In his impressive new book, Guilhem Olivier explores a set of ideas that give meaning to and connect the taking of captives, childbirth, human sacrifice, and accession to power in ancient Mesoamerica. What he shows is that underlying these practices is a set of root metaphors that originate in hunting, hunting technologies, beliefs about animals, and the relationship between hunter and prey. In doing this, he brings a fresh perspective to Mesoamerican symbols and belief, and I predict his work will have the kind of impact on the field that Alfredo López Austin's book Cuerpo humano e ideología had when published in 1980. I know I will never look at Mesoamerican religion in the same way again.

Early in the book Olivier uses the term longue durée, from the Annales school of history, to tell us what he is after: the deep-seated attitudes and beliefs that surround hunting. While these ideas may change over time, they do so slowly, so that a substantial continuity links the present with the past, despite the fact that the indigenous people of Mexico have been subjected to conquest, colonization, and various social engineering programs. Olivier approaches the subject in a way that combines archaeology, art, iconography, history, philology, ethnography, and ethnology without worrying too much about what period or region the information comes from, since the ideas he is tracking continually manifest themselves in symbols, language, myth, art, and ritual. This of course can bring with it problems, but I bet I will not be the only cultural anthropologist brought up short when Olivier suggests an interpretation of what was reported as a kind of stray folkloric element that turns out to be the expression of an ancient and complex set of ideas. (In my case, some people in Santiago Nuyoo told me that the patron of deer, San Eustaquio, appears himself as a deer, with a star on his head.)

Olivier's book can be described as Frazerian. Like the author of The Golden Bough, when he makes a point he piles on example after example that demonstrate not only an impressive scholarship (there are over 1,000 footnotes and the bibliography alone is 73 pages) but also that he had an indulgent editor. Working through all this is worth it, since through these examples Olivier explores the complex permutations and expressions of what he calls the “hunting matrix.” A review simply cannot do justice to this approach. At times Olivier even sounds like Frazer, as when he reflects on the long and unexpected pathways his research has followed. Also like the author of The Golden Bough, one of his main interests is kingship. He even begins his book in the way that Frazer begins, with a puzzle about the nature of (Central Mexican) kingship: why is the ruler, at investiture, identified with traditional enemies?

Long sections of the book are dedicated to topics related to hunting, including techniques for the live capture of wild animals, the management of hunting lands by the ancient states of Mesoamerica, the use and meaning of bows and arrows, the disposition of animal remains, and taboos surrounding the hunt. The author also explores the iconography of Mixcóatl, the lord of the hunt, who was the patron god of many different central Mexican groups. Olivier observes that in Mesoamerica, “myths and rituals relating to hunting . . . make use of the variable positions of humans and animals, as they confront one another, kill one another, fall in love with one another, and blend with one another” (p. 243; my translation). Of special importance are the complex semantic fields and practices surrounding the hunting of deer and elk. He discusses the equivalencies drawn between deer and a variety of social categories: pregnant women, warriors, sacrificial victims, candidates for office, traditional enemies, and the hunters themselves. In this way the hunt becomes something more than a way of acquiring food or a source of discursive metaphors; as I understand him, it is about making temporal, social, and political transitions. In comparing Mesoamerican practices with hunting among other Native American groups, particularly groups in the Amazon, he indicates that through the hunt, hunters take on the identity of their prey. On the one hand, this transforms the hunters into virile beings and makes the group more powerful, while on the other hand their quarry becomes in some sense the hunter's substitute at the climax of the hunt, when the animal's life ends. At the same time this reminds them that substitutions are temporary, and that one day the hunter will also be sacrificed. More generally (and again, if I understand him correctly), hunting is a paradigmatic process whereby new kinds of people, that is, new kinds of identities, are created. It thus gets deployed to frame and understand transitions across a variety of contexts, from pregnancy and childbirth to puberty and entry to high office. Hunting is also a process that is fundamentally reflexive. While it is generally true that our sense of who and what we are is created and sustained through interactions with others, this interaction, as Irving Hallowell pointed out long ago, is mediated by particular languages, values, beliefs, and symbols. Olivier shows that in Mesoamerica, discourse, values, beliefs, and symbols related to hunting are fundamental to the interactions that create warriors, mothers, productive adults, and other essential identities. He makes this very clear when he returns to the question with which he began, arguing that Mexica rulers define themselves through the mirror of Mexica enemies. These enemies are a source of sacrificial victims, are associated with prey—captured with the same techniques used to take deer in the hunt—and become, like deer, intimately associated with their captors who, upon sacrificing them, take on new identities but know that someday they may well be victims too.