Where is the Chichimec Sea? Those unfamiliar with the designation of northern Mexico as the Gran Chichimeca will probably miss the ethnic metaphor elaborated by Charles DiPeso in the foreword to this book from which the title derives. Actually the book is an anthology of archaeological and material culture studies of northern Mexico. It was conceived as a festschrift for J. Charles Kelley of Southern Illinois University who spent long years discovering and interpreting cultures along the northern borders of Mesoamerica. Kelley has championed the idea of contact and cultural influence between Mesoamerica and arid America.
The editors have grouped the contributions into three roughly distinct geographic zones. Part one concentrates on the “Upper” Southwest (southwest of nowhere in the book and “upper” in the sense of most northerly); these articles discuss Mimbres painting, Pecos trading, regional variations, and Spanish-American presence in New Mexico. Part two treats the northern Mexican, “frontier” (which is really the center of the Chichimec Sea) by incorporating articles on Sonoran trade, Durango burials, and obsidian dating. Part three tantalizes the curious with brief investigations of wandering colonial sites, Mesoamerican influences, and pochteca burials among the Anasazi.
The Chichimec Sea has become a bowl of vanished cultures swirling with archaeological dust. The continuities of cultures evidenced in the articles reminds us that contemporary nomenclature does not reflect prehistoric or early historic realities. If there are confusions and discontinuities in our understanding of the Chichimec Sea, credit it to our ignorance and mental rigidity. Even more honor will be paid to J. Charles Kelley when scholars advance these studies to a point that will no longer have to rely on metaphor for coherence.
