Zapotec sacred places,enduring and/or ephemeral: Reverence,realignment and commodification at an archaeological-tourist site in Southern Mexico

The abundant and rightfully famous archaeological ruins of Mexico, besides attesting to the grand achievements of pre-Columbian Mesoamerican culture, also serve as foci for the preservation and/or reaffirmation of contemporary indigenous religion and identity. Additionally, those same ancient ruins have been, in many instances, tidied up and reconfigured variously as outdoor classrooms and museums for the dissemination of a narrative of Mexican national identity, as the country's premier tourist attractions, and thus as sites eventually prized far more as engines of economic development than as educational or religious contexts. Where indigenous peoples are often imagined as passive victims in this commodification of their sacred sites, the case study featured in this article, namely, the twentieth century management of the internationally renowned Zapotec site of Mitla, Oaxaca reveals a native community playing a very active role, arguably the lead role, in the exploitation of the economic potential of its famed ruins. Indeed, the Mitleyenos' entrepreneurially astute reconfiguration of their local sacred geography, a realignment that balanced unprecedented economic challenges with on-going devotional commitments, suggests that the designation of various sites and buildings as ‘sacred’, albeit an extremely pressing matter, is also much more contingent and more transient than is generally assumed.     

The "Flower Songs" Tradition:Indigenous Histories as Depicted in Mexican Codices (14th-16th Centuries)

Mesoamerican groups never constituted a single political or linguistic unit from the 14 th to the 16 th centuries, but there are some fundamental and long-term cultural elements which allow us to link Mesoamerican peoples.One of the principal sources are the objects known as codices.In this paper I will discuss a particular aspect of Mesoamerican codices known as the"Flower Songs"tradition. I will discuss some fragments of stories depicted in codices proper to the Mixtec and Nahua traditions, and will show how modern scholars-including myself-reconstruct the meanings of some of their images.     

Modeling collective rule at ancient Teotihuacan as a complex adaptive system: Communal ritual makes social hierarchy more effective

Experts remain divided about the nature of the sociopolitical system of ancient Teotihuacan, which was one of the earliest and largest urban civilizations of the Americas. Excavations hoping to find compelling evidence of powerful rulers, such as a royal tomb, keep coming away empty-handed. But the alternative possibility of collective rule still remains poorly understood as well. Previously we used a computational model of this city’s hypothetical sociopolitical network to show that in principle collective rule based on communal ritual could be an effective strategy of ensuring widespread social coordination, as long as we assume that the network’s structure could be transformed via social learning and local leaders were not strongly subdivided. Here we extended this model to investigate whether increased social hierarchy could mitigate the negative effects of such strong divisions. We found a special synergy between social hierarchy and communal ritual: only their combination improved the extent of social coordination, whereas the introduction of centralization and top-down influence by themselves had no effect. This finding is consistent with portrayals of the Teotihuacan elite as religious specialists serving the public good, in particular by synchronizing the city’s ritual calendar with the rhythms of the stars.     

“花歌”传统:14～16世纪墨西哥手抄本中描绘的土著历史

14～16世纪的中美洲(Mesoamerica)各民族虽没有统一的政治和语言体系、书写系统,但却普遍流行一种记录在树皮或动物皮上的"手抄本"(codices)。这种反映其社会与文化全领域的手抄本主要以绘画方式讲述了有关宇宙的起源、神灵、王室的谱系、英雄史诗、历史,以及计时(count of time)和仪式等众多方面的主题。这种手抄本由特殊的仪式专家负责记录和解读,并且由其在公共场所朗读以强调手抄本中的古代传说,此被视为是"花歌"(Flower Songs)传统。仪式专家通过朗读与表演,由此而重新创造神话传说,并且据此而预测天气、选择仪式日期、治病等。15世纪欧洲殖民者到达美洲后,手抄本遭到严重破坏,与此同时,手抄本的内容也发生了改变。