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From a geographic perspective, it is easy to define the Mesoamerican core (Figure 1.1). The Isthmus of Tehuantepec, where Mexico reaches its narrowest point, divides western Mesoamerica, completely contained within Mexico, from eastern Mesoamerica, encompassing eastern Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, and parts of western Honduras and El Salvador. At the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, the Maya-speaking societies of eastern Mesoamerica abutted the territories of diverse non-Maya peoples of western Mesoamerica, often collectively referred to as Mexican: speakers of languages such as Zapotec, Mixtec, Totonac, and Otomi. The territory inhabited by speakers of Mixe-Zoquean languages crosses the Isthmus, extending from the Gulf coast of Mexico to the Pacific Coast of southern Mexico and Guatemala.

East and west of Tehuantepec, a contrast between lowlands and highlands structures Mesoamerican geography. The balance between these two kinds of settings is profoundly different in the Maya and Mexican zones. In western Mesoamerica, the Mexican highlands are extensive, forming a series of upland basins and valleys, extending from the Basin of Mexico to the Valley of Oaxaca, the home territories of distinct Mesoamerican societies created by speakers of the Otomí and Nahuatl languages, and the Mixtec and Zapotec languages (Chapters 4, 5, 8, and 9). The lowlands of western Mesoamerica are narrow strips along the Gulf and Pacific coasts formed by a series of rivers originating in the highlands.

In eastern Mesoamerica, the lowlands are much more extensive. The Yucatan peninsula, a vast expanse of limestone, extends far into the Caribbean, surrounded on west, north, and east by ocean, navigable along an extensive coastline. Rainwater percolates through the porous limestone of the northern Maya lowlands, and surface rivers are found only on the edges of the peninsula. Where the limestone sheet meets the base of the Maya highlands, composed of volcanic and metamorphic rocks, impressive tropical rivers run along the zone of contact. The Usumacinta river system on the west, and the Motagua river on the east, formed important corridors of population and communication, with tributaries reaching up into the highlands. These lowlands saw the development of Classic Maya city-states. The better-watered southern Maya lowlands, centered on the Guatemalan Department of Peten, had environmental conditions distinct from those of the drier northern Maya lowlands and different histories of occupation (Chapters 7 and 11).

It is more difficult to define precise edges for Mesoamerica as a geographic region. Historically, maps of Mesoamerica have demarcated the northern Mesoamerican frontier at the approximate location of an ecological boundary with more arid lands populated by mobile groups relying on gathering and hunting. This boundary marking would imply that northern hunter-gatherers lived outside the bounds of Mesoamerican society. But it is unlikely that these groups had no significant contact with the residents of city-states that were their southern neighbors.

Central Mexican histories of the sixteenth century describe significant contacts between northern groups and the ancestors of the Mexica. The Mexica collectively described the mobile northern groups as Chichimecs. Mexica traditions describe the origin of the founders of Tenochtitlan as a place called Aztlan, also said to be located to the north. Archaeologists working in northern Mexico and the Southwest United States have repeatedly documented evidence of interaction between residents of sites in these areas and places in Mesoamerica. A dramatic example is the substantial evidence of the use of cacao, a Mesoamerican food, in Chaco Canyon in New Mexico (Crown and Hurst 2009).

The difficulty of defining a boundary for Mesoamerican geography is even more acute on its southeastern periphery. Based on a review of relatively sparse archaeological data on distributions of selected settlement features and artifacts, the Ulua and Lempa rivers of Honduras and El Salvador were originally identified as the eastern geographic boundaries of Mesoamerica (Lothrop 1939). Later archaeological research showed that even the most complex settlement features proposed as diagnostic of Mesoamerica, ballcourts, were constructed in regions east of these river valleys (Joyce and Hendon 2000). The immediate neighbors of eastern Mesoamerican peoples were not mobile hunter-gatherers, but farmers, many organized in stratified societies that were important trading partners for Mesoamerican states (Joyce 2013). Objects made in the Maya area have been recovered archaeologically as far south as Costa Rica, and gold ornaments of Costa Rican or Panamanian style have been found in sites in the Maya lowlands.

Rather than try to define a geographically bounded region, we might instead think of Mesoamerica as a network of places linking societies with different forms of governance, different social practices, different histories and values. Where the network of societies involved the most intensive participation in practices, we recognize the continuity of the Mesoamerican tradition. In other places, interactions along the network were less intensive, or more selective, resulting in the adoption of cacao drinking in some social circles in the Southwest United States, and promoting the building of ballcourts for the rubber ball game in eastern Honduras.

Imposing a concept of boundaries may actually impede our recognizing significant ways that lives of Mesoamerican people were entangled with those of people whose histories and practices were different. The same is true within the geographic space thought of as thoroughly Mesoamerican: what people’s lives were like varied, in ways the concept of Mesoamerica may obscure.