Some of the students’ theses became Mesoamerican classics: Pedro Carrasco (1950) on the Otomi, Arturo Monzón (1949) on the Aztec calpulli (units of social organization), Anne Chapman (1957) on Mesoamerican ports of trade, and Acosta Saignes (1945) on Aztec merchants. Central concepts for the influential Mesoamerican studies of Angel Palerm, Eric Wolf, and William Sanders also originated when they were students at the National School of Anthropology.

During the 1950s, an increasing number of projects studied the relationships between pre-Hispanic peoples and their geographical setting and natural environment. Many of these investigations were based on settlement pattern analyses that were introduced in Mesoamerican archaeology by Gordon Willey in his 1953 Belize Valley project. Gordon Childe, julian steward, and Karl Wittfogel were the sources of many of the theoretical frameworks of archaeological investigations during this period, and in varying degrees, these theorists had materialist perspectives influenced by Marxism.

Childe had a profound effect on archaeology throughout the world, and in Mexico, his thinking on social evolution and his concepts of “Neolithic revolution” and “urban revolution” were commonly used. Steward’s theories concerning “multilineal evolution” and his studies of culture change in relation to human adaptations to the natural environment formed an essential theoretical basis for settlement pattern studies, which have been a central part of Mexican archaeology for several decades.

Childe’s and Steward’s ideas were often combined with the more controversial theories of Wittfogel about “hydraulic societies” and the roles of irrigation in the development of civilization. In the 1950s, key works included studies by Palerm (1957) concerning ecological potential and cultural development, Sanders’s (1956, 1957) analyses of irrigation systems and settlement patterns in the central highlands, interdisciplinary programs by Lorenzo and others (Lorenzo, Mooser, and White 1956) concerning the paleoenvironments of the basin of Mexico, and Rene Millon’s early investigations of the roles of irrigation at Teotihuacán.

In the 1950s, there were also some major findings in several fields of Maya archaeology. Ruz continued his extensive excavation and restoration program at Palenque, and at Dzibilchaltun in northern Yucatán, E.W. Andrews IV started a multifaceted project that eventually produced important publications. Subsequent investigations continued for three decades. The Carnegie Institution’s last project, centered at Mayapan, involved some essentially new field methodologies for Maya studies, including the excavation of numerous habitational structures and the production of a detailed map of the entire settlement (Pollock, Roys, Proskouriakoff, and Smith 1962). During the same period, the Mormon Church began a long-term program in Chiapas directed by the New World Archaeological Foundation (Lowe 1959), and it produced dozens of important site reports.

Some crucial contributions were also made in Maya epigraphy. The Russian Yuri Knorosov published preliminary phonetic translations of hieroglyphic texts and thus supplied the methodology for the revolution in Maya decipherments that was to take place during the 1970s and 1980s. Unfortunately, Knorosov’s work was vigorously attacked by Thompson, and few Mayanists during the 1950s, with the exception of David Kelley, attempted phonetic translations of hieroglyphs. Despite the mistaken refutations of phoneticism, Thompson produced fundamental analyses in his Maya Hieroglyphic Writing: An Introduction (1950) and A Catalogue of Maya Hieroglyphs (1962).

In 1958, H. Berlin identified what he called “emblem glyphs” on monuments that appeared to be the names of cities or symbols of royal dynasties. In 1959, Proskouriakoff published the first of several key studies proposing that the principal subjects of texts on Maya monuments concerned historical events, especially details of the lives of the kings and nobles who ruled specific centers or regions. The work of Proskouriakoff and Berlin soon caused a reorientation of Maya epigraphic studies because the two men rejected the interpretations of the previous generation of Mayanists headed by Morley and Thompson, who thought the inscriptions were principally religious and calendric in nature