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A Zapotec Natural History is an extraordinary book that describe the people of a small town in Mexico and their remarkable knowledge of the natural world in which they live. San Juan Gbëë is a Zapotec Indian community located in the state of Oaxaca, a region of great biological diversity. Eugene S. Hunn is a well-known anthropologist and ethnobiologist who has spent many years working in San Juan Gbëë, studying its residents and their knowledge of the local environment. Here Hunn writes sensitively and respectfully about the rich understanding of local flora and fauna that village inhabitants have acquired and transmitted over many centuries. In this village everyone, young children included, can identify and name hundreds of local plants, animals, and fungi, together with the details of their life cycles, habitat preferences, and functions in the economic, aesthetic, and spiritual lives of the town. Part 1 of this two-part work describes the community, the subsistence farming practices of its residents, the nomenclature and classification of the local biological taxonomy, the use of plants for treating illnesses, and the ritual and decorative roles of flowers. Part 2 is available online, and includes detailed inventories of all plant, animal, and fungal categories recognized by San Juan’s people; a series of indexes; a library of more than 1,200 images illustrating the town’s plants, people, landscapes, and daily activities; and sounds of village life.
2003 — Julian Steward Award – Anthropology & Environment Section, American Anthropological Association 2002 — A CHOICE Outstanding Academic Book How Zapotec agricultural and dietary theories and practices constitute a valid local science. Zapotec farmers in the northern sierra of Oaxaca, Mexico, are highly successful in providing their families with abundant, nutritious food in an ecologically sustainable fashion, although the premises that guide their agricultural practices would be considered erroneous by the standards of most agronomists and botanists in the United States and Europe. In this book, Roberto González convincingly argues that in fact Zapotec agricultural and dietary theories and practices constitute a valid local science, which has had a reciprocally beneficial relationship with European and United States farming and food systems since the sixteenth century. González bases his analysis upon direct participant observation in the farms and fields of a Zapotec village. By using the ethnographic fieldwork approach, he is able to describe and analyze the rich meanings that campesino families attach to their crops, lands, and animals. González also reviews the history of maize, sugarcane, and coffee cultivation in the Zapotec region to show how campesino farmers have intelligently and scientifically adapted their farming practices to local conditions over the course of centuries. By setting his ethnographic study of the Talea de Castro community within a historical world systems perspective, he also skillfully weighs the local impact of national and global currents ranging from Spanish colonialism to the 1910 Mexican Revolution to NAFTA. At the same time, he shows how, at the turn of the twenty-first century, the sustainable practices of "traditional" subsistence agriculture are beginning to replace the failed, unsustainable techniques of modern industrial farming in some parts of the United States and Europe.
The story behind the international trade in Oaxacan textiles
""Zapotec is one of the major hieroglyphic writing systems of ancient Mesoamerica. This volume explains the origins and spread of Zapotec writing, the role of Zapotec writing in the changing political agendas of the region, and the decline of hieroglyphic writing in the Valley of Oaxaca."--Provided by publisher"--
Zapotec CivilizationThe Zapotecs formed one of the most important of the pre-Columbian civilizations. For one thousand years, their main city of Monte Albán was one of the largest and most sophisticated in Mesoamerica. Building this city was an astonishing engineering feat-it involved flattening a hill in the center of the Oaxaca Valley to create an artificial plateau and then constructing a series of large, ornate buildings on this inaccessible site. Maintaining this large city on a site with no natural source of water must have required an enormous and willing workforce. Despite this, Monte Albán became one of the largest and most important cities in Mesoamerica, and the Zapotecs came to dominate not just the Oaxaca Valley but many adjacent lands. Inside you will read about...✓ The Emergence of the Zapotecs and Monte Albán ✓ Monte Albán Phase 1 to 5 ✓ Zapotec Architecture, Art, and Science ✓ Zapotec Religion and Society ✓ Legacy And much more! We don't know why or how the Zapotecs suddenly seemed to acquire new engineering and architectural skills, but their rise to prominence was astonishingly swift. Once in a position of dominance, they maintained their hold over the region for more than one thousand years. Then, for reasons that are equally unclear, the Zapotecs faced a slow decline which saw them abandon Monte Albán to decay and ruin and return to the Oaxaca Valley floor to become once again a mainly agrarian, peasant people. The Zapotecs still exist as a separate culture in Mexico, but they have never regained their prominence and are now little more than one of the indigenous peoples of that region. This is the story of the rapid rise and gradual decline of the ancient Zapotec people.
Written from the perspective of Teotiteco merchants, a guide to the artistry of Zapotec Indian weaving in the Mexican valley of Oaxaca showcases the wide range of beautiful colors, designs, and techniques found in the textiles of a culture whose traditions extend back to the colonial era.
This book presents an in-depth description of information structure in Isthmus Zapotec, an Otomanguean language spoken by around 50,000 people in southeastern Oaxaca, Mexico, and represents the first book-length treatment of information structure in a Mesoamerican language. Three main observations motivate the study: Strong documentation and a relatively large and active speaker community create a unique opportunity to document information structure in Isthmus Zapotec and to study the language as it is used by speakers in everyday life; As a tonal and verb-initial language, the examination of Isthmus Zapotec represents a chance to explore the possible combinations of tone, intonation, morphology and verb-initial syntax that may occur in the coding of information structure. This work was published by Saint Philip Street Press pursuant to a Creative Commons license permitting commercial use. All rights not granted by the work's license are retained by the author or authors.