Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-ndmmz Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-05-10T06:08:02.768Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

TREASURED TRASH: THE SACRED SIGNIFICANCE OF CERAMIC FRAGMENTS IN ELITE RITUAL CONTEXTS AT POSTCLASSIC XALTOCAN, MEXICO

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 June 2020

Kirby Farah Open the ORCID record for Kirby Farah [Opens in a new window]
Kirby Farah*
Affiliation:
Department of Anthropology, Gettysburg College, 300 North Washington Street, Gettysburg, Pennsylvania17325
*
E-mail correspondence to: kirby.farah@gmail.com
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

In this article, I examine the use of ceramic fragments to mark sacred spaces at the Postclassic central Mexican site of Xaltocan. Recent excavations in Xaltocan's central precinct revealed a series of ritual features dating to Xaltocan's Middle Postclassic period (a.d. 1240–1350) that were carefully constructed with ceramic fragments. I argue that this practice might represent an effort on the part of Xaltocan's Postclassic leaders to mark these features as sacred. Although Xaltocan was ruled by Otomi peoples during this time, the careful incorporation of ceramic fragments into ritual spaces might be related to the Nahua concept of tlazolli and possibly reflects the increasing influence of Nahua ideologies across the Basin of Mexico. Despite its generally negative connotations, tlazolli was a powerful substance that central Mexicans could manipulate to energize ritual spaces. By carefully reordering ceramic fragments in and around ritual features, Xaltocan's leaders might have imbued these spaces with sacred energy. While the concept of tlazolli might have been quite widespread during this time, the specific practices discussed in this article appear to have been isolated to Xaltocan's Middle Postclassic leaders. Perhaps the specific practices observed were an invention of Xaltocan's Middle Postclassic leaders that never spread.

Type
Research Article
Information
Ancient Mesoamerica , Volume 32 , Issue 2 , Summer 2021 , pp. 335 - 349
Check for updates
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s) 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Alva Ixtlilxochitl, Fernando de 1975–1977 Obras históricas. 2 vols. Translated by O'Gorman, Edmundo. Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Mexico City.Google Scholar
Barlow, Robert H. 1949 The Extent of the Empire of the Culhua Mexica. University of California Press, Berkeley.Google Scholar
Berdan, Frances F. 2008 Concepts of Ethnicity and Class in Aztec-Period Mexico. In Ethnic Identity in Nahua Mesoamerica: The View from Archaeology, Art History, Ethnohistory, and Contemporary Ethnography, edited by Berdan, Frances F., Chance, John K., Sandstrom, Alan R., Stark, Barbara, Taggart, James, and Umberger, Emily, pp. 105–132. University of Utah Press, Salt Lake City.Google Scholar
Berdan, Frances F., and Anawalt, Patricia R. 1992 The Codex Mendoza. 4 vols. University of California Press, Berkeley.Google Scholar
Bierhorst, John (translator) 1992 History and Mythology of the Aztecs: The Codex Chimalpopoca. University of Arizona Press, Tucson.Google Scholar
Boone, Elizabeth Hill, and Nuttall, Zelia (translators) 1983 Codex Magliabechiano. 2 vols. University of California Press, Berkeley.Google Scholar
Brown, Linda A. 2000 From Discard to Divination: Demarcating the Sacred Through the Collection and Curation of Discarded Objects. Latin American Antiquity 11:319–333.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brumfiel, Elizabeth, Salcedo, Tamara, and Schafer, David 1994 Lip Plugs of Xaltocan: Function and Meaning in Aztec Archaeology. In Economics and Polities in the Aztec Realm, edited by Hodge, Mary G. and Smith, Michael E., pp. 113–131. Institute for Mesoamerican Studies, University of New York, Albany.Google Scholar
Brumfiel, Elizabeth M. 2005a Ceramic Chronology at Xaltocan. In Production and Power at Postclassic Xaltocan, edited by Brumfiel, Elizabeth M., pp. 117–152. Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia, Mexico City.Google Scholar
Brumfiel, Elizabeth M. 2005b Conclusions: Production and Power at Xaltocan. In Production and Power at Postclassic Xaltocan, edited by Brumfiel, Elizabeth M., pp. 349–360. Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia, Mexico City.Google Scholar
Brumfiel, Elizabeth M. 2005c Introduction: Production and Power at Postclassic Xaltocan. In Production and Power at Postclassic Xaltocan, edited by Brumfiel, Elizabeth M., pp. 27–41. Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia, Mexico City.Google Scholar
Brumfiel, Elizabeth M. 2006 Materiality, Feasts, and Figured Worlds in Aztec Mexico. In Rethinking Materiality: The Engagement of Mind with the Material World, edited by , Elizabeth DeMarrais, Chris Gosden, and Colin Renfrew, pp. 225–239. McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, University of Cambridge, Cambridge.Google Scholar
Brumfiel, Elizabeth M. 2010 Estrategias de las unidades domésticas en Xaltocan posclásico, México: Informe final al Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia. Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia, Mexico City.Google Scholar
Burkhart, Louise M. 1989 The Slippery Earth: Nahua-Christian Moral Dialogue in Sixteenth-Century Mexico. University of Arizona Press, Tucson.Google Scholar
Burkhart, Louise M. 1997 Mexican Women on the Home Front. In Indian Women of Early Mexico, edited by Schroeder, Susan, Wood, Stephanie, and Haskett, Robert, pp. 25–54. University of Oklahoma Press, Norman.Google Scholar
Carrasco, Davíd 1999 City of Sacrifice: The Aztec Empire and the Role of Violence in Civilization. Beacon Press, Boston.Google Scholar
Clayton, Sarah C., Driver, W. David, and Kosakowsky, Laura J. 2005 Rubbish or Ritual? Contextualizing a Terminal Classic Problematical Deposit at Blue Creek Belize. Ancient Mesoamerica 16:119–130.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Borbonicus, Codex 1974 Codex Borbonicus. Codices Selecti 44. Akademische Druck-u. Verlagsanstalt, Graz.Google Scholar
Deal, Michael 1985 Household Pottery Disposal in the Maya Highlands: An Ethnoarchaeological Interpretation. Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 4:243–291.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
De Lucia, Kristin 2010 A Child's House: Social Memory, Identity, and the Construction of Childhood in Early Postclassic Mexican Households. American Anthropologist 112:607–624.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
De Lucia, Kristin 2011 Domestic Economies and Regional Transition: Household Production and Consumption in Early Postclassic Mexico. Department of Anthropology, Northwestern University, Evanston.Google Scholar
De Lucia, Kristin 2014 Everyday Practice and Ritual Space: The Organization of Domestic Ritual in Pre-Aztec Xaltocan, Mexico. Cambridge Archaeological Journal 24:379–403.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Douglas, Mary 1966 Purity and Danger: An Analysis of Concepts of Pollution and Taboo. Penguin Books, Harmondsworth.Google Scholar
Duran, Diego 1971 Book of the Gods and Rites and the Ancient Calendar. University of Oklahoma Press, Norman.Google Scholar
Elson, Christina M., and Smith, Michael E. 2001 Archaeological Deposits from the Aztec New Fire Ceremony. Ancient Mesoamerica 12:157–174.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Espejel, Claudia 2005 Domestics Structures in Xaltocan. In Production and Power at Postclassic Xaltocan, edited by Brumfiel, Elizabeth M., pp. 255–266. Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia, Mexico City.Google Scholar
Farah, Kirby 2017 Leadership and Community Identity in Postclassic Xaltocan, Mexico. Ph.D. dissertation, Department of Anthropology, University of California, Riverside.Google Scholar
Fargher, Lane, Blanton, Richard E., and Espinoza, Verenice Y. Heredia 2010 Egalitarian Ideology and Political Power in Prehispanic Central Mexico: The Case of Tlaxcallan. Latin American Antiquity 21:227–251.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hamann, Byron 2002 The Social Life of Pre-Sunrise Things: Indigenous Mesoamerican Archaeology. Current Anthropology 43:351–381.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hamann, Byron 2008 Chronological Pollution: Potsherds, Mosques, and Broken Gods before and after the Conquest of Mexico. Current Anthropology 49:803–836.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hayden, Brian, and Cannon, Aubrey 1983 Where the Garbage Goes: Refuse Disposal in the Maya Highlands. Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 2:117–163.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hicks, Fredrick 1994 Xaltocan under Mexica Domination, 1435–1520. In Caciques and Their People: A Volume in Honor of Ronald Spores, edited by Marcus, Joyce and Zeitlan, Judith F., pp. 67–85. Anthropological Papers, No. 89. Museum of Anthropology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.Google Scholar
Hutson, Scott R., and Stanton, Travis W. 2007 Cultural Logic and Practical Reason: The Structure of Discard in Ancient Maya Houselots. Cambridge Archaeological Journal 17:123–144.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Iglesias Ponce de León, María Josepha 1988 Análisis de un depósito problemático de Tikal, Guatemala. Société des américanistes 74:25–48.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Joyce, Arthur A., Bustamante, Laura Arnaud, and Levine, Marc N. 2001 Commoner Power: A Case Study from the Classic Period Collapse on the Oaxaca Coast. Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory 8:343–385.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Joyce, Arthur A., and King, Stacie M. 2001 Household Archaeology in Coastal Oaxaca, Mexico. Electronic document, http://www.famsi.org/reports/99012/99012Joyce01.pdf, accessed June 2, 2020.Google Scholar
Klein, Cecelia F. 1993 “Divine Excrement”: The Significance of “Holy Shit” in Ancient Mexico. Art Journal 52:20–27.Google Scholar
LeCount, Lisa J. 2001 Like Water for Chocolate: Feasting and Political Ritual among the Late Classic Maya at Xunantunich, Belize. American Anthropologist 103:935–953.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
López Austin, Alfredo 1993 The Myths of the Opossum: Pathways of Mesoamerican Mythology. Translated by Ortiz de Montellano, Bernard R. and Ortiz de Montellano, Thelma. University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque.Google Scholar
Mock, Shirley Boteler 1998 The Sowing and the Dawning: Termination, Dedication, and Transformation in the Archaeological and Ethnographic Record of Mesoamerica. University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque.Google Scholar
Molina, Alonso de 1571 Vocabulario en lengua Castellana y Mexicana y Mexicana y Castellana. Antonio de Spinola, Mexico City.Google Scholar
Monaghan, John 2000 Theology and History in the Study of Mesoamerican Religions. In Supplement to the Handbook of Middle American Indians, edited by , Victoria R. Bricker, pp. 24–49. Ethnology, Vol. 6. University of Texas Press, Austin.Google Scholar
Morehart, Christopher T. 2010 The Archaeology of Farmscapes: Production, Power and Place at Postclassic Xaltocan, Mexico. Ph.D. dissertation, Department of Anthropology, Northwestern University, Evanston.Google Scholar
Morehart, Christopher T., and Frederick, Charles 2014 The Chronology and Collapse of Pre-Aztec Raised Field (Chinampa) Agriculture in the Northern Basin of Mexico. Antiquity 88:531–548.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Navarro-Farr, Olivia C. 2009 Ritual, Process, and Continuity in the Late to Terminal Classic Transition: Investigations at Structure M13-1 in the Ancient Maya Site of El Perú-Waka’, Petén, Guatemala. Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Department of Anthropology, Southern Methodist University, Dallas.Google Scholar
Navarro-Farr, Olivia C. 2016 Dynamic Transitions at El Perú-Waka’: Late-Terminal Classic Ritual Repurposing of a Monumental Shrine. In Ritual, Violence, and the Fall of Classic Maya Kings, edited by Iannone, Gyles, Houk, Brett A., and Schwake, Sonja A., pp. 243–269. University Press of Florida, Gainesville.Google Scholar
Nazareo de Xaltocan, Pablo 1940 Carta al rey don Felipe II. In Epistolario de Nueva España, edited by Troncoso, Francisco del Paso y, pp. 109–129. Antigua Librería Robredo, Mexico City.Google Scholar
Newman, Sarah E. 2015 Rethinking Refuse: A History of Maya Trash. Ph.D. dissertation, Department of Anthropology, Brown University, Providence.Google Scholar
Overholtzer, Lisa 2012 Empires and Everyday Material Practices: A Household Archaeology of Aztec and Spanish Imperialism at Xaltocan, Mexico. Ph.D. dissertation, Department of Anthropology, Northwestern University, Evanston.Google Scholar
Overholtzer, Lisa 2013 Archaeological Interpretation and the Rewriting of History: Deimperializing and Decolonizing the Past at Xaltocan, Mexico. American Anthropologist 115:481–495.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Overholtzer, Lisa 2015 Dwelling on the Past: The Materiality of Everyday Life at Xaltocan, Mexico. Archaeological Papers of the American Anthropological Association 26:87–104.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Quiñones Keber, Eloise 1995 Codex Telleriano-Remensis: Ritual, Divination, and History in a Pictorial Aztec Manuscript. University of Texas Press, Austin.Google Scholar
Reyes-Valerio, Constantino 1978 Arte Indocristiano. Secretaría de Educación Pública and Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia, Mexico City.Google Scholar
Rodríguez-Alegría, Enrique 2010 Incumbents and Challengers: Indigenous Politics and the Adoption of Spanish Material Culture in Colonial Xaltocan, Mexico. Historical Archaeology 44:51–71.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sahagún, Fray Bernardino de 1950–1982 [1547–1579] Florentine Codex: General History of the Things of New Spain. Translated by Anderson, Arthur J.O. and Dibble, Charles E.. Monographs of the School of American Research. School of American Research, Santa Fe.Google Scholar
Sahagún, Fray Bernardino de 1997 Primeros Memoriales: Paleography of Nahuatl Text and English Translation. Translated by Sullivan, Thelma D.. University of Oklahoma Press, NormanGoogle Scholar
Schiffer, Michael B. 1976 Behavioral Archaeology. Academic Press, New York.Google Scholar
Smith, Michael E., Wharton, Jennifer B., and Olson, Jan Marie 2003 Aztec Feasts, Rituals, and Markets. In The Archaeology and Politics of Food and Feasting in Early States and Empires, edited by Bray, Tamara L., pp. 235–236. Kluwer Academic/Plenum, New York.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stanton, Travis W., Brown, M. Kathryn, and Pagliaro, Jonathan B. 2008 Garbage of the Gods? Squatters, Refuse Disposal, and Termination Rituals among the Ancient Maya. Latin American Antiquity 19:227–247.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stuart, David 1998 “The Fire Enters His House”: Architecture and Ritual in Classic Maya Texts. In Function and Meaning in Classic Maya Architecture, edited by Houston, Stephen D., pp. 373–425. Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, Washington, DC.Google Scholar
Sullivan, Alan P. III 1989 The Technology of Ceramic Reuse: Formation Processes and Archaeological Evidence. World Archaeology 21:101–114.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sullivan, Thelma D. 1982 Tlazolteotl-Ixcuina: The Great Spinner and Weaver. In The Art and Iconography of Late Post-Classic Central Mexico: A Conference at Dumbarton Oaks, October 22nd and 23rd, 1977, edited by Boone, Elizabeth Hill and Benson, Elizabeth P., pp. 7–35. Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, Washington, DC.Google Scholar
Taube, Karl 2000 The Turquoise Hearth: Fire, Self-Sacrifice, and the Central Mexican Cult of War. In Mesoamerica's Classic Heritage: From Teotihuacan to the Aztecs, edited by Carrasco, Davíd, Jones, Lindsay, and Sessions, Scott, pp. 269–340. University Press of Colorado, Boulder.Google Scholar
Urcid, Javier, and Joyce, Arthur A. 2001 Carved Monuments and Calendrical Names: The Rulers of Río Viejo, Oaxaca. Ancient Mesoamerica 12:199–216.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Walker, Deborah S. 1998 Smashed Pots and Shattered Dreams: The Material Evidence for an Early Classic Maya Site Termination at Cerros, Belize. In The Sowing and the Dawning: Termination, Dedication, and Transformation in the Archaeological and Ethnographic Record of Mesoamerica, edited by Boteler-Mock, Shirley, pp. 81–99. University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque.Google Scholar