This thesis focusses on the use and function of music and the so called Flower-flute in the Aztec culture, as well as the Toxcatl festival, in which this instrument played an important role. The...Show moreThis thesis focusses on the use and function of music and the so called Flower-flute in the Aztec culture, as well as the Toxcatl festival, in which this instrument played an important role. The Aztecs knew three different categories of music instruments; the aerophones, membranophones, and the idiophones. These instruments were mainly played by priests during public rituals. In the Aztec culture, music was seen as the voice of the gods through which the gods communicated with the world of humans. This was also the case with the Toxcatl festival, in which the Flower-flute played a central part. During this festival, one prisoner was chosen to impersonate the deity Tezcatlipoca for one year. During this year he would play the Flower-flute after which he would break it on the stairs of a temple. In this festival and instrument, a lot of symbolical meanings are embedded; like the fact that the breaking of the flutes stood symbol for the temporary break of relations between the gods and humans. In this thesis, the Flower-flute was mainly analysed as a sound artefact, leaving slightly aside its symbolical meanings. For instance, there is a possibility that this instrument was played in a major pentatonic scale. There is also a possibility that the flute had a more rhythmic function than a solely melodical function. The exterior of the flute does contain some decorations that possess a symbolical meaning; on some flutes the 4-tonalli sign is present, which refers to the four cardinal directions of the Aztec cosmovision. The flute also has a decoration in the form of two or three red stripes that resemble the fabrication of ancient reed flutes, therefore, suggesting a connection with ancestor veneration.Show less
Research master thesis | Archaeology (research) (MA/MSc)
open access
The Historia General de las cosas de Nueva España is a 16th Century colonial document written in New Spain (modern-day Mexico). It describes many aspects of the lives of indigenous people that...Show moreThe Historia General de las cosas de Nueva España is a 16th Century colonial document written in New Spain (modern-day Mexico). It describes many aspects of the lives of indigenous people that lived in Central Mexico called the Mexica-Nahua. The descriptions are of such detail that they are often a primary source for archaeologists to correlate their material data with. However, this is often done without questioning the validity of the data or putting the conditions of 16th Century Mexico in a proper context. The rituals described in this document have a particular violent character, giving much attention to human sacrifices that were made to indigenous deities. However, these rituals were not witnessed first-hand by its author, Bernardino de Sahagún. The largest ceremonial structure built by the Mexica-Nahua was what is now called the Templo Mayor. This was a large pyramid that stood in the centre of the Capital that lies under modern-day Mexico City. There have been many publications about this temple that contain interpretations of the rituals that were performed here. Many of these interpretations come from a literal interpretation of the Historia General. This interpretation affects the manner in which the precolonial past is represented by archaeologists. These archaeologists put their object of analysis into a context that is subsequently shaped by these same scholars to conform to an already existing representation of the precolonial past. Ethnographic fieldwork shows that the ritual experience of the practitioners is not fully analysed by these archaeologists. This is however salient in the reconstruction of past rituals because these can often be analysed according to frameworks that do not concern themselves with the practitioner, but more with the organizational context in relation to e.g. a centralized state. The literary analysis of the Historia General, the critical evaluation of ritual reconstructions at the Templo Mayor, and the incorporation of ethnography show that the violent picture scholars and the general public have of precolonial Mexica-Nahua society is largely based on a distorted view that results from a lack of proper contextualization as opposed to hard evidence.Show less
When Sahagún came to New Spain he encountered the indigenous population who were in the process of converting to Christianity. He arrived with a group of fellow Franciscan friars with the mission...Show moreWhen Sahagún came to New Spain he encountered the indigenous population who were in the process of converting to Christianity. He arrived with a group of fellow Franciscan friars with the mission to establish a new Christian utopia where a thousand year peace would reign. Sahagún was ordered to write down all that he could find about Nahua culture which resulted in the Historia general. In this manuscript there are various rituals and deities described in full detail and they are said to be idolatrous. Sahagún would take his students from his college in Tlatelolco and gather pictographic information from Tepepulco in order to copy it into the Primeros Memoriales. In this manuscript it is clear that European elements are incorporated in pre-colonial drawings. The Nahua population proved difficult in adopting the Christian faith and kept holding on to traditional beliefs, often mixing old rituals with Christian rituals. This was something Sahagún became upset about, knowing that the traditional rituals were actually in honour of Satan and his demons that needed to be combated. When Sahagún reached old age he was of strong conviction that the mission to establish the utopia had failed and he suggested that Christianity should move on to other parts of the world where conversion would be more successful.Show less
Research master thesis | Archaeology (research) (MA/MSc)
open access
The Florentine Codex is used in many studies to provide information on Mesoamerican social life, and as complementing and reaffirming archaeological data. However, the information in the chronicle...Show moreThe Florentine Codex is used in many studies to provide information on Mesoamerican social life, and as complementing and reaffirming archaeological data. However, the information in the chronicle has been filtered through a masculine lens and interpreted by a Spanish friar. To understand the possible influences of Sahagún’s representations of Mesoamerican gender relations, Goodman’s ways of worldmaking (1978) will be applied. This theory provides insights into the processes of knowledge creation which helps us to make sense of the way Mesoamerican culture is presented in the document. The inclusion of a description of early modern Spanish gender roles and ideals reveals, and urges us to rethink, the Spaniard’s and our own conceptual framed assumptions on gender categories. Next to this, additional data is needed to confirm or reject statements made in the Spanish document: colonial native documents will be compared and complemented, as providing insider views, experiences and practices of the ideal described in the Florentine Codex. Furthermore the purpose, application and addressees of the Florentine Codex guided the represented information towards an attempt of creating a new world made out of the ideals from a Western male worldview. Understanding how the new world is created out of the familiar Spanish conceptual frame, and of what this view is composed of, provides insight in how gender roles and man-woman relations are portrayed, identified and categorised and why specific aspects are left out or accentuated. Knowing this, and the realisation of the knowledge in the document, enables us to look more critical and in concrete ways to the document before we typify something as a Mesoamerican gender category.Show less
