The large series of sacrificial victims excavated from the Feathered Serpent Pyramid (ca. a.d. 200) includes 72 males identified as soldiers. Although most of these wore pendants of imitation human maxillae, four soldiers each had between seven and eleven real human maxillae. Dental dimensions indicate that most, and perhaps all, of these trophies were from males. Dental attrition levels suggest a broader and flatter age profile for the pendants than for the soldiers, with a significantly higher mean age. The oxygen-isotope ratios in the dental phosphate of the pendant teeth, which indicate the geographic origins of those individuals, point to their derivation from three different regions, one of them probably in or near the Basin of Mexico itself. Apparently the soldiers had fought in more than one campaign, and the early interactions of Teotihuacan with more distant societies had sometimes involved an element of violence.

A long-term research program at the Maya center of Chac (II) is providing extraordinary new information regarding architecture, mortuary populations, and foreign presence at the Puuc hills during the Early Classic period (a.d. 300–600). The finding of numerous early substructures at monumental and residential contexts, unusual mortuary practices, and various artifacts showing central Mexican inspiration and/or origin has led to the serious realization that the center of Chac did not develop in cultural isolation. It is becoming increasingly evident that Teotihuacan played a significant role, either directly or via one of its surrogates, in the rise of urban centers in the Puuc region. This paper explores the evidence of foreign influences and contacts at Chac and discusses the larger implications for the early political economy of the Puuc hills region and the region's relationship to greater Mesoamerica.

The archaeological record, as well as written texts, oral traditions, and iconographic representations, express the Maya perception of cosmic order, including the concepts of quadripartite division and layered cosmos. The ritual act of portioning and layering created spatial order and was used to organize everything from the heavens to the layout of altars. These acts were also metaphors for world creation, world order, and establishing the center as a position of power and authority. This article examines the articulations of these concepts from the level of caches to the level of regions from the past and present in an attempt to understand these ancient perceptions. We emphasize that basic organizational notions of the cosmos permeate all societal levels and argue that scholars should expand their focus to include how the sacred landscape and its related ideology were reproduced in the lives of everyday people.

This issue's Special Section presents recent archaeological research and interpretive perspectives on ancient Maya social organization. This topic has received increasing archaeological attention in recent years, with inferences drawn primarily from settlement studies, excavation data from households, and mortuary patterns complemented by evidence from ethnohistoric sources and ethnographic data and interpretations (Fash 1994:187–188, 190–192).

Central topics of anthropological study from the 1940s through the 1970s, kinship and lineage became largely discredited during the 1980s. Recent scholarship, however, has indicated that kinship and lineage, when considered as the products of social activity, can make important contributions to studies of living and past populations. This paper explores lineage as a model of social organization distinguished by specific activities practiced by members of Late Classic Maya social groups. This model is derived from cross-cultural literature on lineages, but practices associated with lineage organization are historically and culturally specific. A suite of archaeological correlates, based on practices endemic to the Late Classic Maya, is evaluated against a test case from northwestern Belize. The implications of a landscape populated by lineages during the Classic period argue that archaeological investigations of hinterland areas are an important complement to more traditional studies focused on nucleated site centers.

This paper presents results of excavations from three house lots at Chunchucmil, a Classic-period site in northwestern Yucatan, Mexico. Each of the three house lots contains multiple residential structures organized around patios with temples on the east side of the patio. The boundaries of the house lots are clearly marked by low walls that encircle the architecture and non-mounded space. These house lots were occupied by multiple-family groups that held a common identity. Inequality existed within these groups insofar as one residence in each group was larger and better constructed than the others. In discussing the succession of leadership within these groups, we argue that social organization resembled the flexible house society model presented by Claude Lévi-Strauss, as opposed to rule-guided models based solely on descent or kinship. The practical nature of social organization is seen in the type of modifications found on the east structures of these groups.

A variety of models contribute to our understanding of Classic Maya sociopolitical structure. Few, however, consider the variability that existed within Maya systems, and the temporal and spatial scales of analysis have often been limited, especially with respect to the commoner segment of society. One model that has focused attention on this component of the Maya is the sian otot, described by Charles Wisdom (1940The Chorti Indians of Guatemala. University of Chicago Press) and introduced for the Copan Maya by William Fash (1983 Deducing Social Organization from Classic Maya Settlement Patterns: A Case Study from the Copan Valley. In Civilization in the Ancient Americas: Essays in Honor of Gordon R. Willey. University of New Mexico Press and Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, Harvard University). Based on data from a 135-km2 regional settlement survey and excavations of the Copan Valley in Honduras, it is argued that this model, in conjunction with other, broader models of Classic Maya society, offers a useful perspective from which to construct a multiscalar model of ancient Copan social organization. The variability among sian otot, particularly in terms of economic production, is considered. The ceramic data from Copan suggest that ceramic production among commoner units was communal, and the possibility for community cooperatives is raised. Finally, the dynamic scale and productive relations among the commoners are considered in light of broader sociopolitical changes in the processual history of the Copan polity. It is concluded that the intersection of social, political, and economic institutional frameworks needs to be more comprehensively investigated from varied scales, both temporal and settlement, to appreciate fully the diversity of Maya social organization during the Late Classic/Terminal Classic transition.

While the recent application of the house model to archaeology (Joyce and Gillespie 2000Beyond Kinship: Social and Material Reproduction in House Societies. University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia) has renewed interest in the nature of Classic Maya social organization, the relationships between Classic Maya social units and Classic Maya polities remain poorly understood. This article examines the effects of the Classic Maya collapse of Copan, Honduras on its constituent social units in an effort to ascertain the flexibility and resilience of these groups within larger political structures. Previous researchers suggested that Copan's collapse was limited largely to the ruling elite. However, the Copan Postclassic Archaeological Project has documented a distinct, possibly foreign occupation in the site center from a.d. 950 to 1100. These data suggest that the longevity of all Classic Copaneco social groups in the wake of dynastic collapse was significantly shorter than some have postulated. These data demonstrate that Classic Maya social units were not semiautonomous groups but, instead, were integrated within polities. Thus, they must be understood within larger political frameworks.

Recognition of architectural patterning among groups of structures at lowland Maya sites dating from the Classic period provides insights into the ways that residences and ritual complexes were organized. Each structured group arrangement, or Plaza Plan (PP), reveals an architectural grammar that provides the database enabling us to predict urban as well as rural settlement patterns. Wide variations in sizes among examples of residential PPs suggests that heterarchy was an important aspect of Classic Maya society. Examination of PP2 at Tikal indicates that a heterarchic pattern of organization existed. Heterarchy may relate to the fragility of the structure of lowland Maya kingship, and this may explain the gradual demise of states during the Terminal Classic and Postclassic periods and their replacement by re-emergent Maya chiefdoms.

Inferring ancient social and political organization from the archaeological record is a difficult task. Generally, the models used to interpret the Classic-period Maya (a.d. 250–900) have been borrowed from other societies and other times and thus also reflect etic conceptions of the past. Maya social and political organization has been interpreted as varying in complexity. Those who would model a less complex Classic Maya social structure have tended to employ lineage models and segmentation. Models of a more complex Classic Maya civilization focus on different social levels and on a breakdown of some kinship systems. Other models, such as that of the “noble house,” represent attempts to find a middle ground. Yet archaeological and epigraphic data that have been gathered for the Classic Maya place parameters on any interpretation that is generated. Data collected from Caracol, Belize, over the past 19 years can be used to illustrate the problems that arise in the strict application of “ideal” social models to the Classic Maya situation. These same data also provide parameters for the reconstruction of ancient sociopolitical organization.

The meaning of ancient Maya social organization continues to engender heated debate. Hierarchy and heterarchy are suggested as organizational principles that reflect the variability characteristic of the Maya households past and present. The presence or absence of lineage in the core area or hinterland reflects the social dimension of Maya social organization and small and larger households are tied to the larger political structure. Detailed archaeological data have documented extreme economic variability in Maya household patterns and relationships associated with these. Scholars argue that structures contain rich symbolic statements and reflect Maya ideological structure. Discussion of Maya household patterns moves beyond a monolithic understanding of social organization in the past and the present, including extreme variation in kinship and marriage patterns, associated economic structure, power, and symbolic representations that bind the society and tie individuals to higher structural levels.

This commentary addresses ethnographic and theoretical problems in the recent debate over lineages and houses in Classic Maya society. On the one hand, proponents of segmentary lineage models miss ambiguities between filiation and descent, residential and corporate groups in the Maya ethnographies they use for their analogies. On the other hand, supporters of Lévi-Strauss's house model fail to appreciate the relative instead of absolute differences between descent theory and alliance theory that underlie lineage and house models and make it difficult, if not impossible, to distinguish between them archaeologically. Both look to descriptive, largely static types derived from elsewhere and then argue which best fits Classic Maya society rather than build models that define the relevant components of social organization—filiation, descent, alliance, residence—and then theorize how differently patterned relations between these components might yield the institutional groupings we find on (or in the case of archaeology, in) the ground.