Everyday Practice and Ritual Space: the Organization of Domestic Ritual in Pre-Aztec Xaltocan, Mexico

Abstract

This article offers new understanding to commoner ritual in central Mexico before the rise of the Aztec Empire through an examination of domestic ritual and everyday practice in Early to Middle Postclassic (AD 900–1350) households in Xaltocan. It also seeks to better understand the ways in which elites negotiate and reinvent ritual traditions to gain and maintain power. In this study, I integrate multiple lines of evidence including ethnohistory, household archaeology and burials to understand the organization, practice and meaning of ritual among commoners before the rise of the Aztec Empire. I argue that pre-Aztec commoner ritual worked to foster solidarity, social continuity and collective memory and was intimately concerned with the protection of household members and the maintenance of household and universal equilibrium. While some of the symbolism and rituals documented in pre-Aztec domestic contexts appear similar to those depicted in Aztec contexts, I argue that state rituals held different meanings as Aztec elites adopted and transformed widely-held commoner rituals and symbols to craft an ideology that promoted their own political agenda. Ultimately, domestic- and state-level ritual should be seen as part of an ever-changing, but necessarily intertwined, historical and political process.