Foundations: Mesoamerican Civilizations: Aztecs

Secondary Sources will have more specific information about your topic.

• Secondary source books written by scholars which present a new interpretation or thesis based upon a synthesis of primary sources, scholarly journal articles, and other secondary sources.
• Sometimes there will be an entire book, sometimes you may have to assemble information from multiple monographs.
• Secondary sources will usually have a bibliography of materials for further study, including primary sources, journal articles (which are also secondary sources), and books. 

BOOKS ON RESERVE AT THE CIRCULATION DESK To ensure equitable access, all reserve materials are to be used only in the library for the duration of the project.

To borrow reserve books:

1. Ask Library Staff at the Circulation Desk for the specific books you would like to use.
2. We will retrieve the books from the reserve shelves and sign them out to you.
3. When you have finished using them or at the end of class, RETURN the books to a Library Staff Member.

General (more than one civilization)

• America's first cuisines / Sophie D. Coe. F1219.76 .F67 C64
• The ancient American world / William Fash and Mary E. Lyons. F1219 .F27 2005
• Ancient civilizations of Mexico and Central America / Herbert J. Spinden. F1219 .S767 1999
• Ancient sun kingdoms: Aztec, Maya, Inca / Victor Wolfgang von Hagen. E65 .V6 1962
• New world and Pacific civilizations: cultures of America, Asia, and the Pacific / Ed. by Goren Burenhult. GN303 .I4 1993 vol. 4 (oversize)

• Religious transformations in the early modern world : a brief history with documents / Merry E. Wiesner-Hanks. BR252 .W54 2009 PS

Aztecs

• Art of the Aztecs and its origins / Henri Stierlin. Oversize F1219.3.A7 S74 (oversize)
• Aztec: man and tribe / V. W. von Hagen. F1219 V72
• The Aztecs / Brian M. Fagan
• The Aztecs / Michael E. Smith. F1219.73 .S58 1996
• The Aztecs / Richard F. Townsend. F1219.73 .T68
• The Aztecs: fate of the warrior nation / Cottie Burland. F1219.73 .B87 1980
• The Aztecs of Central Mexico: an imperial society / Frances F. Berdan.F1219.73 .B47          PS
• Aztecs: reign of blood and splendor / The Editors of Time-Life Books. F 1219.73 .A975
• The Aztecs, rise and fall of an empire / Serge Gruzinski. F1219.73 .G7813 1992 (2 copies ) PS
• Colonial Culhuacan, 1580-1600: a social history of an Aztec town / S.L. Cline. (an online ebook)
• Daily life of the Aztecs / David Carrasc and Scott Sessions. (an online ebook)
• Everyday life of the Aztecs / Warwick Bray. F1219.B845 E9 1987
• Fifth sun: a new history of the Aztecs / Camilla Townsend. F1219.73 .T67 2019
• Handbook to life in the Aztec world / Manuel Aguilar-Moreno. F1219.73 .A35 2006 (also an online ebook)
• Tenochtitlan : capital of the Aztec empire / José Luis de Rojas. F1219.73 .R65 2014

Wikipedia's general disclaimer: "Wikipedia cannot guarantee the validity of the information found here. The content of any given article may recently have been changed, vandalized or altered by someone whose opinion does not correspond with the state of knowledge in the relevant fields."

AZTEC CULTURE: AN OVERVIEW by Dr. Michael E. Smith, Arizona State University. "This essay is based on several encyclopedia entries I have written over the past few years. One reason for posting this work on the internet is the poor quality of the entry for “Aztec” in the Wikipedia."

• Britannica Academic Articles include links to recommended websites.
• SweetSearch, A Search Engine for Students searches only credible websites approved by research experts. 
• Limit your search to reliable domains by including the following phrase: 
  • AND site:edu OR site:ac.uk
  • (edu for educational institutions in the U.S.; ac.uk for educational institutions in the United Kingdom)
  • For example: Aztec AND religion AND site:edu OR site:ac.uk 
• Note: be aware that universities may allow their students to use their edu domain. If there is a tilde (~) in the address, it may be a personal student page which is not monitored by the institution. 

Primary Sources

Sources created by those who lived it

Any document, image, or artifact created at the time of the topic being researched is a primary source. Examples include: eyewitness accounts, autobiographies and memoirs, diaries, letters, speeches, reports, newspapers, household and day-to-day objects, clothing, works of art, architecture, and photographs.

Please note: primary source documents and images are a reflection of the time and culture in which they were created and may contain language or images that are considered offensive today.

Primary Sources in Books / eBooks / Reference Sources

• Early civilizations in the Americas reference library. 2005 .  4 vols  (an online ebook)
• The Aztecs of Central Mexico: an imperial society / Frances F. Berdan.F1219.73 .B47
• The Aztecs, rise and fall of an empire / Serge Gruzinski. F1219.73 .G7813 1992 (2 copies )        
• The Bernal Diaz chronicles: the true story of the conquest of Mexico / Ed. by Albert Idell. F1230 .D53786
• The Broken Spears: the Aztec Account of the Conquest of Mexico / Ed. by Miguel Leon-Portilla. F1230 .L383 1962 (also an online ebook)
• Codex Mendoza: Aztec manuscript / Commentaries by Kurt Ross. F1219.56 .C625 R67 19778
• Encounters in the new world: a history in documents / Jill Lepore. E59 .F53 L46 2000   
• First encounters: native voices on the coming of the Europeans / Ed. by Howard B. Leavitt. GN368 .F57 2010
• Readings in Latin American history: 1492 to the present [1955] / Ed. by Benjamin Keen. F1408.3 .K44 
• The True History of the Conquest of New Spain / Bernal Díaz del Castillo.
• Victors and vanquished: Spanish and Nahua views of the conquest of Mexico / Ed. by Stuart B. Schwartz. F1230.V53 2000

Primary Sources in Online Subscription Databases

• Ancient and Medieval History Click on the Primary Sources tab above your search result list. NOTE: Citations can be exported to NoodleTools.
• Daily Life Through History Use the Filters button at the top of your search results list to select Documents and media, which may include primary source artifacts and images. NOTE: Citations can be exported to NoodleTools
• Gale in Context: World History Select Primary Sources from the menu bar on your search results page. NOTE: Citations can be exported to NoodleTools.
• Modern World History Click on the Primary Sources tab above your search result list. NOTE: Citations can be exported to NoodleTools.
• World History: Ancient and Medieval Eras Use the Filters button at the top of your search results list to select Documents and media, which may include primary source artifacts and images. NOTE: Citations can be exported to NoodleTools.
• World History: The Modern Era Use the Filters button at the top of your search results list to select Documents and media, which may include primary source artifacts and images. NOTE: Citations can be exported to NoodleTools

Primary Sources on the Internet

• American Beginnings: The European Presence in North America, 1492-1690  Primary sources thematically organized with notes and discussion questions. From the National Humanities Center.
  • Indians' Accounts Aztec and Mayan accounts
  • Spanish Conquest 
• Aztec and Maya Law This online exhibit and bibliography is a collaborative project of Tarlton Law Library and the Benson Latin American Collection at The University of Texas.
• Aztec Artifacts (Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York)
• Children and Youth in History: Aztec Primary Sources Primary sources and website reviews relating to the place and role of children and youth throughout history from The Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media at George Mason University and the University of Missouri–Kansas City.
• Colonial Latin America Documents relating to the conquest and exploitation of the Americas. From the Internet History Sourcebooks Project by Paul Halsall, Fordham University.
• The Conquest of Mexico (teaching unit from the American Historical Association)
  • Florentine Codex There are three major sources of “picture-history” of the conquest of Mexico, the most important of which is the Florentine Codex by Fray Bernardino de Sahagún which illustrated many battles and encounters between the Spanish, the Mexicas, and other indigenous peoples. 
  • Letters of Hernan Cortes
• Mesoamerican Painted Manuscripts  Images from the Latin American Library at Tulane University of original and rare copies of Mexican manuscripts painted in the native pictorial tradition... their content dates to the early contact period (A.D. 1500 to 1700). The texts collected here represent a variety of themes: Aztec history and migrations, land claims and grants, property holdings, census data, fiscal and tribute accounts, and royal Mixtec genealogies.
• Pre-Columbian Objects: Mesoamerica from Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection.

To find more primary sources on the internet, you can search your terms with the phrase AND documents OR "primary sources"

• For example: Aztec AND documents OR "primary sources"