After a long hospital stay, Mexican historian and philosopher Miguel León-Portilla passed away on October 1, 2019, at the age of 93. His prodigious work is known throughout the world because classics such as La filosofía náhuatl (León-Portilla 1956), Visión de los vencidos (León-Portilla 1959), Los antiguos mexicanos a través de sus crónicas y cantares (León-Portilla 1961), Las literaturas precolombinas de México (León-Portilla 1964), Trece poetas del mundo azteca (León-Portilla 1967), and Teatro náhuatl (León-Portilla 1974a), among others, have been published and republished dozens of times in a multitude of languages. Professor William R. Fowler kindly asked me to write an obituary for Ancient Mesoamerica and suggested that I focus my text on the contributions that Dr. León-Portilla made in my field, that is, archaeology. To this end I have decided to offer the readers of this journal an English translation of a brief discourse I presented on February 22, 2016 (Figure 1), in the context of a tribute paid to “Don Miguel” on the occasion of his ninetieth birthday, which was organized by the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México.

This article seeks to contribute to the development of a method for analyzing the attributes of the gods of central Mexico in the manuscripts and the statuary from the time of the Spanish conquest. I focus on the Goddess of Water, Chalchiuhtlicue, “Jade Her Skirt.” The method consists of isolating the component designs of her array and grouping them in semantic groups. I begin by examining these designs and show that all of them were used in the notation of toponyms. These findings call into question the traditional separation between glyphs and icons. I next study the semantic groups and show that they consist of a series of culturally selected manifestations of water. Hence, it follows that the rules of composition of the goddess were grounded on a process of “definition by extension.” Thus, most of the semantic groups referred to different secondary names of the goddess, allowing us to think that they represented theonyms of a particular type.

Archaeological and epigraphic data have greatly increased our understanding of ancient Maya warfare in recent decades. Nevertheless, one of the aspects that has received relatively little attention is the disambiguation between the different types of wars waged. The procurement of human trophies as attested in the archaeological record and imagery, as well as the counts-of-captives and captive statements recorded textually, all provide tantalizing clues that raids formed an integral part of Classic Maya military tactics. This rings particularly true when we consider that the Classic Maya terms for “captive” and “bone” are one and the same, thereby betraying emic conceptions wherein captives were deemed to be an ideal source of bone; human trophies par excellence. The features identified for the Classic Maya have to be set within a larger perspective since these are also found among other Mesoamerican cultures, as well as indigenous societies in both North and South America. In so doing, it becomes clear that raiding and the acquisition of captives and human trophies served to foster and heighten prestige, especially among societies that cultivated the warrior ethos. Therefore, raiding emerges as a shared Amerindian trait, rather than being the product of diffusion or independent innovation.

In the Mesoamerican archaeological literature, collections of material regarded as somehow anomalous according to the archaeologist's expectations are often referred to as problematical deposits (PDs). Their problematical aspect originates in the researcher's current state of knowledge of the particular site, not in past behavior. PDs are site-specific, provisional classifications, and need further study to determine the function or intent of the activity that created them. A sample of 223 features designated as PDs by the University of Pennsylvania Museum's Tikal Project is examined here in an approach to understand their intent. A typology of the sample, based upon content, date, and variables of recovery context, indicates three principal intents broadly summarized as ritual, political, and site maintenance, and a category of PDs without intent. The study of PDs demands a wide-ranging approach. It provides an opportunity to reevaluate inadequate ideas and gain new insights into past cultural behavior.

The term “problematical deposits” was coined decades ago at Tikal to refer to special deposits that were neither burials nor caches. Since that time, the term has been expanded to refer to a range of deposits that have puzzled archaeologists. In this paper we review the various interpretations that have been offered for these deposits including de facto refuse, squatter deposits, and the remains of dedication or termination ritual, feasting, or pilgrimage. We argue that the superficial similarity of these deposits can make it difficult to identify the range of activities that they represent and that detailed contextual analysis is required to distinguish them. We offer some of the archaeological correlates that have been associated with different types of problematic deposits.

The description and analysis of materials from on-floor deposits that reflect the final activity before site abandonment are key to making a determination as to what happened during the Maya collapse around a.d. 900. On-floor deposits recovered at Caracol, Belize indicate that factors like warfare, the breakdown of the site's market system, and heightened social tensions were in play prior to the abandonment of the site. In an attempt to understand the meaning of these deposits, we first examine why on-floor remains constitute an important data class for archaeology. We next look at the kinds of artifactual materials that are recovered in these deposits and then at the locations and nature of on-floor deposits at Caracol. Finally, we offer our thoughts on what they represent in the broader Maya context.

At Chan Chich, Belize, archaeologists have encountered Terminal Classic artifact scatters and piled artifact deposits in elite residential compounds near the epicenter of the site. This article presents a detailed comparison of four artifact deposits’ contexts and compositions to highlight similarities and differences among them. Commonly classified as “problematic deposits” in the field, all four examples considered here formed directly on floors or steps. Although they exhibit compositional variability, all four deposits appear to be abandonment-related features, which unknown actors deliberately created, specifically targeting elite residential architecture rather than monumental public structures in the site core.

We present a behavioral-contextual method for studying abandonment-related assemblages in order to ascribe them to a settlement abandonment scenario. Our approach examines the vertical and horizontal architectural contexts of assemblages, along with the nature of reconstructible vessels and other artifacts. This method accounts for gradual, rapid, mundane, and ceremonial abandonment scenarios, and for abandonment with anticipated return. Two advantages of this model are its replicability and its proposition of a shared taxonomy leading away from the concept of problematic deposits. The method is contextualized with two distinct case studies from the southern Maya lowlands: the palace of La Corona, Guatemala and an agricultural household group from greater Minanha, Belize. These dissimilar but contemporary (ca. A.D. 900) contexts revealed complex abandonment-related assemblages, including pre-abandonment middens, de facto and secondary material, and on-floor, exposed offerings. Both case studies are argued to reflect gradual, organized abandonment scenarios, although with significant temporal and behavioral distinctions.

The discovery of cultural remains on or above the floors of rooms and courtyards at several Maya sites has been interpreted by some archaeologists as problematic deposits, squatter's refuse, as evidence for feasting, termination rituals, de facto refuse, or rapid abandonment as a result of warfare. Investigations by the Belize Valley Archaeological Reconnaissance Project have recorded similar deposits at several surface and subterranean sites in Western Belize. Our regional, contextual, and methodological approaches for studying these deposits, coupled with ethnohistoric and ethnographic information, provide limited support for the interpretation of these remains as de facto refuse or due to rapid abandonment. Instead, we argue that these deposits are more likely the result of peri-abandonment activities such as propitiation rituals and/or pilgrimages during and after the gradual abandonment of sites in the Belize River Valley.

Interpreting middens, feasting events, ritual, or terminal deposits in the Maya world requires an evaluation of faunal remains. Maya archaeologists consistently evaluate other artifact classes, but often offer simply number of identified specimens values for skeletal elements recovered from these deposits. To further understand their archaeological significance, we analyzed faunal materials from deposits at the sites of Baking Pot and Xunantunich in the Upper Belize River Valley. We identified the species, bone elements, bone or shell artifacts, taphonomic signatures, and quantitative ratios recovered to test whether a deposit can be identified as a midden, part of a feasting ritual, terminal ritual, or other rituals significant to the Maya. Our analyses allow us to begin building a system for using faunal remains as a proxy for interpreting the significance of these deposits. In this paper, we present our results and hope to open the conversation for future evaluations of faunal remains in similar deposits.

Archaeological research in the Maya lowlands has identified special deposits that offer essential information about the abandonment of Classic Maya centers. We argue that some of the “problematical deposits” associated with terminal architecture may be more accurately described as peri-abandonment deposits since they temporally and behaviorally relate to the activities associated with the final use of ceremonial space. Here, we describe several peri-abandonment deposits that were identified in Group B at the site of Baking Pot, located in western Belize. Using detailed stratigraphic and contextual information, artifact assemblages, and calendar dates recorded on polychrome vessels recovered in the deposits, we describe the nature of activities associated with the formation of peri-abandonment deposits at Baking Pot in the eighth to ninth centuries. We find patterning in the spatial locations of deposits in the corners of plazas and courtyards at Baking Pot, with variability in artifact assemblages between specific deposits.

Investigations in the site core of Cahal Pech have recovered a range of data reflecting Terminal Classic Maya activity at this Belize Valley site. The materials, which were recovered in a tomb, a burial, and in epicentral plaza deposits, include a diverse assemblage of cultural remains including whole and partial vessels, projectile points, obsidian blade fragments, deer antlers, figurines, pottery flutes, spindle whorls, and jade beads. Similar deposits at other Maya sites in western Belize have been interpreted as evidence for de facto refuse or rapid abandonment. Contextual analyses of the Cahal Pech data suggest that the deposits are more likely associated with post-abandonment activity such as pilgrimage from the still-occupied periphery of the site.

Problematic deposits, containing different types of artifacts and skeletal remains, are typically recovered on or near the surfaces of the terminal phase of elite civic-ceremonial architecture at ancient Maya sites. These contexts often date to the Terminal Classic period (~a.d. 750–900). They have been variously interpreted as evidence for site abandonment, squatting, warfare, or dedication or termination rituals. Sixteen chert bifaces were recovered from problematic deposits at the bases of Structures A2 and A3 in the elite Plaza A at Cahal Pech, Belize. Stone tools from problematic deposits are rarely examined in significant detail. Based on stylistic, metric, and use-wear analyses, the bifaces were likely produced locally, used during important hunting or warfare activities, and then ritually deposited in the Terminal Classic. These bifaces were likely hafted to spearthrower darts and represented “success” at hunting or fighting. The recovery of weaponry in problematic deposits that is not the direct result of warfare is an important observation because Mayanists have generally interpreted their presence in these contexts as evidence of warfare. The fact that the points were recovered in groups of seven and nine may indicate that they had important symbolic meanings that connected them to supernatural or mythological places or entities.

Archaeological investigations by the Belize Valley Archaeological Reconnaissance Project at Cahal Pech uncovered several Terminal Classic (a.d. 750–900) peri-abandonment deposits and activity areas at this Belize River Valley center. The deposits contained a diverse assemblage of cultural remains located above and between collapsed architecture, associated with evidence for burning activities. In the past, archaeologists have generally interpreted similar assemblages as “problematic deposits”—“de facto” refuse (garbage)—as associated with building termination and desecration, or as evidence for rapid abandonment during the violent destruction of these ancient cities. It is argued here that the microstratigraphic excavation and contextual analysis of these features provide limited support for these explanations. Alternatively, we suggest that the deposits are more likely associated with peri-abandonment rituals that were conducted by a reduced remnant population at Cahal Pech, or by small groups who continued to reside in the site's periphery during the last stages of the Terminal Classic period.