Estimating the Number of Combatants during the Mixtón War in the Peñol de Nochistlán

Abstract

The objective of this article is to determine the number of combatants in the Mixtón War (1541–42), one of the most important military confrontations of the early years of the vice-royalty in Western Mexico, by analysing the Peñol de Nochistlán. To this end, information provided by historians has been compared with the population estimates established from the density of settlements known from archaeological evidence in order to define the area occupied by the armies involved in the conflict. This exercise resulted in a shifting array of spaces that could have been used by the combatants during confrontations. However, it will enable more intense archaeological prospecting in the area around the site of El Tuiche — the place identified as the Peñol of Nochistlán — revealing new evidence of the events that occurred on this battlefield.     

Haciendas and economic change in Yucatán: Entrepreneurial strategies in the Parroquia de Yaxcabá, 1775–1850

Using archaeological and historical data from eighteenth- and nineteenth-century haciendas in theParroquia de Yaxcabá, Yucatán, this paper demonstrates how documentary records can be employed to create diachronic archaeological explanations. Both the organization of production on the hacienda and the entrepreneurial strategies pursued by the estate owners. contribute to the form of the hacienda. The following analysis suggests quantitative and qualitative explanations for variation in hacienda size and architectural elaboration. The archaeological interpretations offer a reconsideration of processes of economic change in central Yucatán prior to the Caste War of 1847.     

The evolution of the Chinese Communist Party's policy on the bourgeoisie (1949–1952)

From its very beginning, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) had a shifting policy towards the bourgeoisie. Until the early 1940s, it maintained a relatively stable policy which successfully isolated the monied classes in China and helped it overthrow the rule of the KMT. But with the establishment of the new regime, the CCP Central Committee came under conflicting pressures: on the one hand it continued its former policy out of political expediency; on the other hand, based on traditional socialist political theory and Soviet experience, it kept a close watch on the bourgeoisie and even proposed targeting them as the chief enemy of next revolution. After the establishment of the PRC, as a result of the failing economy and the new government's lack of economic support and political experience, the CCP firmed up its policies on the bourgeoisie. However, with the bourgeoisie and capitalism still prominent elements in Chinese society, the communists became uncertain about which direction to take. As the CCP Central Committee had anticipated, officials of both the party and the government often gave way to corruption after taking over major cities. The Central Committee regarded this particular combination of money and power as a “violent attack” against the new communist regime by the bourgeoisie as a whole. In order to tighten its grip on national power, the Central Committee launched two anti‐corruption movements known as the Three‐Antis and the Five‐Antis. These movements were in fact aimed at the bourgeoisie as a whole, and succeeded in destroying the basis for capitalist business in the New China. Encouraged by this outcome, the CCP launched a policy of socialist transformation aimed at depriving Chinese capitalists of their means of production. Thus the CCP gradually and inevitably moved away from its original policy of cooperation with the national bourgeoisie.     

John Ashton (1952–2008)

Il Kalevala, O La Poesia tradizionale dei Finni, studio storico - critico sulle origini belle grandi epopee nazionali. DEL DOMENICO COMPARETTI. Firenze, 1891.

DER KALEVALA, ODER DIE TRADITIONELLE POESIE DER FlNNEN, ETC. Von DOMENICO COMPARETTI. (The authorised German edition.) Halle, 1892. By John Abercromby.

Vestiges de Paganisme dans la Région situé entre les cours supérieurs de l'oka et du Don. Par N. Troitzky. Congrès international d' Archiologie préhistorique et d' Anthropologie. Moscou, Août 1892, t. i. By A. C. Haddon.     

Ceramic Microtypology and the Territorial Expansion of the Early Monte Albán State in Oaxaca,Mexico

Abstract

The Late and Terminal Formative (ca. 300 B.C. to A.D. 200) was the crucial period during which the early Monte Albán state came into being and began to extend its political influence over a wide area in what is now the Mexican state of Oaxaca. One of the most distinctive and frequent ceramic types of this period is the G.12, which is a grayware (gris) bowl with characteristic incising on the interior rim and base. Originally defined by Alfonso Caso, Ignacio Bernal, and Jorge Acosta based on their excavations at Monte Albán, the G.12 bowl has also been found at many other Oaxacan sites. The incised motifs on the interior bases of G.12 bowls show substantial variability, but researchers have been uncertain whether any portion of this variability shows chronological patterning. We present a new microtypology of G.12 bowls based on our recent excavations at three sites near SanMartín Tilcajete, some 27 km south of Monte Albán. Our analysis yields a finer-grained chronology that helps elucidate the step-by-step territorial expansion of the emergent Monte Albán state.     

The religious self-alteration of Shem Irofa'alu during the anti-colonial Maasina Rule in Solomon Islands (1944–1953)

This essay explores the post-World War Two anti-colonial Maasina Rule in north Malaita, Solomon Islands, to show how a church leader Shem Irofa'alu decided to establish a religious movement independent of the state and the traditional evangelical church. Irofa'alu's movement indexes an important moment of culture change towards increasing enthusiasm for the often-overlooked Christianity-based forms of sovereignty in the region. It highlights that Maasina Rule was not only a powerful rupture in social processes, but also sharpened the growing division between state and church. Irofa'alu's role in Maasina Rule shows that his influence peaked between 1948 and 1950 and then went into rapid decline. This change in fortune coincided with a critical turning point in the colonial government's attempts to end the movement through appeasement. No longer the head of the evangelical church in Malu'u sub-district and frustrated about the mother church's governance, Irofa'alu retreated to his home area and set about establishing a new church, Boboa (‘Foundation’), his first attempt at organizing a self-governing assembly before introducing Jehovah's Witnesses in north Malaita. In later years, Irofa'alu became a prophet-exemplar for new generations of religious leaders trying to establish Malaitan sovereignties based on their own power to move the truth of prophecies away from foreign state and church organizations.     

Donald Bán and the Bócan

Although ATU 510A, ‘Cinderella’, is known to have ancient origins, it was widely thought that the ash-name did not become a feature of the tale type until Giambattista Basile’s ‘La Gatta cenerentola’ (The Ashy Cat) in the seventeenth century. However, it is preceded in this regard by a little-known fourteenth-century Icelandic romance, Vilmundar saga viðutan (The Saga of Vilmundr the Outsider). Using this saga as a starting point, this article traces the literary transmission of ATU 510A through the extant corpus of Old Norse literature, with particular reference to the development of three key aspects of ‘Cinderella’: the persecuted heroine; the lost-and-found shoe; and the cinder-name.     

Working the Yucatán in the neoliberal landscape: household management,consumption and the lives of intellectual elite women

This article examines the lives of academic women in Mérida, the state capital of the Yucatán in southern Mexico. In particular, I consider the relationship between work – including household management – and consumer practices in light of Mérida's changing socioeconomic climate. I address how women's lives have been impacted by the neoliberal restructuring of Mexico's political economy and what these changes mean to their experience of university life, household management styles and consumption practices. I point out how labor and consumption are deeply interrelated cultural practices, which have acquired new meanings in the neoliberal landscape. Accordingly, consumption practices must be understood in connection with women's social and professional identities.