northern Maya lowlands.

Research at the ancient Maya city of Yaxuna, located in the heart of the Yucatan Peninsula, has provided sufficient data to suggest a preliminary chronological framework for the cultural development of this large polity. Primary ceramic and stratigraphie data are presented to support a five-phase scheme of cultural history, encompassing the Middle Formative through Postclassic periods (500 b.c.–a.d. 1250). In addition to chronological significance, the political ramifications of a pan-lowland ceramic trade are addressed. Yaxuna experienced an early florescence in the Late Formative–Early Classic periods, when it was the largest urban center in the central peninsula. A second renaissance in the Terminal Classic period was the result of Yaxuna's role in an alliance between the Puuc and Coba, in opposition to growing Itza militancy. This paper proposes a chronological framework for the cultural development of one northern Maya region in order to facilitate an understanding of this area as part of the overall history of polity interaction and competition in the Maya lowlands.