Papers Of The New World Archaeological Foundation

"Rather than unified into a single state, the Pre-Columbian Maya were organized into a series of independent kingdoms or polities. The vast majority of studies of Maya states focus on the apogee of their development in the Classic period, ca. 250-850 CE. In fact, Maya states are defined by the specific political structures that characterized Classic period lowland Maya society. The Origins of Maya States is the first study in over 30 years to specifically examine the origins and development of these states during the preceding Preclassic period, ca. 1000 BCE to 250 CE. Coverage includes material signatures for the development of Maya states, evaluations of extant models for the emergence of Maya states, and advancement of new models based on recent archaeological data. Attempts to understand the origins of Maya states cannot escape the limitations of archaeological data, and this is complicated by both the variability of Maya states in time and space, and the interplay between internal development and external impacts. To mitigate these factors, The Origins of Maya States combines an examination of topical issues with regional perspectives from both the Maya area and neighboring Mesoamerican regions to highlight the role of interregional interaction in the evolution of Maya states. At the core of the study the development of complexity during the Preclassic era is discussed within the Maya regions of the Pacific coast, highlands, and lowlands. This is followed by studies of Preclassic economic, social, political, and ideological systems to provide a developmental context for the origins of Maya states"--Provided by publisher.

This edited volume developed from a 2005 Society for American Archaeology symposium in honor of Gareth W. Lowe, archaeologist and director of the NWAF. The contributions generally focus on the Formative period throughout Mesoamerica and include an original work by Lowe on the Early Formative of the Central Depression of Chiapas. Published by New World Archaeological Foundation.

Includes No. 1. The Chiapas Project, 1955-1958, By Gareth W. Lowe; No. 2, Archeological Exploration Of The Upper Grijalva River, Chiapas, Mexico, By Gareth W. Lowe; No. 3, Explorations At San Agustin, Chiapas, Mexico, By Carlos Navarrete; No. 4, A Brief Reconnaissance In The Region Of Tonala, Chiapas, Mexico, By Carlos Navarrete.

New World Archaeological Foundation, No. 8.

The ancient Mesoamerican city of Izapa in Chiapas, Mexico, is renowned for its extensive collection of elaborate stone stelae and altars, which were carved during the Late Preclassic period (300 BC-AD 250). Many of these monuments depict kings garbed in the costume and persona of a bird, a well-known avian deity who had great significance for the Maya and other cultures in adjacent regions. This Izapan style of carving and kingly representation appears at numerous sites across the Pacific slope and piedmont of Mexico and Guatemala, making it possible to trace political and economic corridors of communication during the Late Preclassic period. In this book, Julia Guernsey offers a masterful art historical analysis of the Izapan style monuments and their integral role in developing and communicating the institution of divine kingship. She looks specifically at how rulers expressed political authority by erecting monuments that recorded their performance of rituals in which they communicated with the supernatural realm in the persona of the avian deity. She also considers how rulers used the monuments to structure their built environment and create spaces for ritual and politically charged performances. Setting her discussion in a broader context, Guernsey also considers how the Izapan style monuments helped to motivate and structure some of the dramatic, pan-regional developments of the Late Preclassic period, including the forging of a codified language of divine kingship. This pioneering investigation, which links monumental art to the matrices of political, economic, and supernatural exchange, offers an important new understanding of a region, time period, and group of monuments that played a key role in the history of Mesoamerica and continue to intrigue scholars within the field of Mesoamerican studies.

Tlacuachero is the site of an Archaic-period shellmound located in the wetlands of the outer coast of southwest Mexico. This book presents investigations of several floors that are within the site's shell deposits that formed over a 600-800 year interval during the Archaic period (ca. 8000-2000 BCE), a crucial timespan in Mesoamerican prehistory when people were transitioning from full-blown dependency on wild resources to the use of domesticated crops. The floors are now deeply buried in an limited area below the summit of the shellmound. The authors explore what activities were carried out on their surfaces, discussing the floors' patterns of cultural features, sediment color, density and types of embedded microrefuse and phytoliths, as well as chemical signatures of organic remains. The studies conducted at Tlacuachero are especially significant in light of the fact that data-rich lowland sites from the Archaic period are extraordinarily rare; the wealth of information gleaned from the floors of the Tlacuachero shellmound can now be widely appreciated.