Material Transformations and Vegetal Ontologies in the Postclassic and Colonial Mesoamerican Flower Worlds

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Bringing the Past to Life, Part 1: Papers in Honor of John M. D. Pohl" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Prehispanic visual sources and colonial alphabetic texts provide rich descriptions of what scholars have termed "the Flower World" in Mesoamerica. This idealized celestial realm was filled not just with flowers, but an array of other precious substances, ranging from gemstones to precious metals, to bird feathers and butterflies. An interesting feature of prehispanic iconography is that some of these distinct substances are represented with identical motifs. What accounted for such visual conflations? These materials ostensibly did not transform into one another in a fashion akin to alchemy; instead, evidence suggests they were all linked by being seen as in states of constant transformation and growth, exhibiting ontologies akin to flowers and other plants. I argue that it was this fluidity and ever-changing nature of these substances that allowed other materials introduced from Europe to be absorbed into the Flower World during the colonial period, namely silk. By adopting silk textiles and other liturgical vestments, and folding them into these same Indigenous ontologies, it became possible for a new vision of this Mesoamerican celestial realm to be materialized in early Catholic churches.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Bringing the Past to Life, Part 1: Papers in Honor of John M. D. Pohl   •
• Society for American Archaeology 89th Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA (2024)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 38620.0