This is a comprehensive, very well done study of the cultural evolution of the Pipil and the Nicarao, two Nahuatl-speaking groups who migrated from Central Mexico to Central America. By using a wide variety of sources, archeological excavations, colonial censuses, new archival research, and colonial histories, as well as botanical, geologic, and climatological data, Fowler accomplishes his goal of presenting a global and integrated description of these civilizations. Along the way, we are provided with chapters on Pipil/Nicarao ethnobotany, agriculture, and ethnozoology that are thorough, well written, and enjoyable. This is excellent ethnohistory, resourceful in its approaches, deriving the maximum information from colonial documents but cautious in not exceeding the quality or credibility of the sources.
A second purpose, in which Fowler is less successful, is to explain why the Pipil evolved into a state-level civilization while the Nicarao reached only that of a maximal chiefdom, when the two groups share a common cultural heritage and very similar ecosystems. Fowler adopts an ecological-functionalist approach combining Robert Carneiro’s External Conflict and Circumscription model and includes religious ideology as a dynamic process in state formation. He suggests that a warrior cult of Xipe-Totec and conflict with the Cakchikel and Pokoman differentiated the Pipil and led to their progression to statehood. As Fowler himself points out, ecological-functionalist explanations are not evolutionary, and he uses a historical materialistic explanation involving tribute as a relation of production to provide a dynamic aspect to the process. He also invokes Immanuel Wallerstein’s world system concept as a possible mechanism for differentiation, because the Nicarao were isolated from the polities of Mesoamerica. Neither of these explanations is compelling, and the evidence for them is weaker than that in the rest of the book. Even so, this book will become the standard reference on the Nahua cultures of Central America for years.
