Figure 2 - uploaded by Emily Umberger
Content may be subject to copyright.
Florentine Codex illustration of Huitzilopochtli's defeat of Coyolxauhqui and his other enemy siblings at Coatepetl. Drawing by author (after Sahag?n 1905-1907).
Source publication
Similar publications
Als Mitglieder der Initiative „Lucius-Burckhardt-Platz bleibt!“ erzählen wir euch hier von unserem Versuch, die Zerstörung und autoritäre Überplanung eines Quartiersplatzes zu verhindern. Es ist die Geschichte unseres Wiederstandes gegen eine Planung, die Teilhabe als Feigenblatt auf der Ebene von institutionellen Gremien und Ausschüssen proklamier...
Citations
... The Codex Aubin's creators would have been aware that within the time scale of the Indigenous calendar, human temporal rhythms were aligned to divine ones. For instance, 1 Rabbit, the date of the earth's creation by deities, was also the first year of the fifty-two-year calendar cycle, during which time 57 Umberger, 1987;Umberger, 2002. human beings carried out their own rituals to renew the world. ...
The Aztec (Mexica) city of Tenochtitlan was transformed after the Spanish invasion of 1519–21 into a staging ground for Habsburg colonial experiments. Indigenous response is glimpsed in this essay through the lens of annals, written in Nahuatl, that document urban festivals celebrating Spanish Habsburg monarchs. I argue that the redeployment of particular spaces—long charged with meaning by Indigenous residents—was crucial to the public legitimacy of the Habsburg festival. These festivals promoted new means of temporal orientation, thus disrupting Indigenous orientations in time, at the same moment that Indigenous calendars were coming under scrutiny for their heretical potentials.
... Townsend, 1979: 63-70). Desconocemos desde cuándo se usaba el calendario mexica, es de suponer que la forma y la estructura del calendario tal como lo conocemos se iniciara después de las reformas de Itzcóatl y Tlacaélel (Umberger, 1981, 2002, Battcock, 2012 y entonces que su uso abarcara mucho menos que un siglo. 11 La razón de un día cada 4 años implica que en 100 años el desfase puede llegar a 25 días (100 ÷ 4 = 25). ...
As it is known, several researchers observed that in the sixteenth century, the meanings of the names of the twenty-day cycles of the Mexica calendar do not match the cycle of the seasons. As the vague Mexica year (Xihuitl) of 365 is approximately a quarter of a day shorter than the tropical year (also known as a solar year) of 365.2422 days, the Mexica year (Xihuitl) used to supplant the tropical year at a steady rhythm. Mi chel Graulich (1976, 1979) assumed that the lack of coincidence between the names of the rituals and of the twenty-day cycles with the seasons of the year was due to the firm nature of the passage of time and by calculating backwards, he concluded that the names of the twenty-day cycles coincided with the seasons was during the period from 680 to 683 A.D. This paper reviews his concepts and calculations.
... Knapp and Ashmore address the then-booming rise of landscape archaeology and emphasize the novel nature of addressing human-land interactions in a non-economically oriented manner; "Today, however, the most prominent notions of landscape emphasize its socio-symbolic dimensions: landscape is an entity that exists by virtue of its being perceived, experienced and contextualized by people" (Ashmore and Knapp 2000: 1). This focus on the "socio-symbolic dimensions" of landscape opened the door to such fascinating cross-theoretical concepts as biography of place, emplacement, and monumentation (Ashmore 2009;Bender 2007;Manzanilla 2002;Meskell 2003;and Umberger 2002). It is in this tradition of theoretical hybridity that I am pursuing an examination of landscape and social memory at the three sites in this project. ...
The study of social memory and landscape in archaeological contexts is a recent trend in social archaeological theory. As such, and despite the flexibility, applicability, and usefulness of this approach, not many sites or societies have been studied from this perspective. The purpose of this examination is to demonstrate the flexibility, applicability and usefulness of the interpretive frameworks by applying it to three disparate sites and societies which are vastly different culturally, spatially and temporally. Research at these sites has not focused on issues of social memory and landscape, despite their perfect suitability.
The Oxford Handbook of Mesoamerican Archaeology provides a current guide to the recent and on-going archaeology of Mesoamerica. Though the emphasis is on prehispanic societies, this text also includes coverage of important new work by archaeologists on the Colonial and Republican periods. Unique among recent works, the text brings together in a single volume article-length regional syntheses and topical overviews written by active scholars in the field of Mesoamerican archaeology. The first section of the text provides an overview of recent history and trends of Mesoamerica, and articles on national archaeology programs and practice in Central America and Mexico written by archaeologists from these countries. These are followed regional syntheses organized by time period, beginning with early hunter-gatherer societies and the first farmers of Mesoamerica and concluding with a discussion of the Spanish Conquest and frontiers and peripheries of Mesoamerica. Topical and comparative articles comprise the remainder of book. They cover important dimensions of prehispanic societies—from ecology, economy, and environment to social and political relations—and discuss significant methodological contributions, such as geo-chemical source studies, as well as new theories and diverse theoretical perspectives. The book concludes with a section on the archaeology of the Spanish conquest and the Colonial and Republican periods to connect the prehispanic, proto-historic, and historic periods.
Examining how the name and portrait of Moteuczoma II were represented in Aztec monuments and colonial manuscripts, this richly interdisciplinary study illuminates the creation of fame and the politics of personhood and portraiture in the Aztec and colonial worlds.
Presenting a radically new interpretation that reorients Spanish-centric historiography and recognizes indigenous agency, this visually compelling book maps the continuities between Aztec Tenochtitlan and sixteenth-century Mexico City.
Incorporation human sacrifice, flaying, and mock warfare, the pre-Columbian Mexican ceremony known as Ochpaniztli, or "Sweeping," has long attracted attention. Although among the best known of eighteen annual Aztec ceremonies, Ochpaniztli's significance has nevertheless been poorly understood. Ochpaniztli is known mainly from early colonial illustrated manuscripts produced in cross-cultural collaboration between Spanish missionary-chroniclers and native Mexican informants Although scholars typically privilege the manuscripts' textual descriptions, Sweeping the Way examines the fundamental role of their pictorial elements, which significantly expand the information contained in the texts. DiCesare emphasizes the primacy of the regalia, ritual implements, and adornments of the festival patroness as the point of intersection between sacred cosmic forces and ceremonial celebrants. The associations of these paraphernalia indicate that Ochpaniztli was a period of purification rituals designed to transform and protect individual and communal bodies alike. Spanish friars were unable to comprehend the complex nature of the festival's patroness, ultimately fragmenting her identity into categories meeting their expectations, which continues to vex modern investigations. Sweeping the Way addresses myriad issues of translation and transformation in pre-Columbian and post-conquest Mexico, as Christian friars and native Mexicans together negotiated a complex body of information about outlawed ritual practices and proscribed sacred entities. © 2009 By the University Press of Colorado. All rights reserved.
Created in Tepechpan, a relatively minor Aztec city in Central Mexico, the Tira de Tepechpan records important events in the city's history from 1298 through 1596. Most of the history is presented pictographically. A line of indigenous year signs runs the length of the Tira, with images above the line depicting events in Tepechpan and images below the line recording events at Tenochtitlan, capital of the Aztec empire and later the seat of Spanish rule. Written annotations amplify some of the images. In this volume, which includes color plates of the entire Tira, Lori Boornazian Diel investigates the motives behind the creation and modification of the Tira in the second half of the sixteenth century. She identifies the Tira's different contributors and reconciles their various histories by asking why these painters and annotators, working at different times, recorded the events that they did. Comparing the Tira to other painted histories from Central Mexico, Diel demonstrates that the main goal of the Tira was to establish the antiquity, autonomy, and prestige of Tepechpan among the Central Mexican city-states that vied for power and status in the preconquest and colonial worlds. Offering the unique point of view of a minor city with grand ambitions, this study of the Tira reveals imperial strategy from the grassroots up, showing how a subject city negotiated its position under Aztec and Spanish control.
Mary Douglas defined "dirt" as matter out of place, but dirt can be matter out of time as well. This essay uses the concept of chronological pollution to interrelate times and places often categorized as separate: pre-Hispanic Mesoamerica; medieval Europe; and the Muslim, Christian, and Native American worlds of the sixteenth-century transatlantic.
