pre-Columbian Research Articles

Book reviews

The Atlantic World, 1450-2000, edited by Toyin Falola & Kevin D. Roberts (reviewed by Aaron Spencer Fogleman) The Slave Ship: A Human History, by Marcus Rediker (reviewed by Justin Roberts) Extending the Frontiers: Essays on the New Transatlantic Slave Trade Database, edited by David Eltis & David Richardson (reviewed by Joseph C. Miller) "New Negroes from Africa": Slave Trade Abolition and Free African Settlement in the Nineteenth-Century Caribbean, by Rosanne Marion Adderley (reviewed by Nicolette Bethel) Atlantic Diasporas: Jews, Conversos, and Crypto-Jews in the Age of Mercantilism, 1500-1800, edited by Richard L. Kagan & Philip D. Morgan (reviewed by Jonathan Schorsch) Brother’s Keeper: The United States, Race, and Empire in the British Caribbean, 1937-1962, by Jason C. Parker (reviewed by Charlie Whitham) Labour and the Multiracial Project in the Caribbean: Its History and Promise, by Sara Abraham (reviewed by Douglas Midgett) Envisioning Caribbean Futures: Jamaican Perspectives, by Brian Meeks (reviewed by Gina Athena Ulysse) Archibald Monteath: Igbo, Jamaican, Moravian, by Maureen Warner-Lewis (reviewed by Jon Sensbach) Left of Karl Marx: The Political Life of Black Communist Claudia Jones, by Carole Boyce Davies (reviewed by Linden Lewis) Displacements and Transformations in Caribbean Cultures, edited by Lizabeth Paravisini-Gebert & Ivette Romero-Cesareo (reviewed by Bill Maurer) Caribbean Migration to Western Europe and the United States: Essays on Incorporation, Identity, and Citizenship, edited by Margarita Cervantes-Rodríguez, Ramón Grosfoguel & Eric Mielants (reviewed by Gert Oostindie) Home Cooking in the Global Village: Caribbean Food from Buccaneers to Ecotourists, by Richard Wilk (reviewed by William H. Fisher) Dead Man in Paradise: Unraveling a Murder from a Time of Revolution, by J.B. MacKinnon (reviewed by Edward Paulino) Tropical Zion: General Trujillo, FDR, and the Jews of Sosúa, by Allen Wells (reviewed by Michael R. Hall) Downtown Ladies: Informal Commercial Importers, a Haitian Anthropologist, and Self-Making in Jamaica, by Gina A. Ulysse (reviewed by Jean Besson) Une ethnologue à Port-au-Prince: Question de couleur et luttes pour le classement socio-racial dans la capitale haïtienne, by Natacha Giafferi-Dombre (reviewed by Catherine Benoît) Haitian Vodou: Spirit, Myth, and Reality, edited by Patrick Bellegarde-Smith & Claudine Michel (reviewed by Susan Kwosek) Cuba: Religion, Social Capital, and Development, by Adrian H. Hearn (reviewed by Nadine Fernandez) "Mek Some Noise": Gospel Music and the Ethics of Style in Trinidad, by Timothy Rommen (reviewed by Daniel A. Segal)Routes and Roots: Navigating Caribbean and Pacific Island Literatures, by Elizabeth M. DeLoughrey (reviewed by Anthony Carrigan) Claude McKay, Code Name Sasha: Queer Black Marxism and the Harlem Renaissance, by Gary Edward Holcomb (reviewed by Brent Hayes Edwards) The Sense of Community in French Caribbean Fiction, by Celia Britton (reviewed by J. Michael Dash) Imaging the Chinese in Cuban Literature and Culture, by Ignacio López-Calvo (reviewed by Stephen Wilkinson) Pre-Columbian Jamaica, by P. Allsworth-Jones (reviewed by William F. Keegan) Underwater and Maritime Archaeology in Latin America and the Caribbean, edited by Margaret E. Leshikar-Denton & Pilar Luna Erreguerena (reviewed by Erika Laanela)

Aproximación inicial a la arqueología del Norte de la Sierra de Guasapampa y Cordón de Serrezuela (Córdoba, Argentina)

In this paper we present the results of an archaeological survey and site mapping carried out in Guasapampa and Serrezuela hills (Cordoba, Argentina). In this micro-region two materiality types constitute the most representative archaeological evidences: grinding gears in fixed rock support and rock art. We discuss pre-hispanic occupation process considering the obtained results. In this sense, similarities and differences with contiguous micro-regions are evaluated.

These Bones Are Read: The Science and Politics of Ancient Native America

These Bones Are Read: The Science and Politics of Ancient Native America

Cultural Remains in Local and Regional Context on the Central Alaska Peninsula: Housepits, Language, and Cultural Affinities at Marraatuq after 1000 B.P.

Professor Dumond's research on the Alaska Peninsula provided information that prior to 1,000 years ago people of both sides of the Alaska Peninsula shared material culture and exhibited subsistence interests that persisted into historic times, During the Late Precontact Era (ca. 1100 A.D. to mid-1700s) these Alutiiq societies shared cultural traits including language, house styles, and material culture with their relatives and neighbors on Kodiak Island. Until recently, few data were available regarding potential variability in house construction techniques, or styles and functions of Alutiiq semi-subterranean houses of this era found on the Alaska Peninsula, This paper provides examples of a few known prehistoric and historic Alaska Peninsula and Kodiak Alutiiq houses and presents previously unreported data from archaeological tests at Marraatuq on the Central Alaska Peninsula, Taken together with Dumond's 1998-1999 field work at Leader Creek and archaeological research on Kodiak Island, the work provides further evidence that interregional interaction was strong during the Late Precontact Era. However, large population centers and ranked political hierarchies probably were not hallmarks of central Alaska Peninsula communities during the Late Precontact Era and historic times as they were on the Kodiak and Aleutian islands.

Website Reviews

Website Reviews David J. Keeling, Websites Editor Websites 2010 This second edition of the JLAG websites section profiles locations that may prove helpful to scholars seeking resources for teaching and research. Descriptions of the profiled sites are drawn directly from the website home pages and from individual contributors. Subscribers to JLAG are encouraged to submit suggestions for inclusion in this section to the websites editor. (1) http://geomaps.aum.edu/ During the first half of the twentieth century, the Carnegie Institution for Science, formerly the Carnegie Institution of Washington, conducted pioneering research throughout Mesoamerica. Carnegie maps and publications represent a significant body of knowledge about ancient people and places. These works continue to rank among the most commonly cited documents by scholars and researchers. Many of the remaining Carnegie publications are housed in rare book collections or private libraries. The Auburn University Carnegie Explorer website makes portions of the Carnegie research available to scholars from all disciplines and. In addition to digital copies of publications, Carnegie Institution paper maps of ancient settlements are provided in geo-referenced digital format for use in geographic information systems. The site provides remote sensing datasets covering all of Mesoamerica and portions of Central America as well. (2) http://www.geosur.info/geosur/ The GeoSUR Portal provides an entry point to the spatial data and metadata published by participating institutions in South America and Panama. The spatial data may be consulted directly by means of a spatial map viewer contained in the Portal that connects to national and regional map services; or may be consulted through the metadata available in the portal, since each metadata record enables consultation of its associated datasets in the portal map viewer. (3) http://www.southwestbooks.org/lgbibliog.htm The bibliography provided through this link will be useful to scholars who study Spanish land grants in northern Mexico and the American southwest. A particular value of this bibliography is that many references are to journals that are not indexed electronically. (4) http://www.ibge.gov.br/home/ The Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics – IBGE – is the main provider of data and information in the country and it fulfills the demands of several different segments of civil society, as well of other governmental institutions at federal, state and municipal level. The site provides access to a rich array of geospatial resources. (5) http://justf.org/ This website is a citizen effort to oversee and understand the United States' military relationship with the Western Hemisphere. It is a project of the Latin America Working Group Education Fund, in cooperation with the Center for International Policy [End Page 169] and the Washington Office on Latin America. Links are provided to three main areas: data, analysis, and reports and other sources. A useful source for those seeking more information about military spending, training, and other regional security issues. (6) http://www.mesoweb.com/ Mesoweb is devoted to the ancient cultures of Mexico and adjacent Central America, including the Olmec, Zapotec, Mixtec, Teotihuacan, Toltec, Aztec, and Maya (reserving the word Mayan for the language and the word Maya for the people and their culture). Because this is a huge area for any one website to cover, the webmasters have chosen to specialize in the Maya and, more particularly, Maya history, viewing it through the lens of archaeology and the related disciplines and the written records left by the Maya themselves. It highlights recent archaeological projects, provides a link to resources, and posts research articles and technical reports. For those interested, there are animation games, videos, and teaching tools available. John Harner uses the site in classroom teaching to show timelines for Prehispanic cultures and to use the excellent collection of images from the National Museum of Anthropology in Mexico City. (7) http://eraofepidemics.squarespace.com/ This website presents information on the broad pattern of the health environment during the late Brazilian Empire and early First Republic (1849-1901) using geographic information system (GIS) tools, digital records derived from archival research, and database organizational techniques. The site has useful timelines, maps, a searchable database, and other useful tools. (8) http://www.ciga.unam.mx/ciga/ El Centro de Investigaciones en Geografía Ambiental (CIGA) es...

Technological and material features of the gold work of Mesoamerica

The metallurgical work in Pre-Columbian America achieved a high degree of development. In the Mesoamerican area, the development of metallurgy started very late, during the post-Classic period (800 AD). Nevertheless, various techniques, such as lost wax casting and false filigree, were rapidly developed and improved. Most of the gold metallurgy was developed in the Oaxaca region, in the South of Mexico, by the Mixtec people. A limited number of gold alloy based artefacts survived after the conquest of Mexico. Few collections are related to archaeological contexts and may be used to obtain reliable information about the technical features and materials used in the Mesoamerican gold metallurgy. For this reason, non-destructive analyses have been performed on some artefacts of the most important collections of the Mexican museums using portable XRF and PIXE in the laboratory. In this work, a full review of the main technical features and alloys of the analyzed gold artefacts from the Mesoamerican area collections are presented. This database may be used to study collections of gold artefacts from the Mesoamerican areas.

"Made-in-America Revolutions"? The "Black University" and the American Role in the Decolonization of the Black Atlantic

The global race revolution of the twentieth century is arguably the central story of mod ern international history. The end of European empires in what Cold War intellectuals and policy makers christened the Third forces historians to rethink traditional periodizations. Scholars speak of a pre-Columbian era before the spread of Western empires overseas; the retreat of those empires logically suggests the arrival of a post Columbian era. As colonized peoples seized self-rule, ethnic minorities led a parallel fight for equality in the West. In both cases the basic mission was the same. In the colonized lands creating nations meant delineating imagined communities and sovereign states to house them. In the metropoles the fight for civil rights meant redefining existing na tionalities to encompass ethnic minorities and to fulfill a long-denied promise of equal citizenship. The chronological coincidence of these struggles, in retrospect, was not mere coincidence. Both hark back to fundamental, constitutive questions of citizenship and nationhood, questions long disallowed under both imperial and segregationist rule. The literature on these intertwined developments?Third World decolonization and Ameri can desegregation?has coalesced into a synthesis of international history, one under scoring the millennial importance of the global race revolution.1

HACIA UNA POÉTICA DE SOLEDAD FARIÑA: PROTOTEXTO Y ESCRITURA CIFRADA EN LA VOCAL DE LA TIERRA

This paper examines the mythogenesic character of the story Al alba from the book Otro cuento de pajaros (Santiago: Las Dos Fridas, 1999) by Soledad Farina, seen as a prototext and a paralel to the writing of the Book that in a fragmentary way -under the constant questioning of the means of representation and the perceptive capacity to be found in this poem- is realized in the trilogy entitled La vocal de la tierra (Santiago: Cuarto Propio, 1999), a book that includes the collections of poems El Primer Libro (Santiago: Amaranto, 1985), Albricia (Santiago: Archivo, 1988) and En amarillo oscuro (Santiago: Surada, 1994); the trilogy thus becomes a new Holy Scripture -an alternative to the judeo-christian and patriarchal Book- which can be identifi ed with the prehispanic culture and is focused in the female gender that constitutes the subject in a protolesbic relation with the Mother, as an offering to the iniciating Goddess, and as a member of the couple of Amazon lovers.

Performing conquest: five centuries of theater, history, and identity in Tlaxcala, Mexico

This is an unprecedented reading of Mexican history through the lens of performance. Tlaxcala is unique among the states of Mexico. Because of its fierce independence during the pre-Columbian era (it was never conquered by the Aztecs) and its strategic alliance with the Spanish invaders in Cortez's conquest in the early sixteenth century, Tlaxcala has played a significant role in Mexican history. Performing Conquest examines the distinct Tlaxcalan identity that has evolved over the last five centuries and the way that performance - especially political speech - has been inextricably linked to its creation. The book focuses on theatrical performances, political events, texts that 'perform' despite themselves, and state-sponsored performances designed to foment local and/or national identity.The theatrical strategies included the re-imagination of civic space, the combination of aural, oral, and visual means of communication to create meaning, and the blurring of the line between representation and reality, which made everyday citizens into 'actors' in their spectacles. Performing Conquest shows not only that these strategies were deeply embedded cultural practices, learned from and developed within religious conversion plays, political entry ceremonies, festival displays, tragic hero dramas, and state-sponsored patriotic pageants, but also that they transformed at crucial historical moments in response to various wars, national cultural policies, and debt crises.

Rheumatic Diseases in the Ancient Americas

The effect of rheumatic and infectious diseases on skeletal remains provides an important source of information for knowledge of contemporary medicine. Few pathologic conditions have attracted so much interest as treponematoses. One of these, syphilis, was the most feared venereal disease throughout the civilized world until the introduction of penicillin in the 20th century. To describe paleopathological and ceramic illustrations of treponematoses in ancient Mexico. Paleopathological and ceramic material examples from the National Institute of Anthropology and History of Mexico were reviewed. A unique paleopathologic site for treponemal diseases comprises the La Candelaria Cave skeletal collection from northern Mexico. The cave was used as a burial site and contained the bones of at least 83 adults and 33 subadults. Fifty-one percent of the recovered skulls possess erosions of the vault consistent with treponematoses. Some of these exhibit the impressive frontal bone lytic changes with irregular borders typical of caries sicca. In addition, periostosis of the long bones was found in up to 88% of the study sample, including 6 examples of saber-shin deformity of tibias. Radiocarbon dating (-C) of a bone retrieved from the cave ranges from 1100 to 1300 A.D. Additionally, a Pre-Hispanic ceramic figurine from the Mexican state of Nayarit depicting a lame man with multiple nodular skin lesions that suggest gummatous treponemal infection is described. These ancient specimens reinforce the notion that treponemal infection was present on the American Continent before European penetration of the New World. These very advanced paleopathologic lesions and ceramic representations demonstrate the degree to which these diseases wrought devastation before the antibiotic era. In ancient times, treponematoses were true rheumatic diseases that produced profound skeletal abnormalities marked by periosteal accretion and bone destruction.

The Allure of Nezahualcoyotl: Pre-Hispanic History, Religion, and Nahua Poetics

The Allure of Nezahualcoyotl: Pre-Hispanic History, Religion, and Nahua Poetics

Reflections on the Painting of Alejandro Puente, the Notion of Pathosformel, and the Return to Life of Mortally Wounded Civilizations

The Argentine author José Burucúa is a key figure in the introduction and dissemination of Aby Warburg's theories to scholarship in Latin America. In this article he tests Warburg's concept of Pathosformel to discuss the development of visual culture in Andean pre-Hispanic art and contemporary painting in Argentina. It is argued that the abstract world created by prominent painters, such as Libero Badii, César Paternosto, and Alejandro Puente, deepened their roots in pre-Hispanic culture. Burucúa's theoretical approach to the arts in Argentina has been highly influential on visual culture studies in Latin America.

The Allure of Nezahualcoyotl: Pre‐Hispanic History, Religion, and Nahua Poetics – By Jongsoo Lee

The Allure of Nezahualcoyotl: Pre‐Hispanic History, Religion, and Nahua Poetics – By Jongsoo Lee

Pre-Columbian Jamaica

Pre-Columbian Jamaica

National Identity and the Problem of Kastom in Vanuatu

Vanuatu's transformation into a predominantly Christian country entailed the loss of much traditional culture and the devaluation of the pre-contact era. In the 1970s the growing independence movement used kastom as a rallying cry to evoke a distinctive non-European national identity. In promoting unity and solidarity, the movement's leaders promulgated kastom on a safe ideological plane, avoiding any definition or differentiation of the concept, whereas the populace attempted to interpret kastom pragmatically. This led to confusion and difficulties because kastom is so ambiguous; its capacity to unite at one level is offset a t others by its political utility in defining difference and in marking boundaries. For Christians, a major problem has been to reconcile the new positive view of kastom with long- entrenched negative attitudes. For the nation-builders, the challenge has been to uphold the virtues of kustorn-within-Christianity while avoiding as much as possible its inclusion in legal codes or in structures and strategies associated with Vanuatu's functioning as a Pacific republic.

The allure of Nezahualcoyotl: pre-Hispanic history, religion, and Nahua poetics

The allure of Nezahualcoyotl: pre-Hispanic history, religion, and Nahua poetics

Mesoamerica's Ancient Cities, Aerial Views of Precolumbian Ruins in Mexico, Guatemala, Belize and Honduras.

Mesoamerica's Ancient Cities, Aerial Views of Precolumbian Ruins in Mexico, Guatemala, Belize and Honduras. WILLIAM M. FERGUSON and ARTHUR H. ROHN. Photographs by John Q. Royce and William M. Ferguson. Niwot, CO: University Press of Colorado, 1990. xiv + 251 pp., 237 illustrations. $45.00 (cloth). ISBN 0-887081-173-8.

A Pre-Columbian World edited by Jeffrey Quilter and Mary Miller

A Pre-Columbian World edited by Jeffrey Quilter and Mary Miller

Construction of an Amaranthus hypochondriacus Bacterial Artificial Chromosome Library and Genomic Sequencing of Herbicide Target Genes

Before the Spanish conquest of the ancient Americas, the grain amaranths (Amaranthus caudatus L., A. cruentus L., A. hypochondriacus L.) were a staple food of the New World. Recently, the grain amaranths have regained international attention for their nutritional quality and importance as a symbol of indigenous cultures. Here we report the development of a bacterial artificial chromosome (BAC) library constructed from the cultivar ‘Plainsman’ (A. hypochondriacus; 2n = 2x = 32). The library consists of a total of 36,864 clones with an average insert size of 147 kb with less than 1.8% of the clones containing empty vectors. The frequency of BAC clones carrying inserts derived from chloroplast and mitochondrial DNA was estimated to be 6.9%. Thus, based on a haploid genome size of 466 Mb per haploid nucleus, the BAC library coverage is approximately 10.6 times the haploid genome content. The genome coverage estimate was empirically confirmed by screening the library with seven low copy amaranth probe sequences. The utility of the amaranth BAC library was demonstrated by identification and full‐length genomic sequencing of the acetolactate synthase and protoporphyrinogen oxidase genes—both major targets for several classes of important herbicides. The quality of the BAC library for BAC end sequencing projects was evaluated by bidirectional end sequencing of 384 random clones. End sequences were annotated using BLAST searches and queries to plant transposable element databases.

Ancient Savannah Roots of the Carbohydrate Revolution in South-Central North America

Along the ecotone between North America’s southern Plains and southeast Woodlands, the oldest known earth ovens with rock heating elements date to 8,000–9,000 years ago. Through the millennia, the number and diversity of earth ovens increased markedly, but they typically functioned as plant-baking facilities, especially for geophytes, plants with underground storage organs. Among the important early Holocene geophytes in oak savannah regions were onions (Allium spp.) and camas (Camassia spp.). In the drier savannahs, including Texas’ Edwards Plateau, agave (Agave lechuguilla) and sotol (Dasylirion spp.), plants with above-ground storage organs, dominated oven cookery. Rock-filled earth ovens were common in comparatively wet regions with sandy soils, including Texas’ Post Oak Savannah, but floral preservation conditions are poor. Ethnobotanically and ecologically derived expectations, however, suggest false garlic (Northoscordum bivalve), onions, and spring beauty (Claytonia virginica) as potential plant food staples. Various plant foods were undoubtedly eaten throughout the pre-Columbian era but geophytes appear to have sparked and sustained an ancient carbohydrate revolution that led to significant early Holocene land-use intensification. Such a profound dietary shift may yet be shown to have played an important role in changes in Native American cranial morphology during the early Holocene.