The Aztecs and Mixtecs of ancient Mexico recorded their histories
in long oral narratives and in images painted on hide, paper, and
cloth, which served to keep the fundamental features of the stories
pure. The tradition of painting history continued even after the
Spanish Conquest, for the indigenous rulers and important native
families still needed documents to support their respective
positions, and the Spaniards accepted the pictorial histories as
valid records of the past. Out of the wealth of documentation that
once existed, five Pre-Columbian and some 150 early colonial
painted histories survive today.
This extensively and beautifully illustrated book offers the
first comprehensive analysis of the Mexican painted history as an
intellectual, documentary, and pictorial genre. Elizabeth Hill
Boone explores how the Mexican historians conceptualized and
painted their past and introduces readers to the major pictorial
records: the Aztec annals and cartographic histories and the Mixtec
screenfolds and lienzos.
Boone focuses her analysis on the kinds of stories told in the
histories and on how the manuscripts work pictorially to encode,
organize, and preserve these narratives. This twofold investigation
broadens our understanding of how preconquest Mexicans understood
and presented themselves and how they used pictographic history for
political an social ends. It also demonstrates how graphic writing
systems developed, like mathematical or musical notation, to convey
meaning directly and without a detour through speech, creating a
broadly understood corpus of visual conventions that communicated
effectively across ethnic and linguistic boundaries.
This book will be important readingnot only for scholars of
ancient Mexico, but also for avocational students of Pre-Columbian
history who want to learn to read the Aztec and Mixtec codices and
learn their stories and legends. Likewise, it offers food for
thought to scholars in a variety of disciplines who think
comparatively about histories and/or graphic systems of
communication.
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