This paper provides data on the salt industry along Guerrero's Costa Chica and on itinerant salt trading conducted by highland Nahuatl villagers. The findings are compared with studies of salt production elsewhere in Mesoamerica, and the nature and quality of oral-historical sources are evaluated. Based primarily on extensive ethnographic fieldwork, the paper explores technical and social-organizational features of salt production and marketing useful for model building among archaeologists and ethnohistorians. In crossing disciplinary boundaries the paper raises methodological issues of concern to scholars who attempt to reconstruct historical or contemporary Mesoamerican cultural and economic patterns.

Following the military campaigns of conquest in sixteenth-century Yucatan, the Order of Friars Minor Observant assumed the task of controlling, by culture conversion, the indigenous Yucatec Maya. The fundamental vehicle for this program of social engineering was the built environment of the mission, composed of the chapel, atrium, and friary, and the associated village. Archaeological remains of mission sites are horizon markers for the earliest phases of permanent Hispanic presence on the peninsula, ca. 1545–1572. Mission villages specify locations where the friars reorganized pre-Hispanic Maya settlements according to Spanish sociopolitical norms. Increasing complexity in mission-chapel architecture marks the stages of this reorganization. In this article, I discuss the historical origin of the friars' policies and the context of their implementation in Yucatan; model the spatial, temporal, architectural, and behavioral variables the Franciscans employed to extend and maintain Hispanic hegemony; provide comparative data from seventeenth-century New Mexico and La Florida; and outline a general theory of Franciscan activity in the New World.

Recent excavations in the first chamber of Gordon's Cave #3 encountered a use floor with a substantial quantity of sherds and artifacts. Middle Preclassic, Gordon subphase sherds were recovered, but overall the ceramics suggest that Preclassic use of the cave was minor with the most intensive use occurring during the Classic period. The artifact assemblage provides a fuller picture of cave rituals which appear to be similar in many respects to those practiced by modern groups in the Guatemalan highlands.

Data are presented from archaeological excavations conducted by the Institute de Antropología e Historia (IDEAH) in the Mundo Perdido architectural complex, Tikal, Guatemala, from 1979 to 1984. After a brief summary of the data pertaining to the Middle Preclassic, Late Preclassic, and Early Classic periods, new results are presented from investigations of the Late Classic occupation of this group. Many marked social changes at Tikal are revealed through the Mundo Perdido data within a cultural context that emphasizes remarkable continuity.

Underwater archaeology in the Maya area during the twentieth century has gradually evolved from a avocational activity whose primary focus was on the recovery of artifacts to a subdiscipline with more focused professional concerns. The present synthesis outlines the history of underwater research throughout the Maya area, including projects at pre-Hispanic sites in the lowlands and highlands, as well as the exploration of offshore historic wrecks. It concludes with a brief assessment of the current state of this research.

This paper reports results of the first neutron-activation analysis (NAA) of ancient pottery wares and clays from the Puuc region of Yucatan. Based on ceramics from Sayil, this investigation seeks to expand exploration into the nature of commercialization during the Terminal Classic period (A.D. 800–1000). This research sought to: (a) establish the chemical composition of major Puuc wares, (b) begin to define potential raw materials and production loci at Sayil, and (c) explore the question of whether Sayil was a major producer and exporter of ceramic wares. Compositional analysis reveals that three of the four major Puuc wares (Puuc Slate, Puuc Unslipped, and Puuc Red) exhibit some degree of chemical distinctiveness, suggesting discrete production units. Compositional analysis of clays from Sayil and Loltun Cave indicates that Puuc Slate and Puuc Red Ware are compatible with clays locally available at Sayil, supporting local production of these wares, whereas Puuc Unslipped Ware initially appears to be closer compositionally to clays from Loltun. In addition, Puuc Slate is an important ware found throughout northern Yucatan that shows evidence of large-scale production at Sayil. This analysis represents the first steps of a comprehensive investigation into the Maya economy of Terminal Classic Yucatan.

This paper summarizes the results of an analysis of the formal stone tools from the Maya site of Tipu, Belize. The lithic tools are dominated by one form, the small, side-notched projectile point. These tools were recovered from Colonial-period contexts at the site. These points were manufactured from prismatic blade and flake blanks and were fairly uniform in terms of their size and method of manufacture, although distinct base styles were observed. A brief discussion of both quantitative and qualitative attributes and a description of the technology used in the manufacture of these points are presented. Also, several ideas on how researchers may be able to see ethnic or subethnic expressions of style in Colonial-period tools is offered. The possible functions of these projectile points is discussed using information from different sources. The use of these small projectile points, a component of bow-and-arrow technology, will be discussed in light of the often hostile nature of the Spanish Conquest, and in particular, the conquest and reconquest of the Tipu area.

Archaeological fieldwork was conducted on Ambergris Caye, Belize, for three years beginning in 1986. Nineteen archaeological sites were identified during survey work. Intensive excavations were conducted at three sites and limited excavation at several others. In addition, a fourth site has been excavated by another party. This data base gives us the opportunity to examine the diachronic and functional variability of the archaeological record.

Archaeological excavations carried out during the past five years along the Pacific coast of Mexico, Guatemala, and El Salvador have recovered 79 new 14C dates for the Late Archaic and Early to Middle Formative periods. We analyze these new dates along with 25 previously published dates to refine a sequence of 10 archaeological phases spanning almost three and a half millennia, from ca. 4000 to 650 B.C. The phases are summarized with a brief description of their most salient characteristics. We include illustrations of the Early Formative period ceramics and figurines from the Mazatan region. The sequence of phases reveals a trajectory of cultural evolution beginning in the Archaic period with the mobile hunting, fishing, and gathering Chantuto people. By 1550 B.C., the first ceramic-using sedentary communities appeared on the coast of Chiapas. They were hunter-fisher-gatherers who supplemented their food supply with cultivated plants, including maize and beans. We suggest that by the Locona phase (1400–1250 B.C.) in Chiapas, they began the transition from egalitarian sociopolitical organization to simple chiefdoms, leaving behind evidence of large-scale architectural constructions, long-distance imports such as obsidian and jade, and elaborately crafted prestige goods. Also in Chiapas, during the Cherla phase (1100–1000 B.C.), ceramic and figurine styles, nearly identical to those found at San Lorenzo Tenochtitlan on the Gulf Coast, made their first appearance. Many of the local artifact styles were gradually replaced by styles that became increasingly widespread in Mesoamerica. The chronology presented here shows that these changes were roughly contemporaneous with similar ones in neighboring regions of Mesoamerica.

A “table altar,” perhaps one described by Cabrera (1822) almost 200 years ago and since unreported, is the only complete example of a class of four-legged sculptures known at present from Kaminaljuyu. Iconographic similarities between the monument and sculptures from southern piedmont and coastal centers and comparisons with other Kaminaljuyu sculptures suggest an early Late Preclassic date (Late Verbena-Early Arenal, approximately 300-200 B.C.). According to depictions on other southern-area monuments many “table altars” were formal, emblematic seats for rulers, or thrones, which had specific ideologies associated with them Review of monuments, including identification as a four-legged throne of the well-known sculpture, Stela 10, numbers the Kaminaljuyu corpus of thrones to date at a minimum of seven. The presence of thrones as a sculptural class at Kaminaljuyu in the Late Preclassic period provides more evidence of a long throne tradition reaching from Olmec times through the Maya Classic and into the Postclassic. Kaminaljuyu's thrones conceivably also add to other evidence of complex sociopolitics at the city during the Late Preclassic.

From the Preclassic on, architectural complexes with defined functions were built in the Maya lowlands as a reflection of societal complexity and of the centralization of power in the hands of a sovereign with divine rights. Two of these types of complexes—acropoli and astronomical commemoration complexes—complement each other, as a model for a new generation of elites with ideas of grandeur and with the vision to realize ambitious projects. Thus, in Tikal and Uaxactun, the acropoli and the astronomical commemoration complexes (also called Group E) were built. These, together with other evidence for political, economic, and artistic progress, led the sites to become powerful centers that radiated prosperity and wealth.

Archaeological excavations at the site of Xochicalco, Morelos, have explored several elements of public architecture important for clarifying aspects of urban organization and civic life during the Epiclassic period. Excavations confirm the presence of a ditch and terrace defensive system, strategic control of access leading into the site, and the presence of walled streets entering the site and extending throughout the city. The urban design also included systems for surface drainage that were linked to street networks. A section of the drainage system was constructed as a subterranean sewer using corbeled arch construction where it passed beneath a large platform mound. Analysis of the materials recovered from buildings throughout these excavations also provide the basis for identifying domestic activities and differentiating between residential and nonresidential structures.

The form and organization of urban architecture is examined at the central Mexico site of Xochicalco to reconstruct aspects of both its internal community structure and regional political organization during the Epiclassic period (A.D. 700-900). Analysis of the site's defensive architecture provides unique information about the city's internal design. Dry moats, walled roads, and steep terrace facades subdivide the community into a series of population segments that on the basis of both size and architecture type resemble ward divisions found in central Mexico cities at the time of Conquest. Furthermore, Xochicalco does not have a single defensive perimeter characteristic of a strongly centralized polity; instead, it possesses a series of defensive precincts located on the hills and ridges adjacent to Cerro Xochicalco that are equivalent in form and redundant in function. The model that best approximates the segmentary nature of this structure is that of a regional confederacy dominated by Xochicalco during the Epiclassic.

Surface reconnaissance at the site of Xochicalco, Morelos, identified 12 areas believed to be production locales where obsidian tools were manufactured during the Epiclassic period (A.D. 700-900). Production locales were identified from concentrations of chipped stone debitage located in both residential and nonresidential contexts at Xochicalco. Differences in the size and location of these production locales suggested obsidian craft activity was carried out in three different production contexts similar to those reported at the large urban center of Teotihuacan: small domestic workshops, large nonresidential workshops, and civic-ceremonial precinct workshops. Stratigraphic excavations were initiated to test whether the inferences about the context of production based on surface concentrations of obsidian debitage would be confirmed by subsurface testing. The results show that in most cases surface concentrations of obsidian debitage accurately reflect the presence of in situ craft activity.