Cave, City, and Eagle’s Nest: An Interpretive Journey Through the Mapa De Cuauhtinchan No. 2

Cave, City, and Eagle’s Nest is the culmination of an international research project and series of conferences, organized by the Moses Mesoamerican Archive, focused on the sixteenth-century pictorial manuscript known as the
Mapa de Cuauhtinchan No. 2 . Painted on bark paper and measuring 109 X 204 centimeters, this extraordinary document contains over seven hundred images and symbols relating the story of the emergence of ancestors at Chicomoztoc (Place of Seven Caves), their migration to the sacred city of Cholula, their foundation and settlement of Cuauhtinchan (Place of the Eagle’s Nest), their community’s history and claim over the surrounding landscape, and many other occurrences along the way. Dating from around the 1540s, barely two decades after the fall of the Aztecs, the mapa recently underwent extensive physical analysis, conservation, and a systematic photographic survey. These rare images - including sixteen full-size sections and a nearly quarter-size facsimile - accompany fifteen richly illustrated essays that explore the meanings and uses of the document, its complex narrative, and the social and ritual memory of an indigenous community struggling to hold its own in the turbulent atmosphere of early colonial Mexico.