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The graniceros or ritual specialists, who in indigenous tradition manipulate the weather, can be a valuable analytical resource for understanding cosmology. Their different elements, taken together, are presented here as hueristic guides to more precisely understand, from within the indigenous culture, different ethnographic realities. This article focuses on two overlapping aspects: their historical antecedents in the Pre- Hispanic period and their use as a vehicle to offer a critique of fieldwork-based studies of contemporary culture in different parts of Mexico. It concludes with suggestions for meeting the methodological and theoretical challenge of adding nuance to understanding ritual specialists operating in specific local contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the following paper, we attempt to re-evaluate the rise of complex societies in the Valley of Oaxaca based on indigenous conceptualizations of land, territory and "resources" as components within a broader Mesoamerican cosmological system. In so doing, we challenge Eurocentric theoretical models of the emergence of civilization that rely on a uniform linear progression, and we articulate an approach that seeks to integrate both material and ideological perspectives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]