Archaeology Institute/ Twenty Seconds to Immortality

[zorrah at ATT.NET]

>Significantly, your questions and challenges (not to mention, elements
>of your website) fit the frameworks of analysis that I have observed to date
>among those I now refer to as "neo-Mexica
>revisionists."

Dr. Ruben G. Mendoza:

Please save your discriminatory labels for all your experimental cows out there that are willing to be branded with them:  "neo-Mexica revisionist," "neo-Mexica revisionist" (or neo-post-modernist Mexica-Xicano), "neo-Mexica revisionists" - I'm not.

NO thanks—for your reductive interpretations, generalizations, and unfounded relationships.  The world, its cultures, and its peoples cannot be - all that simplified and reduced into neat little categories and labels as you present them to be.

I had higher expectations for your response, especially from a professional.
What a disappointment.

citlalin xochime
Graduate Student
New Mexico State University
English Department




> Nahua language and culture discussion <NAHUAT-L at LISTS.UMN.EDU> writes:
> >Question:  Can you please operationalize what you mean by the "reality of the
> Mexica Aztec and
> >other Mesoamerican civilizations" in your final sentence?  Are you trying to
> reconstruct what you think was the reality of the Mexica Aztec or what exactly
> do you mean?  Also, how does this
> >"reality" connect with results from an experiment on a synthetic human cadever?
> How can the results of this experiment and a citation from Francis Berdan -
> provide anyone with a credible
> >representation of the "reality of the Mexica Aztec"?  What is this reality
> based on - theory?
> >
> >Thanks for your response,
> >
> >citlalin xochime
> >Nahuatl Tlahtolkalli
>
> Citlalin Xochime,
>
>         As I am in the midst of an RTP review of a colleague, for the moment I
> would like to respond in brief, and by way of explanations proferred by me in a
> previous response to another neo-Mexica
> revisionist perspective presented in yet another list-serv context and
> "reality".  First, the specific "reality" that I am most interested in at the
> moment concerns the "neo-Mexica revisionist" (or
> neo-post-modernist Mexica-Xicano) reality that has become quite vocal, and often
> antagonistic to university faculty and other students who raise questions such
> as those raised in my earlier post of
> today.
>
>         As a professor at the California State University, Monterey Bay, where I
> teach such courses as "Art of the Aztec Empire" and "Ancient Maya
> Civilizations," I soon discovered that a number of my
> Latino, Mexicano, and Xicano students (and please do note that I count myself as
> a member of the Xicano reality) had adopted a polemical rhetoric often seen
> predominantly and exclusively among the
> more zealous members of the European and American "denial movements" that
> continue to proclaim such realities as that that espouses the belief that the
> Nazi-inspired holocaust of WWII is little more
> than a politically-motivated fiction.  The "reality" in question has become the
> basis for a long-term personal interest in how it is that denial movements,
> ethnocentricity, and nationalism often go
> hand in hand to elevate, or quash, those elements of history, art, and science
> that such groups see as unsavory or demeaning.
>
>         Significantly, your questions and challenges (not to mention, elements
> of your website) fit the frameworks of analysis that I have observed to date
> among those I now refer to as "neo-Mexica
> revisionists."  Please do note, however, I do not consider said position to be
> without merit.  In fact, if anything, consideration and analysis of those
> questions raised by "neo-Mexica revisionists"
> have in fact led me to more closely examine and analyze those diatribes that
> obtain between both proponents and detractors of the "paradise lost" vision and
> reality of ancient Mesoamerica.
> Ultimately, I believe that the shortcomings and failings of archaeology and
> ethnohistory, and the resurgence of ethnocentrically-defined movements and
> nationalistically inspired academic agendas,
> continue to cloud the bloody waters of human sacrifice, conflict, and warfare in
> the Americas and elsewhere.
>
>         One neo-Mexica revisionist, who also happens to be a personal
> acquaintance of mine, has taken to using his pride in his adoptive Mexica roots
> to teach Xicano youth about the beauty of their
> ancestors and their contributions...particularly as concerns dissuading our
> youth from engaging in gangland conflict and violence.  Others, on the other
> hand, profane the discussions by engaging in
> ad hominem attacks on any and all archaeologists and ethnohistorians who have
> worked to sustain Mexica Aztec studies for the better part of the past five
> centuries.  From Sahagun to Carrasco, they
> have been attacked as racist, or characterized as one revisionist put it, as
> "arqueolocos."  Ironically, while these same revisionists question the facts
> presented by Sahagun and others, they
> nevertheless persist in using data and cultural descriptions from these same
> scholars to "reconstruct" a "separate reality" of their respective heritage.
> Other neo-Mexica revisionists, predominantly
> Xicano, have written poetry decrying the blasphemies of the academy regarding
> their ancestors, while at the same time glorifying the bloodshed and violence of
> street gang warfare and drive-by
> shootings.  Again, my objective here is not to denigrate, but to comprehend the
> very roots and affinities of the phenomenon in question.  As a scientist I
> suspect that you would more than fully
> understand that reality is relative!
>
>         If anything, like you, I seek to promote a forensic approach to those
> vestiges of the conflict in question that take many forms.  Interestingly, no
> matter how many questions asked, or "facts"
> interrogated, the arguments can be perpetuated indefinitely in this instance.
> The following was my specific proposal to another neo-Mexica revisionist
> perspective brought to bear in another context
> (I will respond to other specifics latter today or tomorrow):
>
>
>         "I am in fact in agreement with your assessments.  It is precisely for
> said reasons that I would advocate that blood residue analysis of cult objects,
> including axe blades, statuary, and vessels
> (e.g., Ocelotl Cuauhxicalli), be confined to those cult objects retrieved from
> pre-Hispanic archaeological contexts (e.g., Leonardo Lopez Lujan, 1994).  In
> addition, the analysis of bone collagen in
> fact hold the potential to provenience those proteins and amino acids specific
> to food group sources that would assist in the identification of from whence
> such foods were consumed.  This was in fact
> recently done to provenience the origins of an early Copan dynast to the
> Northern Yucatan.  Given that the forensic analysis of bone and blood residues
> now holds the potential to identify human blood
> serum as old as 90,000 years BP, and that corallary analysis of amino acids and
> proteins will permit the identification of (ethnic) origins, I believe that in
> this way we can begin to assess Spanish
> contact claims pertaining to the those core issues that remain as per the
> question of human sacrifice.  I am particularly concerned about the inadequacy
> of forensic data pertinent to the following
> questions:
>
> (a)  Does there exist a body of prima facie forensic evidence to contest or
> support recent claims by neo-Mexica revisionists (e.g., Tlapoyawa, 2002;
> Mendoza, 2001; 2003) that Spanish documentation
> for the existence of human sacrifice in Mesoamerica is little more than a
> fabrication of Spanish conquistadores and clerics?
>
> (b) If, in fact, we can demonstrate that blood sacrifice was a matter of fact
> among such groups as the Mexica Aztec, do we not have access to a sufficient
> body of osteological evidence to specify the
> forms of blood sacrifice that may have been practiced (e.g., human heart
> excision, decapitation, etc.)?
>
> (c) Given both popular lore, and neo-Mexica revisionist claims that if, in fact,
> human sacrifice was practiced, it was only another more radical form of
> auto-sacrifice in which only those
> self-selecting or volunteering were given over to the gods; then can either
> blood residue, DNA, or bone collagen studies settle the matter of who
> specifically was targeted for such a divine rite?
>
> and, finally,
>
> (d) Given revisionist claims that the practice of tearing a human heart from a
> living, breathing, victim is not technically, or surgically, feasible with stone
> tools (or other more modern methods
> that require specialized instruments), how then do the Matamoros cult killings
> of the 1980's (wherein a single individual or cult leader accomplished the same
> task unassisted by attendants) provide
> an "ethnographic" analog that might in turn settle this latter question?
>
>         So, given the many questions that remain unanswered, and the many
> assumptions that both scholars and the lay public make about virtually every
> architectonic feature on the Mesoamerican landscape
> (i.e., the notion that all "altar" platforms were in essence sacrificial sites),
> how then can we fruitfully and effectively begin to bring resolve to the
> questions that continue to vex Amerindian and
> Mesoamericanist communities?  [Note: A recent AAA symposium organized by Rick
> Chacon, David Dye, and myself, was an effort in this direction]."
>
>         You have my preliminary response...and I look forward to more on the
> topic in question. To that end, I thank all who have contributed many more
> questions than can be resolved in this lifetime or the
> next.
>
> Ashkale Kuarma,
>
> Ruben G. Mendoza, Ph.D., Director
> Institute for Archaeological Science, Technology and Visualization
> Social and Behavioral Sciences
> California State University Monterey Bay
> 100 Campus Center
> Seaside, California 93955-8001
>
> Email: archaeology_institute at csumb..edu
> Voice: 831-582-3760
> Fax: 831-582-3566
> http://archaeology.csumb.edu
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>
>