William L. Merrill

The diffusion of maize to the southwestern United States and its impact

Our understanding of the initial period of agriculture in the southwestern United States has been transformed by recent discoveries that establish the presence of maize there by 2100 cal. B.C. (calibrated calendrical years before the Christian era) and document the processes by which it was integrated into local foraging economies. Here we review archaeological, paleoecological, linguistic, and genetic data to evaluate the hypothesis that Proto-Uto-Aztecan (PUA) farmers migrating from a homeland in Mesoamerica introduced maize agriculture to the region. We conclude that this hypothesis is untenable and that the available data indicate instead a Great Basin homeland for the PUA, the breakup of this speech community into northern and southern divisions ≈6900 cal. B.C. and the dispersal of maize agriculture from Mesoamerica to the US Southwest via group-to-group diffusion across a Southern Uto-Aztecan linguistic continuum.

The genetic unity of Southern Uto-Aztecan

The internal structure of the Uto-Aztecan language family has been debated since the late 19th century, when the historical relationships among all of its major subdivisions were first recognized. Alexis Manaster Ramer’s identification in 1992 of a phonological innovation shared by languages belonging to the four northernmost subfamilies led to the acceptance of these languages as a genetic linguistic unit called Northern Uto-Aztecan, but no consensus has emerged regarding the organization into higher-level subgroups of the remaining five subfamilies. In this essay, I argue in support of a perspective, originally developed by Terrence Kaufman, that the languages in these subfamilies also constitute a genetic unit, Southern Uto-Aztecan, based on two shared, sequential innovations: *-n- g *-r- and *-ŋ- g *-n-. Key to my argument is the reconstruction of a Proto-Uto-Aztecan liquid phoneme with **[-r-] and **[-l-] as its allophones, which clarifies the diachronic relationships among reflexes of **-n-, **-ŋ-, and **-r- in the daughter languages. The model that I propose offers a parsimonious solution to several perennial issues in Uto-Aztecan historical phonology and a possible explanation for the absence of a liquid phoneme in the Numic languages.

Reply to Hill and Brown: Maize and Uto-Aztecan cultural history

The hypothesis that Proto-Uto-Aztecan (PUA) speakers cultivated maize in or near Mesoamerica rests primarily on Jane H. Hills argument (1) that a maize-related vocabulary can be reconstructed for PUA, based on cognates in Northern Uto-Aztecan (NUA) and Southern Uto-Aztecan (SUA) languages. In our essay (2), we noted that Hill fails to demonstrate the existence of this PUA vocabulary, because the NUA words she identifies as cognates of maize-related words in SUA languages lack the expected phonological forms or the expected meanings. The same characterization applies to the additional evidence from three California NUA languages that she cites in her reply.

The Power of Song: Music and Dance in the Mission Communities of Northern New Spain, 1590–1810 (review)

the 1960s and 1970s. But it would be unfortunate for anyone to embrace his thesis without studying the rather different theological conclusions that came from the pen of Newman, following his study of historical change. The book under consideration leaves little substance to consider and no tools for discerning that which is faithful to Catholic tradition and that which is not. Newman’s labors, on the other hand, effectively distilled the difference between authentic change, which is desirable growth and necessary development, and that which constitutes deformity and infidelity.

Islands in the stream: Formalism and hermeneutics converging

Benjamin N. Colby and Lore M. Colby. The Daykeeper: The Life and Discourse of an Ixil Diviner. Cambridge and London: Harvard University 1981, xvi + 333 pp.

Mobile Agriculturalists and the Emergence of Sedentism: Perspectives from Northern Mexico

25.00.