Mixtec plant nomenclature and classification by Alejandro de Ávila A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Doctor in Philosophy in Anthropology in the Graduate Division of the University of California, Berkeley Committee in charge: Professor Overton Brent Berlin, Chair Professor Laura Nader Professor Leanne Hinton Fall 2010 Abstract Mixtec plant nomenclature and classification by Alejandro de Ávila Doctor of Philosophy in Anthropology University of California, Berkeley Professor Overton Brent Berlin, Chair Ñuu Savi (‘Sacred Rain’s collectivity’), the Mixtec people of southern Mexico, had created some of the most complex polities in the continent at the time of European contact. Five hundred years later, they remain cohesive, culturally distinct communities, as increasing numbers of individuals and families migrate to northern Mexico and the US for work in the agricultural and service sectors. In 2005, the Mexican Federal Government reported there were more than 446,000 speakers of Tu’un Savi (‘Sacred Rain’s word,’ the Mixtec languages) five years of age and older, 322,000 of them still living in 1551 settlements within their historic homeland; an additional 100,000 to 200,000 are estimated to reside in the US. The term Mixtec, derived from the Náhuatl mixte:cah (‘cloud-people’), has been considered by different authors to encompass between 12 and 52 mutually unintelligible languages, in addition to numerous dialects. According to the Summer Institute of Linguistics’ Ethnologue, it is the second most diversified group of languages in the Americas, after Zapotec. The Instituto Nacional de Lenguas Indígenas, however, recognizes 81 variants of Mixtec, making it the most diversified language group in Mexico following official criteria. The internal variation of Mixtec and its geographic proximity to three related groups (Cuicatec, Triqui and Amuzgo, members of the same lineage in a progressively earlier sequence of branching episodes), provide fertile ground for diachronic inquiry into various lexical and grammatical traits of these languages, which are part of the Otomanguean phylum. The Mixtec territory can be portrayed as an intricate mosaic in its geology and vegetation. It boasts one of the richest floras in Mexico, itself one of the most diverse areas of the planet in biological terms. Furthermore, the Mixteca (the local name for the region in Spanish) is notable for a high incidence of endemic species of vascular plants and terrestrial vertebrates, which reflect long series of climatic and ecological changes in the area’s natural history. It is part of a larger region of Otomanguean speech where a characteristic stone-working technology has been documented by archaeologists, in conjunction with the early development of plant domestication and agriculture. Natural complexity and cultural history thus converge to enhance the interest of the Mixtecan languages for ethnobotanical study. This dissertation presents the results of several years of research on the names and uses of plants in Mixtec communities in the states of Oaxaca, Puebla and Guerrero. Extensive 1 information is provided on plant terminology, backed in part by herbarium specimens collected in the field by the author. The Mixtec languages make use of a productive system of noun markers, in some cases matched by pronominal clitics, to label various plant categories. Adscription to these groupings appears to be determined by use, edibility and symbolic significance, as much as by life form affiliations that reflect adaptive design, such as woody plants, leafy herbs, vines and grasses. Categories labeled by class terms appear consistently in all the Mixtec languages that have been documented to date. The dissertation reviews the botanical nomenclature recorded by linguists and naturalists throughout the Mixteca since the 16th century. 2 TABLE OF CONTENTS 1. Introduction: natural history and cultural chronology of the Mixtec region 1 1.1 Geological history 1 1.2 Climate 6 1.3 Flora and vegetation 6 1.4 Language diversity and Otomanguean prehistory 9 1.5 Mixtec language history 15 1.6 Archaeology and history 19 1.7 The modern period 23 2. History and theory of ethnobiological classification and nomenclature 28 2.1 Francisco del Paso and Franz Boas 29 2.2 Conklin and Lévi-Strauss 31 2.3 Brent Berlin’s principles of categorization 33 2.4 Berlin’s general principles of nomenclature 40 2.5 Recapitulation 43 3. Semantic classification in Mixtec grammar and lexical morphology 46 3.1 Noun classifiers 46 3.2 Mixtec orthography 49 3.3 Phonology 51 3.4 Morphophonemics 53 3.5 Morphology 55 3.6 Contraction processes 58 3.7 The pronouns 59 3.8 Mixtec classifiers 63 3.9 Innovation and loss of the classifiers 70 4. A corpus of Mixtec plant lexicon 73 4.1 The sources of information 74 4.2 Dialectal geography of the sources 84 4.3 The plants marked tun-/tnu-/nu- 87 4.3.1 Cognate sets and individual terms with initial <a> 91 4.3.2 Cognate sets and individual terms with initial <ch> 91 i 4.3.3 Cognate sets and individual terms with initial <d> 93 4.3.4 Cognate sets and individual terms with initial <i> 94 4.3.5 Cognate sets and individual terms with initial <j> 96 4.3.6 Cognate sets and individual terms with initial <k> 96 4.3.7 Cognate sets and individual terms with initial <l> 100 4.3.8 Cognate sets and individual terms with initial <m> 100 4.3.9 Cognate sets and individual terms with initial <n> 100 4.3.10 Cognate sets and individual terms with initial <nd> 102 4.3.11 Cognate sets and individual terms with initial <ñ> 110 4.3.12 Cognate sets and individual terms with initial <o> 113 4.3.13 Cognate sets and individual terms with initial <p> 113 4.3.14 Cognate sets and individual terms with initial <r> 113 4.3.15 Cognate sets and individual terms with initial <s> 113 4.3.16 Cognate sets and individual terms with initial <t> 115 4.3.17 Cognate sets and individual terms with initial <ts> 124 4.3.18 Cognate sets and individual terms with initial <v> 124 4.3.19 Cognate sets and individual terms with initial <w> 126 4.3.20 Cognate sets and individual terms with initial <x> 126 4.3.21 Cognate sets and individual terms with initial <y> 128 4.4 The plants labeled yuku 135 4.5 Plants labeled ita 153 4.6 The plants labeled yuva and nduva 167 4.7 Other labeled groupings 187 4.7.1 Thorny plants 187 4.7.2 Grasses 189 4.7.3 Brooms – switches – shrubs 190 4.7.4 Soap plants 191 4.7.5 Tuberous roots 192 4.7.6 Agaves and plants that resemble them 194 4.7.7 Vines 196 4.8 Unaffiliated plants 198 ii 4.9 The main crops 208 4.9.1 Maize 209 4.9.2 Beans 213 4.9.3 Squashes 215 5. Conclusion: the geography of quelites and flowers 218 5.1 Spatial distribution of the yuva and nduva class terms 218 5.2 Botanical class terms in other Mesoamerican languages 220 Notes 225 Bibliography 232 iii Acknowledgments I am indebted to numerous kind people who have generously shared their knowledge with me during my field work in Oaxaca, Puebla and Guerrero. I cite their names in section 4.1 of this dissertation, listed by communities. I am grateful to Celso Flores Romero and Sergio Méndez, who instructed me in Coicoyán and San Miguel Tlacotepec Mixtec with great patience. The members of Ve’e Tu’un Savi heard my original proposal for documentation of the Mixtec plant lexicon and made helpful observations; I especially thank Juan Julián Caballero and Ubaldo López García for their encouragement and friendship. Many colleagues have offered the results of their own field research to me with great kindness; I would like to express my gratitude to Esther Katz, Priscilla C. Small, Susan J. Hugghins, Anna Piestrzynska, Jonathan Amith, Michael W. Swanton and Sebastian van Doesburg. Alfredo Saynes Vásquez provided Latin binomials for many of the plants I collected in Coicoyán and Jicayán; Silvia Salas Morales, Emily J. Lott and Abisaí García Mendoza have helped me identify the voucher specimens we have gathered subsequently. Salvador Maldonado Paz assisted me in the transcription of field notes, and Javier Ríos Medina prepared the topographic map of the Mixtec region presented in chapters 1 and 4. Óscar Mingüer Vargas helped me convert the manuscript into the format of a dissertation. My research has been supported at different stages by the Consejo Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnología (CONACYT), the Missouri Botanical Garden, the New York Botanical Garden, the World Wildlife Fund, the Instituto Tecnológico de Oaxaca (ITO), the American Philosophical Society, and the Jardín Etnobotánico de Oaxaca. iv 1. Introduction: natural history and cultural chronology of the Mixtec region Ñuu Savi (‘Sacred Rain’s collectivity’), the Mixtec people, had created some of the most refined polities in the American Continent at the time of European contact [1.]. Five hundred years later, they remain cohesive, culturally distinct communities, as increasing numbers of individuals and families migrate to northern Mexico and the United States for work in the agricultural and service sectors. In 2005, the Mexican Federal Government reported there were more than 446,000 speakers of Tu’un Savi (‘Sacred Rain’s word,’ the Mixtec languages) 5 years of age and older in the country, 322,000 of them still living in 1551 settlements within their historic homeland (INALI, 2005); an additional 100,000 to 200,000 are estimated to reside outside of Mexico. The Mixtec people have occupied historically an area of approximately 45,000 square kilometers in southern Mexico. Their territory extends for about 260 kilometers south to north, from the Pacific coast to the Balsas trough in southern Puebla State, and for approximately 175 kilometers east to west, from the Cuicatlán Canyon and the Oaxaca Valley to the mountains of eastern Guerrero State (Spores, 2007: 5). The Mixtec area, a very heterogeneous geographical unit, has been conventionally divided into three regions. The Mixteca Alta, an area that lies mostly above 1600 meters in altitude, designates the districts of Coixtlahuaca, Teposcolula, Tlaxiaco, Nochixtlán, the northern part of Putla and the westernmost portions of the Etla and Zaachila districts in the State of Oaxaca. Sustaining the densest human population, the Mixteca Alta has played a central role in regional history since the formative period. The Mixteca Baja, where the average altitude is about 1600 meters (Ortiz Pérez et al.: 46), covers the district of Acatlán and the western section of the district of Tepexi in southwestern Puebla, and the districts of Huajuapan, Silacayoapan and Juxtlahuaca in Oaxaca. On grounds of linguistic affinity, the Mixtec communities in the districts of Morelos (Tlapa), Allende (Ayutla), Altamirano (San Luis Acatlán) and Abasolo (Ometepec) in eastern Guerrero have been linked to the Mixteca Baja, although their lands stretch over mountain ranges as high as those of the Mixteca Alta and reach down close to sea level on the Pacific coast. Finally, the Mixteca de la Costa, largely below 800 meters in altitude, encompasses the district of Jamiltepec, the western part of Juquila and the southern portion of Putla in Oaxaca. The landscapes of the Mixtec territory are quite rugged and consist of a complex mosaic of geological formations dating to different periods within the morphotectonic province called the Sierra Madre del Sur (Ferrusquía Villafranca, 1998: 60), which extends from the Mexican Transvolcanic Belt south to the Pacific Ocean, and from the Isthmus of Tehuantepec to southwestern Jalisco. Three physiographic subprovinces are recognized within the eastern Sierra Madre del Sur, where the Mixtec territory is situated: the Pacific coastal plain, the Balsas trough and the Oaxaca-Puebla highlands. The latter, which constitute the most complex subprovince, are divided in turn into two zones within our region of interest: the Mixtec-Zapotec sierras and the Tehuacán-Cuicatlán rift valley. For the most part, the Pacific coastal plain is a narrow strip (approximately 20 kilometers from south to north) where rivers do not form significant alluvial depositions, since the sea currents close to the shore disperse sediments rapidly. The continental platform is equally narrow along the coast. 1 The Balsas trough is an east-to-west depression that forms the watershed of the Balsas river, ranging mostly between 200 and 1000 meters in altitude; in its easternmost section, occupied partly by Mixtec communities, it is composed of plateaus that surpass 1000 meters above sea level. The western portion of the Mixtec-Zapotec sierras comprises a high plateau that descends gradually north towards the Balsas trough; the remainder of the zone is formed by mountain ranges that exceed 2000 meters. The Tehuacán-Cuicatlán zone is a long and narrow rift valley, i.e., a graben that is delimited by parallel faults, in a south-southeast to north- northwest direction. The valley is part of the Papaloapan watershed, which drains into the Gulf of Mexico. Figure 1 illustrates the physiography of the Mixtec territory. 1.1 Geological history The Sierra Madre del Sur boasts the most complex geology in Mexico, and its history remains largely speculative (Ferrusquía Villafranca, idem: 63). Ortiz Pérez et al. (2004) characterize the major geomorphological features which distinguish five areas within Mixtec territory (here underlined), largely coincident with Ferrusquía’s subprovinces and zones. The Balsas trough to the northwest has a relatively gentle topography, with 75% of the terrain showing slopes of less than 12°. It morphology is dominated by plateaus formed by metamorphic rocks of Paleozoic age in a general pattern of stepped north-to-south blocks. Mixtec presence in this area has been largely limited to the headwaters, the lower areas of the basin being occupied historically by Tlapanec people (Kaufman, 1990: 98), and more recently by Nahuatl speakers intruding from the north. The mountains and valleys of western Oaxaca feature an intricate relief and diverse structure, characterized by a pattern of ranges that converge towards cusps in the south, with igneous, metamorphic and sedimentary rocks of varying age. Unlike the areas of the Sierra Madre to the west and east, where the mountains relate to the subduction zones and the relief ascends step-wise fashion towards the interior of the continent, here the mountains form linear, parallel ranges, rotated clockwise. The south to north orientation of the Mixteca Alta ranges, in contrast to the east to west axis of the Balsas trough and the general pattern of the Sierra Madre from Chiapas to Jalisco, remains a puzzle. About 25% of the slopes in the area range between 6° and 12°, and 6.5% exceed 30°. The geological history of this region is particularly relevant to the cultural development of the Mixtec people since it occupies a major portion of their territory, where human settlement reached the greatest density, and where large areas of the exposed substrate are highly prone to erosion because of their peculiar mineral composition. Soil retention has been a concern for Mixtec agriculturalists throughout the region and motivated the construction of terraces since the mid to late Classic period, about 500 to 900 AD (Spores, 2007: 75-76). The Tehuacán-Cuicatlán rift bears evidence of having been an endorheic basin which developed its current drainage into the Gulf of Mexico in the Tertiary, in the process capturing flows from the eastern escarpment of the Mixteca Alta. The faults that flank the graben bear witness of recent tectonic activity. Slopes exceeding 30° occupy 3% of the area. Approximately 70% of it lies below 1000 meters in altitude; the warm climate and the potential for irrigation allow the alluvial soils of the lower canyon to produce tropical fruits and two to three crops of maize and other annual species. Mixtec communities settled the 2