The Aztecs of Central Mexico: An Imperial Society

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Thomson Wadsworth, 2005 - History - 212 pages
This case study is about the Aztecs of central Mexico, a people who dominated a vast area of what is now Mexico when the Spanish conquistadors arrived in AD 1519, but who had humble beginnings as despised nomads. The story of the confrontation and the defeat of the Aztecs by the small force of Spaniards led by Hernan Cortes is told in the last chapter. The larger part of this book is devoted to an ethnographic reconstruction of Aztec culture as it flourished in the period immediately preceding the conquest.

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Contents

Mexico and the Mexica
1
A Note on Methods
15
Social Structure and Dynamics
51
Copyright

9 other sections not shown

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About the author (2005)

Frances Berdan received her B.A. degree in geography at Michigan State University in 1965 and her Ph.D. degree in anthropology at the University of Texas at Austin in 1975. She has a long career in both ethnographic and archaeological field research, working in the American Southwest and Mexico. Berdan's research interests include ethnographic research in a Mexican peasant community, and archival and ethnographic research on the Aztecs and Spanish conquest in Mexico City and Seville, Spain. Berdan is currently a professor of anthropology and the coordinator of the Latin American Studies Program at California State University, San Bernardino.

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