Article suitable for Top Juniors and above

Question for January 2025

How long would it take to make a huipil? (2)? Asked by Shenfield St. Mary’s CE Primary School. Chosen and answered by Professor Frances Berdan

The easiest (although quite unsatisfactory) answer to your good question is “we don’t really know.” And, for that matter, neither did the weaver herself. But this need not stop us from exploring this question further and finding out why it is so difficult to “time” such a fundamental activity.
Weaving was engaged in by all women in Aztec society. Girls began learning to spin and weave perhaps as early as five years old and continued to refine and produce their weavings through old age. It was a woman’s dedicated pursuit until she was unable to see clearly or work nimbly.
But while this was a constantly demanding, time-consuming part of each adult woman’s daily life, it was not all she did. She cooked. She cleaned. She bore, tended, and taught children. She went to market. She prepared for and participated in the many religious ceremonies. She helped in the fields, or with pottery-making, or repairing fishing nets, or whatever the family enterprise was. Overall, she managed her household, whether it was big or small. Without a doubt, she was a master at multi-tasking.

Spinning and weaving were perfectly suited to the many (and sometimes conflicting) demands on any Aztec woman on any given day. Both tasks could easily be picked up or dropped at a moment’s notice and could be undertaken for short or long periods of time (I have observed present-day Nahua women spinning while waiting for a bus on the roadside). Unless she was under duress to complete a particular piece of cloth, perhaps for a tribute payment or upcoming religious ritual, a woman could work at these tasks as time permitted. As a skilled multi-tasker, an adept spinner/weaver could entertain guests (or watch children or a simmering pot) while working, chatting about the news and rumor of the day while her well-trained fingers fashioned the cloth to be worn by herself and members of her family…or perhaps to be sold in the marketplace, dedicated as a ritual offering, paid to lord or emperor, or used as a cover for the day’s just-made tortillas. Cloth was endlessly useful and constantly in demand – it wore out, children outgrew their clothing, and (for the elite) colorful designs (fashions, perhaps?) came and went. It often amazes me to think of the certainly millions of pieces of cloth produced by these skilled and hard-working women…all spun and woven by hand, thread by thread!

And, to return to your question, that cloth was produced amidst all the many other tasks and responsibilities of Aztec women throughout their lives, usually without concern about “time.”

Picture sources:-
• Pic 1: image from the Codex Mendoza scanned from the James Cooper Clark 1938 facsimile edition, London
• Pic 2: photo by Sean Sprague/Mexicolore
• Pic 3: photo by Ian Mursell/Mexicolore.

Aztecs

Maya

Question for January 2025

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