Following its publication in 1956 Walter Krickeberg’s Altmexikanische Kulturen received only slight attention in the United States. This is surprising, for the book in some ways superseded other general discussions of pre-conquest Mexican civilizations and it offered an authoritative new treatment of a subject in which all general writings rapidly fall out of date. The Spanish translation by Sita Garst and Jasmin Reuter contains occasional changes, a few new notes referring to recent publications in Mexico, and some post-1956 additions to the bibliography. For the general reader it has many merits: unpretentious text, objective content, clear and informative tables, and illustrations of high quality. A peculiarity of its organization is its reverse chronology: it begins with the late Aztec period and proceeds backward in time to the Archaic cultures and the Olmecs. Krickeberg defends this procedure as a progression from the known and familiar to the unknown and unfamiliar. Those who disagree will not find the reverse chronology any great obstacle to understanding, and at most this feature may be considered an idiosyncrasy in an otherwise well-structured survey. The initial emphasis is on the Aztec imperial area, and the treatment reverts from this to the Chichimec and Toltec periods, to the Theocratic cultures (principally Teotihuacán, Zapotec, and Totonac), and thence to the Archaic cultures of the Valley of Mexico, the west, and the Olmec regions. It concludes with an account of relations between Mexico and other parts of North America and between Mexico and the old world. Readers interested in the Maya will be disappointed to find Maya civilization considered only in one chapter, relating to Toltec influences. Moreover, an unexpected defect is that many places mentioned are not shown on the map.
Krickeberg belittles the Aztec achievement with respect to duration (150 years in a total of 3000), power (“un conjunto de pequeñas provincias diseminadas”), and cultural influence (“aPeñas si rebasó el valle de México”). The treatment of the Aztecs is relatively full, but it carries an air of apology for it results from the nature of the historic evidence rather than from the author’s sense of the importance of the subject. Aztec social organization is handled cautiously but with a firm rejection of the Bandelier hypotheses. Aztec dress, architecture, and religion are discussed in accordance with the best modern and ancient accounts of these topics. The identification of Teotihuacán and Tula is attributed to “North American archaeologists” and properly denied. Teotihuacán and other sites receive separate treatment. Brief chapters deal with Zapotecs and Totonacs. The archaeology of Tlatilco and other early Valley of Mexico sites, of the west, and of La Venta and Tres Zapotes depend upon the technical reports of those locations. Relations with the old world are treated mainly in accordance with the studies of Ekholm and Heine-Geldern. Krickeberg takes seriously the possibility of recurrent trans-Pacific contact. Nothing in the work can be called a contribution to knowledge in an absolute sense, but the whole is an intelligent modern summary and a demonstration that respectable, serious, popular writing in this field is not an impossibility.
