FOR THOSE OF YOU....

Some of you have expressed a desire to know more about exactly what it is my work is about. Those of you who know or couldn't care less should ignore this post.... Those of you who are interested, read on! Below, I've pasted an informal introduction to my studies that I wrote as part of one of my current attempts to get some money. It is a VERY non-academic introduction to how I think about things. Those who want to know more about the pure archaeology of it all, just skip to the post below. I'm trying to wrestle some pictures into a posting I've already written about more "daily life" fieldwork stuff, but for now you can get the text under the heading "La Patrona".

In 1529, Bernardino de Sahagún arrived in New Spain, one of 19 Franciscan missionaries. During the following sixty years, he learned Nahuatl, the language of the Aztecs, he taught indigenous men Spanish and Latin. He taught them to read and write, he taught catechism, he trained them to be priests, and all around, he saw what he believed to be the complete destruction of the pre-Hispanic world. This was not an unreasonable assumption. Modern estimates place the indigenous death toll at 90% of the population in the first 100 years after the arrival of Cortes (Knight 2002). This was devastation on an unimaginable level for both the indigenous population and Europeans[1]. How could any culture survive such ruin?

Sahagún was an unusual man. He was not only a missionary, he was a humanist, a scholar, and he was, many argue, the first anthropologist to set foot in the New World. The destruction he witnessed seems to have worried him. He was, of course, in favor of converting the Indians to Christianity, but he wanted to document the world that had existed prior to the Spanish arrival before it completely and irrevocably disappeared. He did so in the form of a twelve volume encyclopedia known today as the Florentine Codex. The Codex contains descriptions of everything in the Aztec world: history; a complete sketch of their deities; Aztec social structure; their catalogue of the natural world. He wrote his encyclopedia in both Spanish and Nahuatl with the help of native informants who had lived in pre-conquest times. His informants most likely created the lavish illustrations accompanying the text. It is an incredible piece of scholarship, by any standard, and today it provides us with our most reliable glimpse of pre-conquest Mexico.

Early in the summer of 2004, I was in Central Mexico visiting a project I had no intention of becoming a part of. I spent the first two years of my graduate education determined to study the archaeology of ethnic identity in Oaxaca. On my way to Oaxaca and the project I thought I was to spend the next few years with, I stopped in Puebla to introduce myself to the then-director of a new project studying the history, archaeology, and anthropology of the Hacienda San Miguel Acocotla. Dr. Harold Juli was leading a field school of students from the University of the Americas in Cholula, Mexico. Their subject was ethnoarchaeology and ethnology, in preparation for excavations of the Hacienda that Dr. Juli had scheduled for the following summer. I sat down and spoke with Dr. Juli and his students, largely with the intention of making connections in the small but burgeoning field of Mexican historical archaeology.

The students had been collecting oral histories and conducting basic interviews in the descendant community of La Soledad Morelos. Out of curiosity, I asked them what the people of La Soledad Morelos had to say about animals. My specialty is the analysis of animal bones, and, regardless of my interest in a project, this is a question I always ask. The students started giving me the expected list of animals that the people of La Soledad Morelos recognize as part of their world, ranging from European-introduced domesticates such as cow and goat to the native domesticates of turkey and dog. One of the students laughed and said, “Oh, and then there are the animals that don’t really exist!” The rest of the students laughed dismissively, but my curiosity was piqued.

“Animals that don’t exist?” I asked. The student nodded and proceeded to offer a description of a two-headed snake, completely unknown to modern science. The other students laughed and supported her with their own accounts of this mysterious two-headed snake. I was fascinated. The description could have been taken, word for word, from Sahagún’s volume on natural history in which he describes an Aztec “two-headed snake.”

I had a new dissertation project. Since 2004, I have assumed directorship of The Acocotla Project with the assistance and support of the faculty and students of the University of the Americas. My dissertation examines the maintenance of pre-Columbian identities through foodways (the practices surrounding the acquisition, preparation, distribution, and consumption of food). Foodways is not just about food, but about all the “stuff” that comes with it. Imagine any festive, celebratory meal. You have to plan a menu appropriate to the occasion, you have to get the food, you have to prepare it (for which you need equipment), you have to serve it (which requires more equipment). Serving food requires deciding who among your guests receives what portion. After you’ve decided on the food but before your guest arrive, you have to decide what to wear and how to set the table (and the tone) for the meal to come. Every single step in this unconsciously complex process is culturally-loaded. Decisions made are based on social identity. Standing at the head of the Thanksgiving table, you have to decide who will receive white meat and who gets dark. The answer to this dilemma isn’t obvious to those outside your cultural parameters. The material manifestations of this process are the basis for my study.

My excavations at the Hacienda Acocotla are producing large quantities of food remains in the form of bones and charred plant remains, as well as the vessels used to prepare and serve the meals. As recently as the end of the 19th century, women prepared food using traditional, pre-Columbian stone tools. The material remains indicate that the pre-conquest corn tortilla accompanied meat from European-introduced domesticates. Families sat down in front of the calpanaria to share a meal served on ceramics painted brightly in the Spanish tradition but produced locally. The women of the family made themselves pretty with brightly colored glass beads and brass and copper jewelry. The men proudly wore pre-Columbian-style ear spools that they had made themselves out of a reworked piece of brick. The undoubtedly lively conversation that passed among the diners was in Nahuatl, the language of the Aztecs.

The grandchildren and great grandchildren of those diners sit down to similar meals today. Superficial things have changed. Spanish is the only language spoken, and the ear spools are absent. In spite of this disconnect, much is still the same. Today, it is Gaudencio’s birthday, and everyone in the village is invited to eat. The women of his family spend two days preparing a delicious mole using exclusively pre-Columbian ingredients. I ask them about the ingredients. They turn their noses up when I ask if they use the European-introduced chicken. Laughing, they gently explain to the ignorant gringa that chicken is awful in mole; the only meat ingredient for a good mole is turkey. We sit in the courtyard together around a modern “reproduction” of the ceramic vats (or cazuelas) that I have excavated at more than one pre-conquest site. While we sip our beer, we toss chopped chiles and turkey into the mole simmering over an open fire. We watch while the most accomplished cooks prepare an indigo-colored tortilla out of blue corn. Though many Mexicans claim that tortilla machines liberated the woman of Mexico, the women of La Soledad Morelos are rightly proud of their hand-made tortillas.

Eventually, after hours of preparation, the mole is ready and the party begins. The women’s jewelry is indistinguishable from what we find archaeologically. The dishes we eat off of, while clearly modern versions, owe their design to those I find in my excavations at the Hacienda. The food we are served owes nothing to European heritage and is drawn exclusively from pre-Columbian ingredients. When it comes time for me to take my leave, there is a rush. The hostess must prepare the ētecate, a Nahuatl “doggie bag.” No guest may leave without a portion of the food from any party in La Soledad Morelos, and though nobody speaks Nahuatl, there is no known Spanish translation of this word.

This is the basis of my dissertation. These unspoken continuities intrigue me. Today, the people of La Soledad Morelos identify as mestizo rather than indigenous because it is fashionable. To be indigenous in Mexico today is to belong to the lowest class. Yet, with the exception of the most blatant material items, they maintain indigenous practices, identifiable in the archaeological and ethnohistoric records, from times pre-dating the Spanish Conquest. The label they apply to themselves is important, but so is the material reality upon which they construct the label. That material foundation is what I study, from the founding of the Hacienda San Miguel Acocotla in 1577 through the present day.

[1] For comparison, the highest estimates for death due to the infamous European Black Plague are, at their highest, 30% Ziegler, P. 1970. The black death. Harmondsworth, Eng.: Penguin Books..