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Arriving in Mexico less than a decade after the Spanish conquest of 1521, the Franciscan missionary Bernardino de Sahagún not only labored to supplant native religion with Christianity, he also gathered voluminous information on virtually every aspect of Aztec (Nahua) life in contact-period Mexico. His pioneering ethnographic work relied on interviews with Nahua elders and the assistance of a younger generation of bicultural, missionary-trained Nahuas. Sahagún's remarkably detailed descriptions of Aztec ceremonial life offer the most extensive account of a non-Western ritual system recorded before modern times.

Representing Aztec Ritual: Performance, Text, and Image in the Work of Sahagún uses Sahagún's corpus as a starting point to focus on ritual performance, a key element in the functioning of the Aztec world. With topics ranging from the ritual use of sand and paper to the sacrifice of women, contributors explore how Aztec rites were represented in the images and texts of documents compiled under colonial rule and the implications of this European filter for our understanding of these ceremonies. Incorporating diverse disciplinary perspectives, contributors include Davíd Carrasco, Philip P. Arnold, Kay Read, H. B. Nicholson, Eduardo Matos Moctezuma, Guilhem Olivier, Doris Heyden, and Eloise Quiñones Keber.

With its rich archaeological and historical record, the Aztec empire provides an intriguing opportunity to understand the dynamics and structure of early states and empires. Rethinking the Aztec Economy brings together leading scholars from multiple disciplines to thoroughly synthesize and examine the nature of goods and their movements across rural and urban landscapes in Mesoamerica. In so doing, they provide a new way of understanding society and economy in the Aztec empire.

The volume is divided into three parts. Part 1 synthesizes our current understanding of the Aztec economy and singles out the topics of urbanism and provincial merchant activity for more detailed analysis. Part 2 brings new data and a new conceptual approach that applies insights from behavioral economics to Nahua and Aztec rituals and social objects. Contributors also discuss how high-value luxury goods, such as feather art, provide insights about both economic and sacred concepts of value in Aztec society. Part 3 reexamines the economy at the Aztec periphery. The volume concludes with a synthesis on the scale, integration, and nature of change in the Aztec imperial economy.

Rethinking the Aztec Economy illustrates how superficially different kinds of social contexts were in fact integrated into a single society through the processes of a single economy. Using the world of goods as a crucial entry point, this volume advances scholarly understanding of life in the Aztec world.


Contributors:

Frances F. Berdan
Laura Filloy Nadal
Janine Gasco
Colin Hirth
Kenneth G. Hirth
Sarah Imfeld
María Olvido Moreno Guzmán
Deborah L. Nichols
Alan R. Sandstrom
Pamela Effrein Sandstrom
Michael E. Smith
Barbara L. Stark
Emily Umberger