The sixteenth century Aztecs
depicted eating and foodstuffs in an array of mediums. They
painted images of people preparing foods, transporting and storing
foods, and the foods themselves. The Aztecs also created stone and
clay images of deities that were connected to foods, such as their
sculptures of maize deities. There are countless images of teeth
and mouths devouring, as in canonical works like the Sun Stone
and the monumental sculptures of the earth goddess Coatlicue.
Food was an integral part not only of the Aztec's daily
subsistence, but of the ways in which they viewed their larger
world. This presentation explores the way representations of foods
and eating were used by the Aztecs and what these particular
images say about the Aztec view of the cosmos and their place in
it.