pre-Columbian Research Articles

Traumatic brain injury and the fall of the Aztec empire: 500 years of head injury diagnosis.

Background: The Aztec civilization has been one of the most powerful and organized cultures in the pre-Columbian era in America. Its fall was due to many factors, including the incursion of Spanish colonization and its violent transculturation, associated with the strong influence of its theological traditions and beliefs, which generated a new configuration in its social structure.Methods: Through a qualitative analysis and a systematic review based on the keywords Montezuma and TBI (Traumatic Brain Injury), we found 70 texts of interest, of which 32 were selected for their anthropological and medical content and their relationship with the history of neurosurgery.Results: The traumatic brain injury (TBI) controversy and its consequences on this leader’s decision-making capacity and personal and social repercussions is evident. There are basically two versions of the story. That of the TBI was caused by his own people, and the other is the death due to injuries caused by the Spaniards. Historical texts that confirm these findings are presented.Conclusion: There is documentary evidence of TBI in the Aztec emperor, which partly explains his decision making behavior in the face of the invading Europeans. However, there is no forensic evidence to determine the causes of his death,

Los restos faunísticos del sitio arqueológico Tembrao (provincia de Río Negro, Argentina)

En este trabajo se presenta el análisis de los materiales faunísticos del sitio Tembrao, ubicado en un pequeño valle al pie de la meseta de Somuncurá (sur de la provincia de Río Negro). Un fechado realizado sobre restos faunísticos ubica la ocupación del lugar en el Holoceno tardío final. El conjunto está conformado principalmente por restos óseos de mamíferos, entre los que predominan los de artiodáctilos. Se propone que los guanacos habrían sido la presa principal de los cazadores recolectores pre-hispánicos, mientras que los restos de ovejas fueron ingresados por las ocupaciones modernas del paraje Tembrao. Se discute la disponibilidad de recursos faunísticos en cercanías del sitio, especialmente de guanacos sobre la meseta de Somuncurá, y las implicancias de la presencia de elementos foráneos (valvas de almejas fluviales y de moluscos marinos, y probablemente cáscaras de huevos de Rhea americana). En base al análisis se infiere un patrón de subsistencia basado en pocas especies, similar al de otras regiones mesetarias de Norpatagonia y claramente diferenciado de aquel del litoral marino y de los valles fluviales.

Effects of human occupation on soil loss over the past two millennia in the Teotihuacan Valley, central Mexico

Soil erosion is one of the greatest risks worldwide for land degradation. Avoiding it is one of the greatest socio-environmental and economic challenges within sustainable development in connection with food production and maintenance of soil functions in the context of climate change. This study will allow us to answer how long-term occupation dynamics influenced by notable changes in the landscape have led to soil erosion through time. We used Geographical Information Systems to apply the Revised Universal Soil Loss Equation to assess soil erosion on prehispanic and present occupation scenarios that differ in climate and land use management in the Teotihuacan Valley, central Mexico. We analyzed how a heterogeneous landscape and its occupation dynamics over the last two millennia were affected by soil erosion in order to identify which biophysical and anthropogenic components affect soil loss. The settlements extended during Aztec periods over previously forested hillslopes which caused an increase in erosion rates. The greatest soil loss occurred during the humid Aztec period, followed by the Modern period. The differences between average erosion and potential erosion of these periods demonstrate greater effectiveness in controlling erosion during the Aztec period. The most relevant factors involved were land use and soil management, followed by climate and support practices. Our results indicate that in the face of climatic variations, soil management has a significant impact, even greater than rain erosivity. Our results suggest that pre-Hispanic cultures in the highlands of central Mexico may have caused soil erosion at least at rates similar to or even higher than those at present. The comparisons of the scenarios enable researchers and decision makers to identify high-risk areas and to implement sustainable measures against soil erosion.

Missionary theology and the peopling of pre-Columbian America: John Oxenbridge’s “A plea for the dumb Indian” (ca. 1666)

John Oxenbridge was a 17th-century Puritan minister who lived in England, Bermuda, Suriname, Barbados, and New England. During his residence in Suriname, a short-lived English colony, he wrote a missionary treatise he entitled “A plea for the dumb Indian.” The work was never published and survives partially in non-digitalized manuscript form at the Massachusetts Historical Society in Boston. One of the intact portions of the manuscript is a discussion of the settlement of pre-Columbian America. Oxenbridge held that the Native Americans were descended from ancient Scythians, the semi-nomadic and “uncivilized” peoples of the vast Eurasian Steppe, who had entered America through “Anian,” an early modern designation for the region around the Bering Strait. He also thought that two other peoples later settled in pre-Columbian America: Welsh adventurers sailed across the Atlantic but soon intermarried with the Native Americans and disappeared as a distinct people, and some of the lost tribes of Israel entered the New World through Anian. These lost Israelites still survived and continued to observe the Mosaic Law. They never intermarried with the Native Americans; however, they passed on a “tincture of Israels customs” to their Indian neighbors. Oxenbridge’s discussion of the peopling of pre-Columbian America may seem like an antiquarian curiosity of little interest to historians of Christian missions. But for him it remained relevant to the present day. The Welsh migration, which he thought predated Spanish and French colonization, legitimated the English imperial claim in America. More importantly, the presence of lost Israelites in Scythian America would facilitate the conversion of the Native Americans.

Pre-Hispanic Evidence of Cleft Lip and/or Palate in Mesoamerica.

In this letter, the authors present archeological evidence of the presence of cleft lip and/or palate (CLP) in pre-Hispanic Mesoamerica. During years 2016 and 2017, the authors visited 5 anthropology museums in Mexico, Guatemala, and El Salvador, in search for pre-Hispanic archeological evidence of CLP, and 16 anthropomorphic figurines with evidence of CLP were identified; 9 at the Anahuacalli Museum, 6 at the National Anthropology Museum of Mexico, and 1 at the National Anthropology Museum of El Salvador. Fifteen of these ceramics originated from the shaft tombs (pre-Hispanic culture from western Mexico, Jalisco, Colima, and Nayarit; dating from 200 bc-600 ad), and 1 ceramic originated from the Cotzumalguapa (a pre-Hispanic culture from western El Salvador dating from 200 ad-900 ad).

The obsidian of la ferrería site: Local consumption and long-distance interactions in north and northwestern mexico

La Ferrería is an archaeological site located in the Mexican state of Durango, north of the country. This settlement has been thought as the product of the interaction of three different pre-Hispanic traditions: Chalchihuites culture, Aztatlán tradition and a local culture known as Loma San Gabriel. Along various systematic excavations in the site, 77 obsidian artefacts were collected, containing flakes, blades and projectile points. Since the origin of the raw material and the cultural affiliations of these artefacts were unknown, a non-destructive portable XRF analysis and an innovative statistical procedure was applied to classify them and determine their provenance, resulting in the detection of four chemically differentiated sources. The provenance study shows that the inhabitants of the site acquired most of their raw material from Llano Grande, the geological deposit closest to the site. However, the detection of obsidian utilization from other regions suggests some type of interaction between the pre-Hispanic cultures of northwest Mexico, including Sonora region.

The Failed Globalization of Psychedelic Drugs in the Early Modern World

AbstractThis article reassesses what has been called ‘the puzzle of distribution’: why did some drugs rapidly emerge as global consumer goods in the era of the Columbian Exchange, whereas others remained restricted to regional centres of usage? I argue here that the early modern concept of transplantation allows us to approach the puzzle of distribution from a novel perspective. Early modern intoxicants were not disaggregated, free-floating commodities. Their consumption and trade took place within a larger constellation of social codes, cultural practices, ecologies, and built environments. Psychedelic compounds such as peyote and ayahuasca serve here as case studies for examining how the globalization of drugs involved far more than the transport of the substances themselves. Despite their centrality to numerous societies throughout the pre-Columbian Americas, the larger ‘assemblage’ of material cultures, cultural assumptions, and religious meanings that accrued around these substances made it difficult for them to follow the same paths as commodified drugs like cacao or tobacco.

A Socio-Spatial Critique of Pre-Historic and Pre-Contact Spatial Marginalization of Native American Woman

This paper offers a socio-spatial analysis of Native American normative geographies and Native American woman's spatial positionality within these normative landscapes. The discussion in this study premises on the notion that these normative geographies are ambivalent since they accord a marginalized spatial position to the Native American woman. The study argues that the nomadic tribes brought the Asiatic socio-cultural patterns that paved the way for Native Americans' compromised spatiality. The discussion offers a critique of the ambivalence of the normative geographic structures in the pre-contact era. Hence, the study maintains that by the pre-contact time, Native American nations have developed and expanded into different civilizations with established socio-cultural structures and socio-spatial boundaries. During this period, Native American woman's spatial predicament continued and her spatial suppression has become institutionalized.

Pre-Columbian transregional captive rearing of Amazonian parrots in the Atacama Desert

The feathers of tropical birds were one of the most significant symbols of economic, social, and sacred status in the pre-Columbian Americas. In the Andes, finely produced clothing and textiles containing multicolored feathers of tropical parrots materialized power, prestige, and distinction and were particularly prized by political and religious elites. Here we report 27 complete or partial remains of macaws and amazon parrots from five archaeological sites in the Atacama Desert of northern Chile to improve our understanding of their taxonomic identity, chronology, cultural context, and mechanisms of acquisition. We conducted a multiproxy archaeometric study that included zooarchaeological analysis, isotopic dietary reconstruction, accelerated mass spectrometry radiocarbon dating, and paleogenomic analysis. The results reveal that during the Late Intermediate Period (1100 to 1450 CE), Atacama oasis communities acquired scarlet macaws (Ara macao) and at least five additional translocated parrot species through vast exchange networks that extended more than 500 km toward the eastern Amazonian tropics. Carbon and nitrogen stable isotopes indicate that Atacama aviculturalists sustained these birds on diets rich in marine bird guano-fertilized maize-based foods. The captive rearing of these colorful, exotic, and charismatic birds served to unambiguously signal relational wealth in a context of emergent intercommunity competition.

RADIOCARBON DATING OF ARCHAEOLOGICAL MATERIAL RECOVERED FROM THE BASIN OF MEXICO

ABSTRACTThe Mexico City Basin has had exceptional plant and animal diversity since ancient times due to its varied orography and benign climate. This environment attracted diverse human groups, from hunter-gatherers to one of the most influential pre-Hispanic cultures of Mesoamerica: the Mexica, also known as the Aztec. The subsoil of Mexico City hides a rich and varied cultural heritage. The Archaeological Rescue Department works to preserve cultural heritage, review archaeological studies, and expand archaeological information with new findings. We report on archaeological rescue works carried out at two sites in the Mexico City Basin prior to the beginning of new construction projects. The first one is the Reforma Hidalgo Complex Office in Teocaltitlán, one of the neighborhoods of ancient Mexica City, Mexico-Tenochtitlan. Some wooden post samples were selected for accelerator mass spectrometry radiocarbon (AMS 14C) dating, believed to have been used as chinampa supports. We seek to determine their temporality and possible reuse by Hispanic builders. The second one, the La Otra Banda Site, is part of the human settlements that were founded around Cuicuilco, one of the main ancient urban centers of the highlands of Central Mexico. Some human bones and coal samples were selected to be dated, aiming to establish the site’s occupation time.

The King’s Jasper Quarry, Lehigh County, Pennsylvania

The King’s Quarry site (36LH2), located in the Reading Prong region of eastern Pennsylvania, is one of six remaining jasper quarries mapped by the late James Hatch and reported in 1994. Several archaeological investigations were conducted there in preparation for a housing development. These investigations included controlled surface collections, hand excavated test units, and extensive mechanical investigations of mining pits. Pre-Contact era quarry pits were profiled in what appeared to be the most intensively mined area of the site. Several charcoal samples were collected from the profile which documented a prehistoric excavation over 7 m deep. A Paleoindian fluted preform along with other typical Paleoindian tools were recovered from the perimeter of the quarry pit. We present the results of the field testing and an extensive analysis of the artifacts. Despite the jumble of overlapping mining pits and historic farming activities, the site retains both horizontal and vertical integrity.

Linguistic and cultural divisions in pre-Hispanic Northern Peru

Interdisciplinary research at the interface of linguistics and archaeology is often concerned with relationships between archaeological cultures and language families, their subgroups, or their proto-languages. This often makes the problematic assumption of a one-to-one correspondence between groupings from the two disciplines. Here, I show how evidence from Northern Peru, a region which once hosted a myriad of well-differentiated local languages and an equally multifaceted sequence of more or less localized pre-Hispanic cultures, can contribute complementary perspectives to existing models. After providing some summary background information, I discuss two regions of Northern Peru –the North Coast and the cloud forests of Chachapoyas– which both exhibit linguistic divisions that correspond to differences in the archaeological record within what has (traditionally) been taken to constitute overarching archaeological cultures; differences in language and cultural expression may both be interpretable as indexes of different pre-Hispanic social, ethnic, or political identities and allegiances. These cases underscore that one-to-one mappings between languages and archaeological cultures (or their expansions) may in some cases be inadequate.

Colors of Conquest: Perceptions of Gold, Whiteness, and Skin in Mexico's Early Colonial Histories

This essay proposes that early colonial (sixteenth-century and early seventeenth-century) narratives of the conquest of Mexico offer a prism through which to view the meeting of chromatic perceptions from both Indigenous Mesoamerican and Spanish cultures, particularly as those perceptions apply to gold and skin. Recent literature on the pre-Hispanic cultures of Mesoamerica has provided important new understandings of the social and cosmological meanings of specific body paints among Indigenous Mesoamerican communities. Meanwhile, medievalists have increasingly focused on visual and literary expressions of epidermal colorism—the racialized perception of skin color—in premodern Christian Europe. Scholars of colonial Latin America have also studied expressions of epidermal colorism in the meeting of Old World and New World populations, yet those studies largely take as their point of departure the visual articulation of a castas regime in the eighteenth century. However, in Mexico's early conquest narratives, written in Spanish and Nahuatl, observations regarding the color of skin and precious materials attest to a confluence of Spanish and Mesoamerican ways of seeing color. From this confluence of chromatic perspectives, a critical Indigenous positionality emerges in relation to the narrow valorization of gold and whiteness.

THE PERSON OF HERNAN CORTES IN THE «HISTORY OF THE INDIES» BY LAS CASAS

The article discusses the controversy over the characterization of Hernan Cortes in the «History of India» by the famous Dominican monk and one of the earliest indigenous human rights activists in pre-Columbian America, Bartolome de Las Casas. It was determined that the figure of the conquistador evokes mixed emotions in the author, especially before the Cortes invasion of Mexico, the monk uses mostly complementary motifs to describe the figure of the Spaniard, but as a treacherous invader.

The Pre-Hispanic in Landscape

The Pre-Hispanic in Landscape

Culture of death in Mexico: Psychoanalytic inquiry about mourning rites and the symbolic function of society

Mexico stands out for its unique rites of symbolization of death. Being historically determined by the richness of its pre-Hispanic cultures, and with the fusion of catholic and Mesoamerican rites, Mexicans’ relationship with death is unique. Mourning rites are imbued with a circular worldview of life and death. Some of the basic psychoanalytic components of mourning are present in Mexican mourning rites: symbolic function, cathartic affects, identification, and socialization of signifiers. Nowadays, the massive deaths as a result of violence imposes the encryption of mourning as a perverse demand. The lack of response to the cries for help render useless the symbolic functions of mourning rites, which brings about a new way of socializing the loss, through massive social movements. We inquire, through a psychoanalytic reading of mourning and its socio-historical aspects in Mexico, and by emphasizing the traditions of mourning and its multiple symbolic values, the different ways Mexicans deal with death, in order shed some light into Mexicans’ symbolic responses and relationship with death while facing the perverse challenge of a violent regime.

Sobre médicos, piaches y teguas: Una historia particular de la persecución, expropiación y transculturación de la medicina prehispánica en el Virreinato Del Nuevo Reino de Granada durante la conquista y la colonia

Los procesos que se llevaron a cabo luego del contacto de los pueblos originarios con el conquistador español, en términos de saberes médicos en el territorio conocido como Virreinato de Nueva Granada, influyeron en las relaciones de conquistador-conquistado en procesos como la estigmatización y persecución de saberes ancestrales, las diversas formas de transculturación y el proceso de expropiación de algunos elementos de la cultura prehispánica.

Ceramics of Ancient America: Multidisciplinary Approaches

Ceramics of Ancient America: Multidisciplinary Approaches

Stable isotope evidence for dietary diversification in the pre-Columbian Amazon

Archaeological research is radically transforming the view that the Amazon basin and surrounding areas witnessed limited societal development before European contact. Nevertheless, uncertainty remains on the nature of the subsistence systems and the role that aquatic resources, terrestrial mammalian game, and plants had in supporting population growth, geographic dispersal, cultural adaptations and political complexity during the later stages of the pre-Columbian era. This is exacerbated by the general paucity of archaeological human remains enabling individual dietary reconstructions. Here we use stable carbon and nitrogen isotope analysis of bone collagen to reconstruct the diets of human individuals from São Luís Island (Brazilian Amazon coast) dated between ca. 1800 and 1000 cal BP and associated with distinct ceramic traditions. We expanded our analysis to include previously published data from Maracá and Marajó Island, in the eastern Amazon. Quantitative estimates of the caloric contributions from food groups and their relative nutrients using a Bayesian Mixing Model revealed distinct subsistence strategies, consisting predominantly of plants and terrestrial mammals and variably complemented with aquatic resources. This study offers novel quantitative information on the extent distinct food categories of polyculture agroforestry systems fulfilled the caloric and protein requirements of Late Holocene pre-Columbian populations in the Amazon basin.

X-ray computed microtomography for the structural analysis of jewelry from the Museum “Royal Tombs of Sipán”

Precious ornaments from the Museum Royal Tombs of Sipán were analyzed by X-ray computed microtomography (microCT). The ornaments analyzed were golden earrings produced by the Moche culture that flourished along the north coast of present-day Peru between approximately 100 and 600 AD. Sipán, also known as Huava Rajada, is a mochica archaeological complex in the north of Peru. In particular, the spectacular jewelry, mainly composed of gold, silver, and copper alloys, gilded copper, and tumbaga, from the Museum “Royal Tombs of Sipán,” in Lambayeque, north of Peru, are some of the most sophisticated metalworking ever produced of pre-Columbian America. A portable microCT system consisting of a high-resolution flat panel detector and a mini X-ray tube were used for the structural analysis of these ornaments. The microCT images show parts of the internal structure, highlighting the manufacturing technique and gold sheets joining techniques of the Moche artisans. Furthermore, the advantage of using the portable microCT system for nondestructive testing is clear when the sample cannot be taken to the laboratory.