Aztec studies

Abstract

Aztec culture provides a gateway to Mesoamerican studies because it represents the connecting point between the pre-Hispanic past and the globalized present. Current research on the Aztecs comes from several disciplines: anthropology, history, art history, religion, and literature. The nearly fifty articles on the Aztecs published by Ancient Mesoamerica since its inception in 1990 encompass the various branches of Aztec scholarship. In this article we discuss major themes in recent scholarship on the Aztecs: environment and subsistence, settlement and demography, economy, politics, and social relations, ideology and masterworks, and interregional relations. Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2010.