The Heat of the Night: Ritual Purification and Curing in Mesoamerica

Summary

While daytime is often reserved for fairly mundane activities, most archaeological questions have focused on this time period. A wide variety of activities though cross the day into the nighttime, or occur only after dark. It is during the night when Mesoamericans recreated much of their mythology in ritualistic acts. This paper explores the use of household temazcales as nightly ritual spaces. These saunas were not only found in large communal spaces, but also in households. For what were the household temazcales used? Which goddesses added meaning to their practices? Interpretations from ethnohistoric and archaeological sources brimming with images and statements will help to elucidate these questions; fieldwork will add observational data.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Night and Darkness in Precolulmbian Mexico and Central America   •
• Society for American Archaeology 82nd Annual Meeting, Vancouver, BC (2017)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 14777