TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 671 currency exchange in international trade, and of the arithmetic and linguistic subterfuges adopted by Christian merchants to avoid the Church’s usury prohibitions. But Swetz rarely moves beyond a surface reading of the text as a mirror of its time. He sees the Italian merchants as the heroes of the story, pioneering in a “new math” just as they pioneered in opening up new trade routes. In his view, capitalism stimulated the spread of arithmetic; he does not consider the possibility that it may have been more of a two-way street. For the argument that the countinghouse was not the sole impetus to a diffusion of numeracy, readers should turn instead to the intellectually meaty chapters on “The Emergence of an Arithmetical Mentality” by Alexander Murray, in his 1978 book Reason and Society in the Middle Ages. Swetz’s Capitalism and Arithmetic is a valuable and readable analysis of Italian arithmetic techniques; it falls short, however, of fully explaining the cultural milieu that fostered the spread of numeracy. Patricia Cline Cohen Dr. Cohen, of the University of California, Santa Barbara, is the author of A Calculating People: The Spread of Numeracy in Early America (Chicago, 1982). Currently she is at work on two books concerning the history of women in 19th-century America, as well as papers on numeracy in the 18th century and statistics in the early 19th century. Andalusian Ceramics in Spain and New Spain: A Cultural Register from the Third Century b.c. to 1700. By Florence C. Lister and Robert H. Lister. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1987. Pp. xxvii + 411; illustrations, tables, notes, glossary, appendixes, bibliography, in dex. $65.00. Florence and Robert Lister’s first research on Spanish ceramics, published some twenty years ago, concerned 16th-century Spanish majolica pottery brought to the New World by early explorers and colonists. It is still this area, most notably their study of excavated collections from Mexico City, in which their most original and valuable contributions have been made. Not satisfied to remain with that topic alone, however, the Listers have over the years spread out in time and space to investigate, synthesize, and report on an array of related topics, including: the influence of Italian potters on ceramic industries in Spain, the presence of Italian majolica at Spanish sites in the New World, the provenance of Spanish ceramics in the New World, the transfer of Spanish ceramic technology to the valley of Mexico and Puebla, the influence of late Aztec mythology and iconography on Spanish colonial wares, the influence of Moorish traditions on Spanish ceramics, ethnographic studies of potters in Mexico and the western Mediteranean, and . . . this isjust a sampling. 672 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE The Listers’ new book continues their past work on 16th- and 17th-century Spanish ceramics. These two centuries were of enor mous historical importance for Western Europe, witnessing its polit ical and cultural expansion across the Atlantic. What the Listers do, then, is tell the social history of Spanish traditional ceramics of this period. The political history of the Reconquista, the Morisco aesthetic traditions of Seville, the economic structures of imperial Spain, and the beginnings of Latin American culture are all brought into play. Accompanying the broad historical view there is considerable detail from ethnographic, art historical, and archaeological studies of the pottery. It is the combination of detail in the consideration of ceramics and generality in the consideration of broader historical themes that makes this work significant. The book can be appreciated on two levels. First, it is a source that provides access to data and scholarship on Spanish and Spanishtradition ceramics. This includes numerous photographs and draw ings, an enormous bibliography, and a significant amount of archival materia] in appendix form. The historical narrative, however, pro ceeds on another plane. In an effort to make their picture complete, the Listers augment demonstrable findings with hypotheses and educated guesses. An example is their speculation concerning the archaeology of Seville’s ceramic production (pp. 103—15). The advan tage of such an approach is that it gives us a coherent whole to ponder and investigate. Another strong point is the relatively long span...
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Jul 11, 2005
Bao-Ping Li + 5
Open Access