The Sighing, Bleeding, Feasting Soul: Speech Scrolls in Mesoamerica

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Speech scrolls are common elements of Mesoamerican codices and their frequent use and incorporation into a wide array of human and anthropomorphic entities highlights the need for a formal study of these elements of iconography. The use of speech scrolls is not ubiquitous simply because of their function as a marker of speech in service of a larger motif or series of events, but because they are integral to the underlying cultural and cosmic foundations of these motifs. Be it as a simple volute or an intricate swirl of precious items, depictions of speech are more than mere markers of verbal communication. Speech scrolls connect the images and figures depicted to larger cosmic concerns of the soul, earthly and heavenly structure, authority, death, and sacrifice. Analysis of speech scrolls in ritual contexts illustrates the multi-layered and interdependent relationship between tangible and imagined corporeal forms with the unseen supernatural foundations underlying concepts of ritual actions and bodily performance. Through examination of speech scrolls in the Borgia Group codices, with particular focus on the ritual sequences in the Borgia Codex, connections between the depiction of speech/breath and Nahua ideas of the tripartite soul, cosmic structure, and ritual power are revealed.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)

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Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 25314