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Ethnohistory 47.3-4 (2000) 802-806



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Book Review

Native Traditions in the Postconquest World:
A Symposium at Dumbarton Oaks, 2nd through 4th October 1992

Cartographic Encounters:
Perspectives on Native American Mapmaking and Map Use. Edited by G. Malcolm Lewis


Native Traditions in the Postconquest World: A Symposium at Dumbarton Oaks, 2nd through 4th October 1992. Edited by Elizabeth Hill Boone and Tom Cummins. (Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks, 1998. vii + 480 pp., introduction, illustrations, index.)

Cartographic Encounters: Perspectives on Native American Mapmaking and Map Use. Edited by G. Malcolm Lewis. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998. xx + 318 pp., preface, introduction, illustrations, maps, index. $60.00 cloth.)

Although different in purview, these two volumes provide keen insight into new developments and directions in the study of indigenous imagery cultural practices. Native Traditions in the Postconquest World presents cutting-edge research on colonial Latin America, while Cartographic Encounters: Perspectives on Native American Mapmaking and Map Use breaks new ground in North American history. Covered in these accounts are topics fundamental to any postcontact indigenous history: how cultural memories and traditions are sustained; how new cultural forms were invented; and how twentieth-century modes of interpretation operate on objects produced through or for indigenous-European interaction. Less explicitly, though no less interestingly, both books help raise a single provocative [End Page 802] question. In a postcontact world what constitutes recognizable—if not also authentic—forms of indigenous expression?

The Columbian quincentennial provided the impetus for Native Traditions, and a significant contribution to Latin American studies results. The authors, who come from a number of allied fields, including anthropology, art history, ethnohistory, and linguistics, offer readers a wealth of solid historical research and sophisticated interpretive analysis. By design this volume centers on the Nahua and Inka realms, although some attention is devoted to the Maya. The articles are grouped as couplets or triads according to theme (i.e., language, religious practice, visual culture) with the Mexican and Peruvian materials often juxtaposed. This structure enhances the effectiveness of the book, for it encourages consideration of parallel but distinct perspectives on similar issues.

The initial section of Native Traditions contains three essays that together anchor the volume intellectually. Elizabeth Hill Boone’s introduction does an excellent job locating the compendium within past and current developments in colonial Latin American history. A comparative piece by Angeliki E. Laiou describes the complexities of colonial interaction in Byzantine Europe and poses pertinent questions for scholars of colonial practice more generally. And James Lockhart brings to bear his deep knowledge and rigorous thought in a comparison of Nahua, Quechua, and Maya experiences.

The other authors all examine histories in which continuity and innovation are writ large, although each focuses on a discrete set of objects, documents, and practices. Thus, the Andean essays treat litigation records (John V. Murra), keros, tianas, and textiles (Tom Cummins), poetry, song, and weaving (Bruce Mannheim), family values (Irene Silverblatt), indigenous memories and ritual performances (Frank Salomon, Sabine MacCormack, María Rostworowski). The essays on Mexico center on painted manuscripts (Boone, Stephanie Wood), Aztec histories (Susan D. Gillespie), Christian pageantry (Louise M. Burkhart), and indigenous writing (Frances Karttunen). In a thoughtful commentary Cummins reflects on the character of colonial Latin American sources as well as the larger issues raised by the volume’s authors.

Ultimately, Native Traditions makes a compelling case for the material force of things and the performative power of writing. It also illuminates how ritual acts and spoken words become fundamental to the survival of indigenous cultures in the postconquest world. There is nothing explicitly sermonic here, yet this volume sets both a new standard and a fresh stage for research. To wit, facility with indigenous-language documents emerges as indispensable to scholarly work in this field. The volume also [End Page 803] demonstrates the crucial role that objects and images played in colonial claims to identity. No less striking are the models invoked to discuss cross-cultural interaction. For instance, syncretism surfaces only rarely...

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