In all fields of scholarship, certain issues become prisms of theoretical and interpretive positions. In the small subfield of Mesoamerican archaeology, one of the most divisive issues (in a literal, “prismatic” sense) has been the debate over the role of external central Mexican influence in the ancient Maya civilization.

In the earliest days of stratigraphic excavation in Mesoamerican archaeology, Manuel Gamio and others made the shocking discovery of very early settled village cultures in the Valley of Mexico. This finding led to the so called archaic hypothesis that these earliest farming societies had spread from central Mexico to the rest...

Since the remarkable discovery in 1936 of foreign ceramics and talud-tablero architecture (platforms with façades consisting of inward sloping basal elements stacked with rectangular bodies containing recessed insets) at Kaminaljuyu, Guatemala (Figure 1.1), the nature of interaction between the central Mexican culture of Teotihuacan and the Maya of southern Mexico and Central America has been a fundamental question of Mesoamerican archaeology. During the fifty years that followed, few scholars doubted that the presence of central Mexican–style artifacts and architecture in the Maya region represented an actual migration and colonization of southeastern Mesoamerica by population segments from the great city...

The nature of interaction between Teotihuacan and distant regions has been ambiguous, and an understanding of its essential characteristics is important for several reasons. First, from the perspective of regions such as Pacific Guatemala (Figure 2.1), we need to know if local political and economic shifts reflect changes in the foreign relations of Teotihuacan. Such a determination would also help us understand Teotihuacan’s own political and ideological development. Second, we need to develop explanatory models of local evolutionary trends against the background of Teotihuacan interaction. This can be achieved by determining the degree to which Teotihuacan affected the dynamics of...

In 1925, the polymath Walter Lehmann identified central Mexican ceramics in private collections from Kaminaljuyu (Bove 2000). But the presence of Teotihuacan-style pottery at the site remained generally unknown until 1936, when Alfred V. Kidder, Oliver G. Ricketson, and Robert Wauchope of the Carnegie Institution of Washington began excavating Mound A (Figure 3.1; Mound F-VI-1) at the behest of José Antonio Villacorta Calderón, the Guatemalan Minister of Public Education (Kidder et al. 1946:1). Excavation of this rather unimpressive earthen mound—measuring amere 20 m across and 6 m high—was concluded in1937 by Jesse D. and Jane C. Jennings, while...

Numerous explications have been proposed for the appearance of central Mexican ceramics and obsidian, as well as for locally manufactured architecture in a foreign style, at Kaminaljuyu. Nearly all published scenarios, including that put forward by the Carnegie investigators of Mounds A and B, imply that foreigners from the great city of Teotihuacan resided at Kaminaljuyu.¹ Most suggest that these resident foreigners dominated the economy or political system of the site. It is incorrect to call many of the reconstructions “models” or even “falsifiable hypotheses.” Few have predictive value, and because of their highly inductive and interpretive nature, even fewer...

The archaeological site of Copán is situated in a fertile upland valley in western Honduras. Copán has long been recognized as an important political and religious center that was settled during the late Early Preclassic (C. 1000 B.C.; Fash 1991), but reached its apogee during the late Early Classic and Late Classic periods (C. A.D. 400–800). This chapter surveys the archaeological evidence for connections between Copán and central Mexico—including Teotihuacan—during the era of the dynastic Founder K’inich Yaax K’uk’ Mo’ and his son and successor, K’inich Popol Hol (Fash 1997; Schele and Grube 1994b; Sharer 1997c; Stuart...

Twenty years have passed since the Dumbarton Oaks conference that resulted in the volume Highland-Lowland Interaction in Mesoamerica: Interdisciplinary Approaches (Miller 1983). The contributors to that work formulated the basis of what continues to be the majority opinion regarding the influence of central Mexican culture in various parts of the Maya region during the epoch of the maximum splendor of Teotihuacan. As a result of a series of archaeological discoveries, some investigators involved in the problem came to think that Teotihuacan influence was a factor essential to the development of state-level polities in both the Maya lowlands and highlands (e.g.,...

The development and nature of interaction between Tikal and Teotihuacan are controversial subjects. Many perspectives have emerged in the attempt to understand the relationship between these two Early Classic Mesoamerican cities. Each line of argument is supported by studies of architecture, hieroglyphic inscriptions, sculpture, stone tools, or ceramics. The archaeological record of Tikal is particularly rich in data that can be applied to the problem. In fact, the cosmopolitan character of Early Classic Tikal has fostered extreme positions regarding the role played by Teotihuacan in the development of the city and, consequently, of a considerable part of the Maya lowlands....

At the dawn of the Early Classic period, inhabitants of the Maya lowlands began to carve and erect stelae.¹ For some of these sites, the appearance of carved monuments corresponded with the establishment of dynastic rule, a new political order that required innovative forms of public propaganda. Carved stelae answered this need.

The most basic function of these monuments was to glorify individual rulers. Stelae were public proclamations of the importance of the ruler to the community. Clothing themselves in costumes reflecting wealth and prestige, and manipulating symbols of military and sacred power, rulers depicted themselves in service to the...

For a number of Mesoamericanists, including some Mayanists, the core-periphery view of the ancient world offers notable attractions. In such reconstructions of the past, it is necessary only that one identify the central, productive core in order to commence discussion of the movement of goods, gods, and ideas outward to peripheral recipients. Once one has carried out this exercise, answers to all manner of questions that might otherwise seem unanswerable will begin to emerge before one’s eyes. If simplicity is a virtue, it is made into a positive wonder tool by adoption of the navel-of-the-universe perspective. This perspective has engendered...

Since the early twentieth century, questions of interaction and the spread of Teotihuacan-related features in the Maya area have generated many studies that use a variety of methodologies and adopt very different points of view (e.g., Berlo 1984,1989; Coggins 1975; Hellmuth 1975; Kidder et al. 1946; Laporte 1989; Linné 1942; Miller 1983; Parsons 1967–1969; Pasztory 1978b; Sanders and Michels 1977; Santley 1989; Seler 1976[1915]; von Winning 1987). Analysis of these works reveals that are as much epistemological are empirical (Varela Torrecilla 1998:13–25).

In the case of the northern Maya lowlands, a chronological and cultural gap can be added...

The great metropolis of Teotihuacan by no means stood alone in aloof isolation. Rather, it participated in direct and sustained contact with many regions of Early Classic Mesoamerica. Other chapters in this volume focus on Teotihuacan interaction with the Maya area, but Teotihuacan influence also is evident among Classic cultures of the Gulf Coast, Oaxaca, Michoacán, Guerrero, and Colima (see Marcus 1983b; McBride 1969; Noguera 1944; Ortiz and Santley 1998; Winter 1998). Evidence of this contact is not limited to portable objects, such as ceramics, but can also be discerned in architecture, monumental art, and even Teotihuacan texts that are...

Relations between Teotihuacan and societies in the Maya area have long been a controversial topic. The effect of this book is less to resolve disputes than to assemble recent information and to frame the issues more clearly. This is very useful, since it points to strategic directions for further research. Opinions about the role of Teotihuacan, Teotihuacanos, and persons claiming some sort of affiliation with Teotihuacan in the Maya area continue to vary greatly, even within this volume. Some contributors prefer interpretations that minimize Teotihuacan’s impact on the Maya. This is shown especially in their proclivities toward speculations that tend...

Thanks to all the new data being gathered in Mesoamerica, we are now in a better position to develop models for the interaction between Teotihuacan and the Maya. In preparing this chapter, I reviewed the evidence for “foreign ties” at each of the seven sites discussed in this volume and realized that one could create at least seven different models. After noting numerous similarities in them, however, I was able to reduce the number to four. I hasten to add that even after this reduction, no two cases were identical and such case-to-case variability is very significant when trying to...