John E. Clark

The Chronicles of the New World Archaeological Foundation, 1952-1961 was written to honor 70 years of the New World Archaeology Foundation's (NWAF) existence. Paper 88 presents the inception of the NWAF in 1952 and its operation as a non-profit research foundation before it was incorporated into Brigham Young University (BYU) in 1961; it looks at events--and intents--behind the research published in the NWAF Papers series. The chronicles are primarily based on letters to and from the field. Letters are quoted throughout to allow past principal players to speak in their own voice and let their unique personalities and prejudices shine through. These initial players, in the face of frequent frustrations and diverse distractions, performed and published some useful research in southern Mesoamerica, particularly Chiapas, Mexico, during the foundation's first decade. Most of the research focused on the Formative Era because the overriding objective was to discover the origins of Mesoamerican civilization.

When, in faith, we accept Jesus as our Lord and Saviour, we become a new creation, as St Paul explains in his letters to the fledgling churches he helped to found. As believers, we are no longer in the control and service of Satan and our lives are shaped by our relationship with Jesus, the one who has saved us from sin and death. We become instead, as St Paul tells us, His workmanship and our lives should provide evidence of this to everyone around us. Yet we still face a daily battle while we are here on earth, a struggle between our redeemed nature and our fallen sinful selves. This is a lifelong struggle, in which only by God's strength and the presence of the Holy Spirit within us can we begin to look more like our Creator. His Workmanship aims to explore and deepen our understanding of some of the issues that confront us all in the challenge of becoming God's workmanship in our daily lives. It is designed so that each chapter can be read independently as a stand-alone topic and begins with an exploration of who Jesus really is, His role in creation, and ends by looking at what the bible tells us will happen when He returns. His Workmanship deals in more depth with commonly used terms such as grace, faith and trust, as well as the practical issue of dealing with doubt and temptation. It also includes an examination of the biblical account of the nature and purpose of prayer that goes beyond treating it as a shopping list. His Workmanship will also help you view creation in such a way that it becomes extraordinary evidence in our universe for the work of a creator.

Salvage operation undertaken at Mound 3 in 1965 revealed a complex architectural history of temple constructions from the Late Formative (Guanacaste) to the end of the Protoclassic (Istmo) eras, along with numerous caches, burials, and other artifactual evidence.

Group B was one of the key architectural groups extensively excavated by NWAF in the early 1960s at the iconic Late Preclassic center of Izapa. The excavations, caches, burials, and stone monuments are presented in detail, as well as broader assessments of the site by Gareth W. Lowe and John E. Clark.

A remarkable range of ancient societies and economies flourished in the environmentally diverse coastal regions of Pacific Latin America. This first ever synthesis from a Pacific perspective describes the archaeological investigations recently undertaken in the coastal littoral. Studying the similarities, and the many differences, of these varied prehistoric cultures can help us understand some central issues in archaeology--to what extent were cultural variations caused by different historical traditions, environmental conditions, and interactions with neighboring peoples, and how do civilizations arise? In this volume, specialists explain their latest findings in terms of archaic period adaptations, the development and spread of agriculture, the beginnings of sedentism, the formative periods of civilization, and the origins of socio-political inequality. The essays report on archaeological research in southern Mexico, Guatemala, Panama, Ecuador, and Peru--an are extending from the Marismas region of coastal Mexico to Chile's north coast.