Consumption and Construction: Devotional Images and the Place of Empire in Postclassic Mexico, 1325-1521

Devotional sculptures and their attendant ritual interactions allow for pointed critical engagement with the very nature of images, both formally and in the intersection of art and sacra. Within the visual systems employed by the city-states of Pre-Columbian central Mexico, sacred imagery was merely one of multiple mechanisms designed to pull the periphery to the center and to actively construct specific cultural narratives. To that end, this dissertation will explore the manner by which ixiptla, a type of central Mexican cult effigy, functioned to shape conceptions of space, place, and cultural identity in the Postclassic Period (c.900-1521 CE). By investigating their position within the visual milieu, I posit that, through their material agency, ixiptla were crucial in the formation of the aforementioned social systems in Pre-Columbian central Mexico. This dissertation further argues that sacred images are, as a class of representation, indices of collective memory through the mythic narratives inscribed upon the objects themselves and their usage. They in turn form the visual rhetoric that is illustrative, and formative, of the construction of space, place, and identity. This project will specifically address the manner in which these images defined the idea of place, primarily through their position, movement within, and integration with both the physical and cultural landscape. Furthermore, Pre-Columbian devotional objects served to reinforce existing cultural systems while simultaneously shaping the overarching aesthetic narrative. In the manner of a community presenting itself to itself, they both display the overarching cultural matrix as well as participate in its formation.