Life in the Tributary Province of Xoconochco

Summary

Our work on Late Postclassic Xoconochco/Soconusco has been greatly influenced by research carried out by Frances Berdan, particularly her focus on the Codex Mendoza and other Aztec documents and her approach that integrates multiple disciplines. In this paper I use ethnohistoric and archaeological data to review the role of the Soconusco region as an Aztec Tributary Province. More specifically, I examine what these data seem to tell us about how the Aztec conquest and the subsequent collection of tribute payments impacted the local population of the Soconusco. I also discuss the process by which we sometimes have to reconcile the seemingly contradictory evidence provided by the documentary and the archaeological record.

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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