Book Review

Review by WARWICK BRAY
St Albans, UK (Email: postmaster@wbray.plus.com)

Antiquity 79 no. 305 September 2005

The Caste War of Yucatán (1847-1901) was one of the most protracted and successful native rebellions in the New World. The reissue of Nelson Reed's classic study (2001) has made the history of the revolt readily available, but documents do not give the whole story. As Alexander remarks, Spanish Creoles dominate the historical record, but it is the Maya agriculturalists who monopolize the archaeology. Looked at from the viewpoint of the Maya, the Caste War was just one event in a continuing process of resistance to, and adaptation to, the encroachment of colonial society and its market economy on the lives of traditional farmers. Most of this resistance was not violent and took the form of passive non-cooperation or flight to the countryside, away from the centres of state administration. Alexander's objective is to use the methodologies of settlement survey and household archaeology to show how the Maya adjusted their strategies in reaction to the changing political and economic environment of Yucatán before, during, and after the Caste War. Her argument is that changes in the wider world, beyond the control of subsistence farmers, will be reflected by settlement patterns (foundation, growth, decline and abandonment of pueblos, ranches and haciendas), by fluctuations in population size and distribution and, at micro-level, by changes in household layout as the balance of domestic activities changes through time.

This is history from the bottom up, and as fine-grained as it gets. The unit of analysis is a single parish centred on the town of Yaxcabá, which was pillaged nine times during the Caste War. Between 1847 and 1862 the parish lost almost 90 per cent of its population and many of the lesser settlements were deserted, an economic devastation that showed up very clearly in the archaeological record. All but one of the archaeological sites fall within a rectangle of only 24km by 18km. Since temporary structures built of wood and thatch disappear within a few years of abandonment, the survey recorded only the more permanent settlements with remains of masonry buildings, house foundations, walls of fields and gardens, cattle corrals, etc. The 30 sites include one cabecera town (Yaxcabá), four pueblos, and a number of non-urban sites (haciendas, cofradía estates and independent ranchos). Since bedrock is close to the surface, stratigraphic excavation was impossible and the investigation was limited to mapping and surface collecting. The artefacts were not considered worth drawing or listing in detail, though the frequency of non-local items (glazed pottery and metal objects) proved useful as an indicator of household status and access to commercial resources.

The archaeological evidence in itself is pretty dull; what makes this an interesting and important book is the way Rani Alexander brings together field data, historical documentation and anthropological theory to explain the changing patterns recorded on the ground. Almost one third of the book consists of broadly historical background, with excellent discussions of the anthropology of resistance, the causes and consequences of the Caste War, the political economy of Yucatán, and the written sources dealing with Yaxcabá and its outliers. These sections are full of interesting theoretical asides, and establish the author's credentials as both historian and archaeologist.

By focusing on a small area, Alexander avoids the averaging-out process that underlies more general histories. As she points out (p. 157), 'the variable impact of population growth, land ownership, tax status, and distance from authority, prompted different responses among Maya householders in different settlements'. In the uniform landscape of northern Yucatán, Pennsylvania-style cultural ecology does not work. The critical determinants are not soils and calories but politics and economics, and, at the lower levels, bureaucratic and archaeological site rankings do not always coincide. In essence, what Alexander is writing about is the 'archaeology of money', of capitalism and the market economy. People move in and out of the countryside to avoid violence, but also to reduce their taxes and church tithes; others move for investment reasons to take advantage of the booming cattle industry. Even the elegant hacienda houses are not just works of conspicuous consumption; they can be mortgaged to raise venture capital. When land for milpa is in short supply, farmers respond by enlarging their house gardens and by raising more animals. In summary, Alexander gives us real-world explanations for the field evidence, not the simplistic 'just-so' models that afflict so much of prehistoric archaeology. This is a short book but it leaves a long aftertaste, and archaeologists of all persuasions will find something to think about.

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