Abstract

This essay describes the U.S.-Mexico borderlands from the perspective of interregional interaction and the material culture of Indigenous peoples from Aztlán, an area encompassing the Southwest and its proximity to Mesoamerica. Although the aim focuses on the period between 1000 and 1400 AD, it is concurrent with modern periods marked by significant movement, the exchange of goods, and the sharing of medicinal practices among various peoples and groups. Aztlán Archaeologies as a methodology unearths new possibilities of inquiry and offers a hopeful vision of Turtle Island’s overlapping Indigenous territories during disturbing and violent times under the current Trump administration. The work views the Aztlán cultural area as a cuna of spirit praxis; a cradle where cycles of giving and receiving prevail, and a model without settler borders emerges through nighttime cosmology and early morning phenomena.

 

Keywords: Aztlán, Indigenous Border Studies, Chicanx Studies, Indigenous People of the Southwest and Mesoamerica