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\"Identities of power and place, as expressed in paintings from the periods before and after the Spanish conquest of Mesoamerica, are the subject of this book of case studies from Central Mexico, Oaxaca, and the Maya area. These sophisticated, skillfully rendered images occur with architecture, in manuscripts, on large pieces of cloth, and on ceramics.\"-- Provided by publisher.

When humans moved from Asia toward the Americas over 18,000 y ago and eventually peopled the New World they encountered a new environment with extreme climate conditions and distinct dietary resources. These environmental and dietary pressures may have led to instances of genetic adaptation with the potential to influence the phenotypic variation in extant Native American populations. An example of such an event is the evolution of the fatty acid desaturases (FADS) genes, which have been claimed to harbor signals of positive selection in Inuit populations due to adaptation to the cold Greenland Arctic climate and to a protein-rich diet. Because there was evidence of intercontinental variation in this genetic region, with indications of positive selection for its variants, we decided to compare the Inuit findings with other Native American data. Here, we use several lines of evidence to show that the signal of FADS-positive selection is not restricted to the Arctic but instead is broadly observed throughout the Americas. The shared signature of selection among populations living in such a diverse range of environments is likely due to a single and strong instance of local adaptation that took place in the common ancestral population before their entrance into the New World. These first Americans peopled the whole continent and spread this adaptive variant across a diverse set of environments.

The role of climate change in the development and demise of Classic Maya civilization (300 to 1000 C.E.) remains controversial because of the absence of well-dated climate and archaeological sequences, We present a precisely dated subannual climate record for the past 2000 years from Yok Balum Cave, Belize. From comparison of this record with historical events compiled from well-dated stone monuments, we propose that anomalously high rainfall favored unprecedented population expansion and the proliferation of political centers between 440 and 660 C.E. This was followed by a drying trend between 660 and 1000 C.E. that triggered the balkanization of polities, increased warfare, and the asynchronous disintegration of polities, followed by population collapse in the context of an extended drought between 1020 and 1100 C.E.

Our archaeological investigations at Ceibal, a lowland Maya site located in the Pasióón region, documented that a formal ceremonial complex was built around 950 B.C. at the onset of the Middle Preclassic period, when ceramics began to be used in the Maya lowlands. Our refined chronology allowed us to trace the subsequent social changes in a resolution that had not been possible before. Many residents of Ceibal appear to have remained relatively mobile during the following centuries, living in ephemeral post-in-ground structures and frequently changing their residential localities. In other parts of the Pasióóón region, there may have existed more mobile populations who maintained the traditional lifestyle of the preceramic period. Although the emerging elite of Ceibal began to live in a substantial residential complex by 700 B.C., advanced sedentism with durable residences rebuilt in the same locations and burials placed under house floors was not adopted in most residential areas until 500 B.C., and did not become common until 300 B.C. or the Late Preclassic period. During the Middle Preclassic period, substantial formal ceremonial complexes appear to have been built only at a small number of important communities in the Maya lowlands, and groups with different levels of sedentism probably gathered for their constructions and for public rituals held in them. These collaborative activities likely played a central role in socially integrating diverse groups with different lifestyles and, eventually, in developing fully established sedentary communities. Significance The results of our research at the lowland Maya site of Ceibal add to the growing archaeological understanding that the transition to sedentism did not necessarily occur simultaneously across different social groups within a region and that monumental constructions did not always postdate fully established sedentism. Whereas sedentary and mobile populations are, in many cases, interpreted to have maintained separate communities, our study suggests that groups with different levels of mobility gathered and collaborated for constructions and public ceremonies. These data indicate that the development of sedentism was a complex process involving interactions among diverse groups, and that collaborative construction projects and communal gatherings played a critical role in this social transformation by facilitating social integration among different groups.

The ninth century collapse and abandonment of the Central Maya Lowlands in the Yucatán peninsular region were the result of complex human–environment interactions. Large-scale Maya landscape alterations and demands placed on resources and ecosystem services generated high-stress environmental conditions that were amplified by increasing climatic aridity. Coincident with this stress, the flow of commerce shifted from land transit across the peninsula to sea-borne transit around it. These changing socioeconomic and environmental conditions generated increasing societal conflicts, diminished control by the Maya elite, and led to decisions to move elsewhere in the peninsular region rather than incur the high costs of maintaining the human–environment systems in place. After abandonment, the environment of the Central Maya Lowlands largely recovered, although altered from its state before Maya occupation; the population never recovered. This history and the spatial and temporal variability in the pattern of collapse and abandonment throughout the Maya lowlands support the case for different conditions, opportunities, and constraints in the prevailing human–environment systems and the decisions to confront them. The Maya case lends insights for the use of paleo- and historical analogs to inform contemporary global environmental change and sustainability.

Until recently, an extensive area in the central lowlands of the Yucatán peninsula was completely unexplored archaeologically. In 2013 and 2014, during initial surveys in the northern part of the uninhabited Calakmul Biosphere Reserve in eastern Campeche, Mexico, we located Chactún, Tamchén and Lagunita, three major Maya centers with some unexpected characteristics. Lidar data, acquired in 2016 for a larger area of 240 km 2 , revealed a thoroughly modified and undisturbed archaeological landscape with a remarkably large number of residential clusters and widespread modifications related to water management and agriculture. Substantial additional information was obtained through field surveys and test excavations in 2017 and 2018. While hydraulic and agricultural features and their potential for solving various archaeologically relevant questions were discussed in a previous publication, here we examine the characteristics of settlement patterns, architectural remains, sculpted monuments, and ceramic evidence. The early Middle Preclassic (early first millennium BCE) material collected in stratigraphic pits at Tamchén and another locale constitutes the earliest evidence of colonization known so far in a broader central lowland area. From then until the Late Classic period, which was followed by a dramatic demographic decline, the area under study witnessed relatively constant population growth and interacted with different parts of the Maya Lowlands. However, a number of specific and previously unknown cultural traits attest to a rather distinctive regional development, providing novel information about the extent of regional variation within the Maya culture. By analyzing settlement pattern characteristics, inscriptional data, the distribution of architectural volumes and some other features of the currently visible archaeological landscape, which largely reflects the Late Classic situation, we reconstruct several aspects of sociopolitical and territorial organization in that period, highlighting similarities with and differences from what has been evidenced in the neighboring Río Bec region and elsewhere in the Maya area.

Chemical analyses of residues extracted from pottery vessels from Puerto Escondido in what is now Honduras show that cacao beverages were being made there before 1000 B.C., extending the confirmed use of cacao back at least 500 years. The famous chocolate beverage served on special occasions in later times in Mesoamerica, especially by elites, was made from cacao seeds. The earliest cacao beverages consumed at Puerto Escondido were likely produced by fermenting the sweet pulp surrounding the seeds.

In this study, I develop a theory of landscape archaeology that incorporates the concept of \"animism\" as a cognitive approach. Current trends in anthropology are placing greater emphasis on indigenous perspectives, and in recent decades animism has seen a resurgence in anthropological theory. As a means of relating in (not to) one's world, animism is a mode of thought that has direct bearing on landscape archaeology. Yet, Americanist archaeologists have been slow to incorporate this concept as a component of landscape theory. I consider animism and Nurit Bird-David's (1999) theory of \"relatedness\" and how such perspectives might be expressed archaeologically in Mesoamerica. I examine the distribution of marine shells and cave formations that appear incorporated as architectural elements on ancient Maya circular shrine architecture. More than just \"symbols\" of sacred geography, I suggest these materials represent living entities that animate shrines through their ongoing relationships with human and other-than-human agents in the world. En este estudio presento una teoría de la arqueología del paisaje que incorpora el animismo como enfoque cognitivo. Éste ha resurgido en la teoría antropológica debido al mayor énfasis en las perspectivas indígenas. A pesar de su relación directa con la arqueología del paisaje, los arqueólogos americanistas han tardado en incorporar este concepto dentro de la teoría del paisaje. Examino el animismo y la teoría de Nurit Bird-David (1999) de la \"relación,\" y sus expresiones arqueológicas en Mesoamérica. Analizo la distribución de conchas marinas y cuevas incorporadas como elementos arquitectónicos de los templos circulares Mayas. Más que \"símbolos\" de la geografía sagrada, propongo estos elementos como seres que dan vida a los santuarios a través de su continua relación con agentes humanos y no-humanos.

This symposium takes as its point of departure two books by Massimo Livi Bacci, Conquest and El Dorado in the Marshes, published in English in 2008 and 2010. Livi Bacci assesses widely varying estimates of the demographic dimensions of the collapse of the native populations following their contact with Europeans and elucidates the proximate causes of that catastrophe. Drawing on models that combine production potential with demography, environment, and technology, Shripad Tuljapurkar discusses analogous historical experiences of the populations of Polynesia and the social transformation they entailed. David S. Reher argues that explanations of the estimated demographic dynamics need to take into account the negative fertility responses of the indigenous population to the disruption of their traditional way of life. Focusing on the biological aspects of immunity to diseases such as smallpox, Andrew Noymer demonstrates that infectious diseases alone could not account for the Indios' population collapse. The contributions to this symposium are based on presentations at a session at the 2010 Annual Meeting of the Population Association of America, held in Dallas, Texas, that examined the demographic consequences of the Spanish Conquest of the Caribbean region and of South America in light of the two books.