Pedro de Alvarado, Tonatiuh: Reconsidering Apotheosis in Nahua and Highland Maya Narratives of the Spanish Invasion

Recent scholarship on the Spanish invasion of the New World has brought under scrutiny the historiographic theme of apotheosis—the notion that Indigenous peoples regarded the invaders as gods or godlike beings and that such beliefs influenced their responses. This article examines the question by focusing on Pedro de Alvarado, a leading member of Hernán Cortés’s contingent, who was known as Tonatiuh—a Nahuatl word that designated the sun, the day, and the sun god. Indigenous peoples in Mexico and Guatemala used the name during the invasion, and Nahua, K’iche’, and Kaqchikel authors employed it frequently in later writings that variously hinted at, endorsed, or questioned Alvarado’s associations with the sun god. Rather than an imposition resulting from Spanish teachings, the association of Alvarado with the sun god derived from Mesoamerican beliefs about the rise and fall of successive eras, which provided Indigenous paradigms to explain the Spanish invasion.

Comparison of human and faunal enamel isotopes reveals diverse paleodiet and exchange patterns at the highland Maya Site of Kaminaljuyu, Guatemala

This study provides an isotopic examination of both human and animal paleodiets and mobility patterns at a highland Maya community. Kaminaljuyu, Guatemala, was a large Prehispanic center located in a distinctly cooler, drier setting compared with the majority of Maya sites in the surrounding lowlands. Previous archaeological research at Kaminaljuyu revealed it played an important political and economic role in the Maya region, assisting in the obsidian trade network and maintaining ties with communities as far away as Teotihuacan in central Mexico. By examining the strontium (87Sr/86Sr), carbon (δ13C), and oxygen (δ18O) isotope values from dental enamel of humans and terrestrial mammals at the site, this study provides direct evidence of long-distance animal trade, explores the nature and timing of such activities, and compares highland dietary patterns with faunal studies in the lowlands. Our results indicate that isotopically non-local humans and animals are most frequently found in special and ceremonial contexts, indicating that long-distance movements of people and products were motivated for politically or ritually significant events. Although dietary patterns showed cross-species variation, diets within species were similar between highland and lowland settings.

Dogs for the Gods, Fish for the Feast: The Ceremonial Role of Animals at Kaminaljuyu, Guatemala

This study examines the ritual and socioeconomic significance of animals in ceremonial contexts at Kaminaljuyu, Guatemala. Kaminaljuyu was once the largest and most politically powerful highland Maya center. We compare faunal remains from different contexts, including burials and dedicatory offerings in and around monumental features, to better understand the role of animals in these deposits. We then compare ceremonial activities across Mesoamerica to identify similarities alluding to widely recognized practices. Late and Terminal Preclassic (350 BC–AD 250) ceremonies at Kaminaljuyu contain some of the earliest marine fish recovered from a Maya highland site, demonstrating the ability of early elites to obtain exotic species for special events. Dogs, including perhaps the first evidence for Preclassic hairless dogs in Guatemala, appear in deposits that resemble canine sacrificial offerings in central Mexico. The new faunal data in this study provide a novel perspective on Kaminaljuyu's sociopolitical role in the region.

Eschatological Encounters

The corpus of missionary and indigenous colonial texts in the highland Maya language K’iche’ is an exceptional resource for studying the colonial encounter of Christianity and pre-Columbian religion. To translate Christianity into K’iche’, the missionaries appropriated lexical concepts from highland Maya religion, while indigenous authors took up the doctrinal discourse to negotiate both cosmologies and maintain religious tradition. This article examines the terminology used by missionary authors to express conceptualisations of Christian eschatology and analyses how the new Christian discourse of Heaven and Hell was mapped onto pre-Columbian notions of afterlife and otherworld dimensions.