Arthur James Outram Anderson (November 26, 1907 – June 3, 1996) was an American

anthropologist An anthropologist is a person engaged in the practice of anthropology. Anthropology is the study of aspects of humans within past and present societies. Social anthropology, cultural anthropology and philosophical anthropology study the norms and ...

specializing in

Aztec culture The Aztecs () were a Mesoamerican culture that flourished in central Mexico in the post-classic period from 1300 to 1521. The Aztec people included different ethnic groups of central Mexico, particularly those groups who spoke the Nahuatl ...

and

translator Translation is the communication of the Meaning (linguistic), meaning of a #Source and target languages, source-language text by means of an Dynamic and formal equivalence, equivalent #Source and target languages, target-language text. The ...

of the

Nahuatl language Nahuatl (; ), Aztec, or Mexicano is a language or, by some definitions, a group of languages of the Uto-Aztecan languages, Uto-Aztecan language family. Varieties of Nahuatl are spoken by about Nahuas, Nahua peoples, most of whom live mainly in ...

Early life

He was born on November 26, 1907. In the 1970s he began working with James Lockhart and Frances Berdan on colonial-era local level

Nahuatl Nahuatl (; ), Aztec, or Mexicano is a language or, by some definitions, a group of languages of the Uto-Aztecan language family. Varieties of Nahuatl are spoken by about Nahua peoples, most of whom live mainly in Central Mexico and have smaller ...

texts, which are the core of the

New Philology New Philology generally refers to a branch of Mexican ethnohistory and philology that uses colonial-era native language texts written by Indians to construct history from the indigenous point of view. The name New Philology was coined by James Lock ...

Career

He was renowned for his and

Charles E. Dibble Charles E. Dibble (18 August 1909 – 30 November 2002) was an American academic, anthropologist, linguist, and scholar of pre-Columbian Mesoamerican cultures. A former Distinguished Professor of Anthropology at the University of Utah, Dibble retire ...

's translation of the

Florentine Codex The ''Florentine Codex'' is a 16th-century ethnographic research study in Mesoamerica by the Spanish Franciscan friar Bernardino de Sahagún. Sahagún originally titled it: ''La Historia General de las Cosas de Nueva España'' (in English: ''The ...

by fray

Bernardino de Sahagún Bernardino de Sahagún, OFM (; – 5 February 1590) was a Franciscan friar, missionary priest and pioneering ethnographer who participated in the Catholic evangelization of colonial New Spain (now Mexico). Born in Sahagún, Spain, in 1499, he ...

, a project which took 30 years. The two also published a modern English translation of Book XII of the Florentine Codex, which gives an indigenous account of the conquest of Mexico. Anderson translated and wrote an extensive introduction to fray

's ''Psalmodia Christiana (Christian Psalmody)'' He also edited and published translations of formal linguistic texts by eighteenth-century Mexican Jesuit Francisco de Clavigero (1731-1787) outlining rules of the Mexican (

) language. Two publications on which he collaborated were ''Beyond the Codices'', and ''The Tlaxcalan Actas''. With Susan Schroeder, he translated and edited writings of seventeenth-century Nahua historian Chimalpahin. In 1994, a

festschrift In academia, a ''Festschrift'' (; plural, ''Festschriften'' ) is a book honoring a respected person, especially an academic, and presented during their lifetime. It generally takes the form of an edited volume, containing contributions from the h ...

entitled ''Chipping away on earth: studies in prehispanic and colonial Mexico in honor of Arthur J.O. Anderson and Charles E. Dibble'' was published.

Death

Anderson died of a

cerebral hemorrhage Intracerebral hemorrhage (ICH), also known as cerebral bleed, intraparenchymal bleed, and hemorrhagic stroke, or haemorrhagic stroke, is a sudden bleeding into the tissues of the brain, into its ventricles, or into both. It is one kind of bleed ...

on June 3, 1996.Schroeder (1997): p. viii.

Notes

Arturo, or 'Turo, as he was generally known by friends and colleagues, also received the Order of Santa Isabella de la Catolica from the Consul General of Mexico honoring his extensive research and publications regarding the Aztecs.

References

External links

Biography
{{DEFAULTSORT:Anderson, Arthur J. O. 1907 births 1996 deaths American Mesoamericanists Translators from Nahuatl Translators to English Translators to Spanish Aztec scholars 20th-century Mesoamericanists 20th-century American translators 20th-century American anthropologists