Warior Regalia and Questions of Inalienable Possessions in the Aztec World

Summary

A fascinating aspect of Frances Berdan's new text, Aztec Archaeology and Ethnohistory (2014), is the section in Chapter 8 on warrior regalia as inalienable possessions. This topic is explored by Berdan in a rich discussion that merges Annette Weiner's framework with Berdan's own exhaustive knowledge of written and pictorial manuscript sources on the Aztecs. I would like to take this exploration into the realm of material evidence, by examining particular sculpted examples in the Aztec World. The examples are depictions of shields: rock art depictions representing the Aztec Empire in conquered areas and relief depictions representing the Matlatzinco polity (the Toluca area) before Aztec conquest. How were these shields to be understood locally in both pre-and post-Aztec times, and how did they function in inter-ethnic relations between the two groups?

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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