The Chapultepec Castle Chimalli: A Habsburg-repatriated Mexica feline-hide shield

Summary

This paper examines a well-known Mexica chimalli (shield), possibly from the sixteenth century, currently found among the holdings of the National Museum of History, Chapultepec Castle, Mexico City. The importance of this study lies in three fundamental aspects: 1) very few Mexica shields have survived; 2) the examples found outside of Mexico have not been fully analyzed; and 3) the chimalli now residing at Chapultepec Castle was originally taken from the Basin of Mexico to Europe during the sixteenth century and subsequently returned to Mexico in the collection of objects brought by the Habsburg emperor Maximilian in 1866 for his new Imperial Museum. Data obtained in our analysis of the shield will be compared with information contained in the historical sources. The various materials utilized in the shield’s design will also be discussed, along with a final section tracing the ways and means, primarily tributary and commercial, by which its constituent raw materials arrived in Tenochtitlan, the Mexica capital.

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This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 80th Annual Meeting, San Francisco, CA (2015)   •
• The Aztecs and their World: Initerdisciplinary Contributions of Frances Berdan

Keywords

Spatial Coverage