Bundle

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 is coeditor of Indigenous Religious Traditions in 5 Minutes and Sainthood and Race: Marked Flesh, Holy Flesh.

• List of Illustrations Acknowledgments Orienting Notes for Readers Introduction. Meeting the Tlaquimilolli 0.1. The Dawn of the Fifth Sun at Teotihuacan 0.2. Tlaquimilolli as Theory and Method 0.3. A Bundle Book Chapter 1. Building the Model, a First Bundle 1.1 Layer: Visiting Tlaquimilolli 1.2 Layer: Working the Bundle Model Chapter 2. Building Knowledge, a Second Bundle 2.1 Knot: Nahua Ecological Science 2.2 Layer: Working Nahuatl Bundles 2.3 Layer: "Tenochtitlan," the Eagle on the Nopal Chapter 3. Containing Teteoh, a Third Bundle 3.1 Knot: The Christianization of the "Poet" Nezahualcoyotl 3.2 Knot: Divine Containers 3.3 Layer: The Huei Tlaquimilolli Chapter 4. Walking with Nahua Bundles, a Fourth Bundle 4.1 Layer: Clothing Bodies 4.2 Layer: Caring for Tlaquimilolli 4.3 Layer: Carrying on the Work 4.4 Layer: Abelardo de la Cruz itlapohualiz Notes Bibliography Index

"By exploring the idea of bundling as a trope for expressing fundamental concepts, Bassett frames Aztec religion in an innovative manner that foregrounds Indigenous knowledge and cosmological models. She deftly moves back and forth, throughout her study, from the material reality of bundles to their conceptual significance. New and exciting interpretive possibilities emerge through Bassett's use of bundling, both as metaphor and as an act with material implications, and this book will have enormous appeal for anyone interested in the ways in which Indigenous cultures formulate their understandings of the world." - Julia Guernsey, University of Texas at Austin, coeditor of Plantways in Mesoamerica: Three Millennia of Human–Plant Interactions and Conceptualizations"Molly Bassett is the new Virgil of Mesoamerican cosmology. In The Bundle, she leads readers around the clouded peaks of Nahua belief and practice with a clear-eyed approach and surefooted prose. Her chosen path, in turn, is guided by others, especially Native American thinkers and contemporary Nahua intellectuals. Bassett offers a fresh and innovative approach to key Nahua concepts, like teotl, teixiptla, and tlaquimilolli, and readers will emerge from the journey charted in this book gratified by its expansive view of Amerindian worldmaking." - Barbara E. Mundy, Tulane University, author of The Death of Aztec Tenochtitlan, the Life of Mexico City