Tobacco has always represented a complex substance for me, including the fond aromatic memories of my grandfather's pipe; the dreadful somatic effects after sneaking a puff from my grandmother's cigarette when I was ten; the fascination when Belizean friends applied tobacco to remove botfly larvae from their bodies; or imagining the backbreaking tobacco harvesting in Tillsonburg, Ontario, as described in the eponymous toe-tapping song by Stompin’ Tom Connors. The focus of this edited volume is a direct reflection of such complexity, and more.
The editors argue that Nicotiana plants and their resulting tobacco products (mahy, k'uhtz)—whether smoked, chewed, snuffed, or other—played a key role in the development and maintenance of Maya civilization, both past and present, and deem tobacco comparable in importance and influence to maize or cacao. In building on research by Maya scholars and expanding into more recent scientific realms, tobacco is demonstrated to be deeply entangled in practices of identity, spirituality and ritual (divination, protection, offerings), interpersonal conflict and warfare, medicine, recreation, the management of ‘wildlife,’ sociopolitical and socioeconomic networking, and more. The editors and contributors—all well-respected scholars, including specialists in the fields of archaeology, anthropology, folklore/mythology, linguistics, epigraphy, iconography, biochemistry, pharmacology, and museology—highlight the primacy and glory of tobacco's cultural role in Maya society, and in contrast to the particularly negative and acontextual attention it receives in much of the world today.
The introduction by the editors provides a helpful summary of the uses and views of tobacco among the Maya, both past and present, couched in a general botanical narrative of tobacco plants (part of the Nightshade family) and their complex associations. The nine chapters that make up the bulk of the volume deal with elusive origin stories of tobacco: Maya folktales featuring characters who are intimately entangled with the substance, such as the moon deity, God L (the Smoking God), and K'in, disguised as a hummingbird; detailed ethnobotanical, ethnographic, and linguistic accounts of contemporary (or recent) tobacco production and use in the western (Tzeltal/Tzotzil) and eastern (Ch'orti’) portions of the Maya world; the role of tobacco in shamanic practices and animistic worldviews from a pharmacological and neurochemical perspective; the sign inventories and iconography that appear on Classic Period tobacco ’otoot or “homes” (such as pottery vessels and flasks) and in Postclassic codices; the archaeological signatures for tobacco and how to recover them via a scientific assemblage approach; and examinations of the production, forms, functions, distributions, and contexts of Classic Period snuff bottles (tobacco or poison flasks) from both in-situ excavations and un-provenanced collections, leading to discussions of sociopolitical and socioeconomic networking and gifting patterns focused on the Copan region.
The line, “Once we pull on one string, we find a thousand more tangled together” (196) effectively illustrates my experience in reading this book. From the neurochemical effects of nicotine to babies in a calabash, to bone shaving and skinwalkers to talking legs, to tobacco juice running down a Maya queen's chin, it is all there in this fascinating read that lays out the unbelievably entangled nature of tobacco. I found myself regularly falling into Google holes—moving beyond the book to look up additional tobacco-related topics—and revisiting older publications. Other than a slight mischaracterization at Calakmul, the introduction does a wonderful job of summarizing individual contributions succinctly—at times more effectively than do the corresponding articles themselves—and the scholarship laid out in the book is enviably sound and extreme in depth.
The weakness of the volume lies in the lack of acknowledgment among the individual articles. Despite clear connections between each of the articles, cross-referencing is extremely limited. As a result, there exists a considerable amount of redundancy and repetition, and the lack of a final discussion chapter means that individual warp strings carefully strung throughout each chapter are left with a rather weak weft, as no one is present but the knowledgeable and observant reader to weave them all together.
Overall, this was a thoroughly enjoyable read that provided me with many fascinating insights. Most of the contributions require some form of specialist knowledge, particularly in Maya archaeology, epigraphy, iconography, ideology, and others. Therefore, I would recommend this book particularly for Mayanists (researchers, graduate students, senior undergraduate students), as well as the knowledgeable avocational reader.
