Mesoamerican Narratives at the British Museum: Ancient Writing, Contemporary Voices

This bilingual book is the outcome of a research project undertaken between the Santo Domingo Centre of Excellence for Latin American Research at the British Museum and a group of Indigenous and non-Indigenous archaeologists and activists from Mexico and Guatemala. The chapters include new interpretations of some written narratives in the Mesoamerican collection at the British Museum, as well as critical reflections on the politics of Indigenous participation in museum projects and collection research. The book includes new scholarly interpretations of the Tonindeye Codex, the Xiuhpohualli of Tenochtitlan and the Yaxchilan lintels and, seeking to read these Mesoamerican narratives in an embodied way, it hopes to foster temporal imagination in the museum. It also discusses Indigenous epistemologies while focusing on the relevance of mobilising this work strategically outside of the museum, among descendant communities. In this way, researchers and visitors might interrogate their political and emotional positions towards colonial collections.