REMEMBERING
MOUNTAIN MEADOWS
Collective Violence and the Manipulation of Social Boundaries
Shannon A. Novak
Department of Anthropology, Idaho State University
Lars Rodseth
Department of Anthropology, University of Utah
The concept of social memory has generated a large
literature, much of which focuses on the trauma of collective violence.
Yet we need to know more about how narratives of violent and traumatic
events influence social loyalties and how such narratives are managed
or manipulated. Here we focus on the 1857 Mountain Meadows massacre, in
which some 120 Arkansas emigrants were murdered in southwestern Utah. Our
aim is not to establish “what really happened” at
Mountain Meadows, but to examine the memory politics of the case—the
many stories of the massacre, the ways they have been told, and their
use as reference points in drawing or redrawing social boundaries.
Our analysis highlights the activities of schoolteachers and other
rural intellectuals in shaping the trauma process. This process, we argue,
is based on an expanding sense of victimization as communicated in narratives
of social violence and suffering.
LAS
HALDAS: An Expanding Initial Period Polity of Coastal Peru
Shelia Pozorski and Thomas Pozorski
Department of Psychology and Anthropology, University of Texas–Pan
American
The site of Las Haldas is the largest and most complex early Peruvian
coastal site, and its location, overlooking the ocean and 20 km or more
from arable land, makes it enigmatic. Building on the work of Peruvian,
French, Japanese, and American archaeologists since the 1950s, our excavations
within the Casma Valley area document the development of a substantial
Initial period (2150–1000 cal BC) polity at Las Haldas that expanded
inland as the Sechín Alto polity, based within the valley, declined.
The Las Haldas polity responded to the weakened Sechín Alto polity and
its legacy by establishing administrative satellites within the Casma
Valley. Placement of one such structure on the main Sechín Alto mound
clearly reflects an effort to tangibly demonstrate dominance of the newly
invigorated Las Haldas polity over the recently weakened Sechín Alto polity that had so effectively
dominated the Casma Valley area for centuries.
MAIZE
BEER PRODUCTION IN MIDDLE HORIZON PERU
Lidio M. Valdez
Department of Anthropology, University of Victoria
When the Spaniards marched into the Inka capital of Cuzco in 1533,
chicha (maize beer) was the common, everyday beverage within the
vast Inka empire. Recent archaeological research carried out at Marayniyoq,
a Middle Horizon Wari site in the Ayacucho Valley in central Peru,
uncovered a series of cut stones with hollow depressions. Several features
of these artifacts indicate that they functioned as grinding stones.
Confirming this observation is the finding in association with the
cut stones of several rocker grinders or milling stones, which are
the active elements of grinding equipment. While this evidence convincingly
indicates that grinding was an important activity at the site, fieldwork
also uncovered a large number of large vessels. Most of these vessels
had been broken and then repaired in the distant past, a fact which
suggests that they were used for storing dry products that perhaps
were processed by means of the grinding stones. The evidence from Marayniyoq
is very similar to artifacts associated with maize beer production
during (later) Inka times, strongly indicating that during the Middle
Horizon maize beer appears to have been produced in a fashion very
similar to that of the Inka. At the same time, this evidence suggests
that maize beer distribution was a function of the state, perhaps as
part of reciprocal obligations between elites and commoners.
PERSONAL
AND GROUP INCENTIVES TO
INVEST IN PROSOCIAL BEHAVIOR: A Study in the Bolivian Amazon
Victoria Reyes-Garcia
ICREA-ICTA, Universitat Autňnoma de Barceloan
Sustainable International Development Program, Heller School for Social Policy and Management, Brandeis University
Ricardo Godoy, Vincent Vadez, Tomás Huanca
Sustainable International Development Program, Heller School for Social Policy and Management, Brandeis University
William R. Leonard
Department of Anthropology, Northwestern University
Ethnographic evidence, empirical research, and results of experimental
studies suggest that people across cultures invest in prosocial behavior,
but little research addresses the relative importance of personal
versus group incentives to invest in prosocial behavior. We estimate
the relative weight of personal and group incentives for households
to invest in prosocial behavior using two waves of panel data (2001
and 2002) from ca. 350 Tsimane’ Amerindians,
a foraging-farming society in the Bolivian Amazon. We found that
some personal incentives bore a significant association with household
decisions to display prosocial behavior. Consistent with previous
research, we found that investments in prosocial behavior first rise
and then decline with age, and that cash income bore a positive association
with investments in prosocial behavior. We found no evidence that
group incentives were associated with personal investments in prosocial
behavior once we controlled for fixed attributes of villages, but
those fixed attributes did explain a significant share of the variation
in the data.
BOOK REVIEWS
Leslie E. Sponsel: Human Rights: The Scholar as Activist, Carole Nagengast
and Carlos G. Vélez-Ibáñez, eds.
Cynthia Keppley Mahmood: The Performance of Human Rights in Morocco,
by Susan Slyomovics
Mary H. Moran: Farmers and Townspeople in a Changing Nigeria: Abakaliki
during Colonial Times, by Simon Ottenberg
Lara Deeb: Contesting Rituals: Islam and Practices of Identity-Making,
Pamela J. Stewart and Andrew Strathern, eds.
Julia Meredith Hess: High Frontiers: Dolpo and the Changing World of
Himalayan Pastoralists, by Kenneth M. Bauer
Thomas F. Thornton: Development and Local Knowledge: New Approaches
to Issues in Natural Resources Management, Conservation, and Agriculture,
Alan Bicker, Paul Sillitoe, and Johan Pottier, eds.
Cymene Howe: What’s Love Got To Do With It? by Denise Brennan
Judith A. Brouchoff: The Mexican Aristocracy: An Expressive Ethnography,
1910–2000, by Hugo G. Nutini
Howard Campbell: Tepoztlán and the Transformation of the Mexican
State, by JoAnn Martin
Beverly R. Singer: Navajo and Photography: A Critical History of the
Representation of an American People, by James C. Faris
Jeffrey D. Anderson: Ordeal of Change: The Southern Utes and Their Neighbors,
by Frances Leon Quintana
Nobuhiro Kishigami: The Whales, They Give Themselves: Conversations
with Harry Brower, Sr., Karen Brewster, ed.
Regna Darnell: Significant Others: Interpersonal and Professional Commitments
in Anthropology, Richard Handler, ed.
Karen Stocker: Language, Literacy, and Power in Schooling, Teresa L.
McCarty, ed.
James Collins: Colormute: Race Talk Dilemmas in an American School,
by Mica Pollock
Sonia Ragir: Evolution of Communication Systems: A Comparative Approach,
D. Kimbrough Oller and Ulrike Griebel, eds.
Steven W. Gangestad: Adapting Minds: Evolutionary Psychology and the
Persistent Quest for Human Nature, by David J. Buller
Debra Komar: Interacting with the Dead: Perspectives on Mortuary Archaeology
for the New Millenium, Gordon F. M. Rakita, Jane E. Buikstra, Lane A.
Beck, and Sloan R. Williams, eds.
Pam J. Crabtree: Diet and Health in Past Animal Populations: Current
Research and Future Directions, J. Davies, M. Fabis?, I. Mainland, M.
Richards, and R. Thomas, eds.
Natalie D. Munro: Zooarchaeology and Conservation Biology, R. Lee Lyman
and Kenneth P. Cannon, eds.
Amber L. Johnson: Archaeology as a Process: Processualism and Its Progeny,
Michael J. O’Brien, R. Lee Lyman, and Michael B. Schiffer, eds.
Lawrence G. Straus: Hauterive-Champréveyres et Neuchâtel-Monruz.
Témoins d’Implantations Magdaléniennes et Aziliennes
sur la Rive Nord du Lac de Neuchâtel, by Denise Leesch, Marie-Isabelle
Cattin, and Werner Müller
Lawrence G. Straus: Hunters in a Changing World. Environment and Archaeology
of the Pleistocene-Holocene Transition (ca. 11000–9000 BC) in Northern
Central Europe, Thomas Terberger and Berit V. Eriksen, eds. .149
Peter Bogucki: Neolithic Farming in Central Europe: An Archaeobotanical
Study of Crop Husbandry Practices, by Amy Bogaard
Robert McC. Adams: Myths of the Archaic State: Evolution of the Earliest
Cities, States, and Civilizations, by Norman Yoffee
Peter M. Day: Reports on the Vrokastro Area, Eastern Crete. Volume 2:
The Settlement History of the Vrokastro Area and Related Studies, by
Barbara J. Hayden
Christopher Ehret: African Connections: Archaeological Perspectives
on Africa and the Wider World, by Peter Mitchell
Brian S. Bauer: An Inca Account of the Conquest of Peru, by Titu Cusi
Yupanqui, Ralph Bauer, eds.
|