ABSTRACT
The archaeologists of the early part of the 20th century had to contend with a frustrating dearth of solid archaeological data regarding the emergence of Classic Maya civilization in the Maya Lowlands. Until the Carnegie Institution’s excavations at Uaxactun in the 1930s there was little or no actual archaeological evidence for anything that preceded the Classic period-or the Old Empire, as it was then called. One of the most authoritative views on the antecedents to the Old Empire was by Herbert Spinden (1928). This was largely based on the scanty Paleoindian evidence pointing to the Highland regions of Mexico and Guatemala as having the longest history and accordingly being the places where complexity might be expected to have emerged first. The few Paleoindian remains in Highland Guatemala dating to 11,000 years ago were believed to be of a culture of hunters ancestral to the first farmers. The latter were identified with a style of “Archaic” figurines found throughout the Highlands. Only much later in this long Archaic period would the Highland farmers colonize the Lowlands. The similarities in style of the Archaic figurines in both regions were taken to indicate the ethnic identity of Highland and Lowland Maya populations, thus lending support to a migration theory.
