JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact

This paper presents 45 radiocarbon dates demonstrating International Bell Beaker cultural contact and interaction with the Island of Mallorca, c. 2500 cal BC to 1300 cal BC. The radiocarbon documentation is accompanied by supporting artefactual and architectural evidence that demonstrates long-range seaborne exchange and a high degree of social complexity outside the Iberian Peninsula. The evidence has been collected over a thirty-four year period from a number of sites which include cave, rock shelter, open-air settlement and ritual contexts. These demonstrate social, religious and economic activities which show an unusually rich variation and complexity, giving indications of social differentiation and local technological skills, such as water-and animalmanagement, architectural construction, as well as lithic, ceramic, metallurgical and other production, over some twelve hundred years.ß

Between 100 BCE and 200 CE, the city of Teotihuacan grew rapidly, most of the Basin of Mexico population was relocated in the city, immense civicreligious structures were built, and symbolic and material evidence shows the early importance of war. Rulers were probably able and powerful. Subsequently the city did not grow, and government may have become more collective, with significant constraints on rulers' powers. A state religion centered on war and fertility deities presumably served elite interests, but civic consciousness may also have been encouraged. A female goddess was important but probably not as pervasive as has been suggested. Political control probably did not extend beyond central Mexico, except perhaps for some outposts, and the scale and significance of commerce are unclear. Teotihuacan's prestige, however, spread widely in Mesoamerica, manifested especially in symbols of sacred war, used for their own ends by local elites.

No abstract

George Brainerd directed excavations at Cerro Portezuelo in the mid-1950s to understand the Classic to Postclassic transition and the questions he asked are still salient. We have undertaken a reanalysis of the artifacts, survey, and excavation data from Brainerd's project to better understand the nature of relations between the Early Classic period city of Teotihuacan, its immediate hinterlands, and the change from the Teotihuacan state system to Postclassic period city-state organization. Because of Cerro Portezuelo's long occupation that began in the Late/Terminal Formative period and continued beyond the Spanish Conquest, it is a strategic site to investigate the dynamics of state formation and episodes of centralization and fragmentation over this long span. Here we review the history of research concerning Cerro Portezuelo, discuss the current research project reported in the articles that comprise this Special Section, and highlight some of the major findings.