Descendants of Aztec Pictography

"In the aftermath of the Spanish conquest of Mexico, the Franciscan monk Andre s de Olmos was tasked with gathering and compiling knowledge of Aztec history, religious beliefs, and culture into massive pictorial encyclopedias. Combining European traditions of gathering and organizing with indigenous knowledge, these books' primary purpose was evangelical. Only nine of these original encyclopedias, written between 1533 and 1581 in the early years following Spanish conquest, still survive: the Codices Borbonicus, Mendoza, Telleriano-Remensis, Ri o, Magliabechiano, Tudelo, and Florentine (as well as two personal histories of the conquest written by Spaniards). These books covered information on Aztec society, cosmology and calendars, economics, and imperial history for the use of Spanish authorities as they navigated the coalescence of their control of the New World. Although altered and influenced by Spanish bookmaking traditions, these texts are sources of important information about Aztec society before the conquest. Boone sees this work as a culmination of years of research to understand this period and the process of creating these types of books. She studies how information was gathered and influenced by European and indigenous traditions with peoples from both groups collaborating on their authorship, then moves to understanding and comparing the overall intents of individual books in this tradition, and finally looks at how the images themselves display and preserve, or not, artistic traditions from both sides"--