Talk:Santa Cecilia Acatitlan

Chichimeca

I changed some instances of the word chichimeca used to refer to the culture that built St. Cecilia Acatitlan and Tenayuca. Using the name chichimeca for the inhabtants of these sites comes form some of the historico-mythical sources about the wanderings of the early nahua people - in these sources the word chichimeca is used to mean "the precivilized people (generally Nahuas) who journeyed south from chicomoztoz and settled in central mexico". The reason much of the mexican material uses the term chichimeca is a general tendency to not be very critical of these sources historicy by mexican scholars. In american mesoamericanist schoalrship there is a tendency to be very critical of these sources, and furthermore there is a preference to use more strictly defined terms. For example the word chichimeca has many other uses than the ones in the early historico-mythical sources, it als meant someone "uncivilized" and was used to refer to the nomadic non-nahua peoples of northwestern mesoamerica, and in this function it came to be used about the modern chichimeca jonaz. These multiple meanings of the word means that it is not generally used by the american tradition of scholarship about other peoples than the modern Chichimeca Jonaz. Instead often archaeological terms are used and the archaeological phase when tenayuca and Sta. Cecilia were built are from the periods known as the Early Aztec or Epi-Toltec periods around 1000 AD-1200 AD. So when I prefer these terms to Chichimeca it is because chichimeca says something about the ethnicity of those who built it (but we don't know anything about their ethnicity) and furthermore not anything very clear since Chichimeca can variously mean uncivilized peoples, modern chichimeca or non-sedentary Nahuas, whereas early aztec says something about the period when they were built which is almost all we know. In fact it is likely that those who built Tenayuca and St. Cecilia could have been primarily Otomi since that area of the valley of Mexico was inhabited by Otomies before the arrival of the Nahuas, Otomi architecture of this period would still fall under the term "early aztec".·Maunus·ƛ· 15:18, 29 July 2008 (UTC)

Thank you for sharing, and responding so promptly to an appeal. You have just drawn a distinction between respective uses of this ethnographic term in Mexican and American scholarship. This seems key because this article at en.wikipedia is a translation of one at es.wikipedia. The ignorance of the significance of "chichimeca" in Mexican Mesoamericanist scholarship exemplifies the down side of an encyclopedia composed by amateurs (like myself). It would be nice if you would go on to rewrite the Chichimeca article at en.wikipedia. I myself would find this rewrite to be an interesting project, but clearly it would be preferable for the rewrite to be done by someone who already possesses the expertise. Hurmata (talk) 01:21, 30 July 2008 (UTC)