The evolution of social power during the ceramic age of Puerto Rico is investigated. Archaeological site plans, ethnohistoric and ethnographic accounts, and size/spatial distributions of ball courts and ceremonial plazas are investigated as they relate to political organization and leadership roles in prehistoric Puerto Rico. One of the strands linking 14 centuries of ceramicage culture in Puerto Rico is the emphasis on ceremonial space as an overtly integrative arena for the group. As the definition of the “group” evolved from a village-bound entity to a multivillage polity, the importance and elaboration of ceremonial space increased accordingly. The central argument in this paper is that politically motivated individuals accrued power by controlling the rituals and ceremonies that were of fundamental importance for maintaining and reproducing society. Rituals and ceremonies were performed in specially designated areas of communities. As access to power narrowed to specific lineages, families, or individuals, the designated community spaces became more formal in construction and location. These ceremonial spaces, referred to as ball courts and ceremonial plazas in the ethnohistoric accounts, ultimately became contested places as well as places of contest.

The analysis of decorated pottery across house mounds at the lowland Maya site of Xunantunich in Belize investigates the complex relationships between wealth, social status, and political strategies in state-level societies. Rather than using the distribution of decorated pottery as an indicator of social status, this study treats it as an independent variable and illustrates how prestige goods circulated as political currency to further political ambitions. Two social strata and the two ranks within each stratum are defined by architectural complexity and intersite location of house mounds at the Late Classic II (A. D. 670 to 790) to Terminal Classic (A. D. 790 to 1000) provincial center of Xunantunich and its nearby hamlet, San Lorenzo. During the Late Classic II phase, elaborately decorated pottery was found concentrated in elite households in the civic center, whereas during the Terminal Classic, when Xunantunich was in the process of collapse, they were found dispersed equally among all house mounds. I suggest that local elites, to maintain power, abandoned rival displays of prestige goods and attempted to consolidate community support by gifting luxury items down through the social hierarchy. This article, therefore, seeks not only to craft a clearer definition of wealth, but to build a model of when and how prestige goods function as a means to promote political strategies in state-level societies.

Based primarily upon evidence from the site of Urichu in the Lake Pátzcuaro Basin of Michoacán, we propose that changes in the burial practices of local elites document a transformation of these elites from highly ranked local chiefs into a socially stratified elite class associated with the emergence of the Tarascan state. Two distinctive mortuary patterns that represent the Classic-Epiclassic and Late Postclassic periods are presented. These patterns vary in the age and sex composition of differing mortuary facilities, the preparation and treatment of the bodies, the mortuary facilities, the types of burial goods, and the location of the burials within settlements. Comparison to mortuary practices from the sites of Loma Santa María (Morelia), Guadalupe (Zacapu Basin), Tingambato, and Tres Cerritos (Cuitzeo Basin) place these patterns in a regional context. By contrasting the earlier mortuary pattern, which is associated with societies poorly known, with the later mortuary pattern, which is associated with the well documented Tarascan empire, it is possible to propose a model of a transformation in regional political economies associated with the emergence of the Tarascan state in the Postclassic period. This transformation involved a shift in elite identity from one primarily associated with imported finished goods from distant powerful centers and control of prestige goods networks, to an identity primarily associated with locally produced, distinctively Tarascan, goods and control of tributary, military, political, and ideological networks.

New ceramic compositional evidence has come to light that bears on the relationships among the cream paste ceramics of southeastern Mesoamerica. This evidence, which derives from instrumental neutron activation analysis (INAA) and microprobe analysis, suggests that Ivory ware, a Late and Terminal Formative diagnostic found in southern Guatemala, is chemically similar not to other Guatemalan light firing pottery, but to Formative and Classic period cream paste wares from western El Salvador and Honduras. El Salvador is the clearest region of overlap between the Late Formative (Ivory Usulután) and Classic (Chilanga, Gualpopa, and Copador) representatives of this chemically homogeneous cream paste tradition, and therefore we argue that the source zone for all of them lies somewhere in western El Salvador and not in Honduras or Guatemala. This inference contradicts (1) our own earlier hypothesis that Ivory ware originated somewhere in the Guatemalan highlands and (2) the hypothesis that cream paste Copador originated in the Copán Valley. If this inference is correct, then (1) the importance of ceramic circulation in the Late and Terminal Formative Providencia and Miraflores interaction spheres has been underestimated and (2) during the Classic period, Copán absorbed the productive capacity of western El Salvador (represented in this case by cream paste polychrome pottery) to a greater extent than has been appreciated previously.

More than 1,200 artifacts from Tikal provide new information about the presence of Mexican obsidian in the Maya Lowlands and Teotihuacan"s possible role in its transmission. In addition to the source of green obsidian near Pachuca, six other Mexican sources were identified in the Tikal sample. These artifacts date from the early Late Preclassic into the Early Postclassic periods. Over 96 percent are prismatic blades and thin bifaces, whose recovery contexts, spatial distributions, and signs of use-wear indicate they were predominantly utilitarian and domestic artifacts used by all social groups. They were commodities that were transported over Highland-Lowland long-distance exchange networks of considerable time depth. This long-standing, interregional exchange of goods is essentially different from the relatively brief adoption and integration during the Early Classic period of objects, art styles, and behavior of Teotihuacan origin. Obsidian sequins and eccentrics of Teotihuacan style were material components of this latter phenomenon. Their forms and recovery contexts suggest use in rituals borrowed from Teotihuacan, but by lesser elites or wealthy commoners rather than by Tikal"s rulers.