Metal production has been a key economic activity in the southern Andes for the last 2,000 years, but relatively little is known about the indigenous technology used to process and smelt ores, in part because these activities are often difficult for investigators to identify in the archaeological record. In 2001 and 2002, members of the Proyecto Arqueológico Porco-Potosí had the opportunity to observe the use of indigenous smelting technology to produce silver in southern Bolivia. The data generated by these ethnographic observations, as well as by historical texts that describe traditional smelting, are used to interpret a sixteenth-century metal production site excavated by the authors in Bolivia and two production locales reported from Argentina and Chile. This assessment suggests that a great deal of variability existed in the metallurgical traditions of the southern Andes, and that the full spectrum will only be understood if archaeologists can recognize the material correlates of different types of technological processes.

The Maya “collapse” began shortly after A.D. 750, and the events associated with this transition period would play out over the next three centuries. Many factors contributed to the collapse, not the least of which was the trend toward widespread power sharing that began in the eighth century, when lesser nobles, particularly the lords of secondary centers, began to acquire more wealth and political autonomy. The examination of secondary centers, particularly in frontier zones farthest from the polity capitals, offers an advantageous perspective from which to document the events leading up to the collapse and to explore the nature of the collapse itself. Sometime near the beginning of the eighth century, Minanha, one of these secondary centers, emerged as a petty royal court in the frontier between the contracting Naranjo and Caracol polities. After a century of apparent sociopolitical and socioeconomic success, Minanha’s royal residential compound was willfully buried, some of its most important facades and stelae were destroyed, and the center went into rapid decline. The rise and fall of Minanha are discussed with respect to regional politics, as well as the broader ninth-century “collapse” of the southern Maya lowlands.

The geographic expansion of Tiwanaku people and culture (cal A.D. 500–1150) in the south-central Andes can be viewed as a two-staged diaspora. This article defines and categorizes diasporas, suggests archaeological correlates and theoretical implications, and reconstructs the Tiwanaku diaspora. The first stage was a colonizing diaspora in the context of the functioning Tiwanaku state, limited to a few mid-elevation places such as the middle Osmore drainage near Moquegua and probably Cochabamba. The second stage was a much more extensive victim/refugee diaspora driven by the violent disintegration of the colonies around A.D. 1000, in conjunction with either the collapse of Tiwanaku or its radical reorientation by a militaristic elite. Second-stage diaspora populations that settled in sparsely populated areas such as the upper Osmore drainage or the Carumas–Calacoa region established dispersed, small, defensible villages. Those that settled among a larger or more established host population such as the Chiribaya in the coastal Osmore Valley integrated as a marked, lower-status minority. This explosive collapse suggests that Tiwanaku was composed of multiple groups whose differing interests could not be contained. Supporting evidence is drawn primarily from the Osmore drainage, especially the coastal segment.

Agriculture in prehispanic Mesoamerica necessitated not only a wide range of knowledge regarding soil types, fertility, and the growing cycles of different plants, but also the attendant rituals that firmly situated agrarian production into a shared Mesoamerican worldview. Due primarily to archaeological visibility, those attendant rituals have traditionally been investigated within the context of large centers. Recent investigations at the site of Quincunx, a hinterland architectural complex in northwestern Belize of the Maya Lowlands, provide evidence that some rural communities may also have had access to and control over esoteric knowledge involved in agricultural practice in the Late Classic period. Our findings are discussed in the context of ethnographic accounts and archaeological data that reveal the deep significance of quincuncial designs in Maya society and Mesoamerican ritual practices.

Essential to quipu analysis is identification of the logical structure of the quipu and the internal relationships of the data within that structure. The identification process relies on examining, in detail, the colors, placement, and spacing of the quipu cords, and the knot types and positions on the cords. Spin, ply, and knot directionality have recently become available for 59 otherwise well-described quipus. Here, I examine this additional information in the context of the logic of the quipus. Analysis shows that for these quipus, except for three in which the main cord differs from the other cords, spin and ply are uniform for all the cords on a quipu. For the large majority of the quipus (about 81 percent), knot directionality is also uniform throughout. The 19 percent for which knot directionality is mixed are presented and discussed individually. On them, knot directionality conforms to, and plays a role in, the overall logic of the quipu. It is clear that spin, ply, and knot directionality are not chosen by the quipu-maker on a cord-by-cord basis and they do not serve to distinguish between quantitative and non-quantitative data.