Sojourn to the Sun God: Places of Emergence and Movement in Mixtec Codices

摘要

Mixtec codices are sacred books folded like accordions and composed of strips of deer hide or fig-tree bark that visually narrate activities of deities, supernatural culture heroes, and the actions and genealogies of historical Mixtec kings and queens who wanted to emulate them. Recorded in a pictographic writing system, Mixtec codices are cultural artifacts that offer the viewer glimpses of the complex and layered representations of a specific people from particular places during the Postclassic epoch of Mesoamerica. A salient part of these visualized narratives is the act of travel. In Mixtec codices, travel typically begins with the physical act of emergence of a substance, being, or historical figure. Emergence is a visual point of departure for various narratives that pulsate with ongoing movement that we are here defining as travel itself, as the itinerant traversing of place, as the formation of visual trails in the landscape and in the narrative display and reading of the pages in Mixtec codices. Travel is repeated as a conceptual, visual, and performative trope throughout Mesoamerica in various media produced by distinct ethnic groups and communities with various levels of power in the wider webs of Mesoamerican praxis. Travel in the Mixtec codices connects to the incipient founding of community, to the contemporary people, place, and cultural rhythms of communal, ritual life. Through the visual narratives recorded in the codices, an understanding of Mixtec identity, memory, and therefore history is linked to specific places through specific actions such as emergence from and travel to points of origin. By examining such visually codified narratives, this dissertation posits that Mixtec ethnogeographies of travel form part of recording a community's identity and its connection to place.