This essay is study of Aztec stone boxes from the pre-conquest Aztec empire. My study focuses on the interpretation of carvings on the surfaces, as well as the interiors and lids when applicable. The study includes not only traditionally functional boxes, but also altars (blocks or basins) and offering chambers, as comparative examples. The thesis focuses on three specific stone boxes located in museums in Mexico, Germany, and Great Britain: the Islas y Bustamante Box (Museo Nacional de Anthropologi­a, Mexico), the Hackmack Box (Museum fur Volkerkunde, Hamburg), and the Ahuitzotl Box (British Museum, London, and Museum fur Volkerkunde, Berlin). I am studying the iconographic programs, with a focus on themes of auto-sacrifice and creation, carved on the art objects themselves and their function as story-telling devices, with or without the contents that the box may have contained. In their forms, the objects themselves are metaphors for space, time, Aztec history, and Aztec creation myths. The Hackmack Box depicts the creation god, Quetzalcoatl (feathered serpent), and refers to the creation myth of mankind saved from the underworld and resurrected from the ashes of bones, using Quetzalcoatl's own blood. The box bears Montezuma's name glyph and is likely a tribute to his birth, his ascension and success as a ruler, and his piety. The Islas y Bustamante Box depicts the god of caves, Tepeyolotl, and refers to the myth that man ascended from caves, as all of life originated from the mouth of a cave that was also a natural spring. The box itself is a metaphor for this type of cave. The Ahuitzotl Box depicts the god of water Tlaloc, and refers to the myth of the tlaloques (helpers) discovery of "food-mountain", in other words, the discovery of maize that nourished the Aztec people. It has been linked to the dedication of the aqueduct built under the Aztec ruler Ahuitzotl, and serves as a tribute to this historical event. The cosmic arrangement of the motifs on these boxes reveal the object as a metaphor for space and time itself as they comply with the Aztec's earthly orientation of the heavens, the earth, an the underworld.

acase@tulane.edu

How has for over 500 years the Calpolli system of social organization and governance survived? Why is it important for Mexica communities to organize themselves into Calpoltin? These are the central research questions that underpin my work. In the process of answering these questions I have developed a liberating (decolonizing) research framework rooted in the Tlamanalcayotl. Through this framework an analysis of Nican Tlacah resistance movements for liberation and autonomy is undertaken in order to understand that we've been fighting for our traditional social systems of organization and governance. These Nican Tlacah ways of being are rooted in principles of self-sufficiency and sustainability that engender human societies that take care of their ecology. The Calpolli families having formed a union (establishing relationships of responsibility with one another) create a living community that is continually developing a way of being that is functional, practical, self-sufficient, and sustainable.

abstract: This archaeological study analyses households at the Postclassic site of Calixtlahuaca (State of Mexico, Mexico), to evaluate the directness and collectiveness of local and imperial Aztec rule based on their effects on the commoner population. Scholars are divided as to whether Aztec rule was generally positive (due to opportunities for economic and cultural interaction) or negative (due to taxation and loss of autonomy). Contexts at Calixtlahuaca date to three periods, the Dongu (AD 1130-1370), Ninupi (1370-1450), and Yata (1450-1530) phases. The first two phases show the pre-Aztec trajectory, which is compared to the final period under Aztec rule to disentangle general trends toward regional integration from Aztec effects. Each phase includes six excavated households. I assess economic changes on three dimensions: foreign trade, local craft production, and household wealth. Trade is evaluated for obsidian and ceramics (INAA, petrography, type classification) and local crafting is evaluated for ceramic, lithic, textile, and molded ceramic items. Wealth is measured using all excavated artifacts, with the relative values of artifact classes based on Colonial Nahuatl wills. Prior to Aztec rule, trade was increasing and diversifying, but craft production was low. Under Aztec rule, trade reoriented toward the Basin of Mexico, craft production remained low, and household wealth stabilized. Pre-Aztec inter-household variation for all dimensions is low, before increasing during the Yata phase. Cultural changes are evaluated for ritual activities and foodways. I evaluate the degree of interhousehold variability, the overall similarity to other parts of Central Mexico, the degree of change under Aztec rule, and immigration versus emulation as potential explanations for that change. Evaluation is based on the distinction between high and low visibility objects and practices. The Dongu and Ninupi phase households at Calixtlahuaca were culturally homogeneous and regionally distinctive. During the Yata phase, the site became moderately more Aztec, but this change was unevenly distributed among households. Together, the economic and cultural patterns at Calixtlahuaca indicate that the pre-Aztec local organization of power was relatively collective, but that this was partially overlaid by relatively indirect and non-collective Aztec imperial rule, with mildly negative effects. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Anthropology 2016

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Using archaeological and ethnohistorical data, this dissertation examines the character of the relationship between the Late Postclassic (ca. AD 1250-1520) frontier center of Totogal, located in the western Tuxtla Mountains (Toztlan) of southern Veracruz, Mexico, and the expanding Aztec Empire. Traditional models of imperialism examine frontiers from a core perspective that limits the autonomy and agency of groups in the path of expansion. Recent ethnographic, ethnohistoric, and archaeological studies of other boundaries, however, suggest that considerable room for negotiation exists within the space of interactions, whether asymmetrical amounts of power characterize the home bases of those groups. I argue that elites at Totogal, using imperial symbols and markers of their own high status, sponsored feasts and rituals for the non-elite public, during which they brokered the potentially conflicting interests of the Aztecs and the tribute paying population of the Tuxtlas. The invitation of the public to feasts and rituals that combined imperial and local elite symbols (and possibly green obsidian), naturalized the relationship between local elites and imperial representatives with non-elite occupants of Totogal and nearby settlements by establishing a reciprocal system of gifting whereby food and drink, served in the context of elaborate religious and commensal rituals, provided a benefit to the Tuxteco public which, along with other exotic highland goods, was viewed as an acceptable exchange for the local tribute items that the empire desired. This study is an important application of current anthropological perspectives on boundaries, borders, and frontiers to the Aztec Empire. It is also a critical examination of the types of strategies individuals and groups living in boundary regions can enact in situations of contact and change. While studies of modern groups in boundary regions have addressed identity construction and manipulation, and other dynamic social, political, and cultural processes that take place, they do not typically or systematically examine how the negotiations that are enacted in boundary zones are materialized—how changing identities are represented symbolically through the use of particular products or consumption patterns. It is in this area that archaeological perspectives on boundary zone interactions can make important contributions to the modern world.

This paper traces La Llorona’s evolution from ancient Aztec cosmology to Trace Elements of Random Tea Parties, a contemporary novel by Felicia Luna Lemus. I argue that the protagonist’s entrenchment in her own Llorona myth ultimately inhibits the development of a queer community in collaboration with the community of her birth. While Trace Elements of Random Tea Parties leaves the tension between familial duty and personal desire unresolved, the constant narrative oscillation between past tea parties with Leti’s grandmothers and present tea parties with Leti’s chosen lesbian familia opens a space for new kinship structures to emerge, remapping the contours of the Mexican-American family and a woman’s role within it. / text

Les divinités vénérées par les Aztèques dans le Mexique central étaient nombreuses et complexes. Afin de mieux comprendre ces entités, les chercheurs ont adopté différentes approches dans leurs études au cours des dernières décennies, mais la matérialité des parures divines est restée un sujet peu exploré. Malgré l’importance que l’on reconnaît aux attributs, aucune étude ne s’est intéressée de manière globale et systématique aux matériaux qui constituaient les dieux et à leurs significations. Pourtant, ces derniers étaient au fondement des divinités qui incarnaient notamment des manifestations naturelles et se matérialisaient dans le monde des hommes au moyen de formes physiques constituées de matériaux prélevés dans la nature. Elles pouvaient alors être représentées ou bien personnifiées par des statues ou des hommes revêtant les parures de ces entités. L’objectif de cette thèse est de proposer une méthode d’analyse des divinités d’un point de vue emic, fondée sur le déchiffrement de leurs parures et donc sur l’étude systématique des éléments naturels utilisés ou symbolisés dans celles-ci. En décomposant les parures de Tlaloc et de Huitzilopochtli, ce travail met en évidence les significations des matériaux en rapport avec les formes qu’ils prenaient (c’est-à-dire les attributs portés) et les supports corporels des dieux, ceci afin de restituer ce que représentaient ces deux entités pour les Aztèques et comprendre les variations qui affectaient leurs parures d’un contexte à un autre. Apparaît une conception de ces dieux parfois différente de celle que l’on pouvait en avoir, héritée des religieux et des conquérants espagnols. / The deities honored by the Aztecs of Central Mexico were numerous and complex. In order to better understand these entities, Mesoamericanists have addressed this topic from different approaches over the past decades, but the materiality of the gods’ costumes has remained a little-explored subject. Despite the fact that the importance of the attributes is acknowledged by scholars, no study to this date has ever proposed a global and systematic analysis of the materials that composed the deities and of their meanings. However, they were a central part of the deities, given that most of them embodied natural phenomena and showed themselves in the world of men by means of physical forms made of materials taken from nature. In that case, they could be represented or personified by men who wore the costumes of these entities. The contribution of my dissertation is based on the development of a methodology to study the deities from an emic perspective and decipher the meaning of their costumes, which implies a systematic analysis of the natural elements they used or symbolized. By decomposing the costumes of Tlaloc and Huitzilopochtli, this work emphasizes the meanings of the natural elements in relation to the forms they took (i.e. the attributes worn) and the gods’ bodies, in order to understand what these two entities represented for the Aztecs and why their costumes could vary depending on the context. What comes to light is a conception of Tlaloc and Huitzilopochtli that can be different from the one we had, inherited from the Spanish missionaries and conquerors.

acase@tulane.edu

The construction of buildings to replicate specific places within the mythic landscape was a long-standing and widespread tradition in ancient Mesoamerica. This study moves beyond the identification of motifs that marked buildings as mythic, as it examines the messages communicated by these structures and evaluates the meaning and impact of mythic architecture within its historic and cultural contexts. An essential aspect of this study is the investigation of ritual dramas which reenacted episodes from creation narratives. By physically re-creating mythic locations and by re-actualizing mythic events, Mesoamerican communities manifested cosmogonic space and time so that the mythic was made present. Moreover, each building was constructed during a specific moment in time and at a particular location, and therefore it reflected and responded to particular historical realities. Because of this, Mesoamerican mythic architecture had a dual significance: both mythic and historic. Mythic architecture was an active force within the community: it communicated views concerning the origins of the world and the foundations of rulership and culture. It also made these concepts tangible within the historical world. Its very presence confirmed the reality of the mythic realm, thereby reinforcing and validating the culture’s core constructs. Because these structures manifested the mythical landscape, they were particularly potent locations for the reenactment of mythological events. These mythic dramas took place in real time which placed the structure within a specific historical context. When it was the ruler who took on the identity of the creation deities during mythic performances, the blending of myth and history was most significant. In addition, mythic dramas were the means by which the populace could be directly integrated into the mythological narrative. By examining evidence of mythic architecture and mythic drama from different Mesoamerican cultures—with a particular focus upon Classic period Copán and the Postclassic Aztec Templo Mayor—this dissertation demonstrates how they reflected their specific cultural contexts and how different communities interacted with these structures in distinct ways. This study also provides new insight into the significance of these structures at specific places and times and suggests how mythic architecture reflected changing historical circumstances. / text