Sacred Consumption

This thin volume is a well-written introduction to the role of foodstuffs, and the absence of foodstuffs, in Aztec rituals. Elizabeth Morán has done a fine job of bringing together the existing literature and then developing new lines of inquiry related to food and ritual. The book thus serves as an important addition to a growing literature on food and consumption in Latin America.Morán begins with an outline of the multiple types of sources on which she draws for her analysis. These include pictorial manuscripts from the preconquest and colonial periods. Of great importance are primary materials gathered in the postconquest period and written in European characters, such as Bernardino de Sahagún's Florentine Codex and Diego Durán's Book of the Gods and Rites. The number of physical remains from the preconquest period, both domestic items and cultural artifacts, is limited, but these are of great importance in their depictions of the use of foodstuffs. As do other scholars dealing with the Aztecs, Morán uses the tools of the historian, art historian, philologist, and literary critic in order to extract bits of information and to develop a useful and coherent picture.Using these tools, then, Morán looks first at instances of ritualized eating that occurred in a private context, principally taken from Sahagún and Durán and further developed in the pictorial manuscripts. Several of the feasting opportunities throughout the year included banquets and rituals that took place in private homes. The cycles of life as depicted in the Codex Mendoza frequently revolved around food and feasting. In these contexts food was used as a method of displaying the wealth and status of the patron as well as a marker for the important transitions of life. Food items and the instruments of food preparation also took on important symbolic power through these actions.Many of the great ceremonies of the Aztecs' vague solar year, the veintenas of the xiuhpohualli, include feasts and ritualized food. While the ritual 260-day calendar involved more private ceremonies, these great festivals were largely public and state sponsored. Morán considers the feasting and ceremonial use of food in these and finds a very complex symbolism at work. Certainly many ceremonies were to guarantee a good harvest. But in many others food was intimately related to the cosmic forces of the creation of the universe. Food was also the vector for physical and spiritual transformations represented in other rituals, such as the dough images of deities. While folks would enjoy their food, it also conveyed a deeper and more profound message about existence and the cosmos. Certainly the adage that “we feed the gods and the gods feed us” was important in many rituals.This complex relationship between food, deities, and the universe allows Morán to probe more profoundly into the relationship between food and myth. For her, food is the essential element in the creation myths. Transformation occurs through food creation, consumption, and preparation. Indeed, cooking is a ritual act. Wandering groups in the legends acquire foods. The gods discover important foodstuffs. Food forms the very core of Aztec spiritual life. But it also transforms itself, the people who eat it, and the societies that cultivate it.The arrival of the Spanish created what Alfred Crosby has called the Columbian exchange, wherein people from two different continents shared their foodstuffs. On the one hand, there was a natural tendency on both parts to stay with familiar foodstuffs. At the same time, the Spanish crown pursued a half-hearted policy of keeping the two diets separate from one another. But as with the mixing of peoples, the food also became mixed, giving rise to the creole cuisines that are well known today. The new foods also gave rise to new rituals. By the end of the sixteenth century, many Spaniards became concerned about all types of mixing: mixing of peoples, mixing of religious thoughts, and mixing of food. Yet food continued to be an important component of rituals: in the Christian calendar, in smaller, private rituals, and to mark life's passages.This is a fascinating and well-written book. It only begins to scratch the surface, however. Each of the chapters could easily be expanded to be an entire monograph or even series of monographs. The data on which Morán bases her work is well known to scholars of the field. Yet she has done an admirable job of mining these sources to look at the relationship between food, ritual, and life. This book will clearly be an important point of departure for future scholarship

Aesthetics · Archaeology · Art · Art history · Consumption (sociology) · Context (archaeology) · Literature · Order (exchange) · Period (music) · Philology · Sociology · Classics · Culinary Culture and Tourism · Gender Studies · History