The Bundle: Unwrapping Nahua Religious Traditions

An examination of the importance of Nahua sacred bundles, emphasizing their impact on power dynamics, language, and culture in the Nahua religious tradition. The Bundle is a deep scholarly meditation on tlaquimilolli, key religious objects of Mexico’s Indigenous Nahua, formerly “Aztec,” people. These sacred bundles, depicted across Nahua iconography, contained objects associated with the gods and their deeds and were believed to be their embodiments. Drawing on Indigenous sources, Molly Bassett tells the story of the tlaquimilolli’s origins and significance, critically examines previous interpretations, and argues that the form of the tlaquimilolli—not just their contents—is a key to understanding Nahua cosmology. Bassett turns to Indigenous scholarship to interrogate and “unwrap” accepted narratives, taking the sacred bundle itself as a model for theorizing the world. She attends to tlaquimilolli in the context of glyphs and poetry, ritual and ordinary activity, and ceremonial structures. In revealing ways, the material properties of tlaquimilolli were reflected in the architecture of major temples and key cities, like Tenochtitlan. Bundling was also closely entwined with relationships between caretakers and their dependents. These prosaic attachments cast both sacred objects and Nahua sociability in a new light, challenging existing interpretations of Nahua religious traditions.

About the Author

Molly H. Bassett teaches about Indigenous religious traditions, animals and religion, and world religions in the Department of Religious Studies at Georgia State University. She is the author of The Fate of Earthly Things: Aztec Gods and God-Bodies and coeditor of Indigenous Religious Traditions in 5 Minutes and Sainthood and Race: Marked Flesh, Holy Flesh .