Crafting, Identity, and Power: A Comparative Analysis of Late Postclassic Facial Adornment Use in Central Mexico

Summary

In pre-Hispanic Mesoamerica, individuals from diverse regions and social classes deployed facial adornments, such as ear spools and lip plugs, to materialize concepts of identity. Specifically, recent archaeological research at the Late Postclassic (AD 1250 to 1521) city of Tlaxcallan provides new insights into the role of facial adornments in a highly collective society. Tracing material sources reveals the inter-workings of regional and local economic interactions and local sociopolitical institutions impeding on distribution. Similarly, various styles of decoration can also reflect the sharing of cultural ideas between different settlements and regions and how Tlaxcaltecans identified within their own communities in relation to status, age, and gender. By looking at the distribution of raw materials, finished goods, and styles, we document the degree to which facial adornments were restricted to certain statuses/classes, genders, and age groups and, thereby, shed light on the social encoding of these items. Such information can then be used to evaluate the interplay between the degree of social embeddedness and degree of collectivity. Thus, facial adornments have the potential to provide information of great significance in revealing how economic and social institutions impeded on the production, distribution, and consumption of facial adornments among states during the Postclassic.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 82nd Annual Meeting, Vancouver, BC (2017)   •
• Crafting and Consumption in Prehispanic Mesoamerica: A Diachronic Perspective/La Producción y el Consumo de Artesanías en Mesoamérica durante la Época Prehispánica: Una Perspectiva Diacrónica

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 15636