Mesoamerican Rituals and the Solar Cycle. New Perspectives on the Veintena Festivals

Mesoamerican Rituals and the Solar Cycle. New Perspectives on the Veintena Festivals 
Edited by Élodie Dupey García and Elena Mazzetto

Peter Lang, New York, 2021

Collection: Indigenous Cultures of Latin America: Past and Present (dir. Gabrielle Vail), Vol. 1

This book explores a seminal topic concerning the Mesoamerican past: the religious festivals that took place during the eighteen periods of twenty days, or veintenas, into which the solar year was divided. Pre-Columbian societies celebrated these festivals through complex rituals, involving the priests and gods themselves, embodied in diverse beings and artifacts. Specific sectors of society also participated in the festivals, while city inhabitants usually attended public ceremonies. As a consequence, this ritual cycle played a significant role in Mesoamerican religious life; at the same time, it informs us about social relations in pre-Columbian societies. Both religious and social aspects of the solar cycle festivals are tackled in the twelve contributions in this book, which aims to address the entire veintena sequence and as much of the territory and history of Mesoamerica as possible. Specifically, the book revisits long-standing discussions of the solar cycle festivals, but also explores these religious practices in original ways, in particular through investigating understudied rituals and offering new interpretations of rites that have previously been extensively analyzed. Other chapters consider the entire veintena sequence through the prism of specific topics, providing multiple though often complementary analyses. As a consequence, this book will attract the attention of scholars and graduate students with interests in Mesoamerica and early Latin America, as well as ethnohistory, cultural history, history of religions, art history, archaeology and anthropology

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations

List of Tables

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Elena Mazzetto and Élodie Dupey García

Part I. Rites and Myths in Pre-Columbian Mesoamerica

Chapter One. Tezcatlipoca and the Maya Gods of Abundance: The Feast of Toxcatl and the Question of Homologies in Mesoamerican Religion

Oswaldo Chinchilla Mazariegos

Chapter Two. The Re-enactment of the Birth of the Gods in Mexica Veintena Celebrations: Some Observations

Guilhem Olivier

Chapter Three. Quetzalcoatl in Nahua Myths and Rituals: Discreet or Omnipresent Protagonist?

Élodie Dupey García

Chapter Four. Beyond Nature and Mythology: Relational Complexity in Contemporary and Ancient Mesoamerican Rituals

Johannes Neurath

Part II. Ritual Actors and Activities in the Veintena Festivals

Chapter Five. Haab’ Festivals among the Postclassic Maya: Evidence from Ethnohistoric Sources and the Madrid Codex

Gabrielle Vail

Chapter Six. Maize and Flaying in Aztec Rituals

Elena Mazzetto

Chapter Seven. The Toxcatl and Panquetzaliztli Figurines

John F. Schwaller

Chapter Eight. Myths, Rites, and the Agricultural Cycle: The Huixtotin Priests and the Veintenas

Sylvie Peperstraete

Part III. Indigenous Categories, Colonial Interpretations

Chapter Nine. Dance and Sacrificial Rituals in the Veintena Ceremonies

Mirjana Danilović

Chapter Ten. Ritual and Religious Practices Described in the Florentine Codex: Ritual Unit as a Structural Concept

Andrea B. Rodríguez Figueroa, Mario Cortina-Borja, and Leopoldo Valiñas Coalla

Chapter Eleven. An Augustinian Political Theology in New Spain: Towards a Franciscan Interpretation of the Veintenas

Sergio Botta

Chapter Twelve. Bright Plumages, Teary Children, and Blessed Rains: Possible Reminiscences of Atlcahualo during the Indigenous Ceremonial Pomp of Saint Francis in Post-Conquest Mexico City

Rossend Rovira-Morgado

Epilogue

Danièle Dehouve

Notes on Contributors

Index