San Antonio College Library

This important new book documents the splendid artistic legacy of the Aztecs, an extraordinary people who, in the space of only 200 years from 1325 to 1521, created one of the most impressive civilizations in the world. Published to accompany one of the greatest exhibitions of Aztec culture ever seen, this comprehensive volume with over 500 superb colorplates presents works of turquoise, gold, and jade, polychrome ceramics, illustrated codices and...

Examines the Aztec civilization and discusses recent archaeological finds and theories.

The Aztecs of Mesoamerica -- Rise of Aztec Civilization -- People on the landscape -- Artisans and their wares -- Merchants, markets, and money -- Family and social class -- City-state and empire -- Cities and urban planning -- Creation, sacrifice, and the gods -- Science and art -- Final glory and destruction -- The Aztec legacy today.

How Indians discovered the land, pioneered in it, and created great classical civilizations; how they were plunged into a Dark Age by invasion and conquest; and how they are now reviving.

Publisher description: Based on their enormously complex calendars that recorded cycles of many kinds, the Aztecs and other ancient Mesoamerican civilizations are generally believed to have had a cyclical, rather than linear, conception of time and history. This boldly revisionist book challenges that understanding. Ross Hassig offers convincing evidence that for the Aztecs time was predominantly linear, that it was manipulated by the state as a means...

The enigmatic and powerful Tlacaelel (1398-1487), wrote annalist Chimalpahin, was "the beginning and origin" of the Mexica monarchy in fifteenth-century Mesoamerica. Brother of the first Moteuczoma, Tlacaelel would become "the most powerful, feared, and esteemed man of all that the world had seen up to that time." But this outsize figure of Aztec history has also long been shrouded in mystery. In Tlacaelel Remembered, the first biography of the Mexica...

In 1519, Hernán Cortés arrived on the shores of Mexico with a roughshod crew of adventurers and the intent to expand the Spanish empire. Along the way, this brash and roguish conquistador schemed to convert the native inhabitants to Catholicism and carry off a fortune in gold. In Tenochtitlán, the City of Dreams, Cortés met his Aztec counterpart, Montezuma: king, divinity, ruler of a complex and sophisticated civilization with fifteen million...

A wealth of new archaeological findings and interpretations has sparked a richer understanding of the Aztecs, dispelling many myths. The Aztecs: New Perspectives looks at evidence from ancient, colonial, and modern times to present a contemporary, well-rounded portrait of this Mesoamerican culture. Like no other volume, it examines daily Aztec life both at, and away from, the seats of power, revealing the Aztecs to be accomplished farmers, astronomers,...