The absence of suitable methodologies to distinguish between wild and domesticated camelids in rock art has limited the interpretation of visual preferences of Andean prehispanic cultures. Although rock art’s contextual information may provide some indications that help to differentiate between wild and domesticated animals, uncertainty prevails because the relation to camelid forms is indirect. Zoological and zooarchaeological knowledge of South American camelid morphology is used as a means of comparison and identification in Atacama Desert rock art attributed to the Initial Pastoral phase (1500–500 B.C., Early Formative period, northern Chile). Based on this analysis, there are strong arguments for a distinctive graphic representation of wild as opposed to domesticated camelids, as well as a correspondence of these representations to two different modes of subsistence—one of hunters and the other of husbandry-pastoralist societies—which would have coexisted during this transitional period.

From the Classic period to the present, scholars have documented the widespread Maya belief in a supernatural guardian of the animals who must be appeased in hunting rituals. Despite this resilience, features and deposits entering the archaeological record as a result of hunting ceremonies remain largely unknown. I describe several contemporary and nineteenth-century shrines used for hunting rites in the Maya highlands of Guatemala. These sites contain a unique feature, a ritual fauna cache, which consists of animal remains secondarily deposited during hunting ceremonies. The formation of these caches is informed by two beliefs with historical time depth: (1) the belief in a guardian of animals and (2) the symbolic conflation of bone and regeneration. The unique life history of remains in hunting-related ritual fauna caches suggests a hypothesis for puzzling deposits of mammal remains recovered archaeologically in lowland Maya caves. These may have functioned in hunting rites designed to placate the animal guardian and ensure the regeneration of the species via ceremonies that incorporated the secondary discard of skeletal remains. A review of the ethnographic literature from the Lenca, Huichol, Nahua, Tlapanec, and Mixe areas reveals similar hunting rites indicating a broader Mesoamerican ritual practice.

Accounts from the Spanish chronicles regarding Inka record-keeping practices by means of the knotted string devices called khipu (“knot”) indicate that these accounts were compiled in a system of “checks and balances.” Each community in the empire had a minimum of four khipu accountants, all of whom are said by the chronicler Garcilaso de la Vega to have kept the same records. This study examines several examples of matching khipu accounts identified among sets of two or three khipu. The identification of matching khipu accounts has been facilitated by the recent development of a khipu database at Harvard University. It is argued that certain three-term numerical sequences recorded in one set of three matching khipu from Chachapoyas, northern Peru, represent a type of numerical signifier that may have served as identity labels of the information recorded in this set of khipu. The long-range objective of this research is to investigate the information recorded on khipu from various provenience zones around the former Inka Empire that may represent the remains of khipu archives.

“Chihuahua culture” refers to two prehistoric periods of ceramic agricultural occupation in northwestern Mexico. It has long been known that the Medio period (ca. A.D. 1200–1450), with substantial adobe pueblo villages and towns, and ceramics that included elaborate polychrome wares, occurred over a vast region in western and northern Chihuahua and northeastern Sonora. It was also recognized that the preceding Viejo period, with pithouse and wattle-and-daub surface architecture, and less elaborate ceramics, was ancestral, at least in part. However, the geographical extent, dating, and nature of the Viejo-Medio transition were unclear. Recent research by several field projects has demonstrated that Viejo and Medio period occupations were geographically coextensive, as was the transition. A foundation for Viejo period chronometric dating (ca. A.D. 700–1200) is now established by 30 radiocarbon determinations from excavations in west central Chihuahua and one from northeastern Sonora. We discuss the dimensions of the Viejo period in west central Chihuahua with data from 1998–2000 excavations by the PAC (Proyecto Arqueológico Chihuahua). It provides an example of a broad-based transition from a relatively simple to a relatively complex pattern, and new perspectives on the interpretation of radiocarbon dating.”

Settlement studies of the prehispanic Lowland Maya have tended to rely upon dwelling remains that are visible at the ground surface, though floors and living surfaces that leave no surface indications are known to exist. Such “invisible” dwellings have been encountered beneath platforms and in “vacant terrain” lacking surface indications of architecture, and given more systematic attention, could represent a sizable and socially significant segment of the prehispanic populations in the region. This paper describes the application of electromagnetic induction, a geophysical technique, for locating nonplatform dwellings at Chau Hiix, Belize. A conductivity signature for nonplatform dwellings was identified that includes plaster, nonplatform floors, both in an area of vacant terrain and beneath a residential terrace, in association with trash pits and episodes of limestone bedrock mining, presumably for the acquisition of raw material for the floor. The technique also holds promise for locating ground-level floors, use-areas, and possibly footpaths. While this pilot study was limited in scope, it demonstrates the enormous potential of electromagnetic induction for locating these otherwise elusive features.

In a recent comment Michael Smith argues that the cosmological interpretations of Maya urban layouts proposed in an article by Ashmore and Sabloff are vague and unconvincing. He also summarizes some other comparable studies in order to show that arguments for the cosmological significance of archaeologically recovered urban patterns are, in general, subjective and lack methodological rigor. I argue that his view is an unwarranted generalization and that his references to some archaeoastronomical interpretations do not adequately reflect the advances in this field of research and its relevance for the understanding of ancient city plans. I summarize the results of several studies in Mesoamerica, focusing on Teotihuacan and the Templo Mayor of Tenochtitlan discussed by Smith, to show that rigorous methods not only have been applied in archaeoastronomical research but also have resulted in explicit conclusions about specific aspects of worldview and political ideology underlying Mesoamerican architecture and urbanism.

I criticize recent applications of the “cosmogram” concept to ancient Maya architecture and cities. Although cosmograms—graphic representations of aspects of the cosmos—are known from Late Postclassic and early colonial Aztec and Maya sources, there is no textual suggestion that buildings or cities were viewed as cosmograms. Numerous authors, however, assert confidently that architectural cosmograms abounded in Classic Maya cities. I examine known cosmograms, describe recent studies of architectural cosmograms, and discuss problems that occur when highly speculative interpretations are phrased as confident empirical findings.