REHABILITATING BECÁN

Research in 1970 vaulted Becán to prominence on the landscape of great Maya centers. Mapping, excavation, and ceramic stratigraphy revealed that its enigmatic earthwork, first recorded archaeologically in 1934, was a fortification built at the end of the Preclassic period. Large-scale warfare thus unexpectedly turned out to have very deep roots in the Maya lowlands. The site's wider implications remained obscure, however, in the absence of dates and other inscriptions. The ever-increasing dependence on historical and iconographic information in our narratives, along with the invisibility of its Preclassic buildings and plazas, unfortunately marginalized Becán. Some colleagues even claimed that we have misinterpreted both the nature of the earthworks (not fortifications) and their dating (not Preclassic). We rehabilitate Becán by dispelling these claims and by showing that standard archaeological evidence, contextualized in what we know today, has much to say about Becán's role in lowland culture history. We identify intervals of crisis when the earthwork remained useful long after it was originally built, especially during the great hegemonic struggles of the Snake and Tikal dynasties, and introduce new ceramic and lithic data about Becán's settlement history and political entanglements. Our most important message is that inscriptions and iconography, for all their dramatic chronological detail and historical agency, must always be complemented by standard fieldwork.

The Archaeology of Central America

Central America, made up of Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, and Panama, has long been a place without. Without, or beyond, the bounds of Mesoamerica and the Andes, its inhabitants have been traditionally seen as recipients of innovations, such as hierarchically structured political formations, not their creators. Consequently, the region’s cultures were defined by what they were not, Mesoamerican or Andean, and what they lacked, large cities, massive public works, imposing public art. There was little to draw the attention of researchers to Central America once the boundaries of its eye-catching neighbors were drawn. Its history presumably determined by the diffusion of ideas and practices from neighboring core states, Central America slipped into archaeological obscurity. It remains unclear whether the region constitutes a distinct culture area. This doleful account of perpetual marginality has changed as research has intensified throughout the zone since the late 1960s. Increased recognition among archaeologists that cultural boundaries are porous and that developments in one locale cannot be understood apart from events happening elsewhere helped to spur an interest in Central America’s ancient peoples. Originally motivated by a desire to clarify the reach and impact of Mesoamerican societies, research agendas are shifting across the isthmus. The varied histories of Central America’s many prehistoric and early historic cultures are now stressed along with the ways they were shaped as their members negotiated relations with people and things across interaction networks operating at scales ranging from within sites to those relations that spanned several thousand miles. The sources cited in this article draw from research conducted within what are generally treated as three geographic segments of Central America: The Southeast Lowland Maya Zone (including the monumental capitals of Copán and Quirigua); Southeast Mesoamerica (western Honduras and El Salvador), whose populations apparently maintained relatively close ties with the Maya lowlands for various periods; and Lower Central America (eastern Honduras and eastern El Salvador south through Panama), whose people largely spoke languages of the macro-Chibchan group and were weakly or indirectly involved with Mesoamerica and the Andes. These distinctions are units of convenience that continue to impact research intensities, questions, and interpretations to varying degrees. Archaeological investigations have also been affected by the civil and military disruptions from which many of the area’s populations continue to suffer. Archaeological research has been one casualty— certainly not the most important—of these events.

SELECTIVE MEMORY: MONUMENTAL POLITICS OF THE YAXUNÁ E GROUP IN THE FIRST MILLENNIUM B.C.

In seeking continuities and disjuncture from the precedents of past authorities, the Mesoamerican emergent ruling class during the Formative period were active agents in directing changes to monumental space, suggesting that memory played a vital role in developing an early shared character of Maya lifeways (1000 b.c. to a.d. 250). The trend is most visible in the civic ceremonial complexes known as E Groups, which tend to show significant patterns of continuity (remembering) and disjuncture (forgetting). This article uses the northern lowland site of Yaxuná in Yucatan, Mexico, to demonstrate the use of early selective strategies to direct collective memory. While there are E Groups in the northern Maya lowlands, few Formative period examples are known, making Yaxuná a critical case study for comparative assessment with the southern lowlands. One implication of the Yaxuná data is that the broader pattern of Middle Formative E Groups resulted from sustained social, religious, political, and economic interaction between diverse peer groups across eastern Mesoamerica. With the emergence of institutionalized rulership in the Maya lowlands during the Late Formative, local authorities played a significant role in directing transformations of E Groups, selectively influencing their meanings and increasingly independent trajectories through continuity and disjuncture.

Sulfur isotopes as a proxy for human diet and mobility from the preclassic through colonial periods in the Eastern Maya lowlands

Maya archaeologists have long been interested in understanding ancient diets because they provide information about broad-scale economic and societal transformations. Though paleodietary studies have primarily relied on stable carbon (δ13C) and nitrogen (δ15N) isotopic analyses of human bone collagen to document the types of food people consumed, stable sulfur (δ34S) isotope analysis can potentially provide valuable data to identify terrestrial, freshwater, or marine/coastal food sources, as well as determine human mobility and migration patterns. Here we assess applications of δ34S for investigating Maya diet and migration through stable isotope analyses of human bone collagen (δ13C, δ15N, and δ34S) from 114 individuals from 12 sites in the Eastern Maya lowlands, temporally spanning from the Late Preclassic (300 BCE—300 CE) through Colonial periods (1520–1800 CE). Results document a diet dominated by maize and other terrestrial resources, consistent with expectations for this inland region. Because δ34S values reflect local geology, our analyses also identified recent migrants to the Eastern lowlands who had non-local δ34S signatures. When combined with other indicators of mobility (e.g., strontium isotopes), sulfur isotopic data provide a powerful tool to investigate movement across a person’s lifespan. This study represents the largest examination of archaeological human δ34S isotope values for the Maya lowlands and provides a foundation for novel insights into both subsistence practices and migration.

SHIFTING SOCIAL RELATIONS DURING THE TERMINAL CLASSIC PERIOD (ca. a.d. 810–950/1000): CERAMICS FROM THE LOWLAND MAYA SITE OF UCANAL

The end of the Classic period was a tumultuous moment in Maya history, not only because the power of many dominant political centers waned, but because the ways in which elites and non-elites related to each other were increasingly called into question. To understand the nature of changing social relations in the southern Maya lowlands during this time, this study examines the distribution and provenance of decorated ceramics during the Late Classic (ca. a.d. 600–810) and Terminal Classic (ca. a.d. 810–950/1000) periods from the archaeological site of Ucanal, Peten, Guatemala. Comparisons of ceramics from different households across the site reveal that differences in access to decorated and imported ceramics decreased between these periods, suggesting that socioeconomic distinctions leveled out over time. In turn, chemical analysis of ceramics using a portable X-ray fluorescence instrument reveals that the site shifted its political-economic networks, with greater ties to the Petexbatun and Usumacinta regions and continued ties with the Upper Belize Valley.

Ciudades mayas en el norte de Petén, Guatemala: cuatro conjuntos palaciegos

Special features in the urban structure of the Central Maya Lowlands are the palace complexes. They function as a symbolic scheme that represents the center of the city and the power of its rulers. In other contributions, the author has studied the urban composition of various Maya cities in Northern Petén. On this occasion, the study of two elements is deepened: first, the palace complexes, and second, the plaza that precedes them. We compare these elements in four cities with similar characteristics of chronology and cultural region: the Central Acropolis of Tikal, and the palace complexes of Nakum, San Clemente and La Blanca. In the analysis of these relationships we consider, in addition to the concept of the initial study, other methodological aspects that help us to identify and typify a building pattern for the palace complexes in Northern Petén, Guatemala.