Reviews

Transatlantic Encounters: Europeans and Andeans in the Sixteenth Century. Edited by ROLENA ADORNO and KENNETH J. ANDRIEN. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991. Pp. viii, 295.

Good Faith and Truthful Ignorance: A Case of Transatlantic Bigamy. By ALEXANDRA PARMA COOK and NOBLE DAVID COOK. Durham: Duke University Press, 1991. Pp. xvi, 206.

Arqueología de Omagua y Dorado. Por ALEIDA ANSELMA RODRÍGUEZ. Rende, Italy: Mediterranean Press, 1990. Pp. 221.

History of a Voyage to the Land of Brazil, otherwise Called America. By JEAN DE LÉRY, Translated by JANET WHATLEY. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990. Pp. lxii, 276.

Religion in the Andes: Vision and Imagination in Early Colonial Peru. By SABINE MacCORMACK. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991. Pp. 488.

Native Society and Disease in Colonial Ecuador. By SUZANNE AUSTIN ALCHON. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991. Pp. viii, 147.

Mitos y utopías del descubrimiento. By JUAN GIL. Madrid: Alianza Editorial, 1989. Vol. 1, Colón y su tiempo. Pp. 302. Vol. 2, El Pacífico. Pp. 414. Vol. 3, El Dorado. Pp. 432.

The Noble Savage: Allegory of Freedom. By STELIO CRO. Waterloo, Ontario: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 1990. Pp. xx, 182.

The First America: The Spanish Monarchy, Creole Patriots and the Liberal State, 1492–1867. By D.A. BRADING. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991. Pp. viii, 761.

The Identity of Hispanoamérica: An Interpretation of Colonial Literature. By JOSÉ PROMIS. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1991. Pp. 137.

Mexico's Merchant Elite, 1590–1660: Silver, State and Society. By LOUISA SCHELL HOBERMAN. Durham: Duke University Press, 1991. Pp. xiv, 352.

Society, Economy and Defence in Seventeenth‐Century Peru: The Administration of the Count of Alba de Liste (1655–61). By PETER T. BRADLEY. Liverpool: University of Liverpool, Institute of Latin American Studies, 1992. Pp. 170.

A sátira e o intelectual criollo na Colônia: Gregório de Matos e Juan del Valle y Caviedes. By LÚCIA HELENA COSTIGAN. Lima/Pittsburgh: Latinoamericana Editores, 1991. Pp. 171.

La segunda Celestina. Una comedia perdida de Sor Juana. By SOR JUANA INES DE LA CRUZ/ AGUSTIN DE SALAZAR Y TORRES. Edition, prologue and notes by GUILLERMO SCHMIDHUBER. México: Editorial Vuelta, 1990. Pp. 225.

Feminist Perspectives on Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz. Edited by STEPHANIE MERRIM. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1991. Pp. 189.

Untold Sisters: Hispanic Nuns in Their Own Works. Edited by ELECTA ARENAL and STACEY SCHLAU. Translations by Amanda Powell. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1989. Pp. 450.

Disappearance of the Dowry: Women, Families, and Social Change in São Paulo, Brazil, 1600–1900. By MURIEL NAZZARI. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1991. Pp. xiii, 245.

The Royal Treasuries of the Spanish Empire in America. Vol. 4. Eighteenth‐Century Ecuador. By ALVARO JARA and JOHN JAY TEPASKE. Durham: Duke University Press, 1990. Pp. xxii, 170.     

Honour, community and hierarchy in the feasts of the archery and crossbow guilds of Bruges, 1445-81

Archery and crossbow guilds first appeared in the fourteenth century in response to the needs of town defence and princely calls for troops. By the fifteenth century these guilds existed across northern Europe. Despite this they have not received the attention they deserve, and have even been dismissed as little more than militias. An analysis of the uniquely detailed account books of the two Bruges guilds, the archers of St Sebastian and the crossbowmen of St George, reveals much about their social activities, and especially their annual meals. Feasts were important to the guilds in three main ways. Firstly, they demonstrated the guild's status and wealth. Secondly, meals helped to strengthen the bonds of the community. The guild's community could include not just members resident in Bruges, but also shooters from other towns and even leading noblemen. Thirdly, and in contrast to this, communal meals were an occasion to exhibit the hierarchy present within these guilds. Hierarchy is shown through the range of foods purchased, and through the seating plans preserved in the St Sebastian's guild accounts.     

It’s Getting Better All the Time: Comparative Perspectives from Oceania and West Africa on Genetic Analysis and Archaeology

Technological advances are making genetic data collection and analysis feasible on a scale unimaginable only a few years ago. Early genetic research using mitochondrial DNA and the Y chromosome provided important insights for macroscale modeling of regional and continent-wide population movements, but the capacity to study the entire genome now opens an era of finer-grained, mesoscale studies of regional and local population histories that are more compatible with the scale of archaeological analysis. The utility of integrating both types of data is illustrated by a case study from Oceania, where genetic studies were used to evaluate two models for the geographic origins of the populations that colonized Polynesia beginning ca. 3000 bp, bringing with them the distinctive Lapita cultural assemblage. A second case study considers the application of genetic studies to an understanding of Fulbe history, especially that of the pastoral Fulbe. Both archaeological and genetic data are underdeveloped for the key Fulbe homeland regions of Mauritania and Senegal, but recent research in the Middle Senegal Valley permits some conjectures on the history of Fulbe nomadic pastoralism. The article concludes with suggestions for a multidisciplinary research agenda to expand and upgrade the quality of relevant archaeological data, incorporate biodistance studies of human skeletal material, and improve and expand genetic sampling using more historically sensitive collection protocols.     

Conserving Rainforest 4: aural geographies and ephemerality

Works of installation sound art are inherently spatial. Documentation of this form, which dates from the 1950s, involves an engagement with diverse histories of geographical knowledge and oral-historical methodology. David Tudor's Rainforest 4 (1973) is a performed sculptural sound installation which remains the best-known of his pieces. Its durability—when most other of his works remain unperformed, partly because they are too hermetic to decipher or depend on unavailable technologies—belies its “score” which consists of a simple diagram and a few words. Oral history, formal and informal, is not only key to understanding the history of the piece, but is integral to its performance. This paper explores some historical geographies of Rainforest 4 and the aesthetic of ephemerality in live electronic music, for which documentation of performance is secondary. In examining the paradoxes of Rainforest 4's conservation, we explore Tudor's engagement with particular notions of nature and spirituality as well as the social hierarchies and conservative impulse which keep the piece alive.     

A shop is not a home: Nineteenth‐century American sweatshop discourse

The sweated labor, or sweating, system of clothing manufacturers, contractors, and subcontractors who exploited ‘inside’ and ‘outside’ workers was a lamentable fixture of antebellum America. A wide range of reformers called for abolition of the system. Yet it was not until the ‘discovery of poverty’ in the 1890s with its attendant campaigns for public hygiene and tenement house reform that the term ‘sweatshop’ arose to christen the oppressive labor site. This essay traces the ideological reasons for the shift in naming. It correlates the term's adoption with the East European and Italian ethnics who replaced earlier native‐born workers and in so doing analyzes the ideologies embedded in antebellum, Gilded Age, and Progressive‐era discursive practices.