Mesoamerica and the Caribbean, 900–16th century

Between 900 and 1521 C.E., the diverse peoples of Mesoamerica created works of art and architecture that both built on and diverged from the traditions established by their ancestors. In this chapter, we will consider art produced by Aztec, Huastec, and Taíno artists, from books to temples to religious figurines. The chapter ends with the Spanish invasion, and the monumental—and devastating—changes it wrought across the area. The period from 900 to 1521 C.E. is generally referred to as the “Postclassic” period.

Mesoamerica is a cultural region that spans what is today Mexico to northern Costa Rica. In this area, cultures shared a number of important features, including maize agriculture, a 260-day ritual calendar, and ballgames. Cultures of the Caribbean demonstrate some similarities with Mesoamerican groups, like the ballgame, but had limited contact with Mesoamerica.

While some overarching themes connect different groups, it is important to emphasize the diversity of this region. In this period, people in thousands of cultural groups made works of art that reflected their beliefs and practices. The art and architecture that survives today represents a small fraction of the works produced by ancient makers.

This chapter addresses five themes:

1. the tradition of bookmaking
2. the Aztec capital city of Tenochtitlan
3. the use of diverse media
4. ancestors and supernatural forces
5. the Spanish invasion of the Americas

900 C.E. was a time of change in Mesoamerica. In the Maya region, people were in the process of adapting to new cultural circumstances following the collapse of many Classic-period cities (such as Palenque or Yaxchilán). Powerful new centers like Chichén Itzá and Mayapan were emerging.

In Central Mexico, a number of cities flourished in this period (such as Cholula) before the arrival of the Aztec in the region around 1300 C.E. The Aztec (they called themselves the Mexica, but we will use the term “Aztec” here for clarity) quickly established themselves as a regional power and eventually constructed an enormous empire based in Tenochtitlan (today known as Mexico City). 

While the Aztec are perhaps the best known, cultures throughout Mesoamerica and beyond, including the Mixtec (Ñudzavui), Huastec, and Taíno, produced important works of art in this time period as well. Robust trade networks in this era facilitated the movement of people and ideas—so much so that, when combined with political changes, it can be hard to identify exactly who produced what objects.

As we look through this material, keep in mind how we are getting our information. Unlike in the Classic period (c. 200–900 C.E.), there is limited use of hieroglyphs in the Maya area, and few Indigenous books have survived from Mesoamerica. Substantial information about the Aztec comes from sources compiled after the Spanish invasion by both Spanish and Indigenous authors and illustrators. As a result, we should be aware of bias in records that date to the colonial era. A robust program of archaeology throughout the area, combined with renewed attention to Indigenous historical accounts of the invasion and its aftermath, has provided a new window into the Indigenous past. 

The following essays provide more information about Mesoamerica, the Mesoamerican calendar, and the time periods scholars use to study Mesoamerican art history. Other essays introduce the Aztec (Mexica) and Taíno.

The tradition of bookmaking in Mesoamerica probably began long before 900 C.E., but most books have not survived. Only a few books from the Postclassic and early colonial periods remain today. This is in part because paper does not preserve well in the archaeological record, but also because of the systematic destruction of books by the Spanish. The few surviving books from the Aztec, Mixtec, and Maya tell us about how Indigenous Americans conceived of their world. As far as we know, there was no bookmaking tradition in Taíno culture.

Mesoamerican books are often called codices (singular: codex) or manuscripts, and they could be made of deerskin or bark (amatl) paper. These books are referred to as “screenfold” books because they fold like an accordion rather than being bound in the middle like their European counterparts (look at the Aztec Codex Borgia above, for instance). The screenfold method allowed for books to be performed as well as read from front to back: imagine folding out just the pages you want to talk about, for example, so that an audience could see them. These books recorded information about religion, politics, history, and the natural world. Artists used both visual cues and hieroglyphs to identify people, places, things, and events. While some of these books were created after the Spanish invasion, they address Indigenous lifeways that predate the arrival of Europeans. 

Maya scribes probably created the Dresden Codex at some point between 1200–1500 C.E. The 74-page screenfold codex is made of bark paper, and its pages are covered in a fine layer of stucco. It may originally have had wooden covers. Images with human figures and hieroglyphic writing adorn the pages.

The writing includes information related to the 260-day calendar, passages about the movement of the stars and planets (like Venus), prophecies about the future, and rituals involving various gods, including the Moon Goddess and Chahk (the rain god). The book may have been copied from a previous edition (much like the copying of manuscripts in medieval Europe), and it is one of the oldest surviving books from the Americas. Very few precolonial books have survived.

As you read the essays below, what comes to mind when you think of the word book? How do Mesoamerican books adhere to or differ from your idea of a book? 

A number of Aztec books describe the migration of the Aztec from their mythical homeland to the city of Tenochtitlan. Founded in the mid-fourteenth century, Tenochtitlan quickly grew to become an imposing imperial center. 

The city of Tenochtitlan was located on an island in the middle of Lake Texcoco, and it featured canals, floating gardens, and bustling neighborhoods oriented around a ceremonial center. Today buried underneath Mexico City, Tenochtitlan is still present—and modern-day residents of Mexico’s capital city can see remnants of Aztec architecture and sculpture as they move about their daily lives.

The Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan remains one of our best sources on Aztec political history and religious belief. Both archaeological excavations and chance discoveries have enabled a detailed understanding of the buildings and sculptures that made up the city center. Together, these works tell the story of a city that was a political capital as well as a place where the world of the gods and the world of humans intersected in powerful ways. 

The ceremonial center of Tenochtitlan would have been a feast for the senses, brightly colored and humming with people. On special occasions, Aztec leaders led processions, rituals, dances, and other large scale events designed to awe and impress. The Aztec empire itself was made up of many diverse peoples, some forced to assimilate. As a result, the Aztec pantheon and material culture represents cultural and religious ideas from many Mesoamerican groups.

The symbolic center of Tenochtitlan and its most important building was the Templo Mayor, translated as “old temple.” The temple was dedicated to two important deities, and was renovated and enlarged many times. It eventually stood approximately 90 feet above ground level. 

Enormous sculptures in the ceremonial center, which surrounded the Templo Mayor, represented history as well as key facets of Aztec religious belief. They were also vibrant backdrops for human action, from gladiatorial fights to ceremonial processions. The following essays introduce the Templo Mayor and some of the stone sculptures erected in the area around it. 

What messages about religion and history would Aztec citizens have understood from walking around the ceremonial center?

While the Aztec were known for their stone sculpture, artists in the Aztec empire and throughout Mesoamerica worked in diverse media, including ceramic, shell, wood, and paper. The dry climate of Central Mexico has enabled many works of art to survive. Paradoxically, so did the invasion of Europeans, who sent examples of Mesoamerican artistry to Europe. 

The works in this section illustrate the rich visual world of ancient Mesoamericans. A ceramic vessel, found in an offering in the Templo Mayor, summons the might of Tlaloc, a deity associated with rain and agriculture. 

A crown made of feathers (shown below) represents the work of the amanteca, a special group of Aztec artists who worked with feathers and lived in the same neighborhood in Tenochtitlan. Wooden objects (such as the mask shown earlier) covered in intricate mosaics of shell and turquoise would have been used during ceremonial occasions among the Aztec.

A gold pendant from the Mixtec region depicts a ruler in regalia that stresses his ancestral right to rule and his skill as a warrior—and was made using a “lost wax” method of casting. All of these works illustrate the rich networks of trade and communication in Mesoamerica, from the Maya blue pigment on the Tlaloc vessel, to the imported birds that provided feathers for the crown, to the metallurgical techniques first developed in South America. 

Several of these artworks were transported to Europe in the early colonial period. Objects could be taken overseas because of their monetary value, but they also entered European conversations about Indigenous Americans. The Spanish Franciscan friar Bartolomé de las Casas, for instance, pointed to Indigenous artistic achievements to support his arguments against the enslavement of Indigenous populations in the aftermath of the Spanish invasions. Unfortunately, he did advocate for the continued enslavement of Africans.

While these objects tell us about Mesoamerican artistry in the Postclassic period, they are also important parts of ongoing conversations about who owns and cares for works of art. The feathered headdress (also called the Penacho de Moctezuma) now in the Ethnographic Museum in Vienna, for instance, raises vital questions about who can access Indigenous heritage after centuries of colonial exploitation.

Ancient Mesoamericans created works of art that reflected their understanding of the world around them. Imposing sculptures of deities would have populated the city center of Aztec Tenochtitlan, while in the Huastec region, artists created stone sculpture that spoke eloquently of the fine line between life and death. 

In the Caribbean, a Taíno zemi participated in ritual practices that allowed communication between living humans and spiritual forces. Questions remain about how some of these objects acted in the world—but all of them allowed humans to access the sacred and express specific beliefs about the role of people in communicating with the gods.

How would each of these works have been used by ancient Mesoamericans, and what remains unknown about their use and meaning?

The Spanish invasion of the Americas beginning in 1492 onward ignited an era of genocide, disease, and enormous cultural loss. The events of the late fifteenth and early sixteenth century shaped the next five hundred years of Mesoamerican history. Despite the violence of colonization, Indigenous American cultures persevered, and millions of their descendants survive today.

This section explores some of the immediate aftereffects of the Spanish invasion, and the vital importance of Indigenous authors and artists in recording their history. The Florentine Codex, developed by a Spanish Franciscan friar and Indigenous collaborators between 1575–77, eloquently recounts the trauma of the Toxcatl massacre that occurred on May 20, 1520. Spanish conquistadors and their Indigenous allies attacked the Aztecs during a festival, sparking the successive events that would lead to the downfall of Tenochtitlan and the Aztec Empire.

Moreover, months after the Aztecs had expelled Spaniards and their allies from Tenochtitlan due to the Toxcatl Massacre, a smallpox pandemic interrupted the traditional celebration of ancestors during the month of Tepeilhuitl, but remnants of this ceremony survive in today’s Dia de los Muertos celebrations.

On the Caribbean islands first reached by the Spanish, the violence of invaders combined with the introduction of new pathogens had devastating effects. Still, the cultural resilience of Taíno peoples and their descendants appears in modern populations and in the rich cultural legacy of the Caribbean. 

Throughout the areas invaded by Europeans, surviving works of art document the resilience of people and artistic traditions in the early colonial period. In the Huexotzinco Codex, for instance, an Indigenous artist documented tribute goods paid to Spanish administrators. Works like this one tell us how Indigenous Americans both adapted and innovated within a new political, social, and economic structure. 

From books to ceramics to the Templo Mayor, the art and architecture of Mesoamerica helps us to understand the beliefs and practices of diverse ancient peoples from 900–1521. Combined, the works explored in this section speak to flourishing cultural centers with distinctive artistic programs that express ideas about politics, religion, and social structure. Although the Spanish invasion marks a sharp break with the past, none of the cultures discussed in this chapter are “lost.” Indigenous Americans continue to innovate, create, and shape new worlds.