Description

It is widely acknowledged that societies in the US Southwest/Northwest Mexico (SW/NW) acquired various items from Mesoamerica including copper, cacao, and scarlet macaws. There is less agreement as to whether or not SW/NW people sought these items for the specific meanings they held in their source region/s. It has been demonstrated that copper items derived from the Aztatlán region, while cacao was cultivated and consumed in the Aztatlán core zone in coastal west Mexico. Dr. Mathiowetz has long proposed that the coastal strip of southern Sinaloa, Nayarit and northern Jalisco and adjoining highlands was a key source for most of the Mesoamerican goods and ideas that appeared in the SW/NW. However, the manner by which scarlet macaws were acquired has remained an enigma. Drawing on archaeological, ethnohistorical, and ethnological data, Dr. Mathiowetz details some evidence for scarlet macaws/feathers and their ritual use in the Aztatlán region and models the mechanism by which they were acquired from the Gulf Coast via the proposed “Aztatlán-Huasteca Network” and transmitted northward. He contends that Aztatlán cargo holders played a role in the acquisition and dissemination of macaws and feathers into the SW/NW via Pacific-coastal routes for inclusion in Chaco, Mimbres, Hohokam, Casas Grandes, and Puebloan ritualism.