Archaeoastronomy in Pre-Columbian America</Article-Title>
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
Review: [untitled] Author(s): John A. Eddy Reviewed work(s): Archaeoastronomy in Pre-Columbian America by Anthony F. Aveni Source: American Anthropologist, New Series, Vol. 79, No. 2 (Jun., 1977), pp. 497-498 Published by: Blackwell Publishing on behalf of the American Anthropological Association Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/673909 Accessed: 05/08/2010 18:44 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=black. Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission. JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. Blackwell Publishing and American Anthropological Association are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to American Anthropologist. http://www.jstor.org ARCHAEOLOGY 497 Pecos River (Texas) pictographs suggests the tropics. Lathrap also proposes an ex- that these art forms developed "in response planation for the appearance of the Chavin to cultural emanations originating in Meso- and "Great Art Styles." He reviews america," as part of an "island enclave of ceramicOlmc, sc uences relevant to his thesis and dilute Mesoamerican culture... far out in also the causal processes leading to the rise the Chichimec sea" (p. 51-52). of the Mesoamerican civilizations. His con- Kubler's contribution displays his impres- clusions, which suggest that some of the sive knowledge of the iconographic details of epistemological premises cited as being at prehistoric Mesoamerican art. He uses three the roots of our own current "ecological temple tablets from Palenque, to build a crisis" may also be found as part of the plausible set of linkages between Chavin-Olmec world views, will surely lead Teotihuacin and the Maya, employing, in readers into discussion if none of Lathrap's part, climatically-related costumes of the other ideas do. Despite the controversial two personages depicted on the plaques. But nature of some of his propositions, Lathrap other than the convention of the northern comes closest to an analysis of art and foreigner (from Teotihuacin), dressed in environment. By employing an explicit mufflers and capelets, in comparison to the theoretical perspective, and by attempting to tropical forest native (from Palenque) in his substantiate specific cultural processes that loincloth, environmental data or ideas play may lead to the presence, absence, or little role in the process of iconographic modifications of certain motifs or art forms, analysis. Whereas Kubler focuses on recon- Lathrap contributes to the credibility of the structing restricted historical events based on proposition that art forms may be indicators a few art forms, Furst draws extensively on of the cultural processes that obtained as collections primarily of ceramics and sculp- prehistoric human groups adapted to chang- ture from South and Mesoamerica to re- ing socioecological conditions. construct the nature as well as the origin, spread, and distribution of the use of hallucinogens, snuff, and toad venom. Botanical identifications of plants and mush- Archaeoastronomy in Pre-Columbian Amer- rooms depicted on murals, ceramics, and ica. Anthony F. Aveni, ed. Austin: Uni- other art forms, as well as ethnohistorical, versity of Texas Press, 1975. xv + 436 pp. mythological, and contemporary ethno- $16.50 (cloth). graphic evidence is marshalled to support the long and widespread traditions involving John A. Eddy hallucinogens in prehistoric South and Meso- National Center for Atmospheric Research america. Boulder, Colorado Brody's and Lathrap's papers stand out from the rest as well as from each other. This volume compiles 18 of the 26 papers Brody's concern is with the formal charac- presented at a joint Mexican-U.S. meeting on teristics of Southwestern prehistoric kiva wall pre-Columbian archaeoastronomy held in painting and historical Navajo dry painting, Mexico City in June 1973. I am a little the symbolic requirements that led to these surprised at what a popular book it has characteristics, and the subsequent trans- proven to be. Both of the copies in the formations of these art forms as they have University of Colorado libraries seem peren- become "readymade" ethnic art. His nially checked out, I see a number of private emphasis on the immediate environment of copies around, and somebody is always the viewers of and/or participants in the borrowing mine. artistic process has interesting implications A text it is not, nor is it lavishly for the resulting formal characteristics of the illustrated, as are so many of the fine, pictorial compositions. graphic archaeology books that tempt Lathrap's extensive (40 pages) contribu- browsers nowadays. To expedite publication tion is primarily a position paper for his it was offset printed from typewritten manu- theories on prehistoric cultural evolution in script, with resultant bleaching and dulling the New World. As an "unabashed of photographic illustrations. As with most propagandist for the cultural and agricultural books that report conference proceedings, priority of the moist tropics" (p. 116), he is the reader must beware of believing all that an odd participant in a conference on art of he sees, for the articles were not refereed, arid lands. Lathrap focuses on the attributes and are published without the benefit of and early appearance of various manifesta- editorial comment, or any record of the tions of a complex art style in northern questions and debate which one hopes came South America as support for "the essential from the floor at Mexico City. Such a correctness of Sauer's model" (p. 116), caveat, needless to say, seems especially which originally formulated the priority of needed in books which report new work in 498 AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST [79, 1977 ] fields as marginal and ill-defined as archaeo- in Mesoamerica, astronomy seems to have astronomy. Several of the papers are out- played so important a role in shaping early standing and conscientious reviews; others civilizations? Here Aveni has done science a are so specific or so speculative that one great service. And he has a second review wonders how they were chosen, and what volume on the way, by the same press, to ap- they are doing between the hard covers of a pear this year, covering a later conference book. Several would never have seen the held on the same topic at Colgate University. light of day in a scientific journal. Those who are interested in archaeo- Archaeoastronomy and pre-Columbian astronomy, or astroarchaeology, or mega- America are both broad topics, and the lithic astronomy, or whatever you call it, meeting made no obvious attempt to restrict will want to own both of them. them. Papers range geographically from Cali- fornia to Peru, with most emphasis on Mesoamerica and the Anasazi Southwest. Only two papers touch on the non-Pueblo Stonework of the Maya. Edward Ranney. Indians of Northern America, and only one Albuquerque: University of New Mexico treats America south of the Panama Canal. Press, 1974. xiv + 119 pp. $9.95 (paper). There is no general theme, and one of the papers, a ranging discourse by G. S. Hawkins Clemency Coggins of Stonehenge fame, escapes the bounds of Peabody Museum, Harvard University the conference by dealing chiefly with sites in Britain and Egypt. Six other papers could Stonework of the Maya is a photographic be considered reviews: an elegant summary essay on the architecture and sculpture of 12 on the key topic of native astronomy in lowland Maya sites. The author tells us his Mesoamerica by Michael Coe, an interesting photographs are primary and that they have review of Pueblo Indian sky traditions by been chosen in the hope of "providing an Florence Hawley Ellis, significant papers by intensely evocative expression of an ancient each of the two organizers of the meeting, culture" (p. viii). As a photographer Ranney Aveni and Horst Hartung of the University has succeeded in projecting a very personal of Guadalajara, a light sermon in the social view of ancient Maya stonework, but despite sciences mode by J. E. Reyman, and a his disclaimers, he has aimed to do more concluding summary, which adds little and than that. For each site he describes the reads like minutes-of-the-last-meeting, by setting, and gives some history and general Elizabeth Chesley Baity, whose major review background. These introductory sections are of world archaeoastronomy (in Current An- ambitious and on the whole accurate, but thropology 14, 1973) has become an in- they are not well integrated with the photo- dispensable bibliography of the field. Of the graphs which were chosen as photographs, 11 remaining papers, five deal with the Maya rather than as illustrations. calendar, codices, and glyph interpretations, The book begins with Tikal. Here, with four with rock art in the southwestern U.S., ten photographs, including three of plain one with American mounds, and one, by stelae, Ranney's personal vision becomes Alexander Marshack, details a wholly uncon- clear. His photographs are dark, with detail vincing interpretation of an Olmec mirror.