Pre-columbian studies Research Papers - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

2025, Painting the skin. Pigments on bodies and codices in pre-Columbian Mesoamerica

IN THIS CHAPTER, I present a study of the color technology used in the painting of a Late Postclassic (ca. fourteenth-century) Mixtec codex. The study is based on experimental reconstructions of historical recipes used to produce painting materials. 1 The purpose of this study is twofold: the practice allows us to validate information from primary sources, while at the same time informing us about the use and preference of certain materials in a determined space and time. For three main reasons, my research involved records gathered from Nahua informants in the second half of the sixteenth century by Friar Bernardino de Sahagún and Dr. Francisco Hernández. The first is that they are the only known primary sources to have registered the materials and manufacturing procedures used by the indigenous painters with the intention of documenting their practices. The second is related to the stylistic and cultural associations of the Colombino Codex. As Elizabeth H. Boone (2000) has thoroughly explained, the Mixteca-Puebla style may be understood as a cultural horizon shared by different ethnic groups, especially the Mixtecs and the Nahua: a complex network that materialized through a body of religious ideas, symbolic systems, iconography, and aesthetics (Boone 2013:86-89). I propose that the materials and painting techniques recorded by the two sixteenth-century scholars may be associated particularly with the production of codices. In this respect, I draw attention to the possibility of a shared technology that could have been introduced along with other expressions through the Mixteca-Puebla style, a hypothesis that needs further consideration. The third reason, closely related to the second, considers the introduction of painting materials along the trade routes that the Aztec empire established through commerce and conquestnetworks that allowed the Nahua artists to purchase painting materials imported from different areas of Mesoamerica, as the Matrícula de tributos (1980) clearly demonstrates. We know what pigments Nahua painters used for the most part during the second half of the sixteenth century because they were partially documented in Sahagún's Historia general de las cosas de Nueva España (General History of the Things of New Spain), or the Florentine Codex, 2 and Hernández's Historia natural de Nueva España (Natural History of New Spain). However, many

2025, Art and the Senses in Ancient America. Materiality and Meaning

2023, Revista Española de Antropología Americana

2023, Word & Image 39, 2 (2023)

Pliny the Elder's Natural History, which contains an account of the origins of painting, offered sixteenth-century European artists a gift as they struggled to advance the status of painting as an intellectual rather than a mechanical art. The Roman authority was also read by Indigenous intellectuals in New Spain; they described their autochthonous painting practice in an account written in the Nahuatl language to respond to Pliny. This article offers a new translation of their account and a careful analysis that draws on recent work by material scientists to construct an Indigenous ontology of the image, and gives a comparison to the Plinian ideal. Crucial to both accounts is the role of the shadow as it relates to the nature of representation.

2023

Este es un artículo de acceso abierto distribuido bajo los términos de la licencia Creative Commons Atribución-NoComercial-SinDerivar (by-nc-nd) Spain 3.0.

2023, VI Congreso Panamericano de Historia de la Medicina (Online) Academia Panamericana de Historia de la Medicina

Aunque apoyándose en un concepto sobrenatural sobre los orígenes de las enfermedades y enfoques y tratamientos de naturaleza mágico-religiosa, la medicina de los pueblos pre-columbinos comprendía un conocimiento racional y empírico con un inesperado y probado tratamiento eficaz de heridas en trepanaciones. En el siglo dieciséis, tras la llegada de españoles a los países americanos (Antillas), numerosos ejemplos para el manejo certero de medicinas curativas de estrecho margen terapéutico llamaron la atención de los exploradores españoles, que reconocieron la superioridad de los curanderos nativos en ciertos campos de la medicina y cirugía. Pasó mucho tiempo antes de que los médicos europeos pudieran aprender a manejar el extracto de corteza de chinchona, para citar uno de los más desafiantes. Las culturas precolombinas también fueron precursoras en las vías de administración de la medicación, utilizando la masticación, y el enema (utilizado principalmente para la evacuación intestinal, según la teoría humoral galénica, desde la medicina greco-romana), como vías fáciles, rápidas y efectivas de acceder al sistema circulatorio. Este ensayo se centrará en ejemplos sorprendentes de la superioridad en artes curativas nativas del Nuevo Mundo, apoyado por imágenes de piezas precolombinas del Museo de Farmacia y Salud de Lisboa.

2023, Latin American and Latinx Visual Culture

Following an introductory essay, six short contributions by academics and museum curators in the United States (US) and Europe tackle the current state and future of Pre-Columbian visual culture studies. They explore the field’s impressive growth in this century, as well as some of the dangers it currently faces as a result of that growth. Several trace its present state to its origins and the part played by early Mexican and US nationalism, the popularity of world’s fairs, and the civil rights movement, among other factors. Also considered are problems inherent in the late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century separation of the preconquest past from the newly labeled colonial period, as well as the concurrent embrace of the term “Pre-Columbian.” Other essays take a hard look at the present and future relation of art history to archaeology and cross-disciplinary studies within the field, which is defined in part by their dependence on, or skepticism regarding, iconography. Whereas...

2023, Brill

By digging through the stratigraphy of the history of ideas we can find within and beyond Marxism an ‘aleatory current’ that values the role of chance in history. Using this perspective, the book builds a case for a historical materialism that is stripped of all teleology. Starting in the ancient Mediterranean with Epicurus, it traces the history of conceiving history as plural up to Marxism and modern science. It shows that concrete historical ‘worlds’ such as ancient Mesoamerica and Eurasia cannot be reduced to a single template. Affirming the potentiality of a future non-capitalist ‘world’, it invalidates any ‘end of history’ thesis.

2023

n 1984 th.e American folklorist Alan Dundes published a provocative analysis of German folk sayings about excrement. The book's title, Life Is Like a Chicken Coop Ladder, exemplifies the consistently negative role played by anal excretions in the lore he collected, for it derives from a popular German expression: "Life is like a chicken (coop) ladder-short and shitty."l That the word beschissen, or "shitty, " is here a metaphor for the hardships and unpleasant trivia that obstruct our rise to success and happiness is made clearer in another version of the same expression: "Life is like a chicken (coop) ladder-A person can't get ahead because of all the shit [in one's way]."2 The use of dung to signify that which is bad or undesirable is widespread in the Euro-American world, and dates back to the entrenchment of Christianity. In large part, however, such symbolism has been confined, as in Germany, to the realm of popular, as opposed to elite, culture. In the arena of institutionalized religion, in particular, excrement, like sex, has been traditionally taboo. When mention of it does surface in Christian discourse, it predictably signifies FIG. 1 Defecating man eating excrement, Codex Borgia, pl. 10

2022, Pre-Columbian Central America, Colombia, and Ecuador: Toward an Integrated Approach

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2022, Trace

Resumen: En la mitología mesoamericana, varios espacios llevan el nombre de "Lugar del Color". Este ensayo investiga sus rasgos característicos y su función en los mitos, mediante el estudio de la documentación colonial del México central y de los códices prehispánicos de la Mixteca. Con este ejercicio comparativo-enfocado principalmente en la gesta de los héroes Quetzalcóatl de Tollan y 8 Venado Garra de Jaguar-se descubre que, además de estar asociados al color, estos lugares míticos compartían otros puntos comunes, como tener vínculos con extensiones de agua, así como nexos con el dios solar y su territorio. En cuanto a su función, el presente estudio revela que los Lugares del Color eran espacios donde ocurría el inicio de una serie de ciclos, cuyo arquetipo era el curso del astro solar. Finalmente, este ensayo confirma el provecho que es posible sacar de la mitología comparada en el contexto mesoamericano, porque el cotejo de episodios míticos nahuas y mixtecos echa luz sobre aspectos de su contenido y significado que no se alcanzan a comprender con los corpus de fuentes procedentes de cada una de estas áreas culturales.

2022

espanolEste articulo estudia los colores del manuscrito nahuatl conocido como Codice borbonico y los compara con las caracteristicas cromaticas de su primera reproduccion a color, un fotocromo realizado a finales del siglo xix. A partir de un examen minucioso del original, la primera parte del articulo presenta los atributos fisicos del Codice borbonico, enfocandose, en particular, en la paleta de colores que fue empleada para pintarlo. A continuacion se describen los rasgos distintivos y la proyeccion de la primera edicion a color del manuscrito, publicada por Ernest-Theodore Hamy en 1899. Finalmente, el articulo subraya que, si bien existen hoy en dia verdaderas ediciones facsimilares del Borbonico, la primera reproduccion del documento merece seguir siendo consultada por los americanistas, porque da acceso a una imagen hoy perdida del Borbonico, al mismo tiempo que exhibe colores saturados que recuerdan las cualidades cromaticas de los codices nahuas prehispanicos. EnglishThis ar...

2022

Apesar da escrita de uma dissertação ser um tanto solitária, o processo que envolve a pesquisa e investigação é sempre um trabalho que representa muitas pessoas e instituições. Uma série de encontros e aprendizados que transformam a nós mesmos e aos nosso trabalho. A todas essas pessoas não posso deixar de agradecer e mencioná-las. Ao meu orientador, Eduardo Natalino dos Santos, com enorme admiração, pela orientação, trabalho e parceria que não começaram nesse mestrado. Pelo apoio em todas as fases dessa pesquisa e ao longo dos anos. Por sempre me inspirar a ser uma pesquisadora melhor. Obrigada tlatoani! À Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES), pelo financiamento concedido nas fases iniciais dessa pesquisa. À Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP), pelo apoio e financiamento fundamentais, que permitiram a concretização dessa pesquisa.

2021

This chapter argues that Nations and cultures have always interacted with each other and that the interactions between much of the world and Europe since the middle of the fifteenth century created dependencies and interdependencies which established the basic structure of the modern global system. Further, this globalism has tended to favor certain social formations over others. The last five centuries have witnessed the imperatives of Europe’s efforts to expand its borders in all ways: economically, culturally, and politically. Thus, since roughly the middle of the Fifteenth Century, in seeking "gold", European nations imposed their "god" on much of the world, thereby creating for their "glory" huge empires which formed the basis of the contemporary global system.

2020, Neue Fischer Weltgeschichte, Band 16:Frankfurt: Fischer

2019, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute

2019

Resumen En este artículo presentaremos un corpus iconográfico mochica conformado por vasijas de asa estribo, asa lateral y cántaros en los cuales se destacan en relieve personajes muertos involucrados en una danza. Con una metodología de análisis fundamentada en la convergencia de la semántica visual y la etnoarqueomusicología, abordaremos cuestiones referentes al mundo mochica observables en estas vasijas. Entre ellos, discutiremos aspectos ontológicos de la producción sonora, así como el tema de la muerte y el pasaje entre mundos en la sociedad mochica. Además, suponemos que las variaciones iconográficas entre los distintos subtemas de vasijas encontrados en nuestro análisis pueden indicar una distribución regional de este tema, con una producción especializada de los subtemas en valles específicos.

2019, Latin American & Latinx Visual Culture, vol. 1, no. 1, pp. 121-127

2018, Ancient Mesoamerica

This article explores the materiality of the colors of some Nahua codices from pre-Columbian Mexico, comparing data obtained from two bodies of evidence: scientific investigation—through macroscopic inspection and physicochemical studies—and historical accounts. In doing so, this article shows that the Colonial period literature contributes to the understanding of the creation process of the codices and their chromatic palettes, in particular regarding some coloring materials, the identification of which still remains a challenge for scientists. The comparison carried out in this article also elucidates certain aspects of the historical texts on Mesoamerican colors, which were previously poorly understood or misinterpreted.

2018, TRACE

In Mesoamerican mythology, several spaces bear the name of “Place of Color”. This essay investigates their distinctive features and their function in myths, through the study of Central Mexican colonial sources and of Mixtec pre-Columbian codices. This comparative effort —specially focused on the feat of Quetzalcoatl of Tollan and 8 Venado Garra de Jaguar — shows that besides their relation to color, these mythical places shared common traits, for instance they were associated with stretches of water, as well as with the Sun god and its territory. As about their function, the present work reveals that the Places of Color were spaces in which originated a series of cycles, directly inspired on the archetype of the celestial course of the sun. Finally, this essay confirms the benefit to be obtained from compared mythology in the Mesoamerican context, since the compar- ison of Nahua and Mixtec mythical episodes illuminates some aspects of their content and meaning, which are impossible to comprehend if we keep ourselves confined to the corpus of sources from each of these cultural areas.

2017, Volume 34, Issue 1

Early 20th-century exhibits of non-Western objects are
today often viewed through the prism of Modernist Primitivism,
that is, the avant-garde desire for unmediated
confrontation with these objects’ aesthetic form or spiritual
force. This has been the usual interpretation of an exhibition
of pre-Columbian pieces held in Paris in 1928. A study
of archival materials and display practices related to this
event, and to a sister show staged several months later in
Toledo, Ohio, reveals that the organizing anthropologists
and curators were pursuing quite different aims. These
case studies provide rich examples of the conceptual shifts
that occurred between the initial ‘‘discovery’’ of non-Western
art by avant-garde artists and its later institutional
recognition. Focusing particularly on the Toledo installation,
thus far entirely neglected by scholars, this
article further supports the call to broaden the story
of the early transatlantic re-evaluation of non-Western art
beyond the Paris–New York continuum.

2017

In the last decade of the Twentieth Century, the major theme that dominated most aspects of human interactions was that of invasive and extensive global connections. This trend is set to continue and perhaps

2017

PowerPoint slides for a presentation in the symposium, “Tras una herencia cultural milenaria: contribuciones de Richard Cooke a la arqueología del Área Istmo-Colombiana,” XI Congreso de la Red Centroamericana de Antropología, Universidad... more

2017

PowerPoint slides that accompanied a presentation in the symposium, "2012, the Maya, and the New Age: Crossing Borders Both Ways," at the 111th Annual Meeting of the American Anthropological Association, San Francisco, California,... more

2016

This is the English draft of a chapter published in Spanish as "Culturas chibchas del litoral caribeño: Explorando las conexiones precolombinas entre Colombia y Costa Rica" in Archaeología del Área Intermedia, edited by Cristóbal Gnecco... more

2016

On September 15, 2007, the PCS/DC presented its annual symposium on the ancient cultures of the steamy tropics between the Mesoamerican and Andean cultures. As moderator of the symposium, Dr. John W. Hoopes presented the opening talk that
discussed the region between the southern frontiers of Mesoamerica and the northern frontiers of the Central Andes-often referred to as the "Intermediate Area" -that remains unfamiliar to many specialists. A growing body of multidisciplinary
scholarship from the fields of historical linguistics, human genetics, archaeology, ethnohistory, and sociocultural anthropology offers a new perspective on the cultures that connected southern Mesoamerica with the northern Andes and the Caribbean Sea with the Pacific Ocean. Hoopes' talk provided an introduction to how scholars are addressing this new paradigm and discussed its implications for Pre-Columbian studies. It also described the region's principal iconographic motifs as they are represented in ceramics, stone sculpture, jade carving, and metallurgy and explained what they reveal about ancient belief systems of the predominantly Chibchan-speaking peoples and their neighbors in Costa Rica, Panama, and Colombia. Dr. Hoopes received his Ph.D. in Anthropology from Harvard University. He is currently Associate Professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Kansas. He is also a courtesy curator at the Museum of Anthropology at the university. His research interests include the archaeology of Central and South America, Chibchan culture, internet archaeology, cultural evolution, prehistoric trade and exchange, origins of agriculture and sedentism, and prehistoric ceramics.

2016

PDF version of a PowerPoint presentation for the annual symposium of the Pre-Columbian Society of Washington, D.C., September 15, 2007.

2015, El Universo de Sahagún. Pasado y presente 2011

2015, RES. ANTHROPOLOGY AND AESTHETICS

2015

This is a version of my research on the carved stones at Chavín that was written especially for a religious studies audience, as part of an edited volume exploring new research on religiosity and material culture inspired by 'new materialist' philosophers. The rest of the book is great -- good overview by prominent religious studies scholar Sally Promey, and fascinating case studies, mostly from Europe and Euro-America.

2014

This Presentation addresses two things: (1) the cultures that preceded Columbus' visit to the New World and (2) the maps and motivation for his persistent attempt to "discover" the New World.

2014

Columbus had a wealth of information, including maps, that he pursued and then used in order to explore the Atlantic in search of The Indies. He not only used fairly accurate maps, but probably had a guide to lead him to already... more

2013

Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, in Washington, DC, is an institute of Harvard University dedicated to supporting scholarship internationally in Byzantine, Pre-Columbian, and Garden and Landscape Studies through fellowships, meetings, exhibitions, and publications. Located in Georgetown and bequeathed by Robert Woods Bliss and Mildred Barnes Bliss, Dumbarton Oaks welcomes scholars to consult its books, images, and objects, and the public to visit its garden, museum, and historic house for lectures and concerts.