Increased availability of high-quality reproductions of pictorial codices and translations of native-language texts

In 1975, Nicholson called for an increased availability of high-quality color reproductions of pictorial codices, observing that the Akademische Druck-u Verlagsanstalt in Graz, Austria, and the Sociedad Mexicana de Antropología in Mexico were on their way to fulfilling that need (1975:498). They continued to do so, for example, with publication of the Matrícula de tributos in 1982 and the Códice Borbónico in 1991 (Anders et al. 1991). Since the mid-1970s, several other organizations and publishing houses have entered the codex arena with enthusiasm, producing excellent color facsimiles and interpretations of Mesoamerican codices. Recently, special issues of Arqueología Mexicana have been exclusively devoted to the reproduction, translation, and interpretation of four central Mexican codices: Matrícula de tributos (Sepulveda y Herrera 2003), Códice Fejérváry-Mayer (León-Portilla 2005), Códice Nuttall (Hermann Lejarazu 2006), and Tira de la peregrinación (Johansson K. 2007). This same journal has also published thematic issues on codices and writing (e.g., Fray Bernardino de Sahagún 6(36); Códices Coloniales 7(38); Calendarios Prehispánicos 7(41), and La Escritura Maya 8(48)), more focused articles on codices and writing (e.g., Baudez 2002; Izquierdo y de la Cueva 1999; Noguez 2006d; Rossell 2001), and periodic brief discussions of the essentials of selected codices (e.g., Noguez 2006a, 2006b, 2006c, 2007a, 2007b, 2007c, 2008).

Other codices have been made available as full facsimiles and have added to the ability of ethnohistorians and others to conduct enhanced and detailed research on topics ranging from iconography to social organization. Among these facsimiles are the Codex Mendoza and The Essential Codex Mendoza (Berdan and Anawalt 1992, 1997), the Codex Telleriano-Remensis (Quiñones Keber 1995), Sahagún's Primeros Memoriales (Sahagún 1993; Baird 1993), The Codex Magliabechiano (Boone 1983), Códice Azoyú (Vega Sosa 1990), Códice Cospi (Laurencich Minelli 1992), Códice de Santa María Asunción (Williams and Harvey 1997), Historia Tolteca-Chichimeca (Kirchhoff et al. 1989), and Mapa de Cuauhtinchan, No. 2 (Carrasco and Sessions 2007). Another important pictorial genre encompasses the maps associated with the sixteenth-century colonial Relaciones Geográficas, now available and commented upon especially by Mundy (1996).

Contributing to this trend of accessibility of documentary sources, several major textual sources, initially produced in Nahuatl and deriving from colonial times have now been translated with extensive commentaries. Being post-Conquest in date, these sources provide valuable information on native adaptations to Spanish rule. But they also deal with pre-Conquest histories and culture and can be mined for intriguing clues on pre-Conquest life. These include the important works of a Chalcan with the daunting name of Don Domingo de San Antón Muñon Chimalpahin Quauhtlehuanitzin, or Chimalpahin for short (Anderson and Schroeder 1997; Lockhart et al. 2006), The Annals of Cuauhtitlan and Legend of the Suns (Bierhorst 1992a, 1992b), and the encyclopedic works of Bernardino de Sahagún. The Nahuatl texts of Sahagún's Primeros Memoriales have been translated by Sullivan (1997), and the ground-breaking translations of that same friar's Florentine Codex by Anderson and Dibble (continuing in revisions until 1982) provide a magnificent corpus of linguistic and cultural data. Also enhancing this record are Catholic catechisms and other religious texts rendered in Nahuatl. Since these texts frequently contain indigenous imagery and metaphors, their translations contribute to an understanding of the more subtle dimensions of native culture (Anderson 1993; Burkhart 1989, 1996; Sell and Burkhart 2004).

Contextual analyses of painted manuscripts

Rich cultural information from ethnohistoric sources has become not only more available, but also more meaningful through an increasing emphasis on contextual analyses of pictorial codices. Virtually all recent publications of individual codices include extended translations, commentaries, and analyses. Approximating another of Nicholson's suggestions, significant efforts have been made to assemble and analyze groups of codices, whether by content or style categories. The need for this is easily justified in that “The Mesoamerican pictorials should never be studied in isolation but always within their meaningful cultural contexts. Their publication in contextually integrated groupings would positively facilitate this approach” (Nicholson 1975:498). Boone's two synthetic overviews of historical annals (2000) and “books of fate” (2007) provide valuable models for understanding classes of codices and their content. A special section of Ancient Mesoamerica on Mixtec codices presented “a sampler of the most recent thinking on the Mixtec manuscripts” (Fowler and Houston 1990b:97), highlighting the importance of understanding these types of sources in context. This was also important for its interdisciplinary melding of history, archaeology, ethnography, and linguistics. In other areas, the reissue (2005; with expanded notes and comments) of important works such as Nowotny's 1961 classic Tlacuilolli (focusing on the Borgia group of codices) and similar reissue (1994) of Robertson's 1959 Mexican Manuscript Painting of the Early Colonial Period (focusing on the “Metropolitan Schools”) speak to the high level of scholarly need for detailed descriptions and analyses of classes of pictorial documents.

Additional documentary materials

Only a year after Nicholson's article in the Handbook of Middle American Indians a new genre of documentation arrived on the scene with the potential to redirect at least some ethnohistoric research. This genre initially embraced Nahuatl documents written in Roman script and then expanded to similar Mixtec and Mayan sources. These were for the most part civil and notarial records documenting daily life matters in colonial times—wills, litigations, taxes and tribute, censuses, town council minutes, even personal letters. The archives are full of them. Publication of translations of these documents began with the broadly conceived Beyond the Codices (Anderson et al. 1976) and blossomed with additional works in central Mexico focusing on matters such as town council minutes (Lockhart et al. 1986), censuses (Cline 1993), wills (Cline and León-Portilla 1984; Kellogg and Restall 1998), local histories (Gómez García et al. 2000), and primordial titles (Haskett 2005). This style of Mesoamerican ethnohistory has also been pursued in the Maya (e.g., Restall 1999) and Mixtec (e.g., Terraciano 2001) areas, culminating in a comparative work encompassing native language writings from central Mexico, Guatemala, and the Yucatan (Restall et al. 2004). A considerable number of very productive works have derived from the many translations of these types of documents, mostly concentrating on native adaptations to Spanish colonial rule (see below).

In the meantime, other types of documents have come to light. Gerhard's 1993 revision of his 1972 Guide to the Historical Geography of New Spain includes valuable information from several documents unknown to scholars in the 1970s (including a large Relación Geográfica from Tlaxcala). The Códice de Xicotepec, a pictorial document deriving from the Sierra Norte de Puebla, surfaced in 1992 (Stresser-Péan 1995), and two lienzos from nearby Acaxochitlán appeared three years later (Stresser-Péan 1998). The “discovery” of these and other documents, some through happenstance and some through deep digging in the archives, has continued to expand our ethnohistoric database, in some cases (such as these examples) filling in regional gaps in the documentary record.

Post-Conquest studies

Interest in native life under Spanish rule is nothing particularly new to Mesoamerican ethnohistoric research—Charles Gibson's landmark The Aztecs Under Spanish Rule and Tlaxcala in the Sixteenth Century were published in 1964 and 1967, respectively. He was accompanied in these sorts of studies by scholars such as Ricard (1966) and Chevalier (1963). These and other similar works were heavily researched, based on Spanish-language documentation, and the general approach, simply stated, focused on how the natives fit into Spanish-introduced institutions and lifeways.

More recent colonial research has delved into what may be called “regional ethnohistory.” Maintaining an empiricist perspective and often drawing on previously untapped archival sources, these studies have cast a broader net throughout a wide diversity of areas in Mesoamerica (Altman and Lockhart 1976; Carmack 1981; Chance 1989; Clendinnen 2003; Farriss 1984; Hill 1992, 1996; Jones 1989; Spores 1984). Most of the articles in Explorations in Ethnohistory (Harvey and Prem 1984), in The Meeting of Two Worlds (Bray 1993), and in the Ethnohistory supplement to the Handbook of Middle American Indians (Spores 1986) are devoted to indigenous life under Spanish rule. In addition to providing essential data and thoughtful syntheses on differing groups and areas, these studies uniformly emphasize the cultural, social, and historical diversity of these regions in colonial times (see below).

Accompanying the avalanche of native-language notarial and civil documentation was a further innovation—a focus on indigenous adaptations to the new lords of the land. This approach stresses indigenous strategies, survivals and continuities, “arguing that despite broad structural shifts, Indians succeeded in maintaining a separate culture with many distinctive cultural values and behaviors” (Kellogg 1995:xxii). To achieve this understanding, contributions with this orientation present the native voice: a native view from native documents (Lockhart 1991; Restall 1997; Wood 2003). Much of the research is topical. For example, studies range from local history (Schroeder 1991) to women's roles (Schroeder et al. 1997), town government (Haskett 1991; Terraciano 2001), legal matters (Kellogg 1995), Spanish-native relations (Horn 1997), and family and other social relations (Kellogg and Restall 1998). Ranging from the sixteenth through the less well-known eighteenth century, the tour de force of this research is James Lockhart's The Nahuas After the Conquest (1992), which pioneers this point of view and applies it to the natives of central Mexico on a vast panorama of cultural and social topics.

The always-fascinating Spanish conquest

It seems that too much cannot be said about the Spanish conquest. The events, personalities and complex interactions on many cultural and social levels continue to pose intriguing questions and stimulate considerable research (García Martínez 2001; Restall 2003). Even as recently as 1993, Alistair Hennessy (1993:5) wrote that “The more that is written about the Conquest the more puzzling it becomes.” And more and more has indeed been written. Published in that same year, Thomas' (1993) Conquest: Montezuma, Cortés, and the Fall of Old Mexico superseded earlier accounts dating back to Prescott's classic 1843 conquest history. Thomas, drawing on the enormous numbers of primary and secondary sources on the conquest, along with an interesting collection of additional unpublished documents, has brought the genre of “conquest history” to a new level of comprehensiveness. Nicholson (2000:135), while admiring this work but also citing some errors of fact and interpretation, emphasizes the need for historical works of this sort to “make a major effort to acquire as accurate knowledge as possible of the cultures of the indigenous polities that were overrun by Cortés.” Indeed, in recent years “the Conquest” has emerged as more complex and textured than previously understood (Restall 2003).

This increased knowledge of the indigenous side of this clash has been pursued in much the same vein as the studies of native cultures following the Spanish conquest (see above)—by revealing the native voice, native tellings, native perceptions, and native understandings. These indigenous accounts can be found, for example, in Anderson and Dibble (1978), Jones (1998), León-Portilla (1992), Lockhart (1993), Matthew and Oudijk (2007), Restall (1998), Restall and Asselbergs (2008), and Sahagún (1950–1982, Book 12). These native accounts are extremely revealing, yet still must be understood in concert with Spanish accounts (as some of these works do) to reveal a meaningful understanding of the complex interplay between native and Spaniard in those early years of the sixteenth century.

Scholarly interest in the Conquest itself also continues because of fascination with the main actors themselves; not just Motecuhzoma and Cortés, but a whole bevy of pivotal characters populate the unfolding scenarios as the Conquest proceeds. To what extent did the personalities and decisions of these individuals affect the outcomes of the conflict? This question is worth posing and pursuing. For instance, Motecuhzoma Xocoyotzin himself remains enigmatic, and his role in trying to maintain his empire in the face of Spanish military pressure has been recently reexamined (Graulich 2004).

While there have been many momentous conflicts throughout history, few are so well documented to allow such an intimate understanding of both sides of the conflict. As such, it has the potential to serve as a template for understanding culturally embedded human behaviors in dramatic moments of history (Restall 2003).

Useful interpretations and perspectives

Clearly, the documentary base available for understanding pre-Conquest and post-Conquest Mesoamerica has expanded considerably over the past couple of decades. The broader range of documentary records has enhanced the ability of Mesoamerican scholars to pursue more in-depth and sophisticated research questions and to apply more refined approaches and perspectives to get the most mileage from this extensive database. While many different approaches and interpretations have been advanced, I will limit myself here to a brief discussion of five of these.

First is the matter of incorporating the native voice into ethnohistorical interpretations. With more native-language sources translated and available, concentrated data on myriad native cultural and social features ranging from kinship to economics to ritual have been marshaled to gain in-depth “insider” understandings of native life. The Spanish filter through which we previously viewed native life has been muted, in tune with the anthropological tradition of cultural relativism.

Second, the native-language sources have not only provided fertile ground for investigating indigenous life under Spanish rule, but have also encouraged changing perceptions of native-Spanish interactions. Today, the native peoples are seen as more proactive in their colonial adaptive strategies (e.g., Chance 1989; Lockhart 1992). So, for instance, indigenous Tlaxcalan commoners become more affluent and uppity—than previously perceived—by diligently producing cochineal, much to the ire of the indigenous nobility (but not, apparently, bothering the Spaniards). The council of that same town hired a Spaniard to manage and increase their sheep flocks, threatening to fire him if he is not successful (Lockhart et al. 1986). And native residents of the town of Jalostotitlan confidently petition the king, complaining bitterly of the outrageous behavior of their local priest (Anderson et al. 1976:166–173). These and many other examples have added an opportunistic dimension to the nature of indigenous life under Spanish rule.

Third, these ideas suggest the importance of agency in understanding the dynamics of the colonial world. The events of the Conquest itself provide fertile ground to examine similar questions of agency in contributing to the train of history. Agency theory focuses on individual actors along with their actions and decisions, but not in isolation. Johnson (2004:246) suggests that researchers “examine the potential and constraints of specific cases where agency, structure, and power intersect.” Mesoamerican ethnohistorians are on their way.

A fourth issue is the methodological matter of offering general interpretations from specific cases. This actually appears in several twists. The best known of these is “upstreaming”—conceptualizing lesser-known cases from better-known ones. The most popular form of upstreaming involves moving back in time from modern ethnographically revealed cultures to those in the past where the documentation is more fragmentary (especially into colonial times and from there into the pre-Spanish world). Yet this assumes a level of cultural continuity and consistency that is increasingly difficult to support (Chance 2001:9). Along somewhat similar lines, questions have been raised about the wisdom of using highly urban Tenochtitlan as a model for Aztec life in other communities. It is seductive to do this, since the information on life in Tenochtitlan is so rich and abundant, yet this city was unquestionably atypical and other centers must be understood more on their own terms (see M.E. Smith 2008a). Again along similar lines, the profusion of documentary sources on central Mexico has made that region a particular hotbed for ethnohistoric research and an attractive model for interpreting conditions in other regions. However, researchers have increasingly resisted the temptation to generalize from that especially well-documented region. Much progress in understanding regional variation has been made by applying this perspective (see, for example, Chance 2000). So whether present to past, urban to rural, or well-known region to less-known region, scholarly perspectives have recently opted for the greater empiricism, recognizing greater complexities and variations than we had previously thought.

A fifth matter concerns the integration of ethnohistory with other disciplines active in Mesoamerican research. Ethnohistory readily interfaces with archaeology and other disciplines such as art history, ethnology, and geography. Where documents are mute or ambiguous, these several other fields can offer or suggest clarifications or alternative interpretations. Conversely, ethnohistory provides critical clues in the pursuit and refinement of research in these other disciplines. Interdisciplinary approaches are particularly evident in recent studies merging ethnohistory and archaeology (Byland and Pohl 1994, Joyce et al. 2004, and Pohl and Byland 1990 for the Mixtec; Hill 1996 for the Highland Maya; Brumfiel et al. 1994, García Chávez 2002, and López Luján 2006 for the Aztecs), blending ethnohistory, archaeology, and art history (Berdan et al. 1996; Olivier 2003; Umberger 2008), combining ethnohistory with ethnology (Hill and Monaghan 1987), and uniting ethnohistory, archaeology, art history, and ethnology (Berdan et al. 2008). Such approaches today are not just popular. They are expected.