The so-called frieze of the Caciques at Tula, Hidalgo, Mexico, is an 8-m-long bench with most of its original polychromed face intact. It formed part of a larger composition that once ran around the perimeter of the Vestibule, a colonnaded hall that served as a foyer for Pyramid B. The composition of profile males is adapted to look as if they are actually marching around the room toward the pyramid. Although Hugo Moedano Koer (1947) identified the figures as caciques or local chiefs, an analysis of architectural setting, subject matter, and ethnohistory suggests instead that the figures represent merchants engaged in rituals related to trade. This new reading demonstrates that Tula had decorative programs paralleling its development as an important center of long-distance exchange during the Early Postclassic period, and that merchants from Tula may have been a plausible prototype for Aztec pochteca.

Until recently, an entrenched view of Tiwanaku expansion in the south-central Andes as a primarily cultic phenomenon precluded discussion of state-built ceremonial facilities outside of Tiwanaku’s immediate hinterland of the Bolivian altiplano. However, recent research in the Tiwanaku periphery has found specialized ceremonial architecture that reflects the solidification of central control and the development of a provincial system. Excavation at the Omo M10 site, in Moquegua, Peru, has exposed the only Tiwanaku sunken-court temple structure and cut-stone architecture known outside of the Titicaca Basin. A reconstruction of the Omo temple complex demonstrates direct parallels with Tiwanaku ceremonial centers of the altiplano in architectural form and ceremonial activities. This suggests that patterns of state-centered ceremony and peripheral administration underwent a dramatic transformation with the explosive expansion of the Tiwanaku state during the period known as Tiwanaku V (A. D. 725–1000).

Recent excavations of the Spanish Colonial Maya communities of Lamanai and Tipu, Belize, combine with extensive ethnohistorical research to provide guidelines for the location of other Historic-period sites in the region. We present brief case studies of community-location data from the ethnohistorical record, followed by observations regarding survey expectations and approaches appropriate to identification of Spanish Colonial-period sites. Though rooted in Belize experience, the strategies outlined should prove applicable throughout the Maya Lowlands, and perhaps beyond the region's borders as well.

Investigaciones preliminares en Tecoh, Izamal, Yucatán, sitio a donde aparentemente fue traslada la cabecera del señorío de Ah-Kin Chel, han aportado nuevas evidencias sobre los acontecimientos que afectaron a la comunidad maya durante los primeros años de la dominación española. Algunas casas construídas a la manera occidental y que pertenecieron a la nobleza indígena constituyen ejemplos relevantes de la arquitectura civil del siglo XVI en México, y ponen de manifiesto la importancia que esta clase aún mantenía en la sociedad. El temprano abandono de Tecoh, resulta de gran valor para las investigaciones, pues las construcciones coloniales sufrieron pocas modificaciones y las prehispánicas no fueron totalmente arrasadas.

Data from the U. S. Naval Observatory annual astronomical almanacs (1970–1992) in “correlation” with the Maya Calendar Round (CR) sequence indicate that the Dresden Codex lunar table (51a-58b) very probably counted simultaneous sequences of both lunar and solar eclipses on the same set of day names. The contemporary sequence of day names in the CR and the astronomy consistent with it parallels Classic-period Maya observational experience between 9.16.0.0.0 and 9.17.0.0.0.