Nahua Merchants in a Tarascan World

Summary

A major enemy of the Aztecs during the Late Postclassic Period, the Tarascan State nevertheless exchanged key commodities within the Mesoamerican world by means of markets, local and long-distance traders, and gift exchange. Sixteenth century documents known since the 19th c have indicated that Nahua merchants exchanged goods with Purepecha merchants at major Tarascan fortified frontier settlements such as Taximaroa. However new research on recently translated documents and new archaeological analysis indicates more direct, complex, and significant economic exchange that affected the political economies of both of these polities.

SAA 2015 abstracts made available in tDAR courtesy of the Society for American Archaeology and Center for Digital Antiquity Collaborative Program to improve digital data in archaeology. If you are the author of this presentation you may upload your paper, poster, presentation, or associated data (up to 3 files/30MB) for free. Please visit http://www.tdar.org/SAA2015 for instructions and more information.

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