Motherhood, Personhood, Identity, and Place-Making in Ancient Mesoamerica

Abstract

Hudson and Henderson explore how motherhood shaped ancient Mesoamerican processes of identity construction—at the level of the individual and at the level of the community and polity—and how it influenced the social mechanisms of place-making and legitimization. Steambaths, at the core of domestic life, also symbolized key conceptual dimensions of motherhood and were consequently central to the development of individual personhood and to the formation of family and community identity. They draw attention to the close conceptual connection between steambaths and caves, which linked motherhood to the ancestors and to the construction of social and political identities extending beyond the community.