This study builds on Caterina Pizzigoni's previous book, Testaments of Toluca (Stanford University Press, 2007), to present a full discussion of Nahua society and sub-regional variation in the Toluca valley of central Mexico. In the present volume she expands her documentary base to well over 220 testaments, approximately double the number she transcribed, translated and analysed for her earlier book, drawn from a number of archives and collections in Mexico. Fewer than 30 of the testaments originated in the seventeenth century, with the majority dating from the eighteenth century. As was true for her compilation of Nahuatl-language wills, the temporal origins of the corpus underlie the more recent book's most important contribution, which is the detailed consideration of Nahua society, culture and language at a later stage than many previous studies based on indigenous-language documentation in Mexico.

Pizzigoni's examination of local society begins with a consideration of the household and its extensions, the land and the cult of the saints, continuing with a discussion of what the testaments can reveal about daily life and finally the role and implications of religious and political life for local society. Throughout the book she pays close attention to the decisions and preferences of specific individuals and families, using this information to draw conclusions about broader patterns that suggest directions of socio-cultural change over time. In particular she is able to document considerable change in the physical structure of the indigenous household, which had evolved from a walled complex of separate residential units surrounding a patio to a single residential compound with a separate kitchen occupying a lot now almost invariably referred to by the Spanish term, solar, but otherwise functioning much as in earlier times – in other words, mainly to produce food for household consumption. One of her most significant findings also relates to the household, namely the shift in the relationship between household and saints that seems to have taken place in tandem with the physical restructuring of the house-complex. No longer housed separately, in the eighteenth century the saints which were the basis for the domestic cult have become part of the household itself. With this shift Pizzigoni identifies a separate stage in the development of the so-called cult of the saints in indigenous communities, at least in the Toluca valley, with the full flowering and consolidation of the household (as opposed to community) cult taking place from the late seventeenth century onwards. The testaments show the close connections among household buildings, saints and land which are manifest in inheritance patterns in the eighteenth century.

Also significant are the patterns that Pizzigoni identifies in gender roles and relations, as revealed mainly in inheritance strategies and household activities. These lead her to conclude that ‘indigenous women in the Valley lose out in some circumstances and gain in others’ (p. 230), frequently owning and managing significant amounts of land and becoming dominant in maguey and pulque production. Other conclusions may be less surprising, such as the continued move toward greater independence on the part of the constituent units of the traditional altepetl.

The author's prose sometimes verges on chatty, with ample use of the first person plural (‘if we really listen’, p. 36; ‘our excursion’, p. 221) and occasional direct address to the audience (‘let's see’, p. 41; ‘allow me’, p. 55), which readers may find either engaging or irritating. There are limitations to Pizzigoni's analysis due to the study's heavy reliance on testaments. In her introduction she suggests that her use of Spanish-language sources should help to bridge the gap in the historiography of Nahuas and Spaniards in Mexico. She does not venture far in that direction, however, and indeed seems on unsure ground in trying to make those connections, suggesting, for example, that the characteristically fragmented pattern of indigenous landholding differed from an ostensibly Spanish pattern that was characterised by the consolidation of ‘contiguous pieces’ (p. 59), which is not an adequate representation of Spanish practice, and that the existence of different second names within an indigenous family was ‘unlike what happened in the European family’ (p. 226). In fact members of early modern Spanish families often had varied surnames. Although the book is about socio-cultural change, because of the nature of the documentary sources one finds almost nothing about the mechanisms of such change. Although that omission might be unavoidable, it gives the book a somewhat static quality at odds with the focus on change. These are mostly minor quibbles, however, and they do not detract much from the book's main contribution, which is the detailed and well-documented description of local indigenous society, its variants and people in a key region of central Mexico in the later colonial period.