This fascinating multidisciplinary study originated from a session titled “Landscapes of Origin in the Americas” at a meeting of the American Anthropological Association in 2004. After many lively discussions with colleagues, the author gathered nine essays that analyze landscape, memory, and story. The result is an illuminating, clearly organized book that contains insights of considerable value to folklorists.
The editor explains in her introduction, “Landscape is a powerful factor in the operation of memory because of the associations narrators make between the local landscape and the events of the stories they tell” (xii). In the context of collective memory, real and imagined places of origin become highly significant. Three themes comprise the book’s approach: physical features of origin/creation sites, groups’ modes of relocation, and origin places’ impact on contemporary descendants of ancient people.
Divided into three sections—North America, Mesoamerica, and South America—the book covers diverse culture areas. The editor has chosen essays that succeed very well in articulating connections between landscape and narrative. These essays provide a workable model for future studies of landscapes of origin.
The first section presents four essays about North American landscapes of origin: three from the United States and one from Canada. One of the most thought-provoking essays is “Nuvagantu, ‘Where Snow Sits’: Origin Mountains of the Southern Paiutes,” by Richard Stoffle, Richard Arnold, Kathleen Van Vlack, Larry Eddy, and Betty Cornelius. Making the point that American Indians generally have two places of origin—one for their ethnic group and the other for their local group—the authors explain how non-Paiute people have misinterpreted the meanings of landscape. Mountain peaks, for example, may have less power than the surrounding mountain range, although the peaks tend to play an important role in creation myths. While the United States owns much of the land that the Southern Paiute people view as their place of origin, the Southern Paiutes share their knowledge of this land “so they can remain in a stewardship capacity to advise on moral, spiritual, and cultural matters in the Spring Mountain Range” (44).
The second section, on Mesoamerica, includes three detailed studies of landscapes of origin. Merideth Paxton’s “The Map of the Province of Mani: A Record of Landscape and Northern Maya Lowland Concepts of Origin” makes very interesting points about the 1557 Yucatec Maya manuscript known as the Madrid Codex. World directions, creation of the universe, and relationships between parts of the Maya calendar and geographic space are among the aspects considered here. Young people who currently worry about Maya predictions of the end of the world in 2012 would benefit from reading this essay, which conveys the complexity of Maya thought.
In the third section, on South America, there are two essays: one on landscapes as metaphor in Ecuador and another on three origin places of the Inka. Both of these carefully researched essays help the reader view places of origin from the people’s own perspective, without an overlay of Western intellectual interpretation. Jessica Christie, the author of the essay on the Inka, provides extremely interesting archeological and material evidence, as well as results of interviews with individuals. Her conclusions take the reader through four levels of interaction, ending with the observation that “what the origin place is depends ‘which eyes are looking at it’” (171).
Maps, diagrams, and photographs help the reader understand the complex landscapes, cultures, and eras that the authors describe. Since this book is likely to serve as a model for future studies, it is good that it includes such visual aids, especially for those of us who are not specialists in landscape studies. It will be exciting to see the impact of this excellent book upon future publications.
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[Review length: 609 words • Review posted on March 9, 2011]