Société des Américanistes

Dear Member of the Society of Americanists,

We are pleased to announce that the Society’s next conference will be held on Thursday, June 4, 2026, at 6:00 p.m., in Lecture Hall 2 of the Quai Branly Museum.

Annabel Villalonga Gordaliza (Autonomous University of Barcelona – Department of Art and Musicology) will present:

From the Trocadéro to the Quai Branly (MQB-JC): Historiography and Archaeometry of the “Teotihuacan” Materials in the Alphonse L. Pinart Collection.

The MQB-JC houses a collection of archaeological artifacts from Teotihuacan, the Valley of Mexico, and other sites in the Mexico Basin that belonged to the collection of French explorer, anthropologist, and linguist Alphonse L. Pinart (1852–1911), who traveled through northern Mexico, the Gulf Coast, and the state of Guerrero between 1878 and 1882. Based on a historiographical and documentary study, the ongoing research examines correspondence, old catalogs, and museum inventory records in order to reconstruct the history of these pieces. The presentation will propose alternative hypotheses regarding the possible methods of acquisition for some of these objects. The second focus of the project centers on the study of eight “Teotihuacan-style” stone masks preserved in the museum’s storage. The presentation will outline the initial results obtained through traceological analyses aimed at identifying tool marks associated with possible modern manufacturing, as well as a geometric morphometric study applied to two specimens. Through the integration of historiographical research and archaeometric analysis, this contribution seeks to offer new perspectives on the formation, circulation, and authenticity of Mesoamerican collections in European museums.

The lecture will be delivered in Spanish

Dear Member of the Society of Americanists:

We are pleased to invite you to the Society of Americanists’ upcoming lecture, which will take place on Thursday, May 21, 2026, at 6:00 p.m. in Room 2 of the Quai Branly Museum.

 

David Tavárez, professor of anthropology (Vassar College, United States), will present:

From Idolatry to the Republic of Letters: Cosmology and Resistance in Colonial Mexico

In 1702, following the repression of a revolt in a yeche (Zapotec community) in New Spain, the Bishop of Oaxaca offered amnesty to the idolaters in exchange for collective confessions. To avoid any conflict, 68 Zapotec communities denounced their ritual specialists, handing over sacred songs and 102 ritual calendars in the Zapotec language. These texts, composed by specialists using the Latin alphabet, contain cosmological and cosmogonic narratives and ritual protocols that resemble those of ancient pre-Columbian texts. Sent to the Council of the Indies as proof of the failure of the Dominican Order’s evangelization projects, this corpus remained forgotten until the 1960s. This lecture presents these exceptional archives, which, as the largest corpus of indigenous calendars from the colonial Americas, offer a better understanding of Mesoamerican cultural history and its conceptions of the order of time and the cosmos. Drawing on two decades of archival research and fieldwork, this presentation examines the resistance and adaptation of indigenous populations in the face of the colonization of time. This extraordinary corpus demonstrates that, toward the end of the 17th century, indigenous authors briefly established a “republic of letters” that, while deeply rooted in the ancestral understanding of the universe and in Zapotec political interests, also maintained intellectual ties with other bodies of knowledge circulating in the Atlantic world.

 

The lecture will be given in French.

 

For your information, the upcoming lectures will take place:

–    On June 4, featuring a presentation by Annabel Villalonga Gordaliza on the MQB’s Pinart Teotihuacan collection.

–    On September 17, featuring a presentation by Stephen Houston titled “Rhythms of Recall: Maya Writing and the Ancestors Beyond Living Memory”

Dear member of the Société des américanistes,

We are pleased to invite you to the next conference of the Société des américanistes on Thursday, February 19, 2026, at 6:30 p.m. in the cinema room of the Quai Branly Museum.

Mickaël Orantin, CNRS Research Fellow (ECHELLES Laboratory, UMR 8264), will present and discuss his book with Isabel Yaya-McKenzie (EHESS/LAS):

Les prêches du labeur. Anthropologie historique du travail dans les missions jésuites du Paraguay (1609-1768).

Between 1609 and 1768, missionaries from the Society of Jesus founded and administered some thirty large villages in Paraguay, where they evangelized the region’s indigenous peoples, mostly Guaraní. Among the social transformations brought about by conversion to Christianity, those related to work practices and representations played a central role. Missionary production ensured the material sustainability of the villages and, thus, the conditions for evangelization. As an instrument of domination, work also enabled social integration. Its transformations were inextricably linked to those of kinship structures, social assistance, techniques, exchange, identity, and, of course, religion. Through, among other archival documents, the translation and examination of an unpublished monolingual Guarani work catechism written in the missions in the 18th century, this book uses the tools of historical anthropology to uncover the conflicts and collaborations that arose from the encounter between European and Guarani conceptions of work, as well as the misunderstandings that persisted for 150 years.

The lecture will be given in French.

Dear member of the Société des Américanistes,

We are pleased to invite you to the Assemblée générale of the société des Américanistes on Thursday, December 4, 2025, at 6 p.m. in the cinema room of the musée du quai Branly.

This will be followed by a conference of E. James Dixon, Emeritus Professor of Anthropology, University of New Mexico, USA, who will present

How, When, and Why Did Ice Age People First Arrive in North America

New research from different scientific disciplines converges to indicate that seafaring people were the first to colonize North America. This evidence supports the theory that people using watercraft traveled eastward from Asia by navigating along the islands and southern shore of the Bering Land Bridge and then southward along the Northwest Coast of North America. These first Americans reached the southern regions of the American continents thousands of years before the ice that blocked overland migration southward from the Bering Land Bridge had melted. Seafaring and coastal navigation were developed along Asia’s Pacific coasts by 35,000 years ago. These adaptations made it possible for people to navigate eastward along the southern shores of the Bering Land Bridge to North America circa 17,000 years ago. Recent archeological research along the Northwest Coast of North America supports this hypothesis.

The conference will be held in English.

Dear member of the Société des Américanistes,

We are pleased to announce that the society’s next conference will be held on Thursday, October 9, 2025, at 6 p.m. in the cinema room of the Quai Branly Museum.

Rafael Fernandes Mendes Junior (Federal University of Rio de Janeiro) will present: The Land Without Evil: A Guarani Saga

After the Chaco War (1932-1935), Guarani groups left the border between Paraguay and Brazil, guided by their shaman, and embarked on a journey of several thousand kilometers to the northern states of Pará and Tocantins. The study of this double migration, which until now had never been the subject of ethnographic investigation, reveals its significance yesterday and today for these groups and their descendants, as well as the social transformations it causes—or results in—, in space and time: the division of the group into smaller units and its dispersion; interethnic encounters and marriages with whites and other indigenous populations; conversion to Christianity and involvement in a movement to affirm their culture; and finally, the transformations of the concept of the individual. The combination of interviews (in Portuguese and Guarani) and historical sources thus allows for a renewed approach to the famous myth of the Land Without Evil, first reported by ethnologist Curt Nimuendaju and then popularized by Hélène and Pierre Clastres.

The lecture will be given in French.

Please go directly to the museum entrance (37 quai Branly), without going through the ticket office. The Vigipirate security plan requires museum security guards to refuse entry to visitors carrying suitcases (even cabin-size), travel bags, backpacks, sports bags, etc.

Dear member of the Société des américanistes,

We are pleased to announce that the Society’s next conference will be held on Thursday 26 June 2025, at 6pm in lecture room 2 of the Musée du Quai Branly.

Esther Katz (researcher at the Institut de Recherche pour le Développement, UMR 208 PALOC “Patrimoines locaux, environnement et globalisation” IRD/CNRS/MNHN)

and

Araceli Aguilar Meléndez (teacher-researcher at the Centro de investigaciones tropicales, Universidad Veracruzana Xalapa, Veracruz, México)

will present:

“Past and present of chillies (Capsicum spp.) in the Americas”

The chilli (Capsicum spp.) is more than just a spice in the cultures of the American continent. Its extraordinary diversity in terms of shapes, flavours, aromas and pungency levels is the result of historical processes of management, selection and cultural re-signification that date back millennia. Understanding the biocultural trajectory of chilli requires situating the chilli-culture binomial in specific historical, territorial and social contexts. This paper explores how different American societies have contributed to the domestication, diversification and conservation of this plant, through the maintenance of ritual and food practices. Ethnobotanical data and ethnographic examples illustrating the centrality of chilli will be presented based on fieldwork, mainly in Mexico, and on studies published in the book: Chiles, ajíes y pimentas. Capsicum from the Caribbean, Central and South America (coordinated by Esther Katz, Marco Antonio Vásquez Dávila, Araceli Aguilar Meléndez and Gladys Isabel Manzanero Medina and edited by the Universidad Veracruzana and the IRD).

The conference will be held in Spanish.
Please go directly to the museum entrance (37 quai Branly), without going through the ticket office. The Vigipirate plan requires museum security staff not to allow suitcases (even cabin bags), travel bags, rucksacks, sports bags, etc. to be brought into the museum.

Dear members, we are pleased to announce that the next conference of the Society will be held on Wednesday, May 7, 2025, from 4:30 to 6:30 p.m. in Salle de Cours 2 at the Musée du Quai Branly.

Catherine J. Allen (Professor Emeritus, Department of Anthropology, George Washington University) will present: Every Stone Is Unique. Ethnographic Perspectives on Inca Stone Masonry

“The wall was stationary, but its lines were seething and its surface changeable, as that of flooding summer rivers” (J. M. Arguedas, Los Ríos Profundos).

Inca stone masonry has long been a cause of wonder and curiosity. Rather than carving out identical blocks of stone and joining them with mortar, Inca masons treated each stone individually, Thus, every stone in a great wall like Hatun Rumiyuq in Cuzco is unique. Each one was lightly finished and then fitted with the others, seamlessly and without mortar, The irregularity of the stones and absence of mortar make the walls resilient in earthquakes, for the stones can move around during the tremor and settle back against each other when the crisis has passed. Moreover, some Inca walls, like those at Sacsahuaman and Ollantaytambo, are composed of truly gigantic monoliths that had to be transported considerable distances from their quarry sites. Research has cast light on how these feats were achieved, yet what was the point of all that time-consuming effort? Grandiose expressions of imperial dominance? Art for art’s sake? Perhaps. But before leaping to conclusions, we need to understand Inca masonry in terms of what Carolyn Dean has termed a “culture of stone.” What ontological assumptions informed the Inca masons’ relationships with their stone medium? I suggest that ethnographic research into contemporary Andean understandings of stone may shed some light on this question.

The conference will be held in english

Please present yourself directly at the museum entrance (37 quai Branly), without going through the cash desks. The Vigipirate plan requires museum security staff not to allow suitcases (even cabin bags), travel bags, backpacks, sports bags, etc. to be brought into the museum.