Mesoamerican Stingless Beekeeping

Stingless beekeeping is practiced throughout Mexico and Central America, from northwestern Mexico to the Azuero Peninsula in western Panama. Within this area three distinct beekeeping regions emerge. On the Yucatan Peninsula beekeeping is an essential component in the agricultural and cultural heritage, technically sophisticated and frequently practiced, Beyond the Yucatan Peninsula and corresponding roughly with the" limits of ancient Mesoamerican civilization, stingless beekeeping occurs but it is of lesser significance in aboriginal and mestizo agriculture and culture, unsophisticated in practice and only occasionally encountered. In areas to the north and south of ancient Mesoamenca's cultural boundaries, stingless beekeeping is of little agricultural or cultural importance, simple in its application and rarely practiced. This study concludes that stingless beekeeping in the New World originated among the Maya of the Yucatan Peninsula and diffused to other indigenous groups within Mesoamertca, and later in a much diluted form to groups beyond Mesoamerica.     

The Uncertain Origins of Mesoamerican Turkey Domestication

The turkey (Meleagris gallopavo) is the only domesticated vertebrate to originate from North America. Accurate reconstructions of the timing, location, and process of its domestication are thus critical for understanding the domestication process in the ancient Americas. A substantial amount of recent research has been devoted to understanding turkey domestication in the American Southwest, but comparatively little research has been conducted on the subject in Mesoamerica, despite the fact that all modern domestic turkeys descend from birds originally domesticated in Mexico during pre-colonial times. To address this disparity, we have conducted a review of the available literature on early turkeys in the archaeological record of Mesoamerica. We evaluate the evidence in terms of its accuracy and use this evaluation as a stepping off point for suggesting potential avenues of future research. Although the lack of available data from Mesoamerica currently precludes detailed cross-cultural comparisons, we briefly compare the origins and intensification of turkey rearing in Mesoamerica with the American Southwest to generate more dialogue among researchers independently studying the topic in these two distinct but interconnected cultural regions.     

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.     

Mesoamerican Obsidian Blades: an Experimental Approach to Function

Abstract

The experimental replication and utilization of a sample of 165 obsidian blades is discussed in terms of research design. methodology, and results. Use-wear observed on the blades provides the basis for 1) the identification of wear-pattern “signatures” corresponding to particular modes of use and contact materials, 2) the evaluation of general propositions concerning edge damage on utilized tools, and 3) the determination of the probable function of a sample of prismatic obsidian blades recovered from Patarata 52, a Classic Period residential site located in an estuarine zone of coastal Veracruz, Mexico.

Two levels of functional analysis are discussed: the low-intensity or in-the field study, and the high-intensity analysis, which involves tool replication and use. high-power microscopy , and statistical manipulation with computers. Both approaches are advocated: the choice of one method over the other must be made on the basis of availability of time. money, special skills, and equipment.     

Ethnicity,world view,and experience in two Mesoamerican communities

Gregory G. Reck. In the Shadow of Tlaloc: Life in a Mexican Village. New York: Penguin Books, 1978. 224 pp. Photographs. $3.95.

Kay B. Warren. The Symbolism of Subordination: Indian Identity in a Guatemalan Town. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1978. xii + 209 pp. Photographs, references and bibliography. $11.95.     

从清政府的满语保护政策及效果看少数民族语言保护问题

清代是以满洲贵族为主建立起来的一个王朝,作为一个少数民族政权,为了防止在广大的汉族地区丧失民族特性,他们对其民族语言——满语,采取了语言保护政策:民族交往限制、强化满语国语地位(诸如:官员选拔、司法、公文、教育中的强制使用),但都没有改变满语消亡的历史命运。从这个历史事件中,笔者试图通过对民族语言工具性文化地位的考察,来重新考量国际上当前流行的民族语言保护问题,希望对当今的文化政策有所借鉴。     

The South Sulawesi group and neighbouring languages

The languages of the genetically based South Sulawesi (SSul.) group share many specific substantial and structural features with other languages of Southern and Central Sulawesi. Among the non‐SSul. languages of the area, it is the so‐called Highland Toraja languages that bear the strongest resemblance to the SSul. group. Within the last‐named group, the northern languages show more numerous Toraja (esp. Highland Toraja) characteristics than the southern ones. This pattern of isoglosses must be explained as due to areal contacts. In all likelihoo'd, during the greatest part of the history of the SSul. group its languages have been subject to deep influence of old local languages (which were probably similar to present‐day Highland Toraja idioms).     

Revisions of the Vanquished: Some Recent Studies in New Mexican and Mesoamerican Colonial History

Vingt études sur le Mexique et le Guatemala. Réunies à la mémoire de Nicole Percheron. Edited by ALAN BRETON, JEAN‐PIERRE BERTHE and SYLVIE LECOIN. Toulouse: Presses Universitaires du Mirail, 1991. Pp. 381.

Literacy, Education, and Society in New Mexico 1693–1821. By BERNARDO P. GALLEGOS. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1992. Pp. viii, 119.

Nahuas and Spaniards: Postconquest Central Mexican History and Philology. By JAMES LOCKHART. Stanford: Stanford Universty Press, 1991. Pp. xiii, 304.

The Nahuas After the Conquest: A Social and Cultural History of the Indians of Central Mexico, Sixteenth through Eighteenth Centuries. By JAMES LOCKHART. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1992. Pp. xv, 650.

Disease and Death in Early Colonial Mexico: Simulating Amerindian Depopulation. By THOMAS M. WHITMORE. Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1992. Pp. xvi, 261.     

Museum salvage: A case study of Mesoamerican artifacts in museum collections and on the antiquities market

Abstract

Museum salvage refers to critical studies of museum collections with little or no provenience information that seek to glean useful archaeological information from these artifacts and examine the nature of their origins and possible connections to the illicit antiquities trade and the art market. Our case study focuses on artifacts from Mesoamerica and objects from the ancient capital of Teotihuacan in particular. We take a multi-scalar approach, including a quantitative analysis of Sotheby’s auction records for Mesoamerican items from 1966 to 2010, a survey of Teotihuacan attributed items in U.S. museums, and a more detailed examination of Teotihuacan-style artifacts in the Denver Museum of Nature & Science collections. The study tracks and attempts to explain diachronic patterns in the Mesoamerican antiquities trade, connections to museum collecting practices, and looting behavior. The study illustrates the potential benefits of museum salvage, while also revealing the clear limitations of research on poorly documented archaeological material.     

Aztec period houses and terraces at Calixtlahuaca: The changing morphology of a Mesoamerican hilltop urban center

Abstract

Calixtlahuaca, a Middle–Late Postclassic site in the Toluca Valley of central Mexico, was occupied ca. a.d. 1100–1530. Our excavations reveal some of the processes involved in the creation, functions, and decay of a large hilltop urban center. At its height, the majority of the site’s surface (264 ha) was covered with residential-agricultural terraces supported by a complex water management system. House construction techniques included the use of adobe brick, wattle-and-daub, and stone pavements. Our fieldwork contributes to a growing body of research on hilltop political capitals in Mesoamerica. Using a refined chronology, we illuminate the processes by which people constructed the residential zones of this ancient hilltop city.     

Controlling for Doubt and Uncertainty Through Multiple Lines of Evidence: A New Look at the Mesoamerican Nahua Migrations

Nahuatl represents a relatively recent extension of the Uto-Aztecan language family into Mesoamerica. Ethnohistorians have linked Nahuatl's arrival to the historically attested migrations of nomadic people into central Mexico in the last centuries before the Spanish Conquest. Archaeologists have tended to treat migration as an explanation for a change in material culture rather than a social question to be examined theoretically. We approach this migration through the comparison of multiple data sets and conclude that what has previously been treated as a historical event is instead part of a longer term process tying together Mesoamerica's northern periphery with its highland core. While we find that certain themes from migration theory are reflected in this preindustrial migration as well, other variables are unique and bode well for archaeology's ability to address and contribute to theoretical issues relating to migration.