10 Frisbie Place, the Cambridge location of Carnegie's Division of Historical Research, did not look much like Mt. Olympus, but to me, it was exactly that. An old, three-story frame building with drably painted clapboards, it must once have been some Harvard professor's house back in the Victorian era. Anyone looking for it now would never find it: it was demolished many years back to make way for the enormous biochemistry laboratories of a more modern Harvard. The ghosts of its Maya archaeologists–almost all gone now–must wander like disconsolate wraiths among the glassware and computer screens.

We argue that a regional analysis which combines ethnohistoric, ethnographic, and archaeological Information can both discover and employ indigenous cultural ideals in a study of changing settlement Systems. Use of archaeological survey of the valleys of Tilantongo and Jaltepec in conjunction with the historical documentation in the Mixtec codices has allowed us to identify several ways in which ideals of landscape perception were encoded in the codices. This, in turn, allows an enhanced political and social discussion of both the changing patterns of settlement observed archaeologically and the purpose and meaning of the codices. We suggest that the codices, as a form of historical mapping, were produced to recount the common history of several closely interacting elite domains, the Postclassic Mixtec kingdoms of the southern Nochixtlan Valley and their neighbors.

This article begins with the assumption that the Mixtec codices were scripts to be performed. It reasons that as “scripts,” they contained clues to guide the performers in their public reading or chanting. It suggests that this reading would have corresponded to Mixtec canons of verbal artistry, and argues that the size and combination of figures in the codices reflect certain elements in the poetics of contemporary Mixtec speech.

The Carnegie Institution of Washington's 1924–1937. Uaxactun Project, one of the first large-scale excavations in the Maya area, established the role of dirt archaeology in Maya studies. The archaeologists who worked on this pioneering project developed many field methods and approaches that remain in use today. A review of the project and of the careers of its participants shows the critical role the Carnegie Uaxactun Project has played in the history of Maya archaeology.

The structure and meaning of Mixtec codical symbolism is examined, based on data drawn from language, ethnography, and ethnohistory. The article is divided into three parts: (a) a discussion of Mixtec ideology and myth, with respect to codex symbolism; (b) a description of Mixtec poetics and symbolic correlates; and (c) an interpretive commentary of a brief mythological passage from the Vienna codex as a practical illustration of the first two parts of the article.