The Aztecs were a Mesoamerican culture that flourished in central Mexico in the post-classic period from 1300 to 1521. The Aztec people included different ethnic groups of central Mexico, particularly those groups who spoke the Nahuatl language and who dominated large parts of Mesoamerica from the 14th to the 16th centuries. Aztec culture was organized into city-states (altepetl), some of which joined to form alliances, political confederations, or empires. The Aztec Empire was a confederation of three city-states established in 1427: Tenochtitlan, city-state of the Mexica or Tenochca, Texcoco, and Tlacopan, previously part of the Tepanec empire, whose dominant power was Azcapotzalco. Although the term Aztecs is often narrowly restricted to the Mexica of Tenochtitlan, it is also broadly used to refer to Nahua polities or peoples of central Mexico in the prehispanic era, as well as the Spanish colonial era (1521–1821). The definitions of Aztec and Aztecs have long been the topic of scholarly discussion ever since German scientist Alexander von Humboldt established its common usage in the early 19th century.
Chinampa is a technique used in Mesoamerican agriculture which relies on small, rectangular areas of fertile arable land to grow crops on the shallow lake beds in the Valley of Mexico. They are built up on wetlands of a lake or freshwater swamp for agricultural purposes, and their proportions ensure optimal moisture retention. The United Nations designated it a Globally Important Agricultural Heritage System in 2018.
The Nahuas are a group of the indigenous people of Mexico, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Nicaragua. They comprise the largest indigenous group in Mexico and second largest in El Salvador. The Mexica (Aztecs) were of Nahua ethnicity, and the Toltecs are often thought to have been as well, though in the pre-Columbian period Nahuas were subdivided into many groups that did not necessarily share a common identity.
The Aztec Empire or the Triple Alliance was an alliance of three Nahua city-states: Mexico-Tenochtitlan, Tetzcoco, and Tlacopan. These three city-states ruled that area in and around the Valley of Mexico from 1428 until the combined forces of the Spanish conquistadores and their native allies who ruled under Hernán Cortés defeated them in 1521.
The Huexotzinco Codex or Huejotzingo Codex is a colonial-era Nahua pictorial manuscript, one of the group of manuscripts collectively known as Aztec codices. It is an eight-sheet document on amatl, a pre-European paper made in Mesoamerica,and consists of part of the testimony in a legal case against members of the First Audiencia in Mexico, particularly its president, Nuño de Guzmán, ten years after the Spanish conquest in 1521.
Ethnohistory is the study of cultures and indigenous peoples customs by examining historical records as well as other sources of information on their lives and history. It is also the study of the history of various ethnic groups that may or may not still exist. The term is most commonly used in writing about the history of the Americas.
Aztec codices are Mesoamerican manuscripts made by the pre-Columbian Aztec, and their Nahuatl-speaking descendants during the colonial period in Mexico.
Codex Osuna is an Aztec codex on European paper, with indigenous pictorials and alphabetic Nahuatl text from 1565. It has seven parts, with most being economic in content, particularly tribute, with one part having historical content. It was named after the Spanish nobleman, Mariano Francisco de Borja José Justo Téllez-Girón y Beaufort-Spontin, twelfth Duke of Osuna, in whose library the codex was held until his death in 1882. It then became part of the collection of the Biblioteca Nacional in Madrid. It is part of a lawsuit by the indigenous of a Nahua community against Spaniards, and a fragment of a much larger Mexican text; the first numbered folio in the facsimile is 464.
The Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire, also known as the Conquest of Mexico, the Spanish-Aztec War (1519–1521), or the Conquest of Tenochtitlan was one of the primary events in the Spanish colonization of the Americas. There are multiple 16th-century narratives of the events by Spanish conquistadors, their indigenous allies, and the defeated Aztecs. It was not solely a small contingent of Spaniards defeating the Aztec Empire but a coalition of Spanish invaders with tributaries to the Aztecs, and most especially the Aztecs' indigenous enemies and rivals. They combined forces to defeat the Mexica of Tenochtitlan over a two-year period. For the Spanish, Mexico was part of a project of Spanish colonization of the New World after 25 years of permanent Spanish settlement and further exploration in the Caribbean.
Culhuacan was one of the Nahuatl-speaking pre-Columbian city-states of the Valley of Mexico. According to tradition, Culhuacan was founded by the Toltecs under Mixcoatl and was the first Toltec city. The Nahuatl speakers agreed that Culhuacán was the first city to give its rulers the title of "speaker" (tlatoani). In the sixteenth century following the Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire, Culhuacan was incorporated into colonial New Spain and called a pueblo, but in local-level documentation in Nahuatl, residents continued to use the designation altepetl for their settlement.
The traditions of indigenous Mesoamerican literature extend back to the oldest-attested forms of early writing in the Mesoamerican region, which date from around the mid-1st millennium BCE. Many of the pre-Columbian cultures of Mesoamerica are known to have been literate societies, who produced a number of Mesoamerican writing systems of varying degrees of complexity and completeness. Mesoamerican writing systems arose independently from other writing systems in the world, and their development represents one of the very few such origins in the history of writing.
The Códice de Santa María Asunción is mid-16th century Mesoamerican pictorial codex, with Nahuatl glosses, containing censuses of twelve rural communities in Tepetlaoztoc, in the Acolhua area near Texcoco. The codex contains provides important information about community economic and social structure shortly after the conquest. The editors of the facsimile edition estimate the codex was created in stages, with the core glyphic depictions drawn around 1544, with householders, cadastrals of their landholdings. They posit the alphabetic Nahuatl glosses were added later over 30-year period. The glosses include names of the householder, kin relationships, land assignments, and miscellaneous annotations. A third component the codex, called "The Asunción Land Title," is a lengthy account in Nahuatl that sets the territorial boundaries of the settlement (tlaxilacalli) of Santa María Asunción.
Carlos Ometochtzin or Ahuachpitzactzin, or Chichimecatecatl (Nahuatl for "Chichimec lord," is also known simply as Don Carlos of Texcoco, was a member of the Acolhua nobility. His date of birth is unknown. In dispute is how old he was when he was executed by an episcopal Inquisition. He is known to history for his resistance to Christian evangelization. He was burnt at the stake on November 30, 1539 at the order of Bishop Don Juan de Zumárraga, the first Catholic bishop of New Spain, for continuing to practice the pre-Hispanic religion. The main source of information on Don Carlos is the record of his inquisition trial, published in 1910 by the Mexican archives.
The Aztec or Nahuatl script is a pre-Columbian writing system that combines ideographic writing with Nahuatl specific phonetic logograms and syllabic signs which was used in central Mexico by the Nahua people.
New Philology generally refers to a branch of Mexican ethnohistory and philology that uses colonial-era native language texts written by Indians to construct history from the indigenous point of view. The name New Philology was coined by James Lockhart to describe work that he and his doctoral students and scholarly collaborators in history, anthropology, and linguistics had pursued since the mid-1970s. Lockhart published a great many essays elaborating on the concept and content of the New Philology and Matthew Restall published a description of it in the Latin American Research Review.
Francisco de Borja del Paso y Troncoso was an important Mexican historian, archivist, and Nahuatl language scholar. He "was and remains the outstanding major Mexican investigator of his era, a fully accepted figure in the international group of his peers."
Pueblo Culhuacán is an officially designated neighborhood of the Iztapalapa borough of Mexico City, which used to be a major pre-Hispanic city. Ancient Culhuacán was founded around 600 CE and the site has been continuously occupied since. The city was conquered by the Aztecs in the 15th century, but the Aztecs considered the city to have status with early rulers marrying into Culhua nobility to legitimize themselves. After the Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire, the Franciscans and later the Augustinians made Culhuacán a major evangelization center, with the latter building the monastery complex which remains to this day. Today, Culhucan is fully integrated into Mexico City physically and politically. This area was designated as a "Barrio Mágico" by the city in 2011.
Alfredo Chavero (1841–1906) was a Mexican archaeologist, politician, poet, and dramatist.
Howard F. Cline was an American government official and historian, specializing in Latin America. Cline served as Director of the Hispanic Foundation at the Library of Congress from 1952 until his death in June 1971. He was one of the founders of the Latin American Studies Association. He was also active in the Conference on Latin American History (CLAH), the professional organization of Latin American historians, which he chaired in 1964. He is still highly regarded as a scholar "devoted to and effective in the promotion of Latin American studies in the United States."
Codex Tlatelolco is a colonial-era Aztec codex written on amatl, around 1565. It depicts royal ceremonies involving Spanish monarchs Charles V and his son and successor Philip II. The pictorials show the jura (oath) ceremony of swearing the oath of allegiance to the new Spanish monarch, Philip following the abdication of his father in 1556, performed in the Plaza Mayor of Zócalo in 1557. There are depictions of Charles V and Philip II, as well as the indigenous rulers of Tlatelolco and Tenochtitlan,, who along with all officials took the oath of allegiance. There is a written account in Spanish that differs from that depicted in the pictorial. The pictorial account omits the presence of the Spanish cabildo members. The codex refers to the indigenous participation in the Mixtón War ca. 1542, a major indigenous rebellion in western Mexico. Its depictions of Nahua dances and nearly full-body feather costumes make it particularly important for understanding indigenous cultural continuities in the early colonial period. The manuscript is held in the National Library of the Mexican Museum of Anthropology and History in Mexico City.
