ABSTRACT
The Pacific slope of southeastern Mesoamerica, which extends from Chiapas, Mexico through Guatemala and into El Salvador, was filled during the Late Preclassic period with great cities linked by flourishing trade, elite ideologies, and a vibrant material culture that included monumental architecture and innovative art traditions. This chapter explores the shared ideological and material culture systems that linked the cities of this region, and considers what the Pacific slope in particular contribute to ongoing discussions of chronology, migration, political economy, and ideology, processes of state formation and urbanism, the advent of early writing, the construction of social identity, and the collapse of complex societies in the greater Maya region.
