Cemithualtin

Essays in Mexican Kinship offers new and important data on the social structure of Indian and rural Mestizo communities of Mexico, particularly those of the highlands, and provides models and suggestions for future research.

In Ancient Households of the Americas archaeologists investigate the fundamental role of household production in ancient, colonial, and contemporary households. Several different cultures-Iroquois, Coosa, Anasazi, Hohokam, San Agustín, Wankarani, Formative Gulf Coast Mexico, and Formative, Classic, Colonial, and contemporary Maya-are analyzed through the lens of household archaeology in concrete, data-driven case studies. The text is divided into three sections: Section I examines the spatial and social organization and context of household production; Section II looks at the role and results of households as primary producers; and Section III investigates the role of, and interplay among, households in their greater political and socioeconomic communities. In the past few decades, household archaeology has made substantial contributions to our understanding and explanation of the past through the documentation of the household as a social unit-whether small or large, rural or urban, commoner or elite. These case studies from a broad swath of the Americas make Ancient Households of the Americas extremely valuable for continuing the comparative interdisciplinary study of households.

Detailed comparison of Aztec and Spanish religious devotion, examining the melding of practices during the first century of contact 1519-1600.

"Empire of the Aztecs" opens with a summary of the rise and fall of the empire, placing it within the context of its time period and geographical location. The second half of this book explores the daily lives of the Aztec people, focusing on their social customs, religious practices, family and community structure, and cultural accomplishments.

As Mexico entered the last decade of the sixteenth century, immigration became an important phenomenon in the mining town of San Luis Potosí. New silver mines sparked the need for labor in a region previously lacking a settled population. Drawn by new jobs, thousands of men, women, and children poured into the valley between 1591 and 1630, coming from more than 130 communities across northern Mesoamerica. The Motions Beneath is a social history of the encounter of these thousands of indigenous peoples representing ten linguistic groups. Using baptism and marriage records, Laurent Corbeil creates a demographic image of the town’s population. He studies two generations of highly mobile individuals, revealing their agency and subjectivity when facing colonial structures of exploitation on a daily basis. Corbeil’s study depicts the variety of paths on which indigenous peoples migrated north to build this diverse urban society. Breaking new ground by bridging stories of migration, labor relations, sexuality, legal culture, and identity construction, Corbeil challenges the assumption that urban indigenous communities were organized along ethnic lines. He posits instead that indigenous peoples developed extensive networks and organized themselves according to labor, trade, and social connections.

"This is the first book to examine the roles of plazas in ancient Mesoamerica. It argues persuasively that physical interactions among people in communal events were not the outcomes of political machinations held behind the scenes, but were the actual political processes through which people created, negotiated, and subverted social realities"--

Coordinated by Julia Madajczak, Fragments of the Sixteenth-Century Nahuatl Census from the Jagiellonian Library: A Lost Manuscript offers a critical edition of a sixteenth century Mexican census fragment—one of the earliest known Nahuatl texts—recently discovered at the Jagiellonian Library, Poland.

Essays range from historical overviews and historiographic surveys of children's health in various regions of the world, to disability and affliction narratives - from polio in North American to AIDS orphans in post-Apartheid South Africa - to interpretations of artistic renderings of sick children that tell us much about medicine, family, and society at specific times in history.