Jeremy A. Sabloff

Ancient Maya commercial systems: A research design for the island of Cozumel, Mexico

Abstract In 1972 the authors inaugurated the Cozumel Archaeological Project to study the material structure of a port‐of‐trade in order to better understand the nature of its behaviour as a total system. This paper presents a model which relates the internal structure of ports‐of‐trade to the centralization of resource control among the site‐level components which use its facilities. This dynamic model provides a framework upon which to view the process of culture change on the island of Cozumel, Quintana Roo, Mexico, and to organize the collection and presentation of data from the 1972 and 1973 field seasons.

Recent Developments in Archaeology

Jeremy A. Sabloff, Ph.D., Cambridge, Massachusetts, is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Harvard University and Assistant Curator of Middle American Archaeology at the Peabody Museum. He has participated in excavations in Guatemala, North America and England and is presently Codirector of an archaeological project which is investigating a Precolumbian trading center at Cozumel, Mexico. He is coauthor, with Gordon R. Willey, of A History of American Archaeology and a frequent contributor of articles and reviews to academic journals. Thomas W. Beale and Anthony M. Kurland, Jr., Cambridge, Massachusetts, are Ph.D. candidates in Anthropology at Harvard University. HE explosion of published archaeological knowledge-upon which the authors of the past two archaeological reviews for this journal have commented-has continued unabated.’ To