The Art of Being In-Between: Native Intermediaries, Indian Identity, and Local Rule in Colonial Oaxaca (review)
goods). Sara Barber and Arthur Joyce collaborated on “Polity Produced and Community Consumed: Negotiating Political Centralization through Ritual in the Lower Río Verde Valley, Oaxaca,” which examines consumption and community identity, elite control, and the construction of monumental architecture (150 BCE-250 CE). Frances Berdan’s “Material Dimensions of Aztec Religion and Ritual” uses codices and archaeological evidence to assess Tenochtitlan’s temples, idols, priesthoods, offerings, ceremonies, and the periodic renewal of objects and structures. Barbara and William Fash review Mesoamerican ballgame ritual iconography, offerings and sacrifices, and socioeconomic factors (such as gambling) in “The Roles of Ballgames in Mesoamerican Ritual Economy.” The final analytical chapters include Katherine Spielmann’s “Ritual and Political Economies,” which reviews these case studies and provides additional global, cross-cultural examples, observing that political economy comprises large-scale mobilization of labor, food, and goods for ritual performance. John Watanabe’s “Ritual Economy and the Negotiation of Autarky and Interdependence in a Ritual Mode of Production” emphasizes theories about the economics of ritual (citing Rappaport, Weber, Sahlins, Wolf, and Mauss) and modes of production.