Set chronicles 4,000 years of Mesoamerican history
Karin Dienst
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Princeton's Davíd Carrasco has used an affiliation of scholars he created 15 years ago as a jumping off point for gathering contributors to a new three-volume encyclopedia of Mesoamerican cultures recently published by Oxford University Press.
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Fifteen years ago, he established an archive of Mesoamerican religions and cultures, forming an affiliation of archaeologists, anthropologists, ethnographers, historians, religion scholars, astronomers and others interested in the portion of Central America that has been home to a number of great civilizations.
Over the past five years, he's worked collectively with a "who's who" of scholars as editor-in-chief of the three-volume Oxford Encyclopedia of Mesoamerican Cultures. Published this spring, the 1,300-page reference work includes approximately 600 original entries and some 200 illustrations. It makes available to a wide audience more than 4,000 years of Mesoamerican history and culture.
"I feel grateful and proud that I was able to form an intellectual community around this project," said Carrasco. "It has worked very well for all of the scholars involved to be able to nurture each other's work."
Outgrowth of archive
Many of the contributors have published books that are considered the definitive works in their fields. Carrasco became acquainted with their research through the archive he established while a faculty member at the University of Colorado-Boulder. In 1993, he brought the Moses Mesoamerican Archive and Research Project to Princeton, where it trains students, sponsors conferences, supports archaeological work and serves as a repository for slides, books, articles and conference papers on the region that spawned such civilizations as the Toltecs, Aztecs and Mayas.
"In a quiet but powerful way, the archive has become one of the major gathering places for scholars interested in Mesoamerica," he said.
Carrasco said that the editorial board for the encyclopedia had no difficulty working together because of the history of intellectual exchange associated with the archive as well as a shared commitment to a cross-disciplinary approach.
"The encyclopedia is disciplinarily broad, so that it is much more than an art encyclopedia, or an archaeological or historical one," said Elizabeth Boone, an art historian at Tulane University and one of six area editors for the project. "What makes this encyclopedia stand out is that ideology is the major focus -- not just religion, but information systems and intellectual culture."
An associate of the archive from its earliest days and a professor of astronomy and anthropology at Colgate University, Anthony Aveni expects that the encyclopedia will make it obvious that students of Mesoamerica should use points of reference from across the disciplines in order to see the big picture. The encyclopedia will help "students of both culture and the sciences better appreciate the merging of their disciplines that will be necessary in the coming generations if they ever hope to grasp the Mesoamerican world view," he said. Aveni, who is a scholar of archaeoastronomy and an area editor for the encyclopedia, studies how Mesoamerican communities laid out cities and ceremonial buildings and carried out ritual activities in conjunction with astronomical events.
A particular strength of the encyclopedia is its large representation of work from Mexican scholars, according to Christopher Collins, executive editor of scholarly and professional reference at Oxford University Press.
"Davíd Carrasco was, from the project's inception, particularly successful in attracting enthusiastic participation from important scholars from south of the U.S. border," Collins said. "Because of the tireless efforts of Davíd and the editorial board, we are publishing what we hope will be considered a scholarly benchmark in the field."
The articles in the encyclopedia cover cultural territory from pre-Colombian to contemporary eras. The range of time is echoed in the range of entries, which include ballcourts, cannibalism, Chichén Itzá, comets, immigration, mathematics, rain deities, salt, sin, turquoise and Emiliano Zapata.
"The trick was to get leading scholars and some new to the field to think big and small at the same time, and to share what they understand in ways accessible to a general audience," said William Taylor, project area editor and history professor at the University of California-Berkeley.
Three key breakthroughs
Carrasco identifies three key breakthroughs that helped encyclopedia authors to provide the most up-to-date and meaningful coverage of Mesoamerica.
The first is new research conducted at archaeological sites. Even though about 80 percent of the archaeological sites in Mexico are unexcavated, significant digs over the last two decades have unearthed information for scholars to examine and interpret. For example, findings during the excavation of the Great Aztec Temple in Mexico, the most significant excavation of a single ceremonial structure in the Americas, continue to bring a vast amount of material for Mesoamerican experts to explore.
A second breakthrough, which helps scholars understand the pre-Colombian world of the Maya people, is cracking the Maya code. In the last 20 years, epigraphers and linguists have learned to decipher Maya written language. "Now people can read inscriptions on Maya buildings and link that information to contemporary Maya peoples who still speak these languages," said Carrasco. The Oxford Encyclopedia of Mesoamerican Cultures also includes articles written about and by contemporary Maya people concerning their political struggles and cultural renovations.
The third involves the new methodologies researchers can use to study Mesoamerican culture and to bring significantly different insights. For example, Carrasco said that the emerging field of post-colonial studies is helpful in interpreting the colonial history of the region. "It helps us look at the ways in which the church, the state and local communities not only combined European and native traditions, but the ways in which the people themselves struggled and tried to make meaning in the colonial world," he said. Archaeoastronomy, ethnobotany and gender studies also provide new insights to understanding the components of Mesoamerican culture and its impact on society from ancient to contemporary times.
Cultural influences
A scholar thoroughly engaged in his work and collaborations, Carrasco is also a Mexican-American engaged in his cultural heritage. He is pleased that the encyclopedia includes articles that discuss some of the many ways the history and symbolism of Mesoamerica influence contemporary Chicano and Latino cultures. For example, the article "Chicanismo" by Jose Cuellar, a professor of ethnic studies at San Francisco State University, discusses the philosophy of the Chicano people centered around a Mexican mural that combines influences of indigenous, Spanish and African cultures. And Virgilio Elizondo, former rector of San Fernando Cathedral in San Antonio, writes about contemporary Latino devotions to the Virgin of Guadalupe, who miraculously appeared in Mexico City in 1531 and is growing in popularity in the United States.
"I saw this project as a kind of destiny," said Carrasco. "The encyclopedia is the place where all of us associated with the Mesoamerican archive could insert and lay out for the public the research that has absorbed us these last 20 years."
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March 12, 2001 Contents • Preserving
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