Se presenta una nueva interpretación de un importante grupo de la nobleza teotihuacana, cuyos miembros portaban tocado de borlas, como parte de su vestimenta. En base al análisis iconográfico se establece que los señores portadores de la versión más compleja de este tocado (el Gran Tocado) eran gobernantes sagrados que poseían poderes sobrenaturales: se dedicaban al servicio del Dios de la Lluvia y en la guerra eran capaces de usar como arma el rayo del propio Dios. Los miembros de menor rango de dicho grupo también eran ofrendantes del Dios de la Lluvia y aparentemente cumplían funciones políticas. El grupo tenía varios niveles jerárquicos, planteándose la hipótesis de que quizás pudo haber sido regido simultáneamente por varios señores con Gran Tocado. Se sugiere que el ejemplo de este grupo de principales puede servir como clave para descifrar la naturaleza de la clase gobernante de Teotihuacan.

Conflicting Colonial accounts of the Aztec conquest of Oztuma are resolved by correlating new archaeological data, a collection of Early Colonial documents from the town of Ixtepec, and other better-known sources. The correlation of archaeological and ethnohistoric data suggests that, contrary to some interpretations of the histories of the Aztec Empire, the Aztec fortress of Oztuma was separate from and contemporaneous with a Chontal fortified site known by the same toponym, and that the Chontal of Oztuma were not exterminated by the Aztecs during the rebellion of 1487. Instead, Chontal Oztuma maintained internal political cohesion while integrated into the Aztec hegemony. The Aztec and Chontal sites together formed the defensive line of the imperial frontier facing the Tarascans. This study represents a shift in focus in Aztec studies from the Aztec imperial core to its constituent hinterlands, emphasizing the complexity of political and strategic interactions.

This paper discusses the results of recent instrumental neutron-activation analysis (INNA) work identifying the obsidian sources relied upon in the Tuxtla Mountains of southern Veracruz in pre-Hispanic times. Our research indicates that Guadalupe Victoria and, secondarily, Zaragoza obsidian were the main sources imported to the Tuxtlas during the Early and Middle Formative periods. In contrast, Zaragoza became the dominant source relied upon from Late Formative times onward. Data on obsidian color and raw-material quality make it possible to extend the INAA results to the entire obsidian assemblage from the Tuxtlas.

An analysis of oxygen-isotope ratios in skeletal phosphate was used to assess the possibility that the Early Classic period (a.d. 280–550) Maya elite male in Tomb F/8-1 from the eastern Belizean site of Altun Ha had originally come from Teotihuacan, Mexico. When compared with four other individuals used as controls for spatial and temporal variability in δ18Op values at Altun Ha, this individual falls at the high end of the expected range of local intrasite variation but does not have a δ18Op value consistent with that of Teotihuacan. The mortuary and isotopic data have been compared with those from the previously analyzed Maya site of Kaminaljuyu, Guatemala, in order to examine regional and temporal differences in the influence of the powerful state of Teotihuacan. It appears that Teotihuacan was not the homeland of any of the tomb individuals analyzed from either site. Thus, models of ideological or symbolic power are supported over those of political or military imperialism.

Cuando a fines de la primera mitad del siglo XVI los españoles concluyeron la conquista del noroeste de la península de Yucatán, encontraron que las mujeres mayas poseían una larga tradición en la confección de los tejidos de algodón. Los encomenderos y los franciscanos aprovecharon su disposición y organización del trabajo textil para obligarlas a tejer mantas de algodón con el fin de exportarlas al mercado novohispano. La crisis demográfica del último tercio del siglo de la invasión imposibilitó a los pueblos producir con su población femenina las cuotas tributarias y las limosnas textiles. Este fenómeno dio como resultado que los pueblos vivieran un periodo de desequilibrio que propició un proceso de simplificación social, de intensificación de la jornada de trabajo femenino y que la cuota de explotación colonial se incrementara.

In the paper by Hristov and Genovés (1999), the main supporting argument for their hypothesis of pre-Columbian transoceanic contacts is a thermoluminescence (TL) age of 1780 ± 400 b.p. obtained for a small terracotta head found in central Mexico. This age value and the reference cited are not correct. In this contribution, we clarify the context and give for the first time our final results of the TL age analysis of the figurine. Due to methodological problems, we were not able to perform a traditional TL age determination. It was, however, possible to calculate an age range from A.D. 1270 to 870 B.C. for the small head, corresponding to firing in antiquity. This resulting age probably rules out a Colonial manufacturing date, but because of its low accuracy, it certainly cannot be used as an argument in the debate over the head's origin, or even as central evidence for pre-Columbian transoceanic contacts.

In the present “Reply …” we discuss a correction of the thermoluminescence (TL) age limits of an apparently Roman terracotta head found in Mexico (Hristov and Genovés 1999), as well two recent objections to the reliability of the find: (1) that the artifact may have been imported to the New World after A.D. 1492; and (2) that the head was “planted” at the archaeological site during the excavation. The corrected TL age limits oscillate from 2870 B.P. to 730 B.P. (cal. 875 B.C.–A.D. 1265), which excludes the possibility of Colonial manufacture of the artifact and makes the hypothesis of its Roman origin and importation into Mesoamerica applicable. However, an examination of the political and economic relationships between the Aztecs and the Matlatzincas, as well as the circumstances of the discovery, make highly unlikely the suggestion of post-Columbian importation of the artifact into Mesoamerica (and especially into the Central Mexican Highlands), and of the “planting” of the figurine at the archaeological site. Finally, we summarize some recent finds of Berber, Phoenician, Egyptian, and Roman objects and inscriptions in the Canary archipelago that strongly support the possibility of a few sporadic, perhaps accidental, transatlantic voyages from the Mediterranean to Mesoamerica in antiquity.

In this issue we present the second part of the special section on recent research on Late Aztec Otumba, Tepeapulco, and Teotihuacan by Thomas H. Charlton, Deborah L. Nichols, Cynthia L. Otis Charlton, and their colleagues. The background to this research was discussed by those authors in our previous issue (Charlton, Nichols, and Otis Charlton 2000), and, as I pointed out in the introduction to the first part (Fowler 2000), a distinct advantage provided by the Otumba research is that the data generated allow us to assess general models proposed for the origin and development of city-states in the Basin of Mexico during the last few centuries before the Spanish Conquest. To summarize briefly, two general models have been proposed—one emphasizing economic symbiosis and craft specialization and the other focusing on regional political competition among elites. The Otumba data and analyses allow us to perceive and explore further valid aspects of both models.

The Aztec period city-state of Otumba in the upper Teotihuacan Valley was integrated into the Acolhua domain from the early 1430s to about 1515. It then became independent, demonstrating the fragility of city-state organization as a means of regional political integration. A close look at Otumba and other city-states in the Teotihuacan Valley reveals that Acolhua strategies of social engineering welded together the potentially-autonomous city-states into an elaborate political system with impressive structural strengthening and improved flow of services and materials through it.

Obsidian was an important commodity in the Aztec empire. The obsidian industries from several Late Aztec sites in the northeastern Basin of Mexico are briefly summarized. These sites represent both urban centers and their rural dependencies. Site TA-80, the urban center of the Otumba city-state, contained numerous surface concentrations of obsidian debris, representing refuse from workshops where obsidian tools were produced or consumed. Seven of these concentrations represent debris from specialized production of large quantities of prismatic blades. Others represent workshops where blades were consumed in substantial numbers in the process of producing some other commodity. Households at rural sites in the Otumba city-state did not produce blades but probably obtained them through exchange from the specialized producers at TA-80. However, some rural sites did contain evidence of specialized quarrying, preparation of macrocores, and production of bifacial tools, apparently for export to urban centers. Similar evidence is found in the Tepeapulco city-state, which also had evidence of specialized production of prismatic blades in the urban center and of consumption of blades by both specialized producers of other commodities and in domestic contexts, in the urban center and at rural sites. Some rural sites in the Tepeapulco city-state, as in Otumba, also had evidence of specialized production of bifaces and macrocores. In both city-states, obsidian was extracted from local sources and shaped into macrocores and bifaces, which were then exported to the city-state center and to more distant locations beyond the boundaries of the city-state. Within the urban centers of each city-state, macrocores were reduced to prismatic blades. Large quantities of blades were produced by craft specialists, working at a few restricted locations within the city-state centers. The finished blades were then distributed to consuming households within the urban center of the city-state, as well as to rural dependencies and to more distant consumers beyond the boundaries of the city-state.

The study of macrobotanical remains recovered from excavations at Otumba provides evidence for past vegetation and the plants used by inhabitants of different sectors of the archaeological site. Opportunistic weedy genera commonly associated with crops were common among the archaeological specimens. Evidence for domesticated plants includes maize (Zea mays) and frijol (Phaseolus sp.), together with numerous genera that do not appear to have been domesticated as yet, such as Amaranthus sp., Chenopodium sp., Portulaca sp., and Salvia sp. The relative abundance of uncarbonized plant specimens in association with carbonized materials is discussed. The possibility of differential plant use among inhabitants of the nucleated core with respect to the dispersed residential zone is also considered.

The Mapa de Otumba, a sixteenth-century document (1550–1575) currently archived in the Biblioteca Nacional de Antropología e Historia of the Museo Nacional de Antropología in Mexico, represents a small portion of the pre-Conquest altepetl of Otompan and its Early Colonial-period administrative successors, the parroquia and corregimiento of Otumba. The exact circumstances under which the map was executed, its original purpose, and any associated textual documents are unknown. The paper on which the map is executed (amate) and the style in which it was drawn clearly show pre-Conquest paper and the hand of a tlacuilo (scribe) influenced by post-Conquest style, script, and changes in sociopolitical and religious organization. Analysis of the elements of the document reveal its temporal and spatial setting; it also throws light on the changes in indigenous sociopolitical and religious organization during the first half-century of the Early Colonial period.