I argue that diffusion of Tzakol ceramics was enabled as an effort to overcome social boundaries established between the second half of the second and the early part of the fourth centuries AD. Using the case of Early Classic (AD 200-500/550) ceramics of Naachtún site, I propose that the dispersion of the Tzakol ceramics has to do with an effort to establish systems of interaction of great extent, partly in reaction to social barriers set in earlier times. By participating in this particular network of interaction, the denizens of Naachtún had access to the flow of a considerable amount of resources that enabled the growth of this center.

This article addresses the roles of fantastic primeval beings in foundational aboriginal narratives collected in writing by Spanish friars during campaigns of conversion in the Eastern Andes of Colombia during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries CE. This article argues that fantastic creatures are not mere fiction or propaganda. On the contrary, these characters constitute key cultural referents that play essential roles in shaping and bringing into existence society and cosmos in indigenous cosmologies during the colonial period. Foremost, these characters are rendered as necessary to deliver the colonial world into existence.

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