Frances Berdan

Patricia Rieff Anawalt

Consists of v. 2 and 4 of Berdan and Anawalt's The Codex Mendoza (4 v. -- Berkeley : University of California Press, c1992).

The Essential Codex Mendoza

Michael E. Smith

In Daily Life of the Aztecs, Frances Berdan and Michael E. Smith offer a view into the lives of real people, doing very human things, in the unique cultural world of Aztec central Mexico. The first section focuses on people from an array of social classes - the emperor, a priest, a feather worker, a merchant, a farmer, and a slave - who interacted in the economic, social and religious realms of the Aztec world. In the second section, the authors examine four important life events where the lives of these and others intersected: the birth and naming of a child, market day, a day at court, and a battle. Through the microscopic views of individual types of lives, and interweaving of those lives into the broader Aztec world, Berdan and Smith recreate everyday life in the final years of the Aztec Empire.

Everyday Life in the Aztec World

Richard E. Blanton

Elizabeth Hill Boone

Martha and Donald Robertson Chair in Latin American Art Elizabeth Hill Boone

Emily Umberger

Mary G. Hodge

School of Human Evolution and Social Change Michael E Smith

"Based on a ten-week working seminar in 1986, offers new interpretations of the extent, organization, and imperial strategies of the Aztec empire. Analyzes data from the major chroniclers and from individual towns and places throughout the empire. Informa

Aztec Imperial Strategies

Russell J. Barber

Russell J. Barber and Frances F. Berdan have created the ultimate guide for anyone doing cross-cultural and/or document-driven research. Presenting the essentials of primary-source methodology, The Emperor's Mirror includes nine chapters on paleography, calendrics, source and quantitative analysis, and the visual interpretation of artifacts such as pictographs, illustrations, and maps. As an introduction to ethnohistory, this book clearly defines terminology and provides practical and accessible examples, effectively integrating the concerns of historians and anthropologists as well as addressing the needs of anyone using primary sources for research in any academic field. A leading theme throughout the book is the importance of a researcher's awareness of the inherent biases of documents while doing research on another culture. Documents are the result of people interpreting reality through the filter of their own experience, personality, and culture. Barber and Berdan's reality mediation model shows students how to analyze documents to detect the implicit biases or subtexts inherent in primary-source materials. Students and scholars working with primary sources will particularly appreciate the case studies that Barber and Berdan use to illustrate the practical implications of using each methodology. These case studies not only apply method to actual research but also are fascinating in their own right: they range from a discussion of the debate over Tupinamba cannibalism to the illustration of Nahuatl, Spanish, and hybrid place names of Tlaxcala, Mexico.

Understanding Cultures Through Primary Sources

The Emperor's Mirror

This case study is about the Aztecs of central Mexico, a people who dominated a vast area of what is now Mexico when the Spanish conquistadors arrived in AD 1519, but who had humble beginnings as despised nomads. The story of the confrontation and the defeat of the Aztecs by the small force of Spaniards led by Hernan Cortes is told in the last chapter. The larger part of this book is devoted to an ethnographic reconstruction of Aztec culture as it flourished in the period immediately preceding the conquest.

An Imperial Society

The Aztecs of Central Mexico

This book offers views of Aztec lives and their interactions in rituals, markets, courts, and on the battlefield.

Frances Berdan

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