Mesoamerican Death Imagery Oversimplified

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Misinformation and Misrepresentation Part 1: Reconsidering “Human Sacrifice,” Religion, Slavery, Modernity, and Other European-Derived Concepts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

The Aztecs and other Mesoamerican peoples were exceptionally aware and observant of their natural world and the cycles of nature, particularly the alternation of the seasons. Many of their representations were aptly identified with the dry or rainy seasons. Likewise, dead individuals were depicted in the natural death processes, such as rigor mortis, body skin decomposition (putrefaction), as well as with other death symbols: skulls, skeletons, or death joints (with skulls), normally described by Mesoamerican scholars as an alleged mortuary obsession of Aztec art and iconography. Rather than a “religious” obsession with death, Aztec art and iconography reflect a legitimate scientific interest in the natural world. I will show several examples from Codex Borgia using PCA graphs to see variables and their correlations in death imagery while offering new interpretations. Scholars have for decades described death imagery as terrifying demons, grotesque, crouching monsters, and “demon faces” adorning the elbows, knees, claws, and so on. These descriptions hardly do justice to the Aztecs’ close observation of the human body and their surrounding nature.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 89th Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA (2024)   •
• Misinformation and Misrepresentation Part 1: Reconsidering “Human Sacrifice,” Religion, Slavery, Modernity, and Other European-Derived Concepts

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 38417.0