In 1957 German scholars met in Hamburg in order to discuss the future of German archaeological research in America. The six volumes under review are, in a distant fashion, the fruit of these deliberations. Under the inspiration of Paul Kirchhoff and Franz Termer, two scholars of the pre-war generation, a decision was ultimately made to establish an interdisciplinary research project in Mexico which would explore the region Puebla-Tlaxcala in comprehensive fashion. The purposes of the enterprise were to reestablish a scientific presence, to provide opportunities for training and research in collaboration with Mexican institutions and to elaborate a model for interdisciplinary research, with implications beyond the particular case. It would be premature and go beyond the purpose of a review to evaluate the success of the whole undertaking. To judge by these publications and by the evidence of communications among scholars, the project has been reasonably successful, after a slow start. It is the claim to provide a model of interdisciplinary regional research which seems dubious to me and which I would like to discuss, aside from the consideration of individual pieces.
Reviewers are not supposed to indulge in counterfactuals; yet, one is struck by the contrast between the scope of the announced enterprise and the particular contributions. The great potential of the project, as yet unrealized, lies in its combination of archaeology, human geography, historical demography, ethnohistory and social history. Its focus, never clearly spelled out, is the changing relation of man and land in a limited space, from pre-Columbian settlement to European intrusion to the direct and indirect effects of industrialization. Its range, in the disciplines encompassed by the project and over time, goes beyond other regional research projects which litter Mesoamerica like so many unfinished pyramids. Yet this range entails risks and can be a source of weakness. No coherent research design is discernible, embodied in a set of questions and step-wise procedures employing disciplines as they fit problems and contribute to answers. Only one piece (by Peter Tschohl, in Vol. I, Berichte) confronts the necessity of taking up and developing a theoretical stance, implying that concentration on one region does not necessarily reduce the mass of data in significant fashion. Rather its purpose is the testing and refinement of variables, made possible by a successive narrowing down of evidence and by comparison. Tschohl asserts that a project is only as good as the theory behind it, a theory constantly modified by confrontation with results. The studies reviewed here, both the short reports in Berichte and the more detailed monographs, reflect an encyclopedic approach rather than an analytical one, which surely cannot provide models for emulation.
There are surprising omissions in coverage, the most notable of which is the apparent neglect of the present in its political, social and economic dimension. The absence of such a concern is the more striking since Volkswagen is the major industrial enterprise of the region, established in Puebla at the very same time the project got under way. Aside from fortuitous elements the explanation for this neglect seems to be a penchant for Grundlagenforschung, in which the surface, i.e. the present, is left to others. One might ask in this connection: Grundlagen for what? The geographers, of course, begin with the present as their benchmark. Historians investigating the transition from artisan to industrial production may reach the present. The ethnographic and sociological investigation of two rural communities also may help matters. In general, however, the focus narrows in surprising fashion toward the present, perhaps even in welcome contrast to much research conducted under U.S. auspices.
These remarks are not meant to obscure the merits of the project, in laying foundations for future work and in attempting a multi-disciplinary view of a complex region. They also do not do justice to the dispersed pieces which have appeared in geographical publications, in the Jahrbuch für Geschichte von Staat, Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft Lateinamerikas and in Comunicaciones. Proyecto Puebla-Tlaxcala. It remains, then, to discuss some contributions in detail, in particular those pertaining to archaeology, geography and history.
After all the work has been done, archaeologists will have a catalogue of sites encompassing the whole region, with maps and site descriptions (P. Tschohl and H. J. Nickel in Berichte). This catalogue, based on a comprehensive survey, should facilitate the making of the “ethnic” connection, i.e., the attempt to link artifacts and historical tradition, archaeology and ethnohistory. Tschohl solves the problem of surveying present settlements for indications of the past in ingenious fashion, by looking at the adobe walls of villages for the record, instead of digging for it. He also proposes some interesting hypotheses designed to link archaeology and evidence from Indian chronicles in order to elucidate the post-classic period in its later stages, with no immediate verification in sight. Separately from these unfinished undertakings one pyramid complex has already been excavated by Bodo Spranz (Vol. II, Die Pyramiden). This site is older than Cuicuilco, until now thought the oldest structure of the kind in the highlands. Of particular interest are tunnels and chambers which indicate their function as burial places, linking them to the cult of the dead, and to burial mounds elsewhere. Related to archaeology are the geological and palaeontological investigations of E. W. Guenther, H. Bunde and G. Nobis and the study by Klaus Heine, who investigates sequences of glaciation over the last 40,000 years, in order to amass evidence for climatic variation and the relation between glacial and pluvial periods. Guenther and his collaborators find no evidence for a human presence before 25,000 B.C. in their study of fossil remains in the Valsequillo zone south of Puebla.
Geographers and historians occupy a central postion within the project. Their work converges, for instance in the way evidence assembled separately by disciplines can lead to mutually reinforcing explanations. The realization of this potential lies still in the future. The geographers’ main concern is the formation of the Kulturlandschaft and its successive modifications. The historians, whose goals are outlined by Richard Konetzke in Berichte, are interested in population and immigration, in administrative and social structure, with a temporal focus on the post-conquest period and on the later eighteenth century. Secondary interests are Christianization and artistic developments, understood here as the reworking of European artistic, intellectual and cultural models, and the role of indigenous contributions in this process.
Results in these fields are fragmentary, and in a sense will remain so, since no synthesis is planned. The geographers present a series of reports in Berichte: on current settlement and land use (Enno Seele), on abandonment and concentration of settlements (Horst Kern), and on the configuration of the regional urban and market pattern (Erdmann Gormsen). Franz Tichy also gives a summary account of the history of settlement, land use and property relations, the detailed evidence for which he has presented elsewhere. Work accomplished in history is also incomplete. I will simply mention a few items. Helga von Kropfinger-Kügelgen presents an investigation of book exports (in Europäische Bücher) which complements Irving A. Leonard’s and José Torre Revello’s earlier studies. She identifies 627 titles derived from 29 export lists, for a total of 12,000 books and other items sent between June and July 1586 from Sevilla to New Spain. This is a painstaking study in historical bibliography which documents a cultural dimension of the Spanish presence. It is complemented by a sales list of books in Puebla and a short account of the Palafoxiana in Puebla, that most impressive of colonial libraries. These pieces of cultural stratigraphy find their necessary complement in the work of Enrique Otte on Spanish immigration, again published elsewhere. For the eighteenth century there are studies (not included here) of the ayuntamiento of Puebla by Reinhard Liehr (reviewed in HAHR 55:2, May 1975, 338-39), of the region’s Indian population and of the management of Jesuit estates, of the alcaldes mayores by Horst Pietschmann. At some point, also, Günter Vollmer’s comprehensive study of the region’s population should appear.
For the present there is Wolfgang Marschall’s little study (Vol. IV, Beiträge) of a marginal area. It describes the Totonac of Zihuateutla in the Sierra Madre Oriental of Puebla in essentially ethnographic fashion, adding observations about the inhabitants’ willingness and ability to change, to adopt a cash crop (coffee) and to adapt to national culture without great strains. The favorable ratio between resources and population may explain the absence of such strain. The place of the pueblo within a larger system of region and nation is hardly alluded to. A planned study of San Andrés Calpan may well provide a contrasting picture and corrective (H. A. Steger in Berichte).
In the long run the project will constitute a fundamental contribution to Mexican studies, through specialized monographs on a variety of topics, by preparing research tools and opening avenues of contact. A wide dissemination of the results is desirable. A wider distribution of Comunicaciones. Proyecto Puebla-Tlaxcala (10 vols. to date) may help. In the meantime the fact that reports and monographs do have Spanish summaries helps, and so do the Spanish captions of the excellent maps, figures and photographs.
