book re vi ews
In a related vein, the problem of disembedding challenges this volume issues to Americanist anthro-
U.S. hegemonic perspectives from Americanist
scholarship is another intriguing theme that weaves
throughout the essays in this volume. For those who
work solely within the United States, the myriad ways
in which U.S. hegemony shapes, skews, and obfus-
cates scholarship in the rest of the Americas is
astounding and more than a bit disquieting. For ex-
ample, Linda Seligman explores the interesting ways
in which anthropology’s study of power relations re-
sults in obscuring the everyday lives of those cast as
powerless, and ends up reinforcing imagined subjects
rather than the real but messy heterogeneity uncov-
ered by empirically grounded and applied research
(pp. 34–41). Enrique Salmon notes how ethical
questions around ethnography are derived from val-
ues ‘‘usually based on morals that can be traced to
sources in Western European history and religious
thought . . . in which individual rights outweigh re-
sponsibility to community or to humanity in
general’’ (p. 267), regardless of the distinct personal
values of native ethnographers. Peter McCormick
even explores his own family’s hybrid heritage to raise
questions about ancestry stretching back to Western
Europe and the identity area studies ascribed to ‘‘the
Americas’’: ‘‘This hybridization and reconstitution
. . . scares people because they retreat into very safe
colonial cornersFinto essentialized, racialized con-
cepts of the world where they can easily define ‘self ’
and even more easily define ‘other’’’ (p. 283).
Several essays address how national borders create
artificial divisions between people, cultural groups,
historical experiences, and even research questions.
Americanist anthropologists are called on to work
as bridge makers and reach across the conceptual
barriers to find deeper forms of connection and un-
derstanding. Several of the authors call for more
cross-border work and a more international perspec-
tive for Americanist anthropology (e.g., Seligmann,
p. 35; Fine-Dare, pp. 93–97; Salmon, p. 267). Rather
than treating Native American studies as part of
U.S. exceptionalism, more rigorous comparisons
and integrative collaborations need to be made
among indigenous peoples throughout the Americas
(Rubenstein and Fine-Dare, p. 319).
The issues of boundaries, hegemonic perspectives,
and artificial divisions all have major implications for
museums and museum anthropologists. Many of the
80
pology go straight to the heart of how museums
organize, categorize, and interpret their collections.
Who is the unspoken ‘‘we’’ behind each interpretive
panel? Is it possible to construct museum-based
knowledge that genuinely gives equal voice to all
identities and cultural heritages? What unexamined
social, political, and economic divisions are rein-
forced in the process of dividing artifacts into distinct
geographic and cultural exhibit areas? The essays in
this volume will be stimulating reading for anyone
working in or with a museum context.
The editors, Kathleen Fine-Dare and Steven
Rubenstein, have also done an admirable job of inte-
grating different paradigms of research, knowledge
construction, and writing to produce a captivating,
diverse, and appealing encounter with the compelling
topics facing Americanist anthropology today. Rather
than privileging one side of the pendulum, this col-
lection of essays combines reflexivity and practicality,
constructivism and positivism, macro and local scales
of analysis. The reader is given a new appreciation for
not only the mission of Americanist anthropology,
but also the tremendous potential and critical im-
portance of embracing a genuine transnational
approach to the Americas.
Cave, City, and Eagle’s Nest: An Interpretive Journey
through the Mapa de Cuauhtinchan No. 2. Davı́d
Carrasco and Scott Sessions, eds. albuquerque:
university of new mexico press, 2007. 479 pp.
Marc N. Levine
denver museum of nature & science
Cave, City, and Eagle’s Nest is an exciting edited vol-
ume that examines the Mapa de Cuauhtinchan No. 2,
a bark paper (amatl) map painted in the 1540s in the
former Central Mexican altepetl (city-state) of
Cuauhtinchan, located in the modern Mexican state
of Puebla. The extraordinary narrative of the mapa
and its bewitchingly beautiful presentation has long
captivated scholars, but this volume makes it accessi-
ble to a broader audience. The subject matter of the
MC2, as the mapa is known, operates on many levels;
it provides both a historical and mythical framework

for understanding the altepetl’s place in space and
time. Although the MC2 is a postconquest document,
it is painted in an indigenous style common to the
Prehispanic Era. As editors Davı́d Carrasco and
Scott Sessions affirm, the MC2 is a ‘‘global statement’’
and a wellspring for studies of not only Cuauhtinc-
han, but the larger matrix of social, political, and
economic relations in Central Mexico and Meso-
america in the Contact Era. Readers are treated to
dozens of color images, including a pull-out facsimile
of the mapa, approximately one-third its actual size.
Carrasco and Sessions’ introduction outlines the
analytical foci of the volume: examining the mapa’s
iconic elements, considering its apparent division into
left- (mythical history) and right- (conventional his-
tory) hand sides, the uses of the MC2 and its raison
d’être, evaluating relationships among the diverse eth-
nic groups represented, understanding the dialogue
among centers of authority, and strategies of pictorial
representation. The 15 subsequent chapters are parsed
into three themed sections: ‘‘Orientations in Time
and Territory,’’ ‘‘Narratives and Rituals of Roads and
Roadsides,’’ and finally ‘‘Comparisons and Approxima-
tions.’’ I will briefly comment on each of these in turn.
Well placed at the volume’s outset, Elizabeth
Boone’s chapter provides a clear explanation of how to
read the map, describing the interplay among narrative
elements and structure. The diagrams provided are
especially helpful in orienting the reader to a field of
elements that are, at first, seemingly overwhelming in
complexity. In chapter 2, Marina Straulino explains
the conservation effort and digital restoration of the
MC2, formerly in a frightful state, as documented by
revealing photos. One can only hope that similarly
deteriorating codices, lienzos, and mapas will receive
like treatment in the future. In the following chapter,
Ann Seiferle-Valencia utilizes gestalt principles of sim-
ilarity, proximity, continuity, and closure to analyze
territorial order in the MC2. Her analysis highlights
three nested levels of territorial organization, begin-
ning with the altepetl of Cuauhtinchan, that of
Cholula, and then broadening to include the valleys of
Puebla, Mexico, and Chicomoztoc.
In chapter 4, Ethelia Ruiz Medrano discusses
the sociopolitical and economic innerworkings of
Cuauhtinchan, particularly the role of the noble
houses during the early Contact Era. Medrano argues
that the MC2 was probably not originally painted for
book reviews
use in Spanish courts, given the depiction of scenes of
ritual sacrifice that would have provoked the ire of the
Spanish. Instead, Medrano affirms that the mapa was
painted for internal consumption, though possibly
later used in legal proceedings. Florine Asselbergs
then outlines the narrative of the MC2 in relation to
the people, events, time frame, and space in which the
story is told. Her analysis addresses key questions,
such as: where and when was the mapa made, for
whom, and why? This study skillfully interweaves
comparisons with other relevant documents, such as
the Historia Tolteca Chichimeca and the Lienzo de
Quauquechollan, among others. In the final section of
part I, Anthony Aveni examines calendrical notations
in the MC2 and how these dates may be associated
with both events in the mythical past and those in a
‘‘real time’’ framework.
Part II, ‘‘Narratives and Rituals of Roads and
Roadsides,’’ is anchored by Keiko Yoneda, a veteran
scholar of not only the MC2 but the larger corpus of
Cuauhtinchan mapas. Yoneda lays out a clear synopsis
of the MC2, providing precise identifications of glyphs
that helpfully lead the reader by the hand. She places
analytic emphasis on the primordial emergence of the
Chichimec tribes from Chicomoztoc and their event-
ful odyssey along sinuous roads from the seven-lobed
cave of emergence to Cholula. Yoneda argues, com-
pellingly, that the mapa was a collaborative effort of
the Nahua and Pinome (Mixteca-Popolloca) factions
at Cuauhtinchan to be utilized as evidence in legal
disputes over land with the neighboring altepetl of
Tepeaca. Yoneda also argues that the MC2 served in-
ternal purposes, ‘‘to instruct and confirm the identity
of the people,’’ especially the ruling houses.
In chapter 8, Eleanor Wake explores the internal
divisions within Cuauhtinchan, particularly the an-
tagonism between elite Nahua and Pinome rivals.
Presuming the MC2 scribes were Pinome, Wake ex-
plores how they may have inserted their own history
into the MC2, thereby undermining Nahua claims.
Wake’s discussion falters in places: for instance, her
claim that the ‘‘first proto-Mixtec capital proper may
have been Teotihuacan’’ has no archaeological sup-
port whatsoever. In chapter 9, Robert Bye and
Edelmira Linares peel back yet another layer of
meaning in the MC2 with their ethnobotanical anal-
ysis of the mapa’s carefully rendered plants and trees.
They compare the corpus of vegetal icons in the
81
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left-hand side of the MC2, associated with the arid
homeland of the nomadic Chichimecs, with that of
the right-hand side, representing the plant life en-
demic to the greater Puebla Valley and agricultural
life. In chapter 10, Guilhem Olivier examines the 14
sacred tlaquimilolli (bundles) depicted among the
caves, mountains, and ritual structures of the MC2,
and their relationship to particular deities and rites.
The tlaquimilolli, Olivier argues, are associated with
the new fire ceremony, thereby signifying the origin
of a people, foundation of a city, temple or domain,
inauguration of a royal house, or accession to power.
Part III (Comparisons and Approximations) in-
cludes a series of contributions that are more
peripheral in terms of addressing questions directly
related to the MC2 and in some cases revisit themes
already covered in previous chapters. In chapter 11,
Vincent Stanzione draws on ethnographic research in
Guatemala to argue that the MC2 was used primarily
as a pedagogical tool to prepare young men for pil-
grimages that acquainted them with knowledge
encoded in the landscape. Similarly, Jace and Laura
Weaver provide an ethnographic comparison
of practices in the MC2 with the Yuma, Tohono
O’odham, and Huichol peoples of the North. In
chapter 13, Osvaldo Garcı́a-Goyco tacks between the
‘‘mythemes’’ of Mesoamerica, the Caribbean, and
Amazon–Orinoco BasinFparticularly those related
to the cosmic tree. Garcı́a-Goyco then segues into a
rambling analysis of the MC2 with some unconven-
tional interpretations of the codical record. For
instance, on Codex Nuttall page 21, Garcı́a-Goyco
argues that ‘‘souls of sacrificial victims go to live in
the three celestial mountains’’ (p. 369), where others
read star warriors descending from heaven to attack
Lord 9 Wind (Jansen and Pérez Jiménez 2007:140).
Likewise, Garcı́a-Goyco’s identifications of Chico-
moztoc on page 49 of the Borgia Codex and page 33
of the Codex Nuttall are weakly supported.
In chapter 14, Dana Leibsohn invites readers to
literally see the mapa in a fresh light, focusing on the
materiality of the document and its demonstration of
indigenous concepts of vision. In the final chapter,
Carrasco and Sessions draw our attention to Cholula,
integrating ethnohistoric and archaeological data on
this pivotal ‘‘middle place.’’ They seek a more inte-
grated analysis of the left and right sides of the
mapF interpreted elsewhere as representing diver-
82
gent mythical versus conventional historical
narrativesF by introducing the concepts of ‘‘laby-
rinth’’ and ‘‘circumambulation.’’ These concepts,
however, are misplaced in their application to the re-
gional scale and awkward in that they are Old World
concepts with seemingly little or no tradition in
Mesoamerica.
The editors are commended for bringing an in-
terdisciplinary group of scholars together, but the
volume would have been strengthened by an archae-
ological contribution. Furthermore, apart from
Carrasco and Sessions’ final chapter, there was almost
no mention of relevant archaeological data. A final
quibble is that the volume has only one poor, rudi-
mentary map of modern Central Mexico (figure 2) to
orient readers to Cuauhtinchan.
In sum, Cave, City, and Eagle’s Nest provides an
illuminating and dynamic analysis of the MC2 that
will hopefully encourage the next generation of
scholars to ‘‘get lost’’ in its depths. I enthusiastically
recommend this book to all with an interest in Meso-
american studies and traditional writing systems in
general.
References Cited
Jansen, M. E. R. G. N., and Gabina Aurora Pérez Jiménez
2007 Encounter with the Plumed Serpent: Drama
and Power in the Heart of Mesoamerica. Boul-
der: University Press of Colorado.
Around and About Marius Barbeau: Modelling
Twentieth-Century Culture. Lynda Jessup, Andrew
Nurse, and Gordon E. Smith, eds. Mercury Series,
Cultural Studies Paper 83. gatineau, quebec:
canadian museum of civilization, 2008.
Richard Handler
university of virginia
No one person in the history of U.S. anthropology
has played all the roles that Marius Barbeau played in
Canadian anthropology and, beyond anthropology,
in the building of national cultural institutions. Bar-
beau (1883–1969) worked for more than five decades
from his institutional home, the Anthropology