En la cuenca lacustre de Zacapu a lo largo de su ocupación prehispánica (100 a.C. a 1450 d.C.), la dacita, una roca de origen volcánico, fue un recurso estratégico dentro de la economía regional, con el cual los antiguos habitantes de la zona elaboraron una serie de artefactos líticos ligados tanto a actividades de subsistencia y artesanales como rituales. Las investigaciones iniciadas en 2011 en dos minas-taller del yacimiento de dacita del Cerro Vicente expusieron una explotación extensa y organizada en torno a este recurso. En 2015, a partir de la cobertura LiDAR, se identificó un tercer complejo minero con evidencias de una explotación a cielo abierto y subterránea, esta vez en el yacimiento de Las Minas. Con el fin de comprender los mecanismos de explotación de la dacita, se ha llevado a cabo un análisis espacial de este sitio con distintas escalas de aproximación, para caracterizar las evidencias materiales vinculadas con la actividad extractiva. La combinación en nuestra investigación de la información que aporta el LiDAR y la proveniente de la prospección en el campo, nos ofrece un panorama completo del yacimiento, su organización espacial y funcional en un contexto más amplio como un paisaje prehispánico de extracción.

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.

Dental indicators of health and subsistence for Postclassic Maya from the island site of Wild Cane Cay, off the coast of southern Belize, are examined. A total of 213 teeth were recovered from 26 individuals in Fighting Conch Mound. This survey documents dental wear, calculus, alveolar resorption, caries, and alveolar abscesses. This study excludes deciduous teeth. The total sample examined in this study contains 188 teeth from 19 adults. In general, the dental sample indicates a healthier diet than what the inland contemporaries of the Fighting Conch Mound individuals were consuming, as shown by lower rates of several pathologies. The dental data support the interpretation that the healthy diet of the Wild Cane Cay Maya was a function of their island setting in the Caribbean. Plant and animal remains generally corroborate the dental findings.

The unexpected discovery of two reused fragments of an ancient mantic manuscript in Oaxaca casts new insights on scribal and divinatory practices at the eve of the Spanish conquest. This paper describes, analyzes, and interprets the faded inscriptions in the two fragments, comparing the structure of the calendrical notations and the painted imagery with those written on the handful of extant pre-Hispanic screenfolds. Although certain patterns allow us to posit the possible relationship between the fragments, other seeming deviations in the reckonings of the divinatory calendar lead us to conclude that the manuscript from which the two fragments originate evinces a distinct scribal and mantic regional variant.

La región del río Candelaria se vio en varias ocasiones afectada por los cambios climáticos. Los niveles del río variaron en el transcurso de los siglos significativamente y esto afectó a los chontales de Acalan que vivieron a filo del agua para bien o para mal, ya que su vida giraba alrededor de ella. Sus casas, campos de cultivo y ciudades fueron afectadas por los niveles que alcanzó el río. Las evidencias paleoecológicas conocidas todavía son escasas y los comentarios que se hacen son tentativos, sin embargo, por ser una región de ríos, lagunas y pantanos se sabe que estuvo sometida a momentos críticos y problemáticos, que de alguna manera queda reflejada en la ocupación prehispánica de la región.

Teotihuacan es reconocido mundialmente como uno de los sitios arqueológicos más importantes para la investigación de las sociedades complejas, sin embargo, y a pesar de estar incluido desde 1987 en la lista de Patrimonio Cultural de la Humanidad por la UNESCO, en la actualidad enfrenta severos problemas que inciden directa y desfavorablemente en la conservación de los vestigios arqueológicos. Diversas situaciones de carácter administrativo también afectan los acervos que se resguardan de manera muy precaria en las instalaciones, bodegas y los dos museos ubicados dentro de la zona de monumentos.

En los últimos años la exigencia de las cada vez más pobladas comunidades aledañas a la zona arqueológica por tener y mejorar los servicios públicos tanto como el crecimiento de la mancha urbana, ha provocado graves afectaciones al patrimonio arqueológico. Aunado a los problemas económicos del país, la ausencia de una política institucional, la falta de planes de trabajo a mediano y largo plazo encaminados a la preservación de los bienes arqueológicos del sitio, así como de programas dirigidos a las comunidades para concientizarlas e involucrarlas directamente en la conservación, han generado una actitud hostil y de desprecio de los pobladores para con los restos arqueológicos. Sin una estrategia institucional y alternativas viables para los habitantes de las comunidades, la mayor destrucción es ocasionada por los propios pobladores del valle o peor aún, por las instancias de gobierno estatal y municipal encargadas de dotar de los servicios a las comunidades.

En este artículo se analizan algunos de problemas que afectan el patrimonio arqueológico de Teotihuacan. Se hace hincapié en la carencia de planes y programas de trabajo con objetivos a largo y mediano plazo, que ayuden a la preservación de los bienes arqueológicos, así como de la información que constituye los distintos acervos.

Elizabeth M. Brumfiel began work in Aztec studies by tackling nothing less than the economic symbiotic model of Aztec exchange and specialization. Her findings at Huexotla and Xico questioned this model and in its place Brumfiel focused on the politics of exchange and strategies of both state power and commoner households. Her long-term archaeological project at Xaltocan built on and expanded those themes by applying social theories to understand Aztec society, and inequalities more generally, from a bottom-up agency perspective. These intellectual commitments also guided Brumfiel's engagement with community archaeology and her professional leadership.

Drawing upon iconological theory, this article argues that mirrors and blood were regarded as a conceptually linked pair within the imperial ideology of Teotihuacan, Mexico from the second century onward. The relationship between blood and mirrors is shown to have codified with the construction of the Pyramid of the Feathered Serpent, Teotihuacan's third largest edifice. This monument's facade was adorned with hundreds of monumental sculptures of oracular mirrors, some number of which incorporated actual mirrors formed of obsidian. I demonstrate that the Teotihuacan mirror sign took obsidian, a form of black volcanic glass that was intensively worked in the city, as a key referent. This monument was also the site of a historically large human sacrifice of more than 200 individuals, an event argued here to have involved bloodletting with obsidian knives and blades. I note that Teotihuacan interest in the mirror icon increased in concert with the city's residents’ application of the reflective material of obsidian to warring and other blood-spilling behaviors. The mirror icon evoked both obsidian as a radiant material, as well as obsidian's potential for application to forceful martial actions. The article concludes that this icon in part signified imperial force, which was made real through the weaponization of the smoking glass.

La guerra florida es considerada un conflicto en el cual se enfrentaron, durante muchos años, la Triple Alianza Azteca y los reinos del valle tlaxcalteco-poblano. Por mucho tiempo la xochiyaoyotl se ha estudiado como una guerra ritual, prolongada en el tiempo y basada en un recíproco acuerdo. Según las teorías críticas que avaloran esta tesis, el fin de la xochiyaoyotl era obtener las víctimas cuyo sacrificio proveía la alimentación de los dioses. Sin embargo, en las últimas décadas del siglo XX, gracias al descubrimiento y a la traducción de nuevos documentos relativos a la historia prehispánica, el concepto ritual y religioso de la xochiyaoyotl ha empezado a cuestionarse. La fuente que otorga más detalles sobre la xochiyaoyotl es la obra del cronista chalca Domingo Chimalpahin. Este testimonio da evidencia de enfrentamientos llamados xochiyaoyotl precedentes al reinado de Motecuhzoma Ilhuicamina, en que estuvieron involucrados primeramente chalcas y tlacochcalcas y, después, los mexicas. A través del análisis del testimonio de Chimalpahin este estudio busca matizar las teorías acerca de la finalidad puramente ritual de la xochiyaoyotl, avanzando como hipótesis que los mexicas se adueñaron del concepto de xochiyaoyotl, desarrollándolo conforme a las nuevas necesidades políticas sobrevenidas.

In this study, I use the type-variety-mode analysis to define the diagnostic ceramic material for the Ik'hubil Ceramic Complex dating to the Terminal Classic (ca. a.d. 780–930/1000). The percentages of shared ceramic content indicate that multiple sites in the mid-to-lower Sibun Valley are members of an Ik'hubil Ceramic Sphere. My preliminary analyses of sites in the lower Belize River valley suggest that the Ik'hubil Sphere may extend across a broader area of north-central Belize during the Terminal Classic, discrete from the Spanish Lookout Sphere in the upper Belize Valley. Northern Yucatec traits are identified in ceramics and architecture in the eastern Sibun and Belize Valleys, along with marked changes in foodways. The presence of trading diasporas and more intimate social relationships, such as intermarriage, may explain this mix of local and hybrid forms of material culture introduced by the ninth century in this part of the eastern Maya Lowlands.

Based on stratigraphic excavation data and associated radiocarbon dates we argue that the pre-Hispanic city of Cerro Jazmín, in the Mixteca Alta region of Oaxaca, underwent a period of political change between the Late Formative (300 b.c.–a.d. 50) and the Terminal Formative periods (a.d. 50–300). This shift is reflected in the city's layout and in the timing of construction and use of two different monumental sectors. During the city's Late Formative occupation, we found evidence of more exclusionary feasting activity taking place in a secluded monumental sector called the Sunken Courtyards near the hilltop. In the Terminal Formative, however, monumental construction expanded in the more accessible Tres Cerritos sector where larger and accessible public areas were the focus of activity. We argue that changes in the city's layout, along with the differing patterns of feasting, suggest that the city's leaders went from a more exclusionary form of government to a more collective political strategy during the Terminal Formative period. Despite of these efforts monumental construction largely stopped and the city's population declined by the start of the Classic period (a.d. 300).

Recent investigation among the Ayöök (Mixe) people of Oaxaca showed that the on-going use of a 260-day calendar complements the divinatory technique of casting maize seeds. This paper offers a detailed description of this mantic practice as a means to approach and better understand precolonial divinatory practices and the people who practiced them, such as the tonalopouhque among the Nahua. In particular, this new data will also serve to shed light on the use of the pictorial manuscripts that portray the 260-day calendar, such as the so-called Borgia Group Codices. Along these lines, historical and colonial accounts, origin narratives, visual culture, and the archaeology surrounding divination will also be re-examined. This article will show that, similar to the Ayöök contemporary daykeepers and diviners, those that lived in the past were also wise women and men who were specialized in managing the complicated system of symbolism surrounding prognostication and prescription set out over 260 days. Furthermore, they employed divination for medical purposes and aided people with afflictions, curing them of sickness.

Pat Culbert's scholarship and teaching are marked by both an insistence on rigorous attention to data and a gentleness and humaneness in which scholarly inquiry should flourish. I discuss in this paper one aspect of his research—the size and degree of political integration of Maya polities—by means of a comparison with Mesopotamian examples.

A group of three unlooted shaft tombs was discovered and excavated in the site of El Piñon, in Bolaños Canyon of northern Jalisco and southern Zacatecas. The details of the excavations are discussed here, highlighting chronology, the presence of local and trade goods, the osteological analysis, and the question of sequential versus single interment.

In the paper by Hristov and Genovés (1999), the main supporting argument for their hypothesis of pre-Columbian transoceanic contacts is a thermoluminescence (TL) age of 1780 ± 400 b.p. obtained for a small terracotta head found in central Mexico. This age value and the reference cited are not correct. In this contribution, we clarify the context and give for the first time our final results of the TL age analysis of the figurine. Due to methodological problems, we were not able to perform a traditional TL age determination. It was, however, possible to calculate an age range from A.D. 1270 to 870 B.C. for the small head, corresponding to firing in antiquity. This resulting age probably rules out a Colonial manufacturing date, but because of its low accuracy, it certainly cannot be used as an argument in the debate over the head's origin, or even as central evidence for pre-Columbian transoceanic contacts.

I conclude that Hanns Prem's article in this issue is correct in the assessment that the Canek Manuscript is a forgery. This evaluation resulted from extensive communication with Prem and from additional research suggesting that the author of the Canek Manuscript used a 1917 publication by Philip Ainsworth Means and the writings of Sylvanus G. Morley as aids in constructing the text of the document. The forger's references to the Itza capital as Tayasal and to the Tayasal peninsula follow modern, not seventeenth-century, conventions, an error that reinforces Prem's conclusions. The discovery of a family of forgeries, of which the Canek Manuscript is a particularly convincing one, should make future researchers wary of single documents that differ significantly from others of the Colonial era.