Cahequa del Rey: evidencia arqueológica y lingüística del uso del cacao en el Posclásico Tardío de Tzintzuntzan, Michoacán, México

Lieto, Joshua; Pollard, Helen Perlstein; Jones, A. Daniel

DOI: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3477591.

Vol. 41 (2019), pp. 30–40 •

628 KB • español

RESEARCH ARTICLE

Cahequa del Rey: evidencia arqueológica y lingüística del uso del cacao en el Posclásico Tardío de Tzintzuntzan, Michoacán, México

Cahequa del Rey: Archaeological and Linguistic Evidence of the Use of Cacao in the Late Postclassic of Tzintzuntzan, Michoacan, Mexico

Joshua Lieto, Helen Perlstein Pollard, A. Daniel Jones

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Abstract

The cacao tree (Theobroma cacao) and its seeds have a long and varied history of use in Mesoamerica, reaching back at least as far as the Formative period in the Gulf and Pacific coast regions. This paper considers the use of cacao in Tarascan society during the Late Postclassic period (1350–1522 AD). Using chemical and archaeological evidence, we demonstrate that cacao consumption was associated with the well-known Tarascan spouted vessel form and then contextualize this finding with the aid of linguistic and documentary evidence taken from sixteenth-century Purepecha dictionaries.

Keywords

Tzintzuntzan; cacao; spouted vessels; Purepecha dictionaries.

Cite as

Lieto, J., H. P. Pollard, A. D. Jones. 2019.
Cahequa del Rey: evidencia arqueológica y lingüística del uso del cacao en el Posclásico Tardío de Tzintzuntzan, Michoacán, México. Arqueología Iberoamericana 41: 30-40.

Other Persistent Identifiers

PURL: http://purl.org/aia/4103. ARK: http://n2t.net/ark:/49934/179.

Publication date: January 31, 2019.