Landscape and Environment: Insights from the Prehispanic Central Andes

Attention to human–environment relationships in the central Andes has a long history. Although the area is not a neat microcosm of the globe, wholly representative of worldwide trends in the archaeology of human–environment interactions, it has been the site of both seminal investigations in archaeology and a substantial body of recent work that investigates themes of broad archaeological relevance. Specifically, central Andean environments have been variously conceived as structuring, modified, and sacred. These approaches to some extent reflect broad trends in archaeology, while also suggesting directions in which the archaeology of human–environment interactions is moving and highlighting archaeology’s relevance to discussions of contemporary human–environment interactions. This article characterizes concepts that are key for describing central Andean environments and considers the ways in which the particular ecology of the central Andes has informed archaeological research in the region. The example of the central Andes highlights the importance of understanding environments as dynamic, considering both geomorphic and anthropogenic contributors to that dynamism, and examining both ecological (“environment”) and ideological (“landscape”) implications of archaeological landscapes.     

Prehispanic Social and Cultural Changes at Tibes,Puerto Rico

Abstract

we present here the initial results of the Proyecto Arqueológico del Centro Ceremonial de Tibes. The aim of the project is to study changes in the social, political, and economic systems at Tibes, the earliest civic and ceremonial center in the Caribbean. Tibes was founded as a village around A.D. 1, and sometime between A.D. 600 and A.D. 900 experienced major changes that eventually resulted in the development of a center with multiple ball courts and plazas. The ceramic, faunal, and radiometric evidence suggest that multiple factors were operating at different times during the transformation process. While some of these factors are found in other regions of Puerto Rico, others are evidently unique to Tibes. Traditional regional definitions of cultural periods and areas were not adequate units of analysis to study many of the local and short-term social and political processes that occurred.     

Studies of Gender in the Prehispanic Americas

In the past ten years archaeologists have produced a vast literature on the study of gender in the prehispanic New World. This review defines key concepts, identifies three major themes within this tradition—gender in native cosmologies, intersections of gender and the body, and studies of work and specialization—and explores the significant contributions of engendered archaeology to the broader field. Final suggestions for linkages with queer studies and indigenous feminism point the way to where this field might develop productive new avenues of research.     

Recent Trends in Theorizing Prehispanic Mesoamerican Economies

Theoretical frames for modeling prehispanic Mesoamerican economies have been informed mostly by political economy or agency approaches. Political economy models examine the ways in which power is constructed and exercised through the manipulation of material transfers, mainly production and distribution. Research along these lines emphasizes regional redistribution, wealth and staple finance, debt and reciprocity, and regional integration through core/periphery relations. Agency models, on the other hand, explore the social aspects of manufacture, circulation, and consumption to infer the processes by which power is negotiated and contested. Work using this framework focuses on the manner by which meaning and value are assigned to, and become fixed in, social valuables, as well as the moral and emotional dimensions of allocation and consumption. Political economy and agency approaches are converging in Mesoamerican research to forge a new, hybrid theoretical construct, “ritual economy,” which strikes a balance between formalist and substantivist views by considering the ways that belief systems articulate with economic systems in the management of meanings and the shaping of interpretations.     

Urban Open Space and Governance in Ancient Mesoamerica

Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory - Analyzing the nature of governance of early states and cities is a major challenge for archaeology today. Blanton and Fargher’s (Blanton and...     

The practice of archaeology in southern Mesoamerica

Joyce, Rosemary A. Cerro Palenque: Power and Identity on the Maya Periphery. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1991. x + 188 pp. including references and indices. $32.50 cloth.

Hammond, Norman, ed. Cuello: An Early Maya Community in Belize. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991. xxi + 260 pp. including references and index. $90.00 cloth.     

Advances in the Household Archaeology of Highland Mesoamerica

Recent investigations and reconsideration of households in the Mesoamerican highlands illustrate the central role of domestic spheres of interaction to the broader cultural dynamics of the region over four millennia. Methodological advances in the analysis of past houses permit more sophisticated social reconstructions of the spaces and activities that constituted domestic life for the diverse peoples of the region. Current studies highlight the economic interdependence and diversification of households, their strategic flexibility in affiliation, the integrative ritual practices undertaken within domestic spaces, the material correlates of prestige competition between households, and the manner in which households articulated with a larger social universe.     

后现代主义园林设计语言的符号学研究

根据皮尔斯符号三分法和园林分类法,后现代主义园林的设计语言具有丰富的历史性、地域文化、大众文化图象符号和惯用性、表现性、叙事性、色彩象征符号。后现代主义园林不但强调历史文化、地域文化、大众文化的表达,还重视历史文脉的保护恢复。后现代主义园林的设计语言大部分都是从自己的本土文化中吸取的,形成了可理解性,可交流性、可对话性以及意义的可生成性的人性园林,努力恢复被现代主义园林割断的人文尺度。     

How the Olmec used bitumen in ancient Mesoamerica

Bitumen, found in abundance in Mesoamerica’s southern Gulf Coast region in natural seeps and in many archeological contexts, is an important economic resource and exchange item that has received little consideration in Mesoamerica. Analyses of archeological, ethnoarcheological, and experimental data provide insights on the organization of bitumen processing activities, and the end product (archeological bitumen), which the Olmec (1200–400 BC) used in the production of many items. Archeological data are derived from investigations at El Remolino and Paso los Ortices— two Early Formative period levee sites in the San Lorenzo Olmec region. Our findings suggest that among the Olmec, bitumen processing was organized as a specialized activity, involving multiple production stages, but not necessarily elite involvement or control.     

Time and water: Two major variables in ancient Mesoamerica

Fredrick Johnson, ed. Chronology and Irrigation. Volume Four of The Prehistory of the Tehuacan Valley. Richard S, MacNeish, series editor. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1972. xi + 290 pp. Illustrations, maps, figures, bibliography and index. $15.00.     

Historical Archaeology of Indigenous Culture Change in Mesoamerica

This essay outlines recent archaeological research on post-Columbian (c. A.D. 1500–1925) indigenous sites in Mexico and Central America. Historical archaeology is a growing field in Mesoamerica, and over the last 20 years investigations of native culture change have increased, especially in rural areas. Contemporary research contributes new insights on indigenous responses to Spanish colonization over a long period. This work also is reassessing chronologies and examining the diversity of indigenous behavior from late preconquest to historic times. Indigenous adaptations to culture contact and social change are characterized by three general stages: conquest, colonization, and independence. Although I do draw on other regions, the focus of the article is the Maya area and Central America, where more investigations have taken place.     

Prehispanic Dugout Canoes in Mexico: A Typology Based on a Multidisciplinary Approach

Navigation implies a deep knowledge of the environment in which it is practised as well as the development of correlated technologies and techniques. In fact, sailing in lakes, rivers, along coasts or in high seas requires specific skills. This is why watercraft reflect the specific expertise of cultures in relation to the available resources and materials. Navigation as a means of movement and boats as modes of transportation is a well-documented topic in Europe, Asia and the Pacific Ocean, whether focusing on antiquity or the present. Nonetheless, in the New World, especially in Mesoamerica where the Aztec, Tarascan and Mayan Empires flourished, indigenous maritime history has been thoroughly under-investigated. This article explores the first prehispanic dugout canoes of the region, based on a multidisciplinary approach for the Mexico and Pátzcuaro Basins, in the Late Postclassic period (AD 1325-1521). For the first time, a typology of these dugout types is proposed, with a discussion of the importance of dugout canoes as a means of transportation in Mesoamerican civilizations, where wheels and draught animals did not exist.     

Recent Research in the Southern Highlands and Pacific Coast of Mesoamerica

Recent research on the southern highlands and Pacific Coast of Mesoamerica has investigated topics of interest to all archaeologists. Although best known for studies on the development of early social complexity, research in the region also has addressed hunter/gatherer subsistence patterns, early sedentism, the origins of food production, the development of the state, migration, the construction of social identity, political economy, and the collapse of complex societies. Research has accelerated in the past ten years, fueled by efforts of scholars from a number of disciplines. Recent paleo-ecological studies have provided much needed data for understanding human social action against the backdrop of the natural environment, while the region also has been the scene for testing numerous innovative theories of social change. Studies of identity and its manifestation in material culture have been especially productive.     

Alternative pathways to power in late Postclassic Highland Mesoamerica

In recent years, scholars have become dissatisfied with neoevolutionists’ view of social evolution as a series of step-like transformations leading to political centralization and have refocused attention away from traditional theory and toward issues of agency, power sharing, and alternative pathways to complexity. To build on this emerging theoretical orientation, we propose that collective action theory provides a useful path to explaining social change. To evaluate this idea, we make use of ethnohistoric and archaeological sources on the Postclassic (AD 1250–1521) of Highland Mesoamerica (Central Highlands of Mexico and the Mixteca Alta region of Oaxaca), to investigate the causes and consequences of key aspects of sociopolitical change. Of the study states, Tlaxcallan, Cholula, Texcoco, and other central Highlands polities relied extensively on internal revenues and, accordingly, implemented power sharing, control of political officials, and infrastructural power. Conversely, states in eastern Puebla and the Mixteca Alta focused on external revenues and, thus, exhibited greater degrees of despotic governance. These results suggest that collective action provides a useful starting point for understanding state-building in Highland Mesoamerica and merits further testing with other Mesoamerican cases as well as societies in other world areas.     

Artifacts that speak for themselves: Sounds underfoot in Mesoamerica

Previously overlooked in archaeological research, natural sounds emitted from the underground affect humans and culture. In this paper, it is suggested that noises generated by subterranean ground movement, water, wind, and wildlife are a reason why residents in Mesoamerica perceive caves, waterholes, limestone sinks, and mountains as sacred. Too, a mental grasp of the sounds, conceptualized as anthropomorphized voices and music, may have been employed as an ideological basis for authority in Maya society. Support is shown using examples of ethnohistory, ethnography, and archaeology. Called for is the systematic collection and study of underground sounds, as artifacts, to define the noises as possible use determinants in ritual venues and settlement sites. Their potential importance as early warning devices for destructive agents in the natural environment suggests that an understanding of the noises and their regard by residents in the region could contribute to theory-building in anthropology, particularly in issues of human-environment relations, and sociocultural development.     

3400 years of agricultural engineering in Mesoamerica: lama-bordos of the Mixteca Alta,Oaxaca, Mexico

The origins of early Mesoamerican agricultural techniques are not well established. Our charcoal-derived radiocarbon chronology dates cross-valley check dams, or lama-bordos, buried by up to 11.5 m of sediment in arroyos near Coixtlahuaca, Oaxaca, Mexico. Now it is clear that people in highland Mexico built lama-bordos at least 3400–3500 years ago, several hundred years earlier than previously dated engineering systems in Mesoamerica. Lama-bordo systems evolved as intensively and extensively managed landscapes coeval with climate shifting to more arid conditions. They provide clear examples of human-produced stratigraphy and artificial landscapes (stair-stepped valleys). More importantly, these lama-bordo systems signal a major cultural tipping point toward sedentary agricultural life and solidify our understanding of the Neolithic transition in Mesoamerica.     

藏医与天文历算

藏医药学与天文历算有着相同的理论基础。例如五行学说的提出,五行学说是藏医历算理论的基础,是藏医与历算的总体性理论,藏族有一句民谚“要想成为顶级的医师,至少要掌握中等的算学”,因此,藏医与历算被认为是西藏传统文化中的一对“孪生姐妹”。     

Volcanic Glass and Iron Nails: Networks of Exchange and Material Entanglements at Late Prehispanic and Early Colonial Achiutla,Oaxaca, Mexico

In this paper, I examine how indigenous residents of the community of Achiutla—located in the Mixtec region of Oaxaca, Mexico—utilized long-distance trade routes between central Mexico and the Pacific coast, spanning the Postclassic (900–1521 CE) and Early Colonial (1522–1650 CE) periods. The maintenance of prehispanic interregional trade connections by native peoples allowed them to both continue traditional industries like those involving obsidian, while also facilitating their adoption of new types of material culture introduced from Europe. Over the long term, however, I suggest that entanglements in these economic networks had unintended consequences, which possibly included the demise of the prehispanic obsidian industry.