This volume's 13 chapters and epilogue discuss flower world symbolism and related concepts across Mesoamerica, West Mexico, and the North American Southwest. Jane H. Hill (“The Flower World of Old Uto-Aztecan,” Journal of Anthropological Research 48:117–144, 1992; see also Kelley Hays-Gilpin and Jane H. Hill, “The Flower World in Material Culture: An Iconographic Complex in the Southwest and Mesoamerica,” Journal of Anthropological Research 55:1–37, 1999) originally identified the flower world as floral imagery that conjured a sacred landscape of timeless beauty, ancestors / the dead, butterflies, rainbows, colorful birds, and other brightly colored imagery. Building from this generalized base, the chapters in this excellent volume reflect useful syntheses and innovative analyses, but the reoccurring theme is variation in flower world concepts and imagery through time, across cultures, and even within cultures based on context, ethnicity, and faction. The overall outcome is the idea that there is not one singular flower world but many, with diverse associations and manifestations.
The first four chapters present ethnographic accounts of modern Native American communities. Except for Dorothy Washburn (Chapter 4), the authors stress that the flower world is reflected in and also transcends the physical world. The Nahua's flower world is situationally created as an expression of the underlying totiotzin, the substance and energy of the world (Alan R. Sandstrom, Chapter 1). Among the Wixárika (Huichols), peyote allows peyoteros to become a part of the flower world and thereby transform into ancestors/deities, although this transformation engenders suspicion among their fellow Wixárika, who may distrust their power and motives (Johannes Neurath, Chapter 2). The Yoeme (Yaqui) flower world is one of nine ania—sentient and transcendent realms—that manifest in the physical world under the right circumstances (Felipe S. Molina and David Delgado Shorter, Chapter 3). It is located to the east “below the dawn,” is the “beginning of life,” and is accessible through “hard work” (p. 79). These chapters stress that the flower world is not an idea or metaphor; it is instead simultaneously immaterial and made material as plants, objects, sound, smells, and so forth. In contrast, Hopi Katsina flower world imagery is metaphorical in the sense that it represents an idealized past that stands as a reminder and incentive to live properly and thereby sustain the community (Washburn, Chapter 4).
The remaining chapters are organized chronologically to show the integration of flower world concept(s) with material culture. Oswaldo Chinchilla Mazariegos (Chapter 5) suggests that the original Teotihuacan flower world may be tied to female maize goddesses and other aspects of femininity that are distinct from the later male-focused associations with warfare and male authority. Cameron L. McNeil (Chapter 6) finds that four plants are always present in flower world ritual at Copan's Maya temples and tombs: maize, cattails, coyol palm tree (which can be fermented), and popcorn flower (a pungent-smelling white flowering tree). These plants embody the productive and sensory aspects of the Copan flower world. Andrew D. Turner (Chapter 7) traces continuity and variation in imagery from Teotihuacan flower world imagery into the later Epiclassic Mexica imagery to demonstrate the relationship between a flower world and political leadership/authority and related architecture (e.g., ballcourts). Michael D. Mathiowetz (Chapter 8) summarizes his arguments presented elsewhere for West Mexican flower world ideology in the West Mexican Aztatlán culture and then its spread into the North American Southwest. Karl A. Taube (Chapter 9) likewise discusses the North American Southwest by linking the cicada, a noisy grasshopper-like insect, to flower world imagery manifested in emergence stories of historic Diné (Navajo) and Puebloan groups. John M. D. Pohl's (Chapter 10) discussion of flower world imagery in Cholula, Mexico, reflects the variation in “flower worlds” based on context and ethnicity that ties together everything from maize deities to ash-mouthed jester clowns. Ángel González López and Lorena Vázquez Vallín (Chapter 11) focus on ritual offerings, room murals, and plaza reliefs of the Templo Mayor in Aztec Tenochtitlan that reflect and re-create the flower world, including its ties to militarism and human sacrifice. Davide Domenici (Chapter 12) identifies a form of “cultural synesthesia” linking chants (spoken words) and Codex painting as the brilliant colors made using organic (but not the available mineral-based) paints helped “imbue the codices with life and with divinity” (p. 272). Similar themes are reflected in James M. Córdova's (Chapter 13) discussion about flower world concepts and imagery embedded in the Marian devotional paintings of Our Lady of Guadalupe. Here, flower world concepts and ritual technology were linked and reinforced with Christian concepts of flowers as symbols of purity and divine authority/power to create a new expression with profound relevance to Mesoamerican Indigenous audiences and artists.
The chapters here are commendable in their depth and breadth of scholarship. This volume is well worth the attention of scholars interested in the archaeology of Mesoamerica and the North American Southwest, the anthropology of religion, and Mesoamerican art and aesthetics.
