pre-Columbian Research Articles

Culture, traditions and natural resources of Mexican lakes under the onslaught of anthropic pressures and climate change

Indigenous people and local communities play a vital role in conserving inland water ecosystems and their resources through their cultural and spiritual values embedded in the geographic, socio-political, and economic contexts. The Central Mexico lakes along the Trans-Mexican Volcanic Belt harbored important prehispanic cultures that hybridized during the Spanish conquest, evolving into modern Mexico and changing how lakes were valued. The terrestrial Spanish ways of life were inimical to the prehispanic indigenous lacustrine culture. After the conquest, various actions were carried out to drain the lakes for urban growth and to provide agricultural land. The result has been a decline (e.g., Lake Cuitzeo, Michoacán) and, in some extreme cases, the near disappearance (e.g., Lake Texcoco, Mexico City) of what were once extensive water bodies. Unsustainable use of resources, unsympathetic spatial planning (anthropic impacts), and climate change to warmer/drier conditions have all placed additional pressure on the inland ecosystems. Nonetheless, as herein presented, the prehispanic lacustrine cultural knowledge and traditions persist locally in some locations, having been perpetuated by indigenous people's traditions and habits.

CARACTERIZACIÓN AGROMORFOLÓGICA Y DIVERSIDAD FENOTÍPICA DE LA COLECCIÓN DE GERMOPLASMA DE PALLAR (Phaseolus lunatus L.) DEL INIA, PERÚ

<p><strong>Background:</strong> Pallar (<em>Phaseolus lunatus</em>) is a grain legume of great socioeconomic importance in Peru, which has been domesticated in the past by pre-Hispanic cultures. <strong>Objective:</strong> Carry out the agromorphological characterization of 36 accessions from the Pallar National Collection of the Germplasm Bank of the National Institute of Agrarian Innovation (Peru). <strong>Methodology:</strong> 16 qualitative characters and 10 quantitative characters were compared using descriptive analysis, ANOVA and Scott Knott test, correlation, principal components and hierarchical grouping. <strong>Results:</strong> There was a positive correlation between the length of the main stem and the average number of mature pods per plant, average number of seeds per plant, average weight of seeds per plant and average weight of seeds; Likewise, a negative correlation was found between the number of locules per mature pod and the length and average weight of the seeds. <strong>Implications: </strong>The agromorphological characterization of the pallar is necessary for the conservation of genetic resources originating in Peru. <strong>Conclusions:</strong> Phenotypic variability was found among the Pallar accessions; Thus, the existence of three groups was established among the accessions in relation to quantitative characters, highlighting the high values of average number of seeds per plant, seed thickness, number of locules per mature pod, length of the main stem and average number of seeds. mature pods per plant. The promising accession was 14ac with respect to the highest average number of mature pods, average number of seeds and average weight of seeds per plant.</p>

Food Culture in Precolonial Taiwan

Abstract Central to food culture are food practices that encompass any activity in which food is involved. Furthermore, food culture studies analyse the many meanings generated by these practices. This article explores food culture in precolonial Taiwan. It charts the meanings generated by the food practices of the Siraya, a Formosan ethnic group who lived in southwest Taiwan and had intensive contact with Dutch East India Company colonisers and an array of Chinese in the seventeenth century. The article analyses the rich variety of edible animals, plants, and fish, and drinks available in Taiwan before focusing on Siraya food practices and the meanings generated by these practices. These include the use of food for sacrifice, funeral rites, gifting, and exchange. The article also examines taboos around food and their social function. Furthermore, it compares Siraya food culture with that of other Formosan groups and pre-Columbian America.

Gods of Thunder: How Climate Change, Travel, and Spirituality Reshaped Precolonial America by Timothy R. Pauketat (review)

Gods of Thunder: How Climate Change, Travel, and Spirituality Reshaped Precolonial America by Timothy R. Pauketat (review)

Holding Ground: Reconsidering the Sensitivity of Backdirt in the Context of NAGPRA

ABSTRACT In the United States, many archaeological excavations focus on precontact era Native American sites, and for the majority of American archaeology’s existence, these have included a vast number of burial and sacred sites. When the human remains of Native American Ancestors, or remnants of sacred and ceremonial objects, are found, what implications does this have for the soil in which they rested? In addition to exploring questions regarding how backdirt is defined and assessed, we consider how backdirt may be interpreted as ecofact, as material culture, and even as NAGPRA-eligible funerary material or human remains. We hope to demonstrate that backdirt, as an example of some of the most insignificant archaeological material, poses interesting questions relating to interpretations of context, as well as consultation and collaboration with Indigenous communities.

Ecological and archaeological consequences of ongoing, largely human-mediated colonisation of endemic soft, shelly habitats by mangroves in a northern New Zealand embayment

ABSTRACT Areal extent of native mangroves, Avicennia marina, has doubled in Bay of Islands since 1951. This expansion is widely attributed to deforestation and poor land-use practices beginning in the late 1800s to early 1900s, and led to greatly transformed intertidal and supratidal habitats. One example has been the ecological isolation and crowding (sometimes, colonisation) by mangroves of shelly beaches, together with their associated ‘chenier-like’ spits – themselves now among the rarest of New Zealand’s inshore marine habitats, with only six still relatively intact ecologically out of at least 44 in the Bay of Islands. These shores were also where pre Contact Māori often gathered to harvest intertidal cockles Austrovenus stutchburyi and to fish, archaeological signatures typically becoming obscured once mangroves colonised upper shores. Although recent seaward intrusion by mangroves into the cockle habitat of the Parekura Bay study site appears to have been proportionately small, there may be potential for more as elevated levels of sedimentation persist. With wholesale mangrove removals demonstrably ineffective in re-establishing original communities, the ongoing ecological and archaeological disruption of endemic soft, shelly contexts through largely human-mediated mangrove colonisation might be curbed in certain situations through strategic, proactive removal of new mangrove recruits, particularly on expanding edges.

Review: Unseen Art: Making, Vision and Power in Ancient America, by Claudia Brittenham

Review: <i>Unseen Art: Making, Vision and Power in Ancient America</i>, by Claudia Brittenham

Stitching for Material Sensitivity: From Traditional to Activist Embroidery

Cochineal is an insect that has been used for textile dyeing since pre-Hispanic cultures in Mexico. This exposition discusses the use of the cochineal insect as a natural dye for wool and the bridge between ancient indigenous knowledge and contemporary artistic research. A transatlantic connection is created between the Mexican plateau and the Arctic region, merging traditional knowledge, contemporary art, crafting and conceptualisation through an artistic embroidery initiative involving researchers, craft artists and human rights activists living in the province of Lapland in Finland. Documentary photos of artistic practice and research diaries enhance discussion on sustainability, tradition, craftivism, decolonisation and indigenous knowledge. This exposition embraces collaborative craftivism through a group initiative called Embroidered Stances, discussions about material interconnectedness in a web-of-life conceptual structure that includes sheep wool, cactus, cochineal and ancestral knowledge. The endorsement of material sensitivity is narrated into embroideries by the first author Cervantes and discussed, acknowledging complexities within issues of cultural and ecological sustainability.

Pulque: The Drink of the Gods

&#x0D; Pulque is an alcoholic beverage made from the fermented sap of the maguey plant. It is traditional to central Mexico, where it has been produced for millennia. I am interested in the revival of this drink and its relation to the community and social traditions as well as the visual symbols that are contained in contemporary and pre-Hispanic culture. The aim of the project is to show through the links between Pulquerias (where pulque is sold) and art. This project which compromises a series of prints and other objects worked from photographic and video sourced from the Internet of Pulquerías. The prints show in various ways the transitions, the collision, transformations of images of pulque. &#x0D; &#x0D; &#x0D; This work was meant to be exhibited in June 2020 in a Pulquería in Mexico City. Due to the pandemic, I was left with all the body of work and with no possibilities of exhibiting or showcasing the work physically. New research methods for exhibition had to be found for it be shown. New questions to be answered as it was meant to be exhibited in Mexico where Pulque comes from and how presenting it to a global digital audience would the work have to be developed and new elements added for it to be accessible. &#x0D; &#x0D; &#x0D; The work had to be now thought as means to produce something digital to go out to the public. I found a space to set the exhibition up and with professional support of a photographer and film artist the project was presented online. All these new elements within the way of presenting the work added new ideas to develop and to study. One of them is how online platforms develop new audiences nationally and internationally and how links can be created through it. &#x0D;

Marine invertebrates as proxies for early kelp use along the western coast of South America

Coastal societies have lived at the seaward edge of the Atacama Desert since at least 12,000 years ago. Kelp forest ecosystems provide evidence for important subsistence activity along the entire Chilean coast through fishing and gathering. Despite their importance, especially in hyperarid contexts with limited plant abundance, there is scarce evidence of kelp in archaeological contexts, hampering the study of kelp use in the past. In the present study, we use the presence of small marine invertebrates, inhabitants of stipes and holdfasts of macroalgae, as proxies that indicate past kelp presence. We analyze samples of three species of snails (Tegula atra,Tegula tridentata,andDiloma nigerrima) and one limpet (Scurria scurra) from nine archaeological sites dated between 7,000 and 500 cal years before present located around the area of Taltal (25°Lat S). Modern samples of these species were collected to reconstruct the size of fragmented archaeological shells and subsequently estimate the size of harvested kelps. Through this approach, we estimated the size and relative abundance of kelp used by coastal groups that inhabited the southern part of the Atacama Desert for around 6,500 years. Our results are a contribution to the scarce information on the presence and use of kelp in the prehistory of the Americas and contribute to comparative perspectives with other areas of the world where the use of kelp by humans in the past has already been explored.

Imagined Past and Future

Aztech Forgotten Gods, developed by Mexican studio Lienzo, has as its main setting a futuristic unconquered Aztec civilization. The developers took elements from the pre-Hispanic past and projected them into an imagined alternative future. Following this premise, the present article borrows from Penix-Tadsen the division of “the culture in the video game/the video game in the culture” and thus is divided into two parts. The first traces some of the cultural notions present in Aztech that can be found by examining some ideologies with an origin in the Mexican Post-Revolutionary regime from the 1920s. Initially, these ideologies considered the pre-Hispanic era as a “glorious past”; thereafter, toward the 1970s with the Tlatelolco massacre and economic crises, the past was rather seen as “tragic.” These ideologies are also related to ways of thinking about pre-Hispanic culture in relation to other beliefs and religions, or with a desire to “recover” the “Aztec” culture and essentialize it. The second part of this article categorizes and analyzes some of the contemporary cultural notions activated by Aztech Forgotten Gods. This is achieved by analyzing the reactions of internet users to the promotional videos of the video game on YouTube. These responses include the identification of some people as Mexican and their relation to ancient “Aztec” culture, similarities of the game’s music to the music from other video games, and issues of gender representation. The article discusses the complexities that come when a video game takes some aspects from contemporary identity, and some of the different ways the audience responds to cultural aspects of a video game. That is to say, it is fundamentally concerned with the relation between culture and video games.

Night Guest Tintin: The Origins of a Demonic Character in the Folklore and Archaeological Materials of Ecuador

Purpose of this research is the analysis of archaeological, ethnographical data devoted, first of all, to the demonic personage Tintin, typical for manteña-huancavilca beliefs in the coastal zone, and to the image of bat, and bat-like creatures in modern provincial folklore of Ecuadorian Indians.Results. A review was conducted of a wide range of archaeological materials (sculptures, images on pottery, seals, ceramic masks and whistles) known from the pre-Hispanic cultures that existed on the territories of modern Ecuador, Colombia, Peru and Mesoamerica. The article clearly demonstrates that Tintin is the reflection of the long-term mythological tradition which connects bats with the Underworld, shaman’s practices, rituals and fertility.Conclusion. Tintin is one of the multiple anthropo-zoomorphic characters connected with the Pre-Columbian mythological systems of ancient cultures in South America. The peculiarities of bats biological behavior (nocturnal activity, living in caves and specific sound production) are the reason why they are associated with the dark side of the Universe. from the other hand, help to keep the demonic image of Tintin in colonial period and today.

Indigenous and Black Confraternities in Colonial Latin America: Negotiating Status through Religious Practices

Indigenous and Black Confraternities in Colonial Latin America: Negotiating Status through Religious Practices

History of the management of talar fractures: from the fall of king Darius to Garibaldi’s bullet and from the earliest to current operative strategies

PurposeThis historical review aims to highlight the important roles of the talus in antiquity and to summarise the multiple attempts of managing talar fractures throughout history.MethodArchaeological, religious, artistic, literary, historical and scientific accounts were searched for the descriptions of talus fractures in different eras and their treatments to provide a thorough analysis of the evolution of trauma care up to the present.ResultsThis review shows how the talus has always had an important role in several societies: it was used as a die or considered to have a divinatory function in Mesopotamian civilisations, among Greeks and Romans, in Mongolia and in pre-Columbian Americas. Famous talus fractures are recorded in Herodotus’ Histories and in the Acts of the Apostles. We report the earliest injuries described and the first operative managements between 1600 and 1800, including the one that saved Garibaldi’s life in 1862, until the modern osteosynthesis by the first screws and nails and the current fixation by plating.ConclusionThe blooming of orthopaedic surgery at the end of nineteenth century and the high volume of traumas managed in the World Wars brought a better understanding of fracture patterns and their operative treatment. By the work of Hawkins and his classification, the introduction of the CT scan, a better knowledge of injury modalities and bone vascularisation, these challenging injuries finally land in the contemporary era without mysteries. The subsequently developed surgical procedures, although not guaranteeing success, greatly reduce the risk of necrosis and complication rate, improving patient outcomes.

Inter-Island production variability and Pre-Contact carrying capacity estimates: A geospatial analysis of taro farming in Rurutu, (Austral Islands, French Polynesia)

Our study explores pre-contact taro cultivation in pondfield irrigation systems on Rurutu (Austral Islands, French Polynesia). Understanding the size and extent of these systems is critical for estimating pre-contact human population, the ability to produce surplus, and socio-political dynamics. Since peak taro cultivation occurred across Polynesia prior to its historic documentation, the extent of wetland cultivation must be estimated from other sources. We explore pre-contact ecology and population levels on Rurutu using Landsat imagery and geospatial suitability analysis to estimate the maximum extent of the island’s pondfield irrigation systems. A primary goal was to develop an intra-island comparison of probable annual yields of taro to model pre-contact population sizes and their distribution at the system and socio-political district scales. Our model indicates the likely presence of 20 dormant taro systems on Rurutu. Our results point to significant intra-island differences of taro production on the island in the pre-contact era. We suggest that Rurutu’s Open socio-political structure was maintained, in part, by unequally dispersed arable taro land throughout the island which contributed to intra-island differences in annual yields and population densities resulting in endemic pre-contact warfare. We end by linking our data to ongoing conversations regarding resilience in Oceania and beyond.

Agriculture at the Center of the Aztec Horizon Calendar

Horizon calendars were a key part of time measurement for pre-Hispanic cultures in the Basin of Mexico. A new study suggests that calendars were used to manage the agricultural cycle.

“In Honorable Remembrance to All Generations”: Commemoration and the Making of Mormon Battalion Memory, 1921–2021

“In Honorable Remembrance to All Generations”: Commemoration and the Making of Mormon Battalion Memory, 1921–2021

El edificio histórico del Instituto de Botánica Darwinion de San Isidro: el mensaje silencioso del legado del Dr. Cristóbal M. Hicken

The Instituto de Botánica Darwinion (CONICET and ANCEFyN) was founded by the end of 1910 in the San Martín district by Cristóbal María Hicken as his private botanical research laboratory. Its name honors Charles Darwin for his brilliant theory of biological evolution. In 1924, Cristóbal M. Hicken made public his desire to bequeath the Instituto de Botánica Darwinion to the National State, a fact that only materialized in 1934. But in the early ‘30s, he decided to move the Instituto de Botánica Darwinion to a new building located in the San Isidro district, built especially to contain the institute and also his retirement home. After 87 years of existence and five building extensions, the historic building of the Instituto de Botánica Darwinion of San Isidro maintains its integrity and attracts the attention of both the public and architecture and design professionals. Based on the study of building characteristics and the thought of Cristóbal M. Hicken, the main objective of this work is to evaluate whether the external and internal structure of the historic Darwinion building in San Isidro, together with the ornamentation and distribution of original functions of each room, respond only to an aesthetic and functional design or if, in addition, they have a symbolic meaning, a vision of the world, a silent message for those who want (and know how) to understand. With this central purpose as a guide, we carried out a multidisciplinary investigation to reconstruct Cristóbal M. Hicken’s vision in the design of the Instituto de Botánica Darwinion of San Isidro. We started from the analysis of the original building in the San Martín district in search of any possible design background, to then focus the attention entirely on the building in San Isidro. Plans, public documents, correspondence, historical photographs, academic and dissemination articles of the time, pre-Hispanic South American ethnographic information, Argentine historical information between 1860 and 1930, and interviews with relatives and historians were studied. In short, the Instituto de Botánica Darwinion in San Isidro was created as a museum and a laboratory plus a home. The design of the museum agrees with the concept of “temple of Botany” manifested by Cristóbal M. Hicken himself, and whose first sign is observed in the etymology of the name of the institute. Its ornamentation is eclectic, since it combines symbols of Andean pre-Hispanic cultures with symbols of Western civilization, and it is structured according to each room (portal, front rooms, herbarium, library) and orientation (towards the street or towards the inner garden). This ornamentation works like a discourse in symbolic key with multiple messages for the visitor: it reflects an original, foundational, and ancient Argentine identity, which in turn communicates that the Darwinion is a place where a silent and fertile unveiling of the knowledge, of the secrets of evolution, takes place protected from evils and misfortunes by Nature itself. The design plan of the institute, the portal, the access terrace, and the internal garden convey desirable masonic values through the symbolic language, typical and traditional of Freemasonry. Likewise, we show evidence of Dr. Cristóbal M. Hicken’s great interest in Andean pre-Hispanic cultures, of his refined knowledge of Greco-Roman mythology, his belonging to Argentine Freemasonry and consequent ability to symbolic language, and his knowledge of construction, cosmology, and analytic geometry. For these reasons, and considering his participation in the supervision of the building work declared by the newspapers of his time, the probable direct intervention of Cristóbal M. Hicken is proposed both in the design of the building of the Instituto de Botánica Darwinion of San Isidro, as well as in the design of its ornamentation. In addition, evidence is provided of the possible intervention of Arturo Prins and Fernando de Estrada in the project of the building.

Review: A Maya Universe in Stone, edited by Stephen Houston

Review: <i>A Maya Universe in Stone</i>, edited by Stephen Houston

Spatiotemporal fluctuations of population structure in the Americas revealed by a meta-analysis of the first decade of archaeogenomes.

Since 2010, genome-wide data from hundreds of ancient Native Americans have contributed to the understanding of Americas' prehistory. However, these samples have never been studied as a single dataset, and distinct relationships among themselves and with present-day populations may have never come to light. Here, we reassess genomic diversity and population structure of 223 ancient Native Americans published between 2010 and 2019. The genomic data from ancient Americas was merged with a worldwide reference panel of 278 present-day genomes from the Simons Genome Diversity Project and then analyzed through ADMIXTURE, D-statistics, PCA, t-SNE, and UMAP. We find largely similar population structures in ancient and present-day Americas. However, the population structure of contemporary Native Americans, traced here to at least 10,000 years before present, is noticeably less diverse than their ancient counterparts, a possible outcome of the European contact. Additionally, in the past there were greater levels of population structure in North than in South America, except for ancient Brazil, which harbors comparatively high degrees of structure. Moreover, we find a component of genetic ancestry in the ancient dataset that is closely related to that of present-day Oceanic populations but does not correspond to the previously reported Australasian signal. Lastly, we report an expansion of the Ancient Beringian ancestry, previously reported for only one sample. Overall, our findings support a complex scenario for the settlement of the Americas, accommodating the occurrence of founder effects and the emergence of ancestral mixing events at the regional level.