Content area
Full text
The Fifteenth Month: Aztec History in the Rituals of Panquetzaliztli. By John F. Schwaller. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2019. Pp. 272. $39.95, cloth.
If we were to choose the pivotal moment in the ritual, social, and political life of the vibrant imperial city of Mexico-Tenochtitlan, it would definitely be Panquetzaliztli, “The Raising of Banners.” This celebration has finally found its place in the area of critical studies of the Aztec past with John Frederick Schwaller's book.
The author scrutinizes available sixteenth-century sources in Nahuatl and Spanish, tracing the presence and characteristics of Panquetzaliztli both outside and inside imperial Tenochtitlan. Carefully dealing with discrepancies in extant sources and with great attention to detail, Schwaller reconstructs the complex ritual trajectory leading to the culmination of the final day of Panquetzaliztli, enriching his analysis of textual accounts with pictorial sources. He convincingly shows that this extremely complex celebration depended on the choreography of thousands of social actors from the society's different groups. They were engaged in a huge number of ritual preparations and acts leading, in an orderly and integrated manner, to the apogee of the ritual: the celebration of the Mexica patron deity Huitzilopochtli.
In previous studies, the image of Panquetzaliztli has been largely limited to the final celebration recreating the birth and...