Tres estudios sobre el sistema tributario de los MexicasThe Book of Tributes

These two books exhibit recent nuances in the scholarly study of central Mexican populations that accentuate detailed examinations of indigenous pictographic and linguistic sources.Both exploit information that was originally assembled to ex tract or assess tribute in order to examine diverse aspects of indigenous life and the social, political, and economic structures regulating native societies.Munehiro Kobayashi examines the larger, multiregional pre-Hispanic tribute system, and S. L. Cline focuses on two colonial-period communities.Kobayashi's work includes three related articles about pre-Hispanic Meso america that were originally presented in Japanese (1979, 1980, and 1984).His principal sources include the second part of the Codice Mendocino, the Matricula de Tributos, and the "Informacion sobre los tributos que los indios pagaban a Moctezuma" (1554).He employs these three sources to reconstruct a hypothetical "Padron de tributos de Moctezuma," which serves as the basis for his analyses.Each of the three articles treats different aspects of the Mexica tribute system and attempts to expose the underlying structures of Mexica society.The first exam ines consumable foodstuffs in the tribute system: their acquisition, transport, and distribution and their consumption in various social sectors.The second focuses on political and territorial organization of, and relationships among, the sehorios of the Basin of Mexico before, during, and after the formation of the Triple Alli ance.The third examines labor tribute organization and the prestige objects of the tribute system, such as items of personal adornment, clothing, precious stones, and weapons, to elucidate social functions of the huey tlatoani and his role in the redistribution of these items of wealth.The third study also touches on the roles of priests in Mexica society, the redistribution of prestige goods to provision priests and to service the gods, the intrinsic symbolic content of these goods, and their use in religious ceremonies and festivals.Although readers may quibble with particular details of Kobayashi's reconstruction and interpretation of Moctezuma's tribute register for specific re gions, taken together, the resulting analyses appear reasonable.Even with the conjectural analysis, the total view of the tribute system and its dominant role in Mexica society is refreshing and sufficiently enlightening to justify the risk of Kobayashi's approach.The work of S. L. Cline advances both our knowledge of early colonial in digenous lifeways and the Nahuatl language in central Mexico less than a gen eration after the arrival of the Spaniards.She provides a complete transcription

Archaeology · Art · Geography · Humanities · Nahuatl · Archaeology and Natural History · Historical Studies in Latin America · History · Latin American history and culture