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This book addresses two important deficiencies in the fields of Aztec studies and the anthropology of law. It is the first modern analysis of the legal system of any Aztec state and the first comprehensive study of the history and culture of Texcoco, the second most important Aztec city. Law controlled the institutions and processes that were of central importance in all Aztec societies, such as land tenure, inheritance, kinship relations, business, trade, and local and imperial administration. This analysis of the Aztec legal system provides a guide to the poorly understood social and political structures of the various Aztec states and the political dynamics within these states. Legal chan...
In this book, Susan Kellogg explains how Spanish law served as an instrument of cultural transformation and adaptation in the lives of Nahuatl-speaking peoples during the years 1500-1700 - the first two centuries of colonial rule. She shows that law had an impact on numerous aspects of daily life, especially gender relations, patterns of property ownership and transmission, and family and kinship organization. Based on a wide array of local-level Spanish and Nahuatl documentation and an intensive analysis of seventy-three lawsuits over property involving Indians residing in colonial Mexico City (Tenochtitlan), this work reveals how legal documentation offers important clues to attitudes and perceptions. Although Kellogg's analysis reflects contemporary and theoretical developments in social and literary theory, it also applies a unique ethnographic and textual approach to the subject.
Indigenous Graphic Communication Systems challenges the adequacy of Western academic views on what writing is and explores how they can be expanded by analyzing the sophisticated graphic communication systems found in Central Mesoamerica and Andean South America. By examining case studies from across the Americas, the authors pursue an enhanced understanding of Native American graphic communication systems and how the study of graphic expression can provide insight into ancient cultures and societies, expressed in indigenous words. Focusing on examples from Central Mexico and the Andes, the authors explore the overlap among writing, graphic expression, and orality in indigenous societies, in...
This comprehensive volume offers fresh insights on Latin American and Caribbean law before European contact, during the colonial and early republican eras and up to the present. It considers the history of legal education, the legal profession, Indigenous legal history, and the legal history concerning Africans and African Americans, other enslaved peoples, women, immigrants, peasants, and workers. This book also examines the various legal frameworks concerning land and other property, commerce and business, labor, crime, marriage, family and domestic conflicts, the church, the welfare state, constitutional law and rights, and legal pluralism. It serves as a current introduction for those ne...
What are the implications of digital representation on intellectual property and ownership of cultural heritage? Are aspirations to preservation and accessibility in the digital space reconcilable with cultural sensitivities, colonized history, and cultural appropriation? This volume brings together different perspectives from academics and practitioners of Cultural Heritage, to address current debates in the digitization and other computational study of cultural artifacts. From the tension between the materiality of cultural heritage objects and the intangible character of digital models, we explore larger issues in intellectual property, collection management, pedagogical practice, inclusion and accessibility, and the role of digital methods in decolonization and restitution debates. The contributions include perspectives from a wide range of disciplines, addressing these questions within the study of the material culture of Africa, Europe, Asia, Oceania, and the Americas.
The first ever global survey of tax systems and their social and political contexts in premodern world history.
The book examines how the indigenous nobility of Tetzcoco navigated the tumult of Spanish conquest and early colonialism.
The Aztecs brings to life one of the best-known indigenous civilizations of the Americas in a vivid, comprehensive account of the ancient Aztecs. A thorough examination of Aztec origins and civilization including religion, science, and thought Incorporates the latest archaeological excavations and research into explanations of the Spanish conquest and the continuity of Aztec culture in Central Mexico Expanded coverage includes key topics such as writing, music, royal tombs, and Aztec predictions of the end of the world
In Social Memory in Ancient and Colonial Mesoamerica, Amos Megged uncovers the missing links in Mesoamerican peoples' quest for their collective past. Analyzing ancient repositories of knowledge, as well as social and religious practices, he uncovers the unique procedures and formulas by which social memory was communicated and how it operated in Mesoamerica prior to the Spanish conquest. Megged's volume also suggests how social and cultural historians, ethnohistorians, and anthropologists can rethink indigenous representations of the past while taking into account the deep transformations in Mexican society during the colonial era.