Mesoamerican Codex Re-Entangled2016

"This 3lst volume of thc ASLU series is concerned with the study of the less than twenty remainig precolonial Mesoamerican codiccs. By considering these rare and fragile pictographic and hieroglyphic books from the culturul biography perspective, many different aspects of these books can be studied. The biography ol these books begins with their production and continues during their life as sacred objects within Mesoamerican cultures. From the perspective of the late medieval European conquerors, these books had a very different meaning, which caused the destruction or physical alteration ol these sacred objects. The few codices still in existence were almost forgotten in the European institutes that kept them in their collections. Only after these documents had been multiplied through the production of facsimiles, could they be reinterpreted by researchers and regain some of their meaning. The biographies of these books continue to grow as they get increasingly entangled with modern technology. A clear example of this is seen in the study of the palimpsest of the codex Añute or codex Selden, which is included in this work."--Back cover. "This innovative work aims to piece together the cultural biography of Mesoamerica’s precolonial codices. Today, fewer than twenty manuscripts are all that remain of the Mesoamerican book-making tradition. These pictographic and hieroglyphic texts have often been researched according to their content, but such studies have ignored their nature as material objects. By tracing the paths these books have followed over the past five hundred years, Ludo Snijders offers fascinating insights into their production, use and reuse, destruction, rediscovery, and reinvention."--