Research: How jewelry depicted social status in Aztec culture.
INTRODUCTION
The Aztec culture
Culture is the way a certain group of people or community does (their ideas, customs, and social behavior). Moreover, the way people live and interact clearly defines culture. High culture can be defined as an excellent taste from the fine arts and the humanities. When communities interact, there is a change in lifestyle (Root, N. p). In this paper, we will discuss the Aztec culture, which included; agriculture, introduction to irrigation, draining the swampy area, and also cultivation. Moreover, we will discuss the work of the arts as practiced in their culture and the people’s perceptions of the same.
Aztec civilization had fifteen million people living in an average of five hundred communities in their territories. The Aztecs were developed in cultures that included the music, arts, crafts, and the sciences. The music and the human sacrifice practiced by the Aztec people helped them in building their religion and the culture at large and also use jewelry for decoration. Moreover, through their music, they got to believe in their gods as an essential role in the Aztec rituals.
The Aztec culture has been existing since the 15th and 16th centuries when they had organized themselves in a better way. Many people have gained the Aztec culture after the experience of interactions they had together. Agriculture significantly developed due to their religion, which enabled its high productivity and boosted the morale of the rest of the communities to keep working with them and end up adopting their culture. Persistence in farming improved the economic status of the city, and culture enhancement in society. Their social culture kept diversifying due to their passion for shining different practices.
LITERATURE REVIEW
The cultural influence of art
The culture influences the art in several ways while the art reflects what an individual perceives in culture. However, the art tries to bring into the understanding of the world and also the fantasies we create towards the world. Art has several categories, which include; architecture, designs, filmmaking, printing, painting, and literature, among others. However, the freedom of art can be sometimes be misunderstood by individuals just according to their personality, especially the way that individual perceives it (Ganeri, N. p).
In Aztecs, there was a continuous growth in the history running in their arts. However, the emergence artifacts influenced the Aztecs culture through their perpetuation of artists to exhibit the love of sculptures and imposing the architecture and high decorated jewelry and other forms of arts, which became less meaningful to them and their culture.
Jewelry
Lip plus were awarded to men and women when they were young. In boys, it was rewarded for taking a captive in war and for girls during marrying. Depending on your achievements in life, lip plugs could become very elaborate. These lip plugs are made of obsidian, a type of glassy volcanic rock. The most finely carved obsidian lip plugs would be worn by nobles. This rock is almost transparent! People from different cultures might be identified by their lip plugs. The samples are shown below.
Earplugs also are part of jewelry worn by this community. They were made different shapes and materials like wood, bone, shell, leather, obsidian, polished stone, reed, and more precious metal and stones such as gold, amber, turquoise, and jade. Others were used by midwives depending on jade, fertility, and femininity, and other factors. The mother’s white earplug might have been made from bone or polished stone. Aztec jewelry symbolized important themes, even gods. For example, cotton was a symbol of being feminine because women used it to spin and weave. Their protector was the great mother goddess, so they wore cotton in her honor. The samples are shown below.
Nose ornaments like the lip and earplugs, nose ornaments were made of a wide variety of materials. Some nose plugs were of the traditional round shape. Some of the more ornamental types were worn by lords, great warriors, and priests. The gold ornament was won by someone special because the close-ups of Aztec gods surrounding the main image show that they, too, wore similar jewelry. This gold ornament was also won by a priest whose special role it was to impersonate a god. The samples are shown below.
Necklaces, bracelets, beads, and bells were made from precious stones. Precious stones also serve as symbols. The water goddess, Chalchiuhtlicue, whose name means “Jade-Her-Skirt.” The drops sprouting from the river running beneath her are symbolic of jade stones. Therefore jade is a symbol of water. Turquoise, called xihuitl in the Aztec language Nahuatl, was given the same color as jade in ancient manuscripts. Among the beautiful bracelets and necklaces, the Aztecs made were feather bracelets set in gold, as well as gold and jade strings made of beads. Seasonal warriors, on the other hand, often wore shells in honor of the gods Tezcatlipoca and
Quetzalcoatl. three types of warrior’s necklace were:
• Gold Shell Necklace (left-most warrior)s
• Golden Beetle Necklace (3rd warrior)
• Shell Necklace (right-most warrior).
Warriors and participants of religious festivals wore ankle and wrist bracelets that also served as musical instruments. They were copper bells that were meant to imitate the sound of a rattlesnake’s tail. Dancers wearing them moves in rhythm with other instruments like drums, whistles, and clay flutes. See the pictures below.
Pendants and chest ornaments are the most impressive Aztec ornaments, and some are on display in the British Museum. Some have funny shapes like double-headed serpent pendant decorated with turquoise. A pendant or pectoral would have hung down onto the chest and was probably worn by a priest during an important religious ceremony.
Aztec art was created from a wide variety of artworks from massive stone sculptures to miniature, exquisitely carved gemstone insects. They made stylized handcrafted pottery, fine gold and silver jewelry, and breathtaking feather work garments. The Aztecs were as intimately involved with art as they were with their religion, and the two were tightly interwoven. Aztec craftsmen worked images of their gods in most of their artwork. Of gold and silver jewelry, much of it was lost to the conquering Spanish who melted it down for currency. Feather works, unfortunately, don’t last for ages, but some samples remain. Energetic stone carvings, however, remain to show us the great artistry of the Aztecs.
Social culture
The social group also influenced Aztecs from the nearby communities, for instance, the artists from Oaxaca, and the Gulf Coast in the Huastec region as they had strong traditions which entailed the three dimensions of the sculpture. The eclectic taste from the Aztecs and the other diverse influence of ancient art greatly facilitated their ancient culture (Ganeri, N. p). However, the Aztecs had sculptures of the gruesome gods with the imagery of the same workshop as naturalistic works that represented the animal and human form of beauty and grace.
The Aztecs also introduced other forms of arts like the use of pieces of jewelry and the feather works, which intended to set the nobility Aztecs apart from the commoners. Wearing the pieces of silver was also very attractive and exciting as it made them more beautify, enjoyable and attractive to the other individuals that they were in a position to copy their culture. Further, they used metaphors and poetry throughout their artworks, making it more interesting. This approach made them more attractive to an extent of the norm being copied by the neighboring groups. In the current generation, the internet has just influenced the artwork and also the cultural practices from different communities.
Majorly, the group were nomadism and practices cultivation after they entered Mesoamerica where they formed an Aztec empire. Socially, the Aztec society depended on a strict division between the nobles and the free commoners which were grouped into hierarchies of communal status, the obligation and the control of power. On the other hand, the economic situation of the Aztec dependent on agriculture and the large extend warfare. Their nomadic life influenced the artifacts work. (Nash, N. p). Practising agriculture was greatly influenced by the climate changes of the area, and they majored in it improving their economic status.
The Aztecs adopted many other forms of culture, like architecture and literature. Coming from Mexican helped them take new cultures as they started cultivation as they did their nomadic life. This multi-culture practices facilitated them in in many of their todays success and historical recalls. Some of the arts achieved from the other communities were of significant impact on them as it improved their economic and social status (Lizama, p. 7264). Moreover, the adoption of literature was of great importance as they changed the way of interaction and communication hence assisting each other. Through this they were able to relate and understand other communities and socially they borrowed cultural ideologies that helped them for comparisons and improvement. Music was also a significant and exciting adoption as the Aztecs learned new methods of presenting their artwork and perfected it. The art fact work was therefore used as decoration during musical events and also other cultural ceremonies.
The arts claims that the people who made the Aztec’s culture ventured on nomadic life and later started doing agriculture which was also convenient to the area they then set their empire. The Aztec’s people were civilized and liked leadership as they had led a more extensive community before they moved from the Mexico area after the coming of the Spanish conquest. They organized themselves into simpler leaderships that ensured their governance is attained and no civil wars against themselves. Moreover, the Aztecs people are believed to have been worshipping gods and goddesses; hence they were more of religion (Lizama, p. 7264). Additionally, they are believed to have been incorporated with deities severally as their cuts were from the other geographical region and also the people they shared religious practices.
Culture can be transmitted from one group of individuals to another; for instance, the Aztec group improved the form of sculptures after interacting with other groups like the Zapotec. Interacting with them was of great help as they improved their ideas and were more encouraged in their artworks. Many people do not understand how interaction is essential as most of them are a bit ignorant of the same. An interaction changes the normal thinking of an individual and later has a better perception of life than before. Borrowing an idea from a friend or community and improving it, brings about innovation and invention hence increased economic and social status.
CONCLUSION
Interacting with a new community or a group of people will make one adopt a new culture. An individual may gain positive or negative culture after interaction with another group of individuals. The Aztecs interacted with other groups attaining more for their artwork. However, the other communities have the potential to learn from you hence a mutual benefit. Aztecs also had the potential to improve their economic status and they worked hard to ensure they have a better living for their people. Therefore learning from different cultures can models ones musical and arts career for example the costumes that one need to do a performance in a theater. Aztec being the culture of different cultural norms and practices, they are therefore more advanced in jewelry industries. Different types are used for different reasons and therefore they can easily pass communications depending on the type under wore.
Work cited
Root, Deborah. Cannibal culture: Art, appropriation, and the commodification of difference. Routledge, 2018.
Ganeri, Anita. Mesoamerican Myth: A Treasury of Central American Legends, Art, and History: A Treasury of Central American Legends, Art, and History. Routledge, 2016.
Nash, Susan Smith. “LATIN AMERICAN CULTURE–Post-Classical Period.”
Lizama Aranda, Lilia. “Tenochtitlan (Aztec): Geography and Culture.” Encyclopedia of Global Archaeology (2014): 7262-7266.