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Mopan (Mayan) oral histories have preserved for over three hundred years precise details of their early contact with Spanish missionaries. The Mopan histories supplement Spanish documents in documenting significant Mopan resistance to Christian conversion and testify to an extended period in which Christianized Mopan living in Spanish mission villages coexisted as neighbours and trading partners with their non-baptized kin. From the perspective of Mopan inside the Christian villages, a specific contrast of forest to village was doubly determined, not only by Spanish policy that made forest fugitives of those who did not wish to take Christian baptism, but also by an older understanding that the forest and other wilderness areas such as the venerated mountains were the domain of supernatural and non-human creatures. Data from linguistic-anthropological analysis of voice, gaze, and manual gesture reveal how modern-day Mopan tellings present forest residence not as incidental to or the result of non-Christian identity, but instead as a crucial part of constructing, causing, or explaining that identity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Following the capture of Inka Atawallpa in Cajamarca, Spanish conquistadors took control of several Inka provincial centers that subsequently became the sites of colonial towns. This was the case at Tambo Viejo, the Inka provincial center in the Acarí Valley of the Peruvian south coast. Recent archaeological excavation at that site revealed that the Spanish modified existing buildings and added new constructions to suit their needs. The excavation also uncovered multiple interments that had been closely stacked next to each other and buried with a small wooden cross, the most salient symbol of the Christian faith. The new findings highlight the outcome of the Spanish presence in the former Inka territory which manifested in substantial modification of a provincial Inka center, the likely conversion to Christianity of the local population, and what appears to be the devastation caused by the diseases introduced by the conquistadors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyzes the biosiliceous microremains recovered at the Fuerte Sancti Spiritus site, the first Spanish settlement established in the Río de la Plata basin, and which marks the beginning of European colonization and conquest in America. The settlement is located in Puerto Gaboto, Santa Fe province, Argentina, and consists of a brief occupation that took place between May 1527 and September 1529. The excavation was carried out according to open area methodology, for which the sampling was distributed in different features located on the site plan. Twenty samples were analyzed, according to two variables, type of trait and chronology, which, in accordance with ethnohistorical sources, established that the cultivation of corn was practiced and that, in turn, wheat was introduced and probably barley. Likewise, the analysis permitted estimation of the content of the traits according to the type of sediment sampled, allowing for characterization of discard areas, fillings, levels of use, and sediment after the abandonment of the settlement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The earliest records of horses in Mexico date back to the Eocene. However, this group of mammals disappeared from the territory towards the transition from the Pleistocene to the Holocene and came back accompanying the Europeans in their "discovery" and conquest of America at the end of the 15th and the beginning of the 16th century. The impressions in the imaginary of the inhabitants of that multicultural territory regarding the presence of the human upon the beast are manifested in the chronicles, the codices, and the languages of each one of these societies. This article presents the first testimonies about this animal in Hispaniola and of those who arrived with the Spanish invasion. We address the media in which they were represented, their meaning and the evidence of bone remains found in colonial contexts. Our objective is to explain the relationship that the natives established with this animal that had recently arrived in their territories. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The social unconscious of a country or people is shaped by their origins and by the major collective traumatic experiences of their past. In the case of Mexico, this has been the trauma of the Spanish Conquest, that aimed to subjugate its originary peoples and obliterate their whole culture, language, and religion, which nonetheless subsisted subterraneously, syncretized with those of their invaders. It was a veritable genocide, both physical and cultural. The Mexican population was born from the mating of a brutal foreign conqueror and a subjected native woman, resulting in mestization, both physical and cultural. The psychic and social aftermath of these origins has been a deep ambivalence of Mexicans towards their identity and the foreign invader. This is similar to the fate of the unwelcome and abused child described by Ferenczi. Such underlying factors, derived from the collective history of peoples should be taken into account in any psychoanalytic or group-analytic enquiry of individual patients and groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent scholarship on the Spanish invasion of the New World has brought under scrutiny the historiographic theme of apotheosis--the notion that Indigenous peoples regarded the invaders as gods or godlike beings and that such beliefs influenced their responses. This article examines the question by focusing on Pedro de Alvarado, a leading member of Hernán Cortés's contingent, who was known as Tonatiuh--a Nahuatl word that designated the sun, the day, and the sun god. Indigenous peoples in Mexico and Guatemala used the name during the invasion, and Nahua, K'iche', and Kaqchikel authors employed it frequently in later writings that variously hinted at, endorsed, or questioned Alvarado's associations with the sun god. Rather than an imposition resulting from Spanish teachings, the association of Alvarado with the sun god derived fromMesoamerican beliefs about the rise and fall of successive eras, which provided Indigenous paradigms to explain the Spanish invasion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper will examine the critical role that Doña Marina played as a linguistic and cultural conduit between the Spanish conquistadors and the Mesoamerican people during the Spanish Conquest of the Aztec Empire. This paper investigates her involvement in three key encounters between the Spanish and the Mesoamericans that shaped the outcome of the conquest: the negotiation at Tlaxcala, the circumvention of an ambush plot at Cholollan, and success in persuading the Aztec emperor Moctezuma II to accept captivity at Tenochtitlan. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract Background Despite their regional economic importance and being increasingly reared globally, the origins and evolution of the llama and alpaca remain poorly understood. Here we report reference genomes for the llama, and for the guanaco and vicuña (their putative wild progenitors), compare these with the published alpaca genome, and resequence seven individuals of all four species to better understand domestication and introgression between the llama and alpaca. Results Phylogenomic analysis confirms that the llama was domesticated from the guanaco and the alpaca from the vicuña. Introgression was much higher in the alpaca genome (36%) than the llama (5%) and could be dated close to the time of the Spanish conquest, approximately 500 years ago. Introgression patterns are at their most variable on the X-chromosome of the alpaca, featuring 53 genes known to have deleterious X-linked phenotypes in humans. Strong genome-wide introgression signatures include olfactory receptor complexes into both species, hypertension resistance into alpaca, and fleece/fiber traits into llama. Genomic signatures of domestication in the llama include male reproductive traits, while in alpaca feature fleece characteristics, olfaction-related and hypoxia adaptation traits. Expression analysis of the introgressed region that is syntenic to human HSA4q21, a gene cluster previously associated with hypertension in humans under hypoxic conditions, shows a previously undocumented role for PRDM8 downregulation as a potential transcriptional regulation mechanism, analogous to that previously reported at high altitude for hypoxia-inducible factor 1α. Conclusions The unprecedented introgression signatures within both domestic camelid genomes may reflect post-conquest changes in agriculture and the breakdown of traditional management practices.

Copyright of Contexto Revista Anual de Estudios Literarios is the property of Facultad de Medicina, Universidad de los Andes, Venezuela and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The Spanish conquest of the Cuchumatanes Highlands (1524–1541 ce) led to dramatic land use changes adhering to colonial practices and values, which included the rearing of livestock, agriculture, timber extraction, mining, and the relocation of indigenous populations to new settlements. These changes are often recorded in historical accounts and official records; however, these are sparse, incomplete, and have been lost over the passage of time. Here, we present a high-resolution palaeoenvironmental reconstruction for Cenote Kail (Guatemala) since the Spanish Conquest, to provide additional evidence of land use changes from an integrated multi-proxy perspective. We analysed: (i) fossil pollen; (ii) macroscopic and microscopic charcoal; and (iii) dung fungal spores (Sporormiella) from a lake sediment core extracted from Cenote Kail in the Cuchumatanes highlands, combining these analyses with remotely sensed satellite data. We reconstructed: (i) forest composition and dynamics; (ii) burning, (iii) fauna abundance, and (iv) agricultural activities. High resolution age-depth modelling was conducted using a combination of 210Pb and 14C dates. The high temporal resolution enabled a novel integrated validation of the charcoal data sets with remotely sensed satellite data and the historical record. Three stages of floral compositional change were discerned from the palynological assemblage data encompassing: (i) the decline of mixed hard wood forests (MHWF), associated with the building of new settlements, agriculture and timber extraction for fuel (1550–1675 ce); (ii) pastoral expansions involving the rearing of livestock (1700–1800 ce); and (iii) the expansions of urban settlements and increasing management of the land (1821–2015 ce). Seed predation is suggested as the dominant factor preventing MHWF from re-establishing in the Cuchumatanes Highlands over the past 500 years. Burning is limited locally and regionally and in line with the modern regime, which suggests that fire has been managed and controlled since European contact. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the changes and adaptation of warfare strategies in indigenous societies during the Spanish conquest, through a case study of Copiapó valley in northern Chile. Using ethnohistorical and archaeological data, it explores the experiences and actions of collective agents who transformed their warfare practices and social alliances in order to fight for their autonomy and survival. The Copiapó people transformed from a society characterized by low-scale intermittent warfare to one that employed an intensive mode of conflict and developed broader inter-ethnic alliances. Their relative success in this last stage eventually proved to be an effective bargaining tool to negotiate better conditions for their incorporation into the new colonial system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many items of culture which are conveyed from one culture to another may take verbal form, and then constitute what Jakobson called "translation proper." If such diffusions involve a co-occurrent change of semiotic systems, they are of such a different nature, that we better reserve another term for it: transposition. Whether or not accompanied by transpositions, such as pictures, translational events may play an important part in the encounter between cultures, not only in the negative sense of deformations as postulated by the Tartu school. Particularly, when such transpositions make up a massive occurrence, as was the assimilation of the Greek-Muslim heritage in Middle Age Europe, or the more extended process by means of which Europe took on of the experience of the so-called New World several centuries later, such processes may actually enrich the homeculture. In this paper, we will study the latter process, zeroing in on a single, if protracted, event, the creation of the work ascribed to Bernardino de Sahagún, which really involved the collaboration of many scholars, many of them bearers of Aztec culture, exclusively or in combination with Western culture. This case interests us in particular, also because it involved the transposition of pictures, not, in the sense, of Western pictures being substitued for single pre-Hispanic picture, but rather as a kind of semiotic means contributing in different ways to the process of constitution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Boletín del Museo Chileno de Arte Precolombino is the property of Museo Chileno de Arte Precolombino and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

One of Cortés's first measures following the conquest of Central Mexico was the introduction of agricultural products and techniques, as well as European livestock. This production was mostly directed toward European settlers who did not want to alter their dietary habits. However, rural indigenous populations were not left out of these transformations of agricultural system. As early as the 1540s, both indigenous elites and community members obtained lands from the Crown used to raise sheep and goats. Recent excavations on the site of Mich.415-Las Iglesias (Michoacán) open a window on an Indian village occupied shortly after the Conquest. Test pits uncovered a trash area associated with a wealthy habitation, containing 566 faunal remains. Zooarchaeological analysis indicates the presence of both European (cattle, sheep/goat) and local (mud turtle, fish, duck) animals. This demonstrates the early spread of these new products in rural areas of Western Mexico and their rapid impact on the diets of indigenous populations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The painting Landscape of the West Indies at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, is attributed to Jan Mostaert from Haarlem (ca. 1475-1555 / 56). Several identifications have been proposed for the region that is represented and for the event that takes place there (a conflict between Spanish conquerors and an indigenous people that defends a great mountain). After critically reviewing the existing hypotheses, this article continues the path indicated by Martínez de la Peña (1970) and Peter Mason (2015, 2017), who have identified several details of the painting as typical of the Canary Islands and its original inhabitants. This article proposes that the mountain of central importance in the painting corresponds to the Roque Bentaiga of Gran Canaria, that the striking stone arch is the nearby rock formation called "Ventana del Bentaiga" and that the snow-topped mountain in the background must be the Teide, a volcano on the neighbouring island of Tenerife, visible from this area. The conclusion is that the painting depicts the battle that took place at this site in 1483 between the troops of the Spanish conquistador Pedro de Vera and the Canaries who opposed them with fierce resistance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The conquistadors armament is one of the outstanding issues to reach a complete and dynamic vision of the Conquest of New Spain. Although there are some studies that address the subject, its approach is restricted to the use of codices and chronicles for its description. In this sense the work of Silvio Zavala, and the place occupied by the indigenous tribute in the supply of weapons, is especially effective to make an approach that allows another paradigm of the important phenomenon heading to its 5th Centenary. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]