Ross Hassig
National Endowment for the Humanities/
Weatherhead Resident Scholar 1997-1998
Rethinking the Aztec
Calendar
Ross Hassig became interested in anthropology through a course called "Anthropology
and Law" while an undergraduate at Vanderbilt University. His fascination
with non-Western legal systems focused first on the northern Plains Indian
tribes and later on Acoma Pueblo, the topic of his thesis while working toward
a master's degree in law and anthropology at Vanderbilt.
When Hassig went to Stanford University to work on his Ph.D.
in anthropology, his focus shifted to Mesoamerica, and he trained in regional
analysis with an emphasis on the study of economic and political institutions.
This led to a study of the Tarascans of Mexico, who appeared to be anomalous
because they were a class society without a major city. On closer examination,
Hassig realized that the Tarascans had achieved the equivalent of an urban system
through the use of an extremely efficient system of canoe transportation.
With the Tarascan model in mind, Hassig shifted his attention
to the lake system of the Aztecs. His first book, Trade, Tribute, and
Transportation: The Sixteenth-Century Political Economy of the Valley of Mexico,
dealt with the effects of the Spanish Conquest. Focusing on continuity rather
than change, Hassig concluded that the arrival of the Spaniards was not the social
watershed it had been thought. Aztec Warfare: Imperial Expansion and
Political Control, his next book, went on to explore the implications
of his earlier work by dealing with one aspect of Aztec society. It was followed
by War and Society in Ancient Mesoamerica, which emphasized
politics and warfare over more traditional ideological interpretations. Hassig
dismissed the idea that imperial expansion "created" Mesoamerica and
called instead for an analysis of specific traits and their associated mechanisms
of transmission. "Who expanded where defines today's cultural boundaries
across all of Mesoamerica," Hassig observed.
In his most recent book, Mexico and the Spanish Conquest,
Hassig noted that the problem with studying the Conquest is that almost all of
the sources are Spanish, and most have been taken at face value by scholars.
His contribution was to work with all available sources from a nonideological
point of view.
Collectively, his works to date provided him with a platform
from which to launch his new study of time and history before and after the Conquest.
Some ideologically driven notions of other scholars have been under intense scrutiny
as Hassig has worked to show the political basis for observed changes in the
archaeological and ethnohistorical record. One of the principal components of
Hassig's study during his resident year has been the Aztec calendar. It is one
of the most complicated known, causing him to ask why and to track what happened
to it with the introduction of the Christian calendar at the time of Conquest.
His current book is a reassessment of his own work
against the backdrop of a vast and fascinating literature of Aztec
culture and history in pre- and post-Conquest times. At the conclusion
of his tenure at the School, Hassig said, "I hope that my rethinking
of the significance of the Aztec calendar will find favor with my
contemporaries, and that the next generation of scholars will be able
to use the model to reinterpret Mesoamerican culture and history in
pre-Aztec times."
Return to Resident
Scholars 1997-98
