Head Shaping During the Second Millennium. Postclassic and Postcontact Mesoamerica

Abstract

Many parts of Mesoamerica experienced irrevocable social and cultural changes towards the second millennium A.D., a gradual replacement of regional political and economic organization, which was upheld by pan-Mesoamerican ideological shifts and later Aztec-dominated streamlining of ritual expression. In the course of the Postclassic period (A.D. 900–1519), the previous medley of artificial cranial morphologies is gradually replaced by uniformity. This tendency is most evident in those areas that staged diversity in headwear before the Postclassic period, such as Western Mexico and the Lowland Maya. At the time of European contact during the late fifteenth and early sixteenth century, native head practices on infants were still widespread in most areas and enacted purely using cradleboards. In the years of colonization, the Iberian conquerors suppressed this indigenous custom as part of their colonization strategy of forced assimilation of all non-European sectors. Subsequently, native head modeling was either abandoned altogether or was gradually replaced by alternative head practices, deemed equally efficient by the mothers. This cultural change occurred at different times within the broader sphere of Hispanic Mesoamerica. The last part of this chapter traces the last bastions of head flattening in the subtropical southeastern hinterlands Mexico.