In her treatment of metals (pp. 283-84), she gives no hint of recognition that words for "metal" existed in nearly all the Mesoamerican languages which linguists reconstruct as going back to Book of Mormon times. In An Ancient American Setting I had said, "comparative linguistics shows that metals must have been known, and presumably used, at least as early as 1286 B.C. That date extends back to the time of the Jaredites, for which so far we have not a single specimen of actual metal. Does it not seem likely that specimens are going to be found someday?" Instead of acknowledging this significant information, she gets hung up with a narrow view of archaeology, insisting that, "No evidence has been found that metallurgy was practiced by the Olmec civilization" (p. 288). By "evidence" she means physical remains, ignoring the names for metals.

She goes on, "[If metals were used by Book of Mormon peoples in Mesoamerica] somewhere there should be the mining localities and their associated tools, processing localities and the remains of the metal objects that were produced" (p. 288). Indeed there should be. Meanwhile, until archaeologists figure out how to find and identify those remains, there is the undeniable presence of a term for metal in the language widely considered that of the Olmecs, Proto-Mixe-Zoquean, as well as in all other major proto-languages of early Mesoamerica. Is linguistic evidence to be excluded from the study of archaeology when it is inconvenient? Shouldn't we be trying to shed maximum light instead of defend status quo interpretations?

She makes much of the fact that metal processing sites are known in the civilized portions of the Old World (p. 284). But as recently as fifty years ago the same lack of narrowly "archaeological" evidences for metal processing prevailed in the eastern hemisphere as for Mesoamerica now. But vastly more archaeology has been done in the central portions of the Old World—probably more in a single year than gets done in a decade in Mesoamerica. Experts have looked more, and they have found more (there was no doubt more to be found anyhow). Eventually many more "traces of such ancient metallurgy" will be found in Mesoamerica, for, as the names witness, some metal obviously was in early use.

We may not need to find "new" specimens or sites as much as we need to reassess old ones, few of which have received more than limited attention by qualified experts. E. J. Neiburger recently applied xeroradiography to artifacts of the Old Copper Complex of Minnesota, where it has always been supposed that only cold-hammering of nuggets was used in making the more than 20,000 copper artifacts known from around the Great Lakes area. His study found, to the surprise of nearly all archaeologists, that some of the artifacts appear to have been cast, and at least one "provides firm evidence of casting." "Excavated," if it is clear, does not mean "studied properly"—in Minnesota or in Mesoamerica.

All this is no more a problem for the Book of Mormon than for ancient Mesoamerica and, indeed, the Americas generally. The West Indies area—where the Spanish conquistadors laid hands on so much "gold" that their appetite for it became insatiable and led them to the mainland—had yielded a total of only nine archaeological specimens of any kind of metal as of two decades ago. Daniel Rubín de la Borbolla made the same point about the weak representation in museums of what the Spanish records emphasize was a great deal of Tarascan "gold." Bray emphasizes for the Americas generally "how inadequately the archaeological discoveries reflect the actual [ancient] situation" regarding metalworking. But he puts the onus of clarification on the archaeologists rather than casting doubt on the accuracy of historical traditions: "If we are ever to get an accurate picture of aboriginal metal technology, archaeologists must be persuaded to look for foundry sites." Unfortunately Spanish eyewitness accounts show that such craft sites were small, unobvious and apparently rarely located within the types of settlements routinely investigated by archaeologists. Compare the statement by Earle R. Caley and Dudley T. Easby, Jr.: "Direct archaeological evidence of smelting operations is rare in pre-Conquest Peru and unknown in Mexico for all practical purposes." That does not mean there were no smelting operations—quite surely there were—but that their locations have yet to be discovered due to inadequacies of archaeological strategy and technique.

Matheny also states that "complex technological processes generally leave traces in the archaeological record" (p. 284). While logically that is true, in reality little useful information has been recovered so far by Mesoamerican archaeologists about most "complex processes," not just metals. Obsidian working is an example—though not particularly "complex"—where archaeologists, by minute examination of the artifacts and waste fragments produced by ancient and experimental flint-knappers, have achieved considerable knowledge of the methods used. But how stone monument carving, textile manufacturing and dyeing, wood carving, jewelry crafting and many other processes were conceived and performed is known only imperfectly, and that virtually never by the discovery or excavation of workshop sites. Thus Matheny's rhetorical expectation that archaeology should reveal direct evidence of technical methods is out of touch with the realities of today's archaeology. Again, this is not a "Book of Mormon problem" but one for professional archaeologists broadly.

It is a mistake to look for complications where there is no need (p. 285). Yes, brass is an "alloyed metal," usually intentionally made by mixing copper and zinc, yet sometimes the alloy results from smelting ore which naturally contains both copper and zinc, hence mention of "brass" objects does not necessarily imply "a sophisticated development of non-ferrous . . . metallurgy among the Jaredites" but perhaps only a modest knowledge. The Book of Mormon text says almost nothing about metallurgical techniques, and what is said need not be interpreted as involving particularly complex operations. Consider the case of Peru, whose museums display abundant metal artifacts, yet Bray emphasizes the "rudimentary nature" of the equipment and methods used for processing, while Peruvian miners, he says, employed only "the simplest possible technology." A lesson that Matheny needs to learn from this case and others like it in her discussion is that problems and explanations, in archaeology as well as in reading the Book of Mormon text, are best phrased in terms no more complicated than necessary.

Still, even limited by a metalworking technology that was quite basic, Mesoamerican smiths eventually produced a lot of metal and crafted it with great skill. For example, Cortez was given whole bars of gold when he landed in Veracruz. But of the "immense riches" and "huge quantities . . . of golden objects" the Spaniards found, "the number [surviving in American museums] is negligible compared to the great quantity" sent by the Spaniards to Europe, where "most of the metal objects were melted and made into bars." Estimates are that at least 350 kilograms of silver and 4,000 kgs. of gold were looted from Mexico at the time of the Conquest, and 61,000 kgs. of silver and 8,000 of gold from Peru.

Despite the simple means they employed, the metalworkers did remarkable work. Albrecht Dürer, the son of a European goldsmith, saw Aztec metal artifacts in Brussels in 1520, and praised the results roundly: "I have never in all my days seen anything that so delighted my heart as these things. For I saw amazing objects and I marvelled at the subtle ingenuity of the men in these distant lands." Clearly the "curious workmen, who did work all kinds of ore," among the Nephites (Helaman 6:11) or the like among the Jaredites, need not have had "a sophisticated development of . . . metallurgy" nor have involved "complex technological processes," as Matheny puts it, beyond what the Aztecs knew. By exaggerated language she has made a technological mountain out of a molehill.

The principle of avoiding unneeded complications applies also to the reading of texts, here with reference to the "abundant" metals reported by the Nephites. "Abundant" is what anthropologists call an "emic" concept, a word whose meaning has to be construed in the culture's own terms. The statement in 1 Nephi 18:25 on discovering ores refers to a point in time when Lehi's party had just landed. Those men available to explore could not have exceeded ten in number. Consequently their search for and discoveries of ores would only have been cursory and local, extending at the maximum 25 miles from the landing site. The same caution applies to interpreting "great abundance" in 2 Nephi 5:15 and "abound" in Jacob 2:12 and Jarom 1:8). Those expressions reflect the viewpoint of small communities, perhaps a single village. We must not distort the record by transforming the "emic" sense of "abundance" in the minds of the first few Lehites and Nephites into "etic" (i.e., objective, geological) abundance on a scale of hundreds of miles throughout Mesoamerica.

Here again is an unjustified reading of the Book of Mormon text (pp. 285-86). Matheny first refers to the Jaredites' manufacture of "swords of steel" (Ether 7:9). Whatever this statement may have meant to the original writer, they are never again credited with using "steel." Millennia later, Mosiah 8:11 informs us, Zeniffite explorers brought back from the zone of the final Jaredite battle "swords, the hilts (of which) have perished, and the blades (of which) were cankered with rust." Matheny supposes that the reference to "rust" means that those objects were "of ferrous metal," that is, by implication, some form of real "steel." But they could just as well have been copper, which also rusts. On the slim basis of these two time-bracketing statements, she supposes that "metal swords" were "the weapon of choice" over the intervening thousands of years, since no other material is mentioned. Maybe so and maybe not; the short text does not permit settling the matter; however, to get so much inferential mileage out of a single verse followed by silence from the text is unjustified treatment of the document.

I believe she also misconstrues 2 Nephi 5:14: "I, Nephi, did take the sword of Laban, and after the manner of it did make many swords." The next verse continues: "And I did teach my people . . . to work in all manner of wood, and of iron, and of copper, and of brass, and of steel, and of gold, and of silver, and of precious ores" (2 Nephi 5:15). Verse 16 uses language parallel to verse 14: "I, Nephi, did build a temple; and I did construct it after the manner of the temple of Solomon save it were not built of so many precious things; for they were not to be found upon the land. . . . But the manner of the construction was like unto the temple of Solomon." As I read verse 14, "after the manner of" does not refer to the material used but to the "manner of construction." That is, the general pattern or form of the Judahite temple, and no doubt its function, were copied, but different materials were necessarily used. So when the phrase "after the manner of" is applied to copying Laban's sword, should we not construe it similarly? That is, Laban's weapon was replicated in function and general pattern, but different material could have been used for the new weapons (Matheny offers helpful citations on the use of hard wooden "swords" in Mesoamerica). The copies might have been of metal, but need not have been. The text fails to settle that question. Note also that the statement about weapons (2 Nephi 5:14) is made before that about working metals (2 Nephi 5:15) and no attempt is made by the writer, Nephi, to connect the two; had a connection been intended, one would have thought the statement about metalworking would have come first, then the mention of weapons preparation. It seems a sound rule to pay as much attention to what the text does not say as to what (we think) it does say.

Matheny appears not to consider the Hebrew language meanings of the word translated "sword" in the King James version of the Bible. "Sword" does not have to be of metal, hence the Book of Mormon is indeterminate about the material used when it is read as a translation from Hebrew.

Matheny discusses Mesoamerican ore sources but inexplicably refers to "mineralogical maps of Mexico" based on present-day commercial exploitation of minerals (pp. 287-88). I would have thought she would follow her training in the documents from the period around the Spanish Conquest to find out where the peoples of Mesoamerica then obtained metals. The location of modern mines is irrelevant. Contrary to the geographical picture she offers, placering, the commonest pre-Columbian method employed, was used in Veracruz, Oaxaca, Tabasco, and Chiapas states in Mexico and in Belize, El Salvador, and Guatemala. Furthermore, Clair Patterson argues that ores in ancient times were easier to locate and exploit than in late pre-Spanish times, by which time many surface sources were likely to have been exhausted. Hence even the ore locations known to the Indians at the time of the Conquest might not reflect fully the wider sources accessible in the Book of Mormon era.

Matheny expects that metal objects would be found in tombs of the Olmec era if such objects existed then. The number of known tombs of that age is very limited, and those that have been dug typically contain few artifacts, for whatever reason. If we are going to speculate, and we are all forced to do so at present for lack of concrete information, it is at least as reasonable that valuable metal objects would have been passed carefully down to heirs rather than being stuck into tombs where, experience would have shown, they would in short order "canker with rust" like the sword blades of the Jaredites did after less than 400 years. Anyway, the linguistic data going back to the Olmec period assures that metal was in use, whatever the tombs show.

Iron ore used in the manufacture of Mesoamerican mirrors (p. 289) could have been included within the general category of "precious ores" sought and worked by the Nephites (cf. Helaman 6:11).

Matheny cites K. Bruhns to the effect that "all Classic period metal objects found in Mesoamerica are obviously southeastern in manufacture" (p. 290). That is not obvious at all. Neither Bruhns nor anyone else has technically examined a significant number of the known metal artifacts. Rather she is making an assumption on the basis condemned by renowned expert Dudley Easby: "The majority of scholars, relying on circumstantial evidence, believe that fine metallurgy in ancient Mexico was limited to a few centuries before the arrival of the Spanish," (my emphasis) but "it seems to me that their theory leaves much to be explained." Bruhns' opinion is based on circumstantial evidence, not analyses. I'll be very interested in what hard tests reveal, if they are ever done. There is no question that some early metal pieces were prepared locally and in local styles. That alone vitiates Matheny's statement that "The few [specimens in the list in Metals, Part 4] that are genuinely Early Classic or slightly earlier seem to be trade pieces not produced in the area" (p. 291).

Matheny's treatment of the rings from La Libertad (p. 291) underlines the problem I have faced of getting satisfactory information on apparently early metal specimens. On the basis of limited information in the only source I knew, an unpublished report, that described the objects from La Libertad, I suggested the rings likely dated to the Late Classic, for the report said nothing about Post-Classic materials being present at the site. I listed the rings in my evidence category "I," "incomplete information," and tentatively assigned a date of A.D. 600-900 in my table of "Probable and Possible Pre-A.D. 900 Mesoamerican Metal Specimens." Now, eighteen years after the dig, Matheny is able to report more about the circumstances, but only on the basis of a private communication from the responsible archaeologist; the formal site report is still "in preparation." I appreciate the additional information thus dug out. The cavalier reporting so typical of most archaeologists responsible for specimens that I reported in my list is one reason little firm data are at hand about early metalworking. Given the glaring gaps in professional communications on this matter, I feel confident that additional early metal specimens have come out of the ground but have not reached print. All clarifications are welcome.

"Sorenson suggests that use of metals among Book of Mormon peoples was primarily ornamental" (p. 292). It is more than a suggestion. Examination of the scriptures on metal use, listed for convenience in Part 5 of my "Metals and Metallurgy" paper, shows that in every case where a conceptual/social context is indicated for metal use, which is a majority of the statements, it is associated with terms like "rich," "enrich," "ornament," etc. This is true of Jarom 1:8 also, which Matheny has taken as dealing with practical implements. The text says that the Nephites "became exceedingly rich in [1] gold, and in [2] silver, and in [3] precious things, and in [4] fine workmanship of wood, in [5] buildings, and in [6] machinery, and also in [7] iron and [8] copper, and [9] brass and [10] steel." Donald Parry shows that in this verse all these products are linked under "rich" in a Hebrew literary form called "synonymia." The verse is not, then, a description of utilitarian artifacts but a poetic expression of the culture's "emic" classification of "riches." (Incidentally, Patterson, cited above, believes that, in ancient America generally and Mesoamerica particularly, metals were used mainly for ornamentation and social symbolism rather than for utilitarian artifacts.) This leaves only 2 Nephi 5:15, referring to Nephi soon after the initial landing, to speak of utilitarian metalworking (the Jaredites aside). Perhaps difficulties of access to, or technological problems in treating, the local ores made it difficult for craftsmen after Nephi's day to continue some of the technical practices which he optimistically initiated. (There are cultural parallels among historical immigrating parties elsewhere.)

Weapons and Tents

Matheny's discussion of the macuahuitl as a sword is helpful, though not exhaustive (pp. 292-93). Artistic representations of Mesoamerican armed men include weapons going beyond currently recognized categories. Bernal Diaz mentioned a kind of "sword" among the Aztecs in addition to the macuahuitl. More careful work needs to be done to complete the inventory of arms used in Mesoamerica. Only then will a full discussion of how Book of Mormon weaponry fits with that of Mesoamerica be possible.

While noting the macuahuitl for the Spanish conquest period, Matheny questions whether swordlike weapons existed at all in Mesoamerica during Book of Mormon times and whether they were present in the "proper areas" to fit my correlation model: "There is very little evidence from the archaeological record to support these latter two assumptions" (p. 293). Elsewhere I have discussed the fact that little research has been done on most aspects of Mesoamerican warfare. In two articles, I have pointed out the deficient state of studies of warfare. Armillas (with whom I worked) and Palerm said years ago, and Webster more recently, to largely deaf ears in the profession, that war was much more common and earlier than acknowledged by the vast majority of Mesoamericanists. The point has been gaining ground. I was able to show that fortifications, the most obvious archaeological evidence for war, date throughout all but the earliest part of the Mesoamerican sequence. The same point could be made by studying representations of martial figures and captives in art. Meanwhile the power of a single lucky dig to reshape our picture of warfare in the past is underlined by a University of Michigan project under Charles Spencer and Elsa Redmond. They found direct evidence from the period 200 B.C.-A.D. 200 for the presence of a tzompantli or skull display rack, the same device used about 1286 years later by the Aztecs to psychologically terrorize subject peoples. Until this surprise find, nobody had imagined that this feature extended so far back in time. So I do not believe it matters if, at this moment when hardly anybody has studied the subject, "there is very little evidence from the archaeological record to support these [i.e., my] . . . assumptions" that swordlike weapons were used in the Pre-Classic. Be a little more patient. Recognize the selectivity of "the archaeological record." Only a fraction of the total record has been, or likely ever will be, dug up.

The advice applies to the question about how early the macuahuitl was in use (p. 294). As long ago as 1938 S. J. Morley published Stela 5 from Uaxactun, which shows a macuahuitl. Philip Drucker even reported "the depiction of an obsidian-edged sword" at Olmec La Venta, in art dating to Jaredite times. Given these early examples, there was no reason for Matheny to prolong the discussion about the unclear weapon shown in the scene from Loltun Cave, which is much like the one Morley showed. I expect that fuller mastery of the technical literature, like what she has missed on these early macuahuitl examples, will probably relieve her mind about more "problems" which she still sees in relations between the Book of Mormon text and archaeology.

She also suggests that if Nephi's descendants had changed from "metal swords" to a form of weapon like the macuahuitl, this would represent a "fundamental change" that ought to be "reflected in the language" (pp. 296-97). This reasoning is erroneous on two grounds. As I showed above, the text does not tell us that metal swords were used on a wide scale. Note that Ammon, son of the Nephite king, possessed an effective sword (not necessarily metal), while none of his Lamanite opponents or companions (commoners) had such a weapon (see Alma 17:37), even though Lamanites (certain elite only?) are said to have had swords (see, e.g., Alma 60:12, 22, although Alma 49:2 omits any hint of them). Perhaps there was no "fundamental change" because most people lacked metal swords from the beginning. Yet even had there been a change, we do not have the language of the general populace in the record that has come down to us. The records were kept only by the elite lines springing from the houses of Nephi and his brother Jacob. We do not know how the language used in keeping the record related to contemporary speech generally.

Matheny is correct that "no case has been made that metal swords existed in Mesoamerica before the Spanish conquest" (p. 287). Neither I nor anyone else has seriously attempted to do so, yet. This does not mean it might not be possible. I wish Matheny had tried it by delving exhaustively into the recondite sources on Aztec-period warfare that ought to be known to her instead of pointing to another "problem" that may be only an uninvestigated bogey-man. The bow and arrow provides a parallel case. It has commonly been said that this device arrived or developed in central Mexico "late." This is an error based on inadequate examination of the archaeological record, as Paul Tolstoy has shown. He has found "prima facie evidence of the limited use of the bow and arrow in central Mexico since early agricultural times."

Rather than deal with particular points Matheny raised about tents (pp. 297-300), I will proceed directly to the results of a bit of research I completed in little more than a day by poking about in the Mesoamericanist literature (benefitting from suggestions by John E. Clark). The results respond to Matheny's central challenge: "Archaeological, ethnographic, and linguistic records from Mesoamerica provide no evidence of a tent-making or tent-using tradition and, even more problematic, suggest no available material for making tents" (p. 299). I found on the contrary that tents were in regular use by Aztec armies, and when the Spaniards saw them, they immediately labelled them tiendas, "tents." This fact is easily documented as well as logical, the cultural pattern was widespread in Mesoamerica, and it seems to me that Matheny ought to have known this because of her training.

She could have begun in Hassig's Aztec Warfare: Imperial Expansion and Political Control. While she listed it in her bibliography, she did not study it carefully enough. Perhaps she only scanned the index, which fails to list "tents." Yet Hassig notes, "The [Aztec military] camp itself was constructed of tents and huts (xahcalli) made of woven grass mats. These mats were usually carried as baggage from the home cities, but some tribute labor gathered en route was also allocated to carry them to the battlefield and set up the camp." I did not see Hassig's statement (his book was published after my An Ancient American Setting) until after I had turned directly to Durán, an obvious fundamental source on Aztec war customs. Durán arrived in New Spain in 1542, only twenty-one years after the Conquest. He saw for himself a way of life changed only in part since Cortez arrived. He lived amidst Indians who acted as detailed informants, he had access to and utilized many native manuscripts, and he read reams of Spanish reports of visits and administration. From these he synthesized a history of the Aztecs colored with fascinating ethnography; it was completed in 1581.

Motecuzoma (popularly known as Montezuma in English) and his spokesman told the Mexican army while they were en route to Chalco, "on this plain [where they were stopped] are many straw houses and huts ("casas pajizas y chozas') where we are staying until this business is finished."

The combined armies of the Mexicans prepared for an expedition against the city of Tepeaca by getting their encampment set up, "pitching their tents and huts ("armando sus tiendas y jacales')—that is what they call their war tents—very nicely ordered and arranged, placing the squadron or unit of the Mexica by themselves, [that of] the Tezcocans by themselves, the Chalcas by themselves, the Xochimilcas by themselves, and the Tepanecs by themselves."

Preparation for a campaign involved ordering barrio leaders in the capital city to furnish supplies, including "many tents and huts ("tiendas y jacales') for the war, with much other apparatus and munitions of war."

"And when morning came, they left there, and they did the same thing in whatever place they reached. And one day's journey before they arrived (at their destination), they sent ahead those charged with logistics to the place where they were going to set up the camp, and they pitched the tents ("tiendas') and erected the huts ("chozas') and quarters ("cuarteles') for all the lords of the provinces, so that when they arrived they had nothing more to do than each one to go to his place that the advance party had got ready, and they did the same thing along the road when night was coming on."

In preparation for war, Motecuzoma ordered surrounding cities to furnish stores of food and "sleeping mats ("petates') to make tents ("tiendas') and houses ("casas') of those mats ("esteras') in which they would dwell [while] in the field." When they didn't stay in the towns, they pitched their tents and shelters made with mats ("tiendas y casas de petates') in spots arranged by the advance party."

In An Ancient American Setting, I had cited Bernal Diaz as mentioning that the Aztec soldiers "erected their huts" in the field.

At least five types of field military shelters are distinguished here, and several of them were labelled "tiendas," tents, by the Spaniards:

1. "casas pajizas," houses of straw;

2. "chozas," huts, sometimes of unspecified material but suitable for leaders to occupy;

3. "jacales" (from Nahuátl xahcalli) huts; the material utilized is not clear, for at least some were collapsible and movable; some leaders occupied these; mats were probably the usual material. It is unclear how these differed from "chozas;" perhaps the latter were made from materials such as brush scrounged in the field;

4. "tiendas," tents; of unspecified material but perhaps of (ixtle or henequen?) cloth, given the normal Spanish sense of "tiendas"; some were good enough to house leaders;

5. "casas de petates," houses of mats; the cheap, light, readily portable mats could be combined with, say, spears, to make a simple "tent" for ordinary soldiers, or anybody in an emergency;

6. "cuarteles," quarters, barracks; these may refer to commandeered housing in communities along the road, or they might have been collapsible multi-person shelters.

Only the variety of military housing should surprise us. After all, every army in the world has had to find culturally and ecologically effective ways to cope with the problem of shelter in the field. As long as there are armies, there must be cross-cultural equivalents of "tents." The only questions in relation to a specific culture have to do with form, materials, and names.

It is to Matheny's credit that she (p. 300) detected a reference to "tiendas" in Tezozomoc (a contemporary of Durán; she might easier have followed up my reference to Bernal Diaz). The Durán material should, however, have been obvious given that she had studied with Prof. Dibble at Utah, an expert on this set of materials.

She raises another difficulty about tents. After all, she says, the tents mentioned in Tezozomoc "were found in central Mexico rather than in the area of the Limited Tehuantepec model," farther south. The answer is obvious. The Aztecs fought or had garrisons in many parts of Mesoamerica, including Chiapas. No groups who interacted with them could have failed to know about their tents. Furthermore, if the Aztecs, who were great cultural copycats, were smart enough to figure out field shelter for their soldiers, were other Mesoamericans so benighted that they had never solved the same problem over millennia of warfare? Hassig's answer is self-evidently correct: "Given Mesoamerican technology, any material innovation in warfare could diffuse rapidly and came within the grasp of every group."

As an added witness look in the Motul dictionary. This is, of course, a classic sixteenth-century work that scholars automatically turn to for supplementary light on pre-Spanish Yucatec Maya language and culture. The definition for the Maya word pazel is "choza o tienda en el campo, o casilla pequeña de paja" (hut or tent for use in the field, or small straw booth). Mesoamerican farmers have long and widely used a similar type of hut. For example, the Zoques of Santa Maria Chimalapa in the Isthmus of Tehuantepec still construct "very small chozas of palm fronds and grass, almost level with the ground, where they sleep during the days when they work in the fields" away from home.

Matheny conjures up still another problem, though—the Aztec "tiendas" of Tezozomoc "were known [only] at the time of the conquest, about one thousand years after the end of the Nephite civilization" (p. 300). The only evidence we have of their presence even for the time of Tezozomoc and Durán is in historical documents; it is not archaeological. What archaeological evidence would one expect that would establish the presence of overnight "tiendas," "chozas," or "jacales," even among the Aztecs less than five centuries ago? Then what hope has an archaeologist of finding the still slimmer traces of a temporary encampment dated two thousand years before that? I have no idea how these tents would show up in an archaeological dig; I suspect they would be completely undetectable. Until archaeologists come up with an operational solution to this dilemma, it seems sensible to me to accept the Book of Mormon as documentary evidence of tents in the first century B.C. on a par with Durán's or Tezozomoc's testimonies for the sixteenth century A.D.

Matheny says, "It seems unlikely that such a practical tradition as tent-making would die out in Mesoamerica" (p. 299). While, as we have just seen, that did not take place in the case of tents, the extinction of many former cultural patterns that appear "practical" retrospectively to moderns is a well-known phenomenon.

Plants and Animals

Regarding plants, Matheny again needs to read the Book of Mormon carefully (pp. 300-301). Olive trees are mistakenly said to have been cultivated by the Nephites; not so the text. Continuing, she mentions three "products" which "imply the existence of specific plants, including "fine linen,' vineyards, and wine presses." All those terms imply is the existence of cultural products which the author supposes to involve "specific plants," namely flax and grapes. But, as I have pointed out, perhaps to the point of tiresomeness, the Spaniards did not make the same assumptions as Matheny. They encountered and referred to what they considered "linen" or linenlike cloth made from plants other than flax. They also spoke of "vineyards," not planted in grapevines but in maguey plants, from which pulque, which they termed "wine," was manufactured. Half a dozen different types of "wine" made from fruits other than grapes were identified by the Spanish explorers.

The English term wine is itself unclear. A standard anthropological source uses the terms beer and wine without clear distinction, and the author, LaBarre, supposes that none is needed, for the difference is not consistent in English. Nevertheless, grapes were known and used in ancient America. LaBarre reports the Opata of northern Mexico used a drink made from native grapes. Terrence Kaufman lists a word for "wild grape" in the Proto-Mayan language, which he calculates began to break up into daughter languages in highland Guatemala before 2000 B.C.

By the way, of interest as a functional parallel (i.e., an analogy) to the Lamanite and Nephite use of "wine" to prepare themselves for combat (see Alma 55:8-32) is a "wine" made and consumed by the Maricopa Indians, according to LaBarre; blood red, it was made of cactus fruit and consumed at a certain celebration—"When they were drunk, they thought of war."

Without explaining her basis, Matheny assumes that "Old World plants" would have been grown among the Nephites (p. 302). This view could come from only two points in the text: (1) 1 Nephi 18:24 mentions that upon arriving in the promised land, Lehi's party planted the seeds they had brought from Palestine or Arabia, and these flourished; and (2) mention of Old World names for two grains, "wheat" (Mosiah 9:9) and "barley" (Mosiah 7:22; 9:9; Alma 11:7, 15). The two phenomena are not, however, connected by the text.

Historical cases of plant transfers do not give us confidence that imported seeds would prove viable in a new environment in the long run. In An Ancient American Setting, I documented how millet, introduced by the Spaniards in Yucatan and said in the sixteenth century to grow "marvelously well," could not be located at all in the Carnegie Institution's botanical inventory of the area early this century. The same might have been the case with the seeds brought with Lehi's party and planted (but, realize, only after at least nine years of being hoarded through the Arabian desert; they may or may not have been healthy by then, and the new moist tropical environment would hardly welcome desertic Near Eastern grains). Yet realize that nothing is said in the text about the species those seeds represented; perhaps they were rye, emmer, and dates. We have no warrant to assume, in the absence of textual reference, that they included the plants later called by the Nephites "barley" or "wheat."

Many historical cases assure us that plant names can change under new circumstances. When new plants are encountered, old names commonly are applied to them. For instance, after the Conquest, many Spanish names were applied to plants found in Mexico because of their similarities to those of Europe, such as "ciruelo," plum (tree), applied to the nonplum genus Spondias. Various other naming puzzles also occurred. The fruit of the prickly-"pear" cactus was called by the Spaniards "fig," even though a real native fig was present (as Matheny noted, p. 302). Some Spaniards used the word "trigo," wheat, for maize (French peasants in recent times still called it "Turkish wheat" or "Roman wheat").

Within the Book of Mormon itself we discover an interesting case of a plant name changing. Mosiah 9:9 mentions "sheum" in a list of plants. The name rather obviously derives from Akkadian (Babylonian) "sheum," barley (Old Assyrian, wheat), "the most popular ancient Mesopotamian cereal name." A Jaredite source is logical, for that group departed from Mesopotamia, although the Book of Mormon reference is to a plant cultivated by the Zeniffites (a Nephite-"Mulekite" group) in the second century B.C. The term could not have meant "barley" or "wheat" among the Nephites because "sheum" is listed along with "barley," while "wheat" is named elsewhere without hint of any connection with "sheum." (Incidentally, careful reading of Mosiah 9:9 indicates that while "corn," "barley," and "wheat" were classified as "seeds," "neas" and "sheum" may be implied to be other than seeds.) Whatever crop was called "sheum," it is unlikely to have meant to the Zeniffites what it once had in Mesopotamia, barley or wheat, but had come to be applied (by the Jaredites?) to something else.

Plenty of other cultivated grains in ancient Mesoamerica might have been called sheum, or "wheat," or "barley." Some possibilities are:

1. amaranth (Amaranthus leucocarpus and A. cruentus);

2. huauzontle;

3. chia (Salvia hispanica or S. chian, used in greater quantity by the Aztecs than even amaranth);

4. Setaria or fox-tail millet (S. geniculata Beauvais);

5. 40-chromosome "perennial corn" (Zea perennis, a form of teosinte);

6. 20-chromosome "perennial corn" (Zea diploperennis, also a teosinte); and

7. Chalco teosinte (probably the food plant mentioned in Codex Vaticanus 3738 as "accentli"). These materials are cited to make the point that the archaeological inventory of Mesoamerican grains still remains to be completed, as well as to point to the problem of naming.

Matheny cites an archaeological study by Martínez M. who recovered plant remains in Chiapas. The limited inventory discovered in that study is supposed to pose a problem for the Book of Mormon, whose peoples I believe inhabited that area. However, when Mart&iacture;nez's short list of remains is compared with the extensive inventory of plants already known to have been in use in Mesoamerica as a whole, it is apparent that a sampling problem exists. Archaeologists in particular regions, let alone at single sites, are not going to discover the full range of plants used anciently throughout the entire culture area. Martínez's list is only a small portion of Heiser's inventory. (I find it amusing that when Matheny wrote out the names of some of Martínez' plants, she put down "vitis," apparently unable to bring herself to say "grape!") Accidents of sampling, preservation and identification all contribute to the problem of straightening out botanical history. For example, C. Earle Smith, Jr., was dismayed to find maize absent at a huge Peruvian site, except for a single cob (pp. 150-51). And while the pineapple is known to be old in the New World on distributional grounds, the only archaeological record for it consists of seeds and bracts found in coprolites from Tehuacan Valley caves dating between 200 B.C. and A.D. 700.

Anyway, few really good studies of plant remains have been done in Mesoamerica. Heiser spoke of "the often-equivocal archaeological data" on which opinions about the age of plants in a given area have been based, while botanists still disagree widely on the systematics and areas of origin of many cultigens. The difficulty of the problem for archaeologists is shown by the fiasco of the famous Tehuacán Valley maize specimens. Accelerator (AMS) dating (the most sophisticated form of radiocarbon dating) was done in 1989 on a sample of cobs selected by chief excavator Richard MacNeish. He intended them "to represent the oldest maize in the collection and related to well-dated levels." All the specimens were selected from his Coxcatlán phase ("2860 to 3400 B.C.") except one cob from the succeeding Abejas phase. Instead, the actual, calibrated AMS dates of the "earliest" cobs stretched from the calibrated range 3860-3380 B.C. at the early end through 2540-2150 B.C. Yet two of the cobs proved to be as late as the time of Christ, another fell around A.D. 300-286, and a final specimen dated to A.D. 1286! Clearly, the archaeologists had made some major mistakes somewhere along the way. So botanical and archaeological methods still have a long way to go before they can be relied upon to give us firm data on the age, types, and distribution of ancient American crops. Not without reason did Heiser warn us that "detailed knowledge of the origin [and dating and distribution] of many of the cultivated plants of the Americas is lacking."

It is marginally helpful for Matheny to remind us how far facile statements by some Latter-day Saint writers about the crops of the Nephites and Lamanites depart from what the botanists think they know. I too hope for improvement and caution in reading and interpreting both the scripture and the scientific record. But now consider the case of the discovery of New World barley, which Matheny construes as unimportant or negative in relation to the Book of Mormon account. What it actually teaches us is that changes in the scientific botanical inventory for ancient America must still be anticipated. Details of the case are as follows: I reported in 1984 on the discovery in Arizona—the first in the New World—of archaeological specimens of possible domesticated barley, and suggested that this could prove of interest in relation to Alma 11:7 and 15. Abundant samples of the same grain had also been discovered at sites and in collections from Illinois and Oklahoma. These led V. L. Bohrer to state cautiously, "it is reasonable to conclude that we are looking at a North American domesticated grain crop whose existence has not been suspected." But Nancy and David Asch were less cautious: "[Our] project reveal[s] a previously unidentified seed type now identified as little barley (Hordeum pusillum), and there are strong indications that this grain must be added to the list of starchy-seeded plants that were cultivated in the region by 2000 years ago." They added, "This barley is well-represented also at two other sites, one Late Woodland (A.D. 600-1050) and the other Middle Woodland" [early A.D. centuries]. So here was a domesticated barley in use in several parts of North America over a long period of time. Crop exchanges between North America and Mesoamerica have been documented by archaeology making it possible that this native barley was known in that tropical southland and conceivably was even cultivated there. The key point is that these unexpected results from botany are recent. More discoveries will surely be made as research continues.

Meanwhile it is a red herring for Matheny to hedge that H. pusillum was, after all, not "an Old World import" but a native American plant. As I have pointed out above, the Book of Mormon says nothing about where its "barley" crop originated. It is not out of the question that Hordeum pusillum was Nephite "barley," even though it is not likely. Surely the discovery is not without relevance for the problem of identifying the Nephites' crops.

Matheny also states, "thus far no Old World plants have been identified by the presence of their pollens or other remains" (p. 302). This is a puzzling statement. She has told me that she has used the two-volume Pre-Columbian Contact with the Americas across the Oceans: An Annotated Bibliography in connection with her investigation of possible Semitic inscriptions in South America. By looking up "plant" or "crop" in the index, she would also discover a vast literature that would directly contradict her statement about "no Old World plants." A substantial number of Old World pre-Columbian crops have been identified in America. This is fact, even though diehard isolationist archaeologists and botanists (the B.S.) are uncomfortable with the point. Yet regardless of the fact that certain crop plants did obviously cross the oceans, we cannot confidently state whether any of those cultigens were, or were not, brought or used by Lehi's group. So it would make no direct difference to the question of the accuracy of the Book of Mormon either way, but certainly somebody brought some plants across, thus making it plausible that Lehi's group could have done so.

Noting various animals known from Mesoamerica, which I had suggested as possibly utilized by the Nephites and Lamanites, Matheny thinks that "many of these animals may have been considered unclean for consumption by Nephites" under "the Law of Moses" (pp. 302-4). She admits that we do not know from the text whether the Nephites knew of or kept "the dietary laws" of that code, yet she assumes that they did. This reveals an uncritical view of the origin and development of those rules; it implies that the code that appears in today's (King James?) version of the Old Testament existed at the time of Lehi's departure from Jerusalem. We do not know that. Some of the devotees of "critical method" who contributed to the volume in which Matheny's paper appeared would consider this naive. There are major scholarly disputes about what rules, if any, were known and applied in the land of Israel by the time of the diaspora, but many—maybe most—current scholars would question Matheny's position. They consider it likely that some or all those specific restrictions on food were developed and codified by the Jews after the date for Lehi's departure. It seems intuitively likely that some restrictions were in force by then, but not particularly the set listed in present scripture. Until more is known on the matter, there is no point speculating whether or not the Nephites had this or that particular ritual limitation on animal use.

In any case, we know that only some of the Nephites kept their version of the "law of Moses" some of the time. Otherwise there would have been no point in the text's emphasis on how hard it was for the priests to hold the people to whatever the code was (Jarom 1:11-2). (Will no liquor bottles be found in the ruins of Mormon communities by future archaeologists!?) The same qualification would be true of other aspects of the "law of Moses." For instance, performing sacrifices is not mentioned in the bulk of the Book of Mormon record, between Mosiah 2:3 and 3 Nephi 9:19. The latter verse tells us that some sacrifices were being practiced, but we are not told of what they consisted. It is unlikely that they approached the cultural centrality of the temple sacrifices in Israel during the same period, or more would have been said of them. We simply don't know what was in the Nephite version of the "law of Moses," hence Matheny's objection about nonkosher animals is moot.

Matheny's comments on animal names are not apt (p. 304). All kinds of complications have occurred in historical cases of animal nomenclature, the same as for "wine" or "barley." Her generalizations will not work because they are not empirically based. She needs to look carefully at the extensive literature on animal terminology in a variety of cultures. Some of this material is accessible by looking under "naming ambiguities" in the index in my Animals in the Book of Mormon: An Annotated Bibliography. My hope in putting out that piece was to increase the sophistication of discussions of the Nephite and Jaredite animals referred to in the Book of Mormon. After she studies it, her comments would be more to the point.

The fact that scientists generally doubt the presence of any animals other than those they have "authoritatively" agreed upon so far does not mean that they will not change their minds in the future (p. 305). A classic case involves the "chicken." George F. Carter, emeritus professor of geography at Texas A & M University, is completing the editing of a volume of papers (assisted by a F.A.R.M.S. grant) to be published by TAMU Press that covers evidence for the New World occurrence of this fowl before the time of Columbus. He and others have published on the topic previously. He has assembled a wide range of evidence—from zoology, archaeology, history, linguistics and ethnography—that has been long ignored or resisted by conventional scientists, which demonstrates that at least one race, and probably more than one, of the Old World domestic chicken was present and used in the New World (mainly for sacrifice) before the Spaniards brought their birds from across the Atlantic. Actual chicken bones have been found over the last fifty years at several sites in the western United States without their being acknowledged in the formal literature. The bones exist and they were dug up by legitimate archaeologists, but they have been tucked away undiscussed—some for many years—because "everybody knows there were no chickens before the Spaniards arrived." Carter's volume will demand these be properly reconsidered. Yet this is only a little more scandalous than the neglect given the possibility that real horse bones have been found in Mesoamerica dating to the time of the great civilizations.

Matheny's treatment of the horse illustrates, again, how carefully one must read the scriptural text before attempting to compare it with outside information. She assumes that the "Jaredites and Nephites . . . were well-acquainted with horses" in the Old World, hence they would not "have mistaken a deer or a tapir for a horse" (pp. 307-8). But we do not know whether or not the Jaredite party were "well-acquainted with horses." The text says nothing about the subject in relation to their land of origin. No one knows from exactly what part of the Near East they began their journey to America. In general we suppose it was Mesopotamia, but even if that should be correct, were horses common, rare, or unknown there, or were they domesticated at all at ca. 3000 B.C.? Whatever the case for their homeland, the Jaredite party's trip across Eurasia and the ocean consumed years, after which few if any of the pioneering generation in the new land may have survived long enough to tap their memories regarding animals in their original land as they encountered fauna in the New World. (The only mention of "horses" in their record, in Ether 9:19, comes generations after the landing.) As we have the Book of Ether through Moroni's translation, I assume that the term "horse" in Ether 9:19 is from him and refers to the same beast to which the name is applied in Mormon's record.

Of course Nephi and his cohorts certainly knew horses, yet keep in mind that the Hebrew term for horse, sus, means basically "to leap," and other ("leaping") animals, including the swallow, bore related names. The fact that deer are also leapers might have justified the early Nephites in applying to them a Hebrew name that had been applied to the horse in Nephi's Jerusalem. (Compare Egyptian ss, "horse," and shs, antelope; note also, in the Mixtecan language of Mexico, yi-su, "deer.") But nowhere in the scriptural text do we get a definite answer to the question of how the Jaredite/Nephite "horse" relates to the animal kingdom as we know it. There are other thought-provoking examples of possible ambiguity in Nephi's Hebrew nomenclature which Joseph Smith's English translation of, say, 1 Nephi 18:25 may not adequately reflect: the word for ox, in Hebrew aluph, was from a root meaning "tame" or "gentle," which could also be applied to a friend. (Could it apply to a tapir?) Another Hebrew word was teo, "wild ox," but it also applied to a species of gazelle. One of nine Hebrew words for sheep, zemer, is translated in different versions of the Bible as both "mountain sheep" and "rock-goat," while one Jewish scholar believes it to mean an antelope. And if someone balks at the idea that Joseph Smith may not have translated every term "correctly," consider the enigmatic statement in Enos 1:21, the Nephites "did raise . . . flocks of herds." As I noted, this is quite surely a Hebraism, for Hebrew baqar translates as "ox," or "cattle," or "herd." I suppose that Joseph was "right," although in English the translation is more than puzzling.

It is not just the Book of Mormon text that is obscure, however. The Spaniards were very unclear about some of their encounters with newly discovered American animals. They left behind in their historical records a mishmash of names for animals which we know today by other labels. Were they "mistaken," as Matheny thinks the Jaredites would have been, when the Europeans called bison "cows," the turkey a "peacock," pronghorn antelope "animals like flocks of sheep," or the tapir "a species of buffalo of the size and somewhat looking like an ass?" If the Spaniards made ad hoc, puzzling naming decisions when they discovered and labelled New World animals, I grant the same option to the people of Lehi. We reveal our ethnocentrism if we demand nice natural-science logic on their part when we see the strange names applied by the Europeans. Those like Matheny who question my interpretations for Book of Mormon animal names at least ought to become informed on the topic by mastering the literature on documented cases of terminological ambiguity. I've shown where to begin, not how to conclude.

My critic goes on to doubt that deer were ridden in Mesoamerica—an interesting possibility that I suggested. She turns to a selection of representations of human-animal pairs, all from the Maya lowlands, outside the Book of Mormon area I recognize. She cites guesses by archaeologists about what those scenes might or might not mean. Her result is that the question of whether deer were ridden is left up in the air. But she ignores ethnohistoric information laid out by Professor Dibble in the department where she graduated, which tells us about the Aztecs' encounter with Spanish horses. They spoke of "the deer-which-carried-men-upon-their-backs, called horses." Such information shows that there is nothing inherently implausible in the idea. (In Siberia deer have been ridden for centuries.)

But if one is going to try to make sense of Nephite or Jaredite animal use, the need—once more—is to read the Book of Mormon text meticulously. So I hasten to note that the Book of Mormon says nothing to suggest that deer, or any other animals, were ever ridden. The only reason I raised the matter in An Ancient American Setting was to show that the role of animals in Mesoamerican cultures was probably more varied and extensive than routine scholars have supposed. Two references in Mosiah suggest that "burdens" were placed on an animal called an "ass." But all verbs and adjectives in the Book of Mormon text relating to animal use need careful study. Neither "domesticated" nor an equivalent term occurs, for example. The Jaredites are said to have "had" certain animals, and the Nephites "did raise" flocks, according to Enos 1:21. "Horses and chariots" were used to "conduct" (what an enigmatic verb!) a party from place to place within the general land of Nephi (Alma 18:9-12). Then 3 Nephi 4:4 lumps "horses" with "provisions" and "cattle, and flocks of every kind"—as food supply—which the Nephites accumulated "that they might subsist." Clearly, we need to get on with the basic textual study on this topic. To that end I included in "Animals in the Book of Mormon" an exhaustive appendix, "Animal References in the Book of Mormon." I wish Matheny had done some of that spadework instead of just giving opinions.

The note about biological characteristics of American populations in relation to the Book of Mormon (p. 310) shows overconfident reliance on "mainstream" physical anthropology. Matheny could well engage in broader study of the subject, going beyond the selective "top 40" lists of acceptable literature favored by standard American physical anthropologists. Of particular value would be reading in the history of this sub-discipline, starting perhaps with Juan Comas. He makes it apparent that U.S. "mainstream biological anthropology" is paradigm- (and clique-) limited so as to include certain researchers, like the trendy, much-published Christy Turner, but to exclude arbitrarily an Andrzej Wierçinski (and, with a condescending smile, most other physical anthropologists outside the USA).

Incidentally, while it is true that "most features of cranial morphology are considered to be very responsive to environmental change" by physical anthropologists today, that has not been demonstrated but largely assumed.