Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-dsjbd Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-23T13:24:46.470Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Use of the Term “Mixtec” in Mesoamerican Archaeology

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 January 2017

H. B. Nicholson
H. B. Nicholson*
Affiliation:
University of California, Los Angeles, Calif.
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Vaillant's geographic and stylistic term, Mixteca-Puebla, is rapidly and unfortunately being supplanted by an ethnic and linguistic term, Mixtec, which has rather suddenly become a popular label for the final pictorial horizon style of much of Mesoamerica. The well-known dangers of using an ethnic or linguistic term for an archaeological manifestation are intensified in this case by the lack of systematic archaeological work in the Mixteca region. The great mercantile and religious center of Nahua-speakers rather than Mixtec-speakers at Cholula is suggested as the origin of the almost pan-Mesoamerican diffusion of the Mixteca-Puebla style in Postclassic times. Thus, Mixteca-Puebla, not Mixtec, should be used to describe this style which flourished in and probably originated somewhere in a geographic region dominated in late preconquest times by Nahua-speakers in the north and Mixtec-speakers in the south.

Type
Facts and Comments
Information
American Antiquity , Volume 26 , Issue 3Part1 , January 1961 , pp. 431 - 433
Copyright
Copyright © The Society for American Archaeology 1961

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Bernal, Ignacio 1948–49. Exploraciones en Coixtlahuaca, Oaxaca. Revista Mexicans de Estudios Antropológicos, Vol. 10, pp. 5–76. Mexico.Google Scholar
Caso, Alfonso 1938. Exploraciones en Oaxaca, quinta y sexta temporadas, 1936–1937. Instituto Panamericano de Geografía e Historia, Publicatión, No. 34. Tacubaya.Google Scholar
Caso, Alfonso 1953. El Pueblo del Sol. Fondo de Cultura Económica, Mexico.Google Scholar
Covarrubias, Miguel 1957. Indian Art of Mexico and Central America. Knopf, New York.Google Scholar
Dfaz Del Castillo, Bernal 1955. Historia verdadera de la conquista de la Nueva Espaúa. Colección Austral, Espasa-Calpe Argentina, Buenos Aires.Google Scholar
Franco, J. L. 1958. Un oyohualli Mixteco. Boletín del Centro de Investigaciones Antropológicas de México, No. 5, pp. 13–15. Mexico.Google Scholar
Franco, J. L. 1959. La escrirura y los códices. Esplendor del México Antigua, Vol. 1, pp. 361–78. Mexico.Google Scholar
Gómara, Francisco López de 1943. Historia de la conquista de México. Editorial Pedro Robredo, Mexico.Google Scholar
Nicholson, H. B. 1957. Review of “Excavations at Yagul, I,” by Paddock, John and others. American Antiquity, Vol. 23, No. 2, pp. 195–6. Salt Lake City.Google Scholar
Nicholson, H. B. 1958. Review of “Indian Art of Mexico and Central America,” by Covarrubias, Miguel. American Anthropologist, Vol. 60, No. 4, pp. 784–5. Menasha.Google Scholar
Nicholson, H. B. 1960. The Mixteca-Puebla Concept in Mesoamerican Archeology: A Re-examination. Selected Papers of the Fifth International Congress of Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences [Philadelphia, 1956], edited under the chairmanship of Anthony F. C. Wallace, pp. 612–7. University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Noguera, Eduardo 1954. La cerámica arqueológica de Cholula. Editorial Guaranía, Mexico.Google Scholar
Noguera, Eduardo 1959. Cerámica y estratigrafía. Esplendor del México Antiguo, Vol. 1, pp. 411–38. Mexico.Google Scholar
Oviedo, Gonzalo Fernández De 1946. Sucesos y diálogo de la Nueva España. Biblioteca del Estudiante Universitario, No. 62. Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Mexico.Google Scholar
Paddock, John (Editor) 1953. Excavations in the Mixteca Alta. Mesoamerican Notes, No. 3. Mexico City College, Mexico.Google Scholar
Proskouriakoff, Tatiana 1954. Varieties of Classic Central Veracruz Sculpture. Contributions to American Anthropology and History, No. 58, Carnegie Institution of Washington, Publication 606, pp. 61–121. Washington.Google Scholar
Robertson, Donald 1959. Mexican Manuscript Painting of the Early Colonial Period: The Metropolitan Schools. Yale Historical Publications, History of Art, Vol. 12. Yale University Press, New Haven.Google Scholar
Toscano, Salvador 1946. El arte y la historia del Occidente en México. Arte Precolombino del Occidente de México, pp. 9–33. Secretaría de Educación Pública, Mexico.Google Scholar