This volume is truly a milestone for the complexity of data amassed and synthesized by Carmack during twenty-five years of field studies. It is also unparalleled for elucidating social, economic-ideological structures of an archaic state during various stages of development and ossification (a.d. 900s-1520s). Carmack demonstrates a superb grasp of cultural theory and a rare versatility by effectively integrating such diverse methodological approaches as ethnohistory, sociopolitical anthropology, archaeology, cultural ecology, historical linguistics, and ethnosemantics.
First, drawn largely from twenty patently historical sixteenth-century native chronicles, the original migration, conquests, political alliances, and subsequent demographic expansions of the Quiché are traced from a Gulf lowland homeland (Tabasco) into and throughout the Guatemalan highlands. Minute sites (e.g., Hacawitz) established by intrusive military lineages have now been archaeologically analyzed along with most of the subsequent and far larger community centered on Utatlán. An “Ecology” chapter presents both an “emic” view of the Quiché’s environment and resources and an “etic” analysis of the material conditions that sustain some 100,000 persons in the Utatlán area. Taking sociopolitical and ideological reconstruction to new heights for an archaic state, the author delineates seven social classes and their residential units, as well as the underlying segmentary lineage system, identified herein for the first time in Mesoamerica. Segmentary lineage organization constitutes the very core of Quiché migration, conquest, political confederation, and incorporation of subjugated “vassal” lineages through intermarriage, and mirrors the finely detailed dualistic then quadripartite hierarchy of deities. Two archaeology chapters, on settlement patterns and buildings, provide “normative behavioral patterns” in which to access “idealistic patterns” presented by ethnohistory for social organization and ideology, respectively. This furnishes a much deserved critique as to limitations in both ethnohistoric and archaeological methods. For example, the time framework for the entire aboriginal duration of the Quiché from ethnohistory, extrapolated from 11 successive rulers to about 300 years, is extended nearly twofold with radiocarbon dating. Two ethnographic chapters round out the Quiché’s narrative through the colonial and modern periods. This thoroughly documented case avails a timely service for historiographic disciplines by alllowing a weighing of heretofore cited monocausal variables that interacted as cultural processes in the Quiché evolutionary trajectory. Such variables are arranged according to their significance in decreasing order as: frontier hybridization, warfare, religious integration, trade and ecological symbiosis, population growth, and irrigation. Thus, the dictates of cultural materialism, with primacy for trade and ecological symbiosis, irrigation, and so on are now somewhat tempered by an exhaustive reconstruction revealing a multiplicity of factors.
