By far the best of the three books on Precolumbian America under review is Ancient Oaxaca, which combines two very significant synthesizing essays and eight short papers on specific topics originally presented at the 1962 Americanist Congress. Although such compendiums are usually interesting only to specialists, John Paddock has formed a unified study with direction and emphasis by astute editing and by writing a pivotal central essay.
To introduce the total Mesoamerican scene, Paddock has translated and, with judicious footnotes, edited a 1959 essay by Wigberto Jiménez Moreno, who is widely known and justly respected for his histories of Indian civilization. Since few others feel competent to tread in such an intricate field combining legendary history, archaeology, ethnology, and linguistics, Jiménez seldom has any challenges to his conclusions, and these are often not fully documented. For the early period, the subject of this essay, he must rely heavily on archaeological material, which he accepts uncritically to fit his thesis. He also bases many judgments on art works, but makes important errors of attribution, such as the inclusion of many Late Preclassic works in the Late Classic period. In spite of these errors, Jiménez has been able to put life back into archaeological remains by attempting to determine which ethnic groups created each culture (an approach conservatively rejected by North American archaeologists) and how various movements of people instigated cultural change.
Focusing on the southern Mexican state of Oaxaca, Paddock’s essay emphasizes the importance of its cultures in the development of Mesoamerica as a whole. Two crucial transitions in Mesoamerican culture are assigned to Oaxaca: the domestication of corn (found in southern Puebla, which is considered part of the Oaxacan archaeological zone), and the first true urban center, at Monte Albán (although Teotihuacán is usually given that honor). Paddock convincingly explains the motivation for the creation and then the abandonment of such a ceremonial center. His most original contribution, however, is the definition of the distinctive “Ñuiñe” regional style of the Classic period in the Mixteca Baja. Only the purposeful omission of “genteel footnotes” mars this essay’s usefulness as an important synthesis and reference work, for its clear panoramic view of both the Zapotec and the Mixtec cultures is as valuable as its large quantity of original photographs taken mainly by the author.
While the eight short papers cannot be discussed here individually, their common theme concerns the importance and influence of the Mixtecs. Their content ranges from the wild speculation that the Mixtecs were the bearers of the Preclassic Monte Albán I culture to the solid documentation of their power and presence in the predominantly Zapotec Valley of Oaxaca. Paddock’s long essay ties these contributions so well together that the reader will want to refer even to this most technical section of the book. As a model of creative editing and as the most definitive work available on the cultural history of an important subarea of Mesoamerica, Paddock’s book can be highly recommended.
Neither of the other two works under consideration merits such approval. The booklet by Mario Palacios is too uncritically derivative, even to its unrelated illustrations reprinted from old National Geographic Society negatives. His ethnohistory of “La Venta” Olmecs was doomed to failure from the start because it was not based on documentary evidence. No oral history mentioned the Olmecs, unless they were part of the legendary people of Tamoanchan, as Jiménez Moreno suggests. To get his information Palacios has combined physical data from Tlatilco burials in the Valley of Mexico (influenced by the Gulf Coast Olmecs, but not populated by them), ethnographic information from the modern Popoluca Indians of inland southcentral Veracruz (who are not even agricultural, as the Olmecs surely were), and inferences from archaeology. Even in this latter source, supposedly the most reliable, Palacios has mixed true Olmec sites with late or peripheral Olmecoid ones. Although the entire text is a compilation of quotations from all sources, Palacios obviously prefers the inspired but unscientific theories of Covarrubias and the unorthodox sequences and dating of Piña Chán, to whom the author constantly makes obsequious bows.
Rafael Larco Hoyle, on the contrary, takes all the bows himself in this personal testament to his role in Peruvian archaeology. The book was supposed to be a survey of generally accepted theories in the field, as the series editor embarrassingly admits. Significantly, though, there are neither footnotes nor bibliography, but just a rambling text which presents only Larco’s unchanging theories and cantankerous condemnations of all other positions. He refuses to use standard terminology for phases or cultures, yet does not present his own theories in a coherent fashion. His vision of the development of Peruvian culture concentrates on the north coast, where he first excavated in the 1930s, and he gives the cultures of this region priority during the early periods of civilization. More elaborate developments elsewhere appear to him more “mature” and therefore later. The entire Peruvian evolution, he claims, was unaffected by outside influences, in spite of growing evidence to the contrary. Of most interest are the illustrations of many previously unpublished pieces from the Larco Herrera Museum and other private collections. Unfortunately the color photographs are marred by over-intense background colors and lighting, and do not in any way correlate with the text.
