Maya News Updates 2007, No. 19: Harvard - Researchers Head to Yaxchilan to Preserve Ancient Maya Inscriptions

Yesterday, April 12, 2007, the online edition of the Harvard Gazette posted a short news item on a group of researchers from the Corpus of Maya Hieroglyphic Inscriptions who will be heading south to scan and digitize fading Maya inscriptions. The expedition will focus first on the important site of Yaxchilan (edited by MNU):

Harvard researchers head south to preserve ancient inscriptions: Researchers from the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology are preparing to head into the Central American rain forest to begin an ambitious, multiyear project to scan and digitize fading Maya inscriptions and carvings. The expedition, by the Corpus of Maya Hieroglyphic Inscriptions Program (CMHI), will focus on Yaxchilan, an ancient Maya city on the Usumacinta River, which forms the border between Mexico and Guatemala. The CMHI’s mission since its formation in 1968 is to record and disseminate information pertaining to all ancient Maya hieroglyphic inscriptions and their associated iconography. During the height of its power, Yaxchilan dominated the Usumacinta region, its influence peaking during the eighth century. Located in modern-day Mexico and reachable only by boat, today it is known for its excellent carvings and narrative inscriptions.
The nine-member team will employ advanced technology in an effort to preserve the elaborate Maya hieroglyphics, images, and stone carvings that are free-standing or decorate various buildings at Yaxchilan. Researchers will use an optical scanner to create a digital, three-dimensional image of each carving. The image will be stored in a computer file, much like a word document or a photograph. It can be examined, shared digitally, and even “printed out,” layer by layer, on a special, 3-D printer that creates a three-dimensional reproduction of the carving.
Barbara Fash, director of the Corpus of Maya Hieroglyphic Inscriptions Program, said Yaxchilan was chosen because it has many different types of monuments on which the new technology can be tested. Its rain forest setting will also test the equipment in a humid, tropical environment.
Archaeologists have long recognized that the carvings on Maya monuments are imperiled and have mounted various efforts to preserve them, including removing them to museums, creating paper molds that were used to make plaster casts, and, more recently, making latex molds of the monuments. The effort has raced the natural degradation caused by the wind and weather, and, in recent decades, by the corrosive forces of acid rain. Human destruction is an important factor as well, as some monuments have been defaced, others stolen by looters, and still others broken up by local people to be used in construction projects.
Every carving that is lost, and every detail of surviving carvings that has faded away has taken with it an opportunity to learn more about the ancient Maya civilization, according to Fash. The effort to decipher the Maya’s written Mayan language is ongoing and the small dots and squiggles carved alongside images of coronations and other aspects of Maya life are critical details in understanding the history that underlies each image.
Using the digital files of the monuments, researchers hope to resurrect some lost details. Peabody archives hold 50,000 photographs of Maya monuments, some of which contain lost details of the monuments. By digitizing the images and combining them with the soon-to-be-created 3-D images, researchers hope to be able to re-create the monuments as they existed decades ago.
If the field trial is successful, the Corpus plans to visit other important Maya sites, recording as many carvings and monuments as possible to preserve them for the future (written by Alvin Powell, Harvard News Office) (Source: Harvard Gazette).

Maya News Updates 2007, No. 18: Tulum - Results of Research on 10,000-13,000 Year Old Human Remains

MNU reported first on these finds in Maya News Updates 2006, No. 54, on December 29, 2006. Two days ago, on April 10, 2007, the results were made public on the most recent research on these human remains. Below follow the reports from La Cronica de Hoy in Spanish and China View in English (edited by MNU):

Revelan pruebas de carbono 14 edades de Tulum: Los análisis de Carbono 14 realizados a las osamentas encontradas en 2002 en las cavernas sumergidas de Tulum, las ubican con una antigüedad de entre 10 mil y 13 mil años, lo que confirma la presencia del hombre prehistórico en esa región, destacó la investigadora Carmen Rojas Sandoval. En un comunicado difundido hoy, la especialista del Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia (INAH) destacó que el hallazgo ofrece evidencias materiales de ocupación temprana en la Península de Yucatán, cuya temporalidad corresponde a finales del Pleistoceno. Explicó que debido a la falta de evidencias, durante décadas se pensó que los grupos nómadas precerámicos no habían arribado al norte de la Península, sin embargo, en las cavernas sumergidas de Tulum se recuperaron tres esqueletos humanos, cuya antigüedad ha sido determinada.

Los resultados, obtenidos en laboratorios del Reino Unido, Estados Unidos y México, son de gran relevancia para la arqueología no sólo de México sino de América, puntualizó Rojas. Esa antigüedad, destacó, coloca al sureste mexicano como uno de los pocos sitios con presencia prehistórica comprobada de América, y aporta nuevos elementos para la comprensión del complejo rompecabezas del poblamiento americano". Luego de señalar que están a la "caza" de una cuarta osamenta paleoamericana, refirió que los restos analizados proceden de las cuevas inundadas Las Palmas, El Templo y Naharon. Son esqueletos prácticamente completos, dos identificados como femeninos en posición de decúbito y uno masculino del que no se pudo determinar su postura, porque sólo se halló un segmento de la columna vertebral, detalló. Aclaró que las osamentas no son de filiación maya porque no presentan la morfología que caracterizaba a esta civilización, particularmente en lo que respecta a la forma de cráneo alargado, de ahí que se hable de especies tempranas que permiten determinar la temporalidad prehistórica de Tulum. La investigadora recordó que estos sitios forman parte de uno de los sistemas de cuevas inundadas y ríos subterráneos más largos del mundo, de hasta 150 kilómetros. En el pasado, dijo, esta región estaba seca y las cavernas fueron usadas de refugio o espacios de depósito funerario, como lo sugieren los restos humanos hallados; así como residuos de carbón de madera, hablan de hogueras producidas por el hombre".

La inundación de estos espacios fue producto de los cambios climáticos que se dieron en el último deshielo de los polos glaciales al final del Pleistoceno (10 mil años antes del presente), consideró. No obstante que las características ácidas del subsuelo de la región no son propicias para la preservación de materiales orgánicos, incluidos los huesos, la condición que guardan las cuevas inundadas ha permitido la conservación de los tres esqueletos encontrados, algunos de los cuales datan de épocas anteriores al incremento del nivel del mar. En la cueva de Naharon, a 368 metros de su entrada y una profundidad de 22.6 metros se recuperó el esqueleto parcialmente completo de un individuo del sexo femenino, de una estatura de 1.41 metros y un peso aproximado de 53 kg. Al momento de su muerte pudo haber tenido entre 20 y 30 años de edad, detalló la arqueóloga al referir que el primer fechamiento por Carbono 14 de esta osamenta arrojó una antigüedad de alrededor de 14 mil 500 años calendáricos. Dentro de este conjunto subterráneo que se ubica a 4.5 km al suroeste de Tulum, se ubica la cueva de Las Palmas, donde se localizó el segundo esqueleto también del sexo femenino. Este se encontró en posición de decúbito lateral izquierdo y pudo haber contado con una edad de 44 a 50 años. Su estado de conservación es extraordinario y su datación por el mismo método dio una antigüedad de entre 10 mil y 12 mil años.

A 18 kilómetros al norte de Tulum, en la cueva El Templo, se encontró la tercera osamenta, la de sexo masculino. "Aunque su estado de conservación es un poco mala, porque está erosionada y con pérdida casi total de materia orgánica, se cuenta con el 70 por ciento del esqueleto", abundó la especialista adscrita a la Subdirección de Arqueología Subacuática.Al momento de su muerte pudo haber contado con entre 25 y 30 años; su antigüedad se estima en 10 mil años. La especialista en cultura Maya aseveró que el hallazgo de estas evidencias son resultado de una intensa labor de exploración efectuada desde el 2002, mediante el uso de tecnologías de buceo que permiten sumergirse por estos "laberintos" subacuáticos y desarrollar el estudio sistemático de los contextos arqueológicos. Esta investigación, que forma parte del Proyecto Atlas Arqueológico para el registro, estudio y protección de los cenotes de la Península de Yucatán, también ha permitido el hallazgo de fauna fósil del Pleistoceno al interior de las cuevas inundadas.

Hasta la fecha han sido hallados ejemplares fosilizados de caballo americano, camélido, armadillo gigante, proboscidio, gonfoterio, gliptodonte y murciélago.Rojas Sandoval detalló que el área geográfica en la que se han efectuado estas investigaciones abarca los municipios de Homún, Opichén, Abalá, Tinúm y Valladolid, en el estado de Yucatán, así como Lázaro Cárdenas, Tulum, Cozumel y Solidaridad, en el estado de Quintana Roo, donde se han detectado importantes concentraciones de cenotes. Tan sólo en el municipio de Solidaridad, existen más de 600 km de ríos subterráneos, 129 cuevas sumergidas y 529 cenotes registrados", destacó la investigadora para quien estos depósitos acuíferos fueron usados en la época prehispánica como sitios sagrados y de depósitos mortuorios, toda vez que además se han hallado materiales como vasijas de cerámica y lítica.Rojas Sandoval, quien junto con el biólogo Arturo González dirige este proyecto de investigación, comentó que como parte de su análisis también se efectúan estudios para determinar las patologías que tuvieron en vida esos individuos y causas de muerte para poder hacer comparaciones con otras poblaciones americanas (Source: La Cronica de Hoy.

Archaeologists find 3 prehistoric bodies in SE Mexico: Mexican archaeologists found remains of two women and a man that can be traced to more than 10,000 years ago in the Mayan area of Tulum, Mexico's National Anthropology and History Institute said in a statement on Tuesday.
The remains were being examined by laboratories in Britain, the United States and Mexico, all of which had said the remains were people between 10,000 and 14,500 years ago, said Carmen Rojas, an archaeologist quoted in the statement. "This makes southeastern Mexico one of the few areas with a proven prehistoric presence in America," said Rojas.
The remains were found in the Las Palmas, El Templo and Naharoncaves, in an area previously thought to be uninhabited. They are not Mayas because they do not have the classic Mayan skull deformation. The woman found in Naharon cave, 368 meters from its entrance and 22.6 meters underground, was 1.41 meters' tall, weighed around 53 kg and was between 20 and 30 years old when she died. The woman found in Las Palmas cave was between 44 and 50 when she died.
The body found in El Templo cave was a man aged between 25 and 30. His body was the least well preserved because it had been eroded and most of its organic material was gone. Archaeologists have worked since 2002 to exhume the bodies from underwater caverns, said the statement. In the past the region was dry but the caves were flooded due in the last thaw of the Pleistocene ice age, it said.
Archaeological finds showed the region was probably used as a refuge and a graveyard, said the Institute. The archaeologists also found campfire remains (written by Lin Li. Source: China View / Xinhua Online).

Maya News Updates 2007, No. 17: Teotihuacan - People of Maya Origin Identified Among the Sacrificial Victims at the Pyramid of the Moon (extended April 12)

Today, on April 10, 2007, the Instituto Nacional de Antropologia e Historia posted a short overview on their website (section: Sala de Prensa - Noticias) on some of the recent preliminary osteological research carried out on skeletal material found at the central Mexican site of Teotihuacan (edited by MNU):

Identifican procedencia de hombres que eran inmolados en Teotihuacan: Estudios preliminares de ADN indican que los hombres que fueron ofrendados a la Pirámide de la Luna, en Teotihuacan, no procedían de la región central sino de áreas como la maya, el occidente y las costas veracruzanas, informó Rubén Cabrera, investigador del Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia (INAH), al referir que estos individuos posiblemente fueron llevados como cautivos a esta antigua ciudad. El codirector del Proyecto Pirámide de la Luna, informó que derivado de las exploraciones hechas de 1998 a 2006 en el interior de este edificio prehispánico, se han hallado más de 50 esqueletos humanos, hecho que confirma el carácter militarista que prevaleció en Teotihuacan, donde imperó la práctica de inmolaciones masivas de hombres de distintas procedencias.
Al participar como ponente a finales del mes de marzo, en el ciclo de conferencias periódicas de la Academia Mexicana de Ciencias Antropológicas, el arqueólogo presentó un balance general de los trabajos de investigación efectuados en los últimos ocho años en este sitio, del que destacó el hallazgo de seis entierros múltiples que fueron colocados a manera de ofrendas para consagrar cada una de las etapas constructivas que conforman la pirámide y que fueron edificadas en distintas épocas. En los seis entierros además de hallar una amplia gama de materiales arqueológicos que van desde cerámica, lítica y restos de animales, también se encontraron las osamentas de más de medio centenar de hombres distribuidas en los distintos depósitos funerarios: “se trata fundamentalmente de individuos del sexo masculino y, de acuerdo con los resultados preliminares de ADN, se sabe que eran foráneos, es decir, procedían de regiones distintas a la central, como las costas veracruzanas, el occidente de México y el área maya”.

“De acuerdo con los antropólogos físicos se calcula que tuvieron una edad media y adulta, pero esta información está en proceso de validación”, explicó Rubén Cabrera al considerar que tal vez todos estos hombres fueron llevados a Teotihuacan como cautivos después de participar en guerras. En la ponencia titulada Resultados generales de las excavaciones arqueológicas en la Pirámide de la Luna, Teotihuacan, el arqueólogo del INAH explicó que los seis entierros múltiples en realidad no son fosas sino ofrendas compuestas por objetos, animales, vegetales y hombres, algunos de ellos decapitados. “Cada una fue colocada en el momento que se iba a construir una nueva etapa de la Pirámide, como un medio de consagración del edificio y las deidades relacionadas a éste”, detalló. En total se detectaron siete etapas constructivas que constituyen la Pirámide de la Luna. La más antigua data del año 50 de nuestra era, hasta la última que actualmente se observa, creada hacia el año 500.
“Estas evidencias están confirmando lo que habíamos ya deducido años atrás con el hallazgo similar en el Templo de Quetzalcóatl, sobre la práctica a gran escala del sacrificio humano”, añadió el arqueólogo luego de indicar que la serie de análisis de ADN e isótopos de los restos óseos humanos, permitirán en un corto plazo acercarse a la dimensión biológica y social de los individuos inmolados. Por lo que respecta a las especies de fauna que también se hallaron en estas ofrendas, abundó que se trata de animales con un alto simbolismo para la cosmovisión teotihuacana. Entre ellos destacan pumas, cánidos (perros y coyotes), aves rapaces (águilas, halcones, búhos), serpientes y caracoles marinos. Asimismo se encontró una gran cantidad de objetos de jade, concha y piedra verde, cuchillos de obsidiana y cerámica, además de materiales vegetales.
Tras adelantar que durante este 2007 no se efectuarán nuevas exploraciones en la Pirámide de la Luna, Rubén Cabrera comentó que este año la labor se centrará en los análisis de laboratorio. “Debido a que el material rescatado es cuantioso, los procesos de estudio e interpretación de resultados, así como la elaboración de conclusiones, requerirán de mucho tiempo”, precisó. En este proyecto multidisciplinario de investigación encabezado por el INAH, también participan el gobierno japonés; la National Geographic Society; la UNAM; la Universidad Estatal de Arizona y la Universidad de las Américas de Puebla (Source: INAH - Sala de Prensa, www.inah.gob.mx/press/htme/sape.html).

These research results can also be found discussed at Reuters.com on April 12, 2007, in the following short news item (edited by MNU):

Ancient Mexicans brought human sacrifice victims from hundreds of miles (km) away over centuries to sanctify a pyramid in the oldest city in North America, an archeologist said on Wednesday. DNA tests on the skeletons of more than 50 victims discovered in 2004 in the Pyramid of the Moon at the Teotihuacan ruins revealed they were from far away Mayan, Pacific or Atlantic coastal cultures.
The bodies, many of which were decapitated, dated from between 50 AD and 500 AD and were killed at different times to dedicate new stages of construction of the pyramid just north of Mexico City. The victims were likely either captured in war or obtained through some kind of diplomacy, said archeologist Ruben Cabrera, who led the excavation at the pyramid, the smaller of two main pyramids are Teotihuacan, which housed some 200,000 inhabitants at its height of power around 500 AD. "Teotihuacan may have had a tradition of capturing prisoners for sacrifice," said Cabrera. Ancient Mexican civilizations like the Aztecs sacrificed humans by cutting their hearts out but researchers are not sure how the victims at Teotihuacan were killed.
Little is known about the race that inhabited Teotihuacan or what language they spoke. The site, Mexico's oldest major archeological site, was revered by later Mesoamerican civilizations, including the Aztecs, who gave it its current name, meaning "The place where gods are made" in their Nahuatl language. Teotihuacan icons found in far away Mayan ruins in Guatemala and Honduras show the city's broad reach.
Littered among the victims' bodies at the pyramid are remains of animals that had symbolic importance including pumas, coyotes, eagles and snakes as well as a large number of precious objects like obsidian knives. Discoveries in the early 1980s of sacrificial victims and weapons skewered previous theories that Teotihuacan had a peaceful culture, unlike the warlike Aztecs and Maya.
"Researchers always tried to throw a little fog over it, but there was human sacrifice even if we don't know if it had to do with wars," said Cabrera.

(Source: Reuters)

Maya News Updates 2007, No. 16: Philadelphia - 25th Annual Maya Weekend at the University of Pennsylvania Museum

This year the Annual Maya Weekend at the University of Pennsylvania Museum celebrates its silver anniversary. The 25th edition of the Maya Weekend has as its subject The Dawn of Civilization and it takes place on April 13 - 14, 2007. Information on the conference (schedule, program, abstracts for workshops and papers, registration, etc.) can be found at the website of the University of Pennsylvania Museum (www.museum.upenn.edu).

For your convenience (and reading pleasure) here I include the abstracts of most of the papers that will be presented at this meeting (edited by MNU):

John Clark (Brigham Young University): Something Borrowed, Something New: A True History of Lowland Maya Civilization. Early Lowland Maya civilization arose about 600-300 BC and had its roots in late Olmec civilization, with its principal center located at La Venta, Tabasco. Numerous specific similarities between early Maya and late Olmec civilizations show that there must have been a relationship between the two, but, for the moment, archaeology has failed to reveal the missing historic links. The most obvious parallels between civilizations can be found in the institution of kingship and its physical manifestations and props. This paper focuses on this institution and other shared cultural practices and explores their significance for an epoch of co-history and synergism between the two civilizations. The first cause of Lowland Maya civilization was none of the usual suspects: population pressure, circumscription, warfare, trade, or climatic change. Rather, the prime mover of Maya Civilization was Olmec history – which early Lowland Maya peoples co-opted as their own.

Ann Cyphers (Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México): Wrestling with the Olmec. The Wrestler sculpture, allegedly from Antonio Plaza, Veracruz, Mexico, is without a doubt a masterpiece in basalt. Whether this piece may be attributed to the Olmec civilization (1200-400 BC) has been the subject of a recent debate (e.g. Kelker 2003; Coe and Miller 2005) in which its legitimacy is analyzed, but not resolved. The accurate evaluation of this sculpture, long held in high esteem for its beauty, has important repercussions for Olmec studies. If it can be demonstrated that this sculpture is legitimate, it may be added to the corpus of stone icons that served as political emblems in the ancient Olmec landscape of the southern Gulf Coast lowlands. The distribution of these stone sculptures suggests the integration of a fluvial and terrestrial communication web that propitiated interrelationships and interactions in social, economic and political frameworks.

Francisco Estrada-Belli (Vanderbilt University): Highland-Lowland Interactions and the Emergence of Maya States. In this talk I will address the relationship between the Maya Lowland and Highland regions as these relate to the rise of Maya states. I will first outline how earlier scholars have linked the rise of Maya states to two hypothesized migratory movements from the highlands to the lowlands. The first migration is the one that brought farmers into the lowlands at the onset of the first millennium BC. The second migration is the one that brought polychrome ceramics and hieroglyphic writing into the lowlands during the Terminal Preclassic period (ca. A.D. 150-250). The arrival of Teotihuacan iconography on Early Classic carved monuments was once believed to reflect a third possible migration that brought state-level organization to the Lowlands. As it is now widely recognized, the appearance of such iconography post-dates the emergence of Maya states. These diffusionists models are unsupported by current data. I will contrast the migration models with current data to show that much more can be said now about Preclassic period developments in the Maya Lowlands than previous models had allowed for. The new data show a much deeper chronology of occupation for the Lowlands and a much earlier point of departure for the development of state-level civilization in this region than previously thought. While communication between the Maya people of the highland and lowland regions was undeniably constant, the current data suggest that the development of civilization in the Lowlands was more independent from major migratory movements and cultural inputs from more developed regions than previously thought.

David C. Grove (University of Florida): From Tlatilco to Teotihuacan: the Foggy Dawn of Civilization in Central Mexico. This presentation takes a close look at the archaeological data behind the myths and realities of the rise of urbanism in central Mexico. It raises the question, was civilization there built upon an Olmec legacy? An examination of the Preclassic archaeological record at the sites of Tlatilco, Chalcatzingo, Cuicuilco and Teotihuacan demonstrates significant changes in interregional interactions and influences over time. Social and natural forces affecting the region's Preclassic period populations are also discussed. This chronological overview reveals that the archaeological record pertaining to the dawn of civilization in central Mexico is obscured by significant data gaps. Current popular interpretations may have over-simplified a very complex situation and likewise overlooked some significant data.

Julia Guernsey (University of Texas at Austin): The Preclassic Period along the Pacific Slope: Monuments, Themes, and New Discoveries. This talk explores recent discoveries along the Pacific coast and piedmont of Guatemala and Mexico and considers them within the long-standing traditions of carved monuments and impressive architectural spaces that characterized this region during the Middle (900 – 300 BC) and Late (300 BC – AD 250) Preclassic periods. It will focus in particular on a series of monuments and themes that were consistently invoked in this region for over a millennium at a variety of sites. It will also explore how rulers manipulated specific symbols not only to assert their political authority, but also to underscore their ability to communicate with the supernatural realm. The talk will also consider how these symbols and themes known from the Pacific region were part of broader systems of communication that were shared between other regions of Mesoamerica including the Central Mexican highlands and the Maya lowlands.

Norman Hammond (Boston University): “A Back-Looking Curiosity”: The Maya Middle Preclassic In Middle-Distance Perspective. The period from 700 to 400 BC, the late Middle Preclassic, is one of the most crucial research topics in Maya archaeology today: here lies the key to the genesis of Maya civilization” (Hammond 1986: 402). Twenty-one years ago that view seemed extreme to some, with the Middle Preclassic still often regarded as a period when simple villagers grew corn and beans in milpas cut freshly from the forest: today, new material from a variety of sites shows us that while Preclassic Maya civilization may have attained literacy and developed iconography encoding its belief systems only after 400 BC, substantial progress towards a complex society had been made in the preceding three centuries.

Richard D. Hansen (Idaho State University & FARES): New Cultural and Natural Perspectives on the Dawn of Maya Civilization in the Mirador Basin. Scientific investigations from 19 sites in the Mirador Basin have provided new perspectives on the origins and cultural and ecological dynamics of incipient Maya civilization. Settlement distributions of Maya sites show a strong correlation to major bajo systems which have precipitated a series of studies of the natural and geologic history of the area. Significant variations in climatic and settlement concentrations have altered the ecological landscape and had significant impact on wetland marsh systems which formed the economic engines of the prodigious growth of the Preclassic Maya in the Mirador Basin. The impacts were followed by social and political unrest which fueled additional stress on the political and economic systems in place. The resultant data provide a model to explain the rise and demise of early complex societies in the tropical forest environment of the northern Petén. Observations of the subsequent modest populations in the Mirador Basin during the Late Classic period, nearly a thousand years later, provides a test case for the hypotheses generated by the data.

Eleanor King (Howard University): Sweat Equity: The Role of Labor in the Birth of the Maya State. It has become axiomatic among scholars researching the origins of complex societies that social differentiation first developed because emerging elites were able to control scarce and/or critical economic resources. The question is what resources did they control? From China to Oaxaca archaeologists have postulated that power was based on ownership of land and natural resources such as metal ores or obsidian. Hand in hand with ownership went elite control over the production and distribution of goods from those sources, whether in the form of agricultural surplus, raw materials, or finished craft items. Among the Maya, however, the economic resource that was most valued seems to have been human labor. This presentation will examine the implications of that emphasis for the early development of social inequalities in the Maya area. Of particular interest will be the organization of labor surrounding different productive activities and the interaction between labor, natural resources, and trade in the creation of Maya elites.

Simon Martin (University of Pennsylvania Museum): Early Maya Kingship: The Control of Word and Image. When we investigate the earliest stages of Maya statehood we concern ourselves with how systems of political authority evolved and came to control significant populations and territorial domains. This paper examines the earliest examples of royal portraiture and hieroglyphic inscriptions for clues to these processes. Underlying it are questions about how these manifestations are controled by early states and how the hazy image of the Preclassic state they allow might be resolved into a comprehensible system. Late Preclassic civilization (400 BC-AD 200) developed many facets of the personalized power that achieved its fullest form in the Classic period (AD200-900), but important questions remain about how closely these two eras can be compared. We need to ask how real our modern division into eras really is, and whether the transition is better characterized as an revolution, evolution, or one that amounts to little difference at all.

Karl Taube (University of California at Riverside): Ritual And Mythology Of The Late Preclassic Maya: An Overview. It is becoming increasingly clear that Preclassic Maya culture and society was by no means a simpler, inchoate precursor to the glories of the Classic Maya. Instead, Late Preclassic art and monumental architecture indicate the great political power and cultural complexity of Maya society at this early date. For the highlands and piedmont region of Guatemala and neighboring Chiapas, stone monuments from such sites as Izapa, Talalik Abaj and Kaminaljuyu bear complex scenes and texts pertaining to Late Preclassic Maya ritual and belief. In addition, many lowland Maya sites, including El Mirador, Uaxactun, Tikal and Cerros contain monumental architecture with impressive stucco facades of gods and ancestral beings. The recent discovery of well-preserved, Late Preclassic murals at the site of San Bartolo, Guatemala, promises to radically change our understanding of the Late Preclassic period and the development of Maya religious traditions. The finely painted murals are virtually a "codex of creation," and depict detailed scenes of early Maya mythology. Partly through the prism of San Bartolo, this study will examine how Late Preclassic Maya religious practices and belief are manifested and transmitted through art and monumental architecture. Among the themes to be discussed are mythology and deities, including the rain, maize and sun gods, ritual practices including dance, deity impersonation and human sacrifice, and concepts concerning ancestral souls and the afterlife.

Marcello Canuto (Yale University): Does the Sun Always Rise in the Southeast? The development of complexity in Maya civilization has been recently invigorated by a series of spectacular finds in the lowland regions of Veracruz and Peten. These have demonstrated the precocious development of complexity among lowland relative to highland Mesoamerican societies. These discoveries emphasize the use of mature writing systems and the formation of formal political hierarchies centuries earlier than once believed. However, one cannot preclude the existence of increasing social complexity elsewhere in the Maya area based solely on the absence of the more immediately recognizable material indices of political hierarchy. Given the absence of similar evidence of ancient complexity in the southeastern Maya area, the development of social complexity in this area has often been interpreted as a consequence of external influences from neighboring areas exhibiting greater complexity. It is indeed true that evidence for eternal contacts in the southeastern Maya area (Mixe-Zoquean colonists, Olmec merchants, highland Maya traders, or Cholan speaking Maya settlers) is rife and pertinent to the area's development. However, the question of this region's social complexity is not fully explained by these external contacts. Rather, social complexity in this area developed through alternative mechanisms that did not result in easily recognizable archaeological indices, but were nonetheless equally transformative. New data from the Copan, El Paraíso, and other western Honduran valleys will be presented and synthesized to assess the rise of complexity in an area that has traditionally been dismissed as peripheral.

Michael Love (California State University at Northridge): The rise of the south: The southern Maya region in the Middle and Late Preclassic. The Late Preclassic period was in many ways a demographic and cultural climax in the southern Maya region. Many portions of the coast and highlands reached population levels not seen again until modern times, and state-level polities may have developed throughout the area. Early Maya art and hieroglyphic inscriptions, including a majority of the known Baktun 7 Long Count dates in Mesoamerica, are found in the region at this time. This paper will provide an overview of the Middle to Late Preclassic period within the region, with an emphasis the transition from La Blanca to El Ujuxte in the southwestern Pacific coast. Data from household contexts, ceremonial zones, and regional survey together show three keys areas in which La Blanca and Ujuxte differed: economics, ideology, and daily practice. First, the elite at Ujuxte wielded more effective economic control by centralizing storage of subsistence resources while also more effectively controlling long-distance exchange. Second, the elite transformed ideology by two means; a) the primary locus of ritual activity was moved from the household to public areas where the elite controlled the agenda, b) by asserting new ideological claims that they serve as a center essential to cosmological order and reproduction. Third, the transformation of material culture, especially monumental architecture, served to create daily social practices that reinforced increasing social inequality.

Also William Saturno (University of New Hampshire) will present a paper at the 25th Annual Maya Weekend, but at present no abstract was available.