Noble David Cook

Population data for Indian Peru: sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

The author presents data on the aboriginal population of Peru in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The data were collected from various archives in both Europe and America. A description of the various early attempts at conducting censuses is provided, and the quality of the data is assessed.

The discovery and conquest of Peru : chronicles of the New World encounter

Dazzled by the sight of the vast treasure of gold and silver being unloaded at Sevilles docks in 1537, a teenage Pedro de Cieza de Leun vowed to join the Spanish effort in the New World, become an explorer, and write what would become the earliest historical account of the conquest of Peru. Available for the first time in English, this history of Peru is based largely on interviews with Ciezas conquistador compatriots, as well as with Indian informants knowledgeable of the Incan past. Alexandra Parma Cook and Noble David Cook present this recently discovered third book of a four-part chronicle that provides the most thorough and definitive record of the birth of modern Andean America. It describes with unparalleled detail the exploration of the Pacific coast of South America led by Francisco Pizarro and Diego de Almagro, the imprisonment and death of the Inca Atahualpa, the Indian resistance, and the ultimate Spanish domination. Students and scholars of Latin American history and conquest narratives will welcome the publication of this volume. Pedro de Cieza de Leun (c. 151;8-1555) was a soldier in Spains royal forces who recorded that countrys conquest of Peru.

The Backbone of History: Health and Nutrition in the Western Hemisphere (review)

Steckel and Rose have brought together afty-two separate contributors in twenty-three chapters under the umbrella of “macrobioarchaeology” to focus on use of modern techniques to determine long-term health conditions in the Americas. The densely packed pages of information, with a substantial number of tables and illustrations, is not easy to read but offers much that is rewarding for those willing to sit at the table. Nine parts provide the “backbone” of this complex text. Most of the oesh is found in parts III (“European and Africans in the New World”) and VI (“Native North Americans”), with ave chapters each. Between are sandwiched two parts on areas south of the Mexican frontier, with chapters on the Maya, Ecuador, and Brazil. The “brains” are in the three chapters of Part II on method. The introduction provides a taste of the meat of the study, and the last parts, VII to IX, can be viewed as a tail, swaying back and forth to recapitulate and help stabilize the whole. Each chapter is based on substantial aeld research and close attention to the superimposed methodological structure. As the editors point out, “Health has played a central role in human history, both as an agent of change and as an outcome measure indicating the quality of life” (3). Without a arm written record based on modern medical knowledge, they rightly argue, the best evidence is to be found in the skeletal remains that can be used to illustrate health over the ages. The volume’s contributors examined 12,500 individuals in sixtyave sites, dating from approximately 4,000 b.c. to the early 1900s. The researchers helped to develop, applied, and then tested a so-called health index, “Mark I,” in conjunction with length of life to compare differences in adaptation. The application of Mark I in this volume “represents one of the arst attempts to develop a tool for systematically and objectively comparing populations” (596). Part II, on methodology, is of critical importance. Without a clearly articulated and consistently applied method, any attempt at a systematic comparative study is oawed. In Chapter two, Alan H. Goodman and Debra L. Martin review the possibility of “Reconstructing Health Proales from Skeletal Remains.” The key is their analysis of nine distinct dental and skeletal lesions that were used as the database for elaboration of the “health index.” The main indicators include adult stature, subadult size, linear enamel hypoplasia, porotic hyperostosis, periosteal reaction, trauma, osteoarthritis and osteophytosis, dental caries, and antemortem tooth, all of which can be used to indicate points on a scale of environmental stress. Goodman and Martin argue in general that “tremendous advancements have been made in our ability to make diagnoses and causal inferences” (49). Yet, they admit that lack of standardization in application leads to problems. Their warning that the measures “are neither perfectly reliable nor perfectly indicative of unREVIEWS

The Discovery and Conquest of Peru

Dazzled by the sight of the vast treasure of gold and silver being unloaded at Seville’s docks in 1537, a teenaged Pedro de Cieza de Leon vowed to join the Spanish effort in the New World, become an explorer, and write what would become the earliest historical account of the conquest of Peru. Available for the first time in English, this history of Peru is based largely on interviews with Cieza’s conquistador compatriates, as well as with Indian informants knowledgeable of the Incan past. Alexandra Parma Cook and Noble David Cook present this recently discovered third book of a four-part chronicle that provides the most thorough and definitive record of the birth of modern Andean America. It describes with unparalleled detail the exploration of the Pacific coast of South America led by Francisco Pizarro and Diego de Almagro, the imprisonment and death of the Inca Atahualpa, the Indian resistance, and the ultimate Spanish domination. Students and scholars of Latin American history and conquest narratives will welcome the publication of this volume.

Born to Die: Disease and New World Conquest, 1492-1650.

Introduction 1. In the path of the hurricane: disease and the disappearance of the peoples of the Caribbean, 1492-1518 2. The deaths of Aztec Cuitlahuac and Inca Huayna Capac: the first New World pandemics 3. Settling in: epidemics and conquest to the end of the first century 4. Regional outbreaks from the 1530s to centurys end 5. New arrivals: peoples and illnesses from 1600-1650 Conclusion.

Good Faith and Truthful Ignorance: A Case of Transatlantic Bigamy

Good Faith and Truthful Ignorance uncovers from history the fascinating and strange story of Spanish explorer Francisco Noguerol de Ulloa. in 1556, accompanied by his second wife, Francisco returned to his home in Spain after a profitable twenty-year sojourn in the new world of Peru. However, unlike most other rich conquistadores who returned to the land of their birth, Francisco was not allowed to settle into a life of leisure. Instead, he was charged with bigamy and illegal shipment of silver, was arrested and imprisoned. Francisco’s first wife (thought long dead) had filed suit in Spain against her renegade husband. So begins the labyrinthine legal tale and engrossing drama of an explorer and his two wives, skillfully reconstructed through the expert and original archival research of Alexandra Parma Cook and Noble David Cook. Drawing on the remarkable records from the trial, the narrative of Francisco’s adventures provides a window into daily life in sixteenth-century Spain, as well as the mentalite and experience of conquest and settlement of the New World. Told from the point of view of the conquerors, Francisco’s story reveals not only the lives of the middle class and minor nobility but also much about those at the lower rungs of the social order and relations between the sexes. In the tradition of Carlo Ginzberg’s The Cheese and the Worms and Natalie Zemon Davis’ The Return of Martin Guerre, Good Faith and Truthful Ignorance illuminates an historical period—the world of sixteenth-century Spain and Peru—through the wonderful and unusual story of one man and his two wives.