About

Allison Caplan is a scholar of the art of Late Postclassic and early colonial Mesoamerica, with a special focus on the Nahuas (Aztecs) of Central Mexico. Her research interests include Nahua art theory and aesthetics, issues of materiality and value, animal-human relations, and the relationship between visual expression and the Nahuatl language. She has authored significant works such as her upcoming book, Flickering Creations: Concepts of Nahua Precious Art, which reconstructs Nahua theorizations of color, light, surface, and assemblage in art made from precious stones, feathers, and metals. Her first book, which emerged from her award-winning dissertation, explores Nahua concepts of preciousness and aesthetics. Her second book, The Story-Circle Manuscript, provides an in-depth study of the earliest drafts of the Florentine Codex, revealing the colonial dialogue between Nahua and Spanish contributors and how this dialogue engaged with Indigenous knowledge traditions. Caplan's scholarship has been published in various academic journals and edited volumes, and she has contributed to exhibition catalogues and forthcoming essays on Latin American art. She has studied the Nahuatl language for ten years, including through fellowships and fieldwork in Mexico, and has published translations and research in Nahuatl. Her research has been supported by numerous grants and fellowships from prestigious institutions. Prior to her current position at Yale, she served as an Assistant Professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and held a postdoctoral fellowship at Johns Hopkins University. She has also worked in curatorial and educational roles at several museums, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Getty Research Institute. At Yale, she teaches courses on ancient and colonial Mesoamerica, Indigenous materiality and art theory, and museums and collecting, and she is actively advising graduate students interested in Latin American art and Indigenous languages.

Research topics

• Biology
• Art
• Archaeology
• Zoology
• Geography
• History
• Visual arts
• Sociology
• Political Science
• Materials science
• Composite material
• Anthropology
• Ecology
• Ethnology

Selected publications

• The Cotinga and the Hummingbird

  2024-01-11

  book-chapterOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Mosaics of carefully overlaid, glued feathers were a major art form of Mesoamerica, dating back at least to the 13th century, and especially prominent among the Nahua people of the Aztec Empire (1428–1521 CE). Items of high value and prestige, feather mosaics traditionally were made using a range of vibrantly colored feathers by feather artists, or amantecah, who resided in specialist districts throughout the Aztec Empire. The intense sensory displays created by moving, shining featherworks were closely associated with the person and tonalli (animating force) of their owners, and their use was restricted to god-representatives, rulers, nobles, and accomplished warriors, who wore full-body feather suits and carried round feather shields into battle (Figure 6.2.1).

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Review of Jorge Gómez Tejada, ed., The Codex Mendoza. New Insights

  Estudios de cultura náhuatl · 2024-02-06

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Review of Jorge Gómez Tejada, ed. 2022. The Codex Mendoza. New Insights. Quito: Universidad San Francisco de Quito (USFQ) Press.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  University of Texas Press eBooks · 2023

  • Geography

  read drafts of the book, and the final result is much stronger for their comments; Lisa Regan at TextFormations also offered invaluable editorial advice.I benefited greatly

  DOI

• Blowers of Sun-Excrement: Nahua Lost-Wax Gold Casting in the Florentine Codex Book 9, Chapter 16

  West 86th · 2021

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Art
  • Materials science
  • Composite material
  PublisherDOI

• Locking Eyes with the Sun: Perception, Landscape, and the Fame of Greenstone in a Sixteenth-Century Nahuatl Narrative

  MAVCOR Journal · 2021-01-01 · 1 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  As understood from two closely related versions in Books 10 and 11 of the Florentine Codex, a narrative describing interactions between a human knower, sun, and precious stones enables a new interpretation of Nahua accounts of precious stones releasing vapors, while also providing greater insight into the nature of sensory experience in Nahua thought more generally.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• The Living Feather: <i>Tonalli</i> in Nahua Featherwork Production

  Ethnohistory · 2020 · 4 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  • History
  • Archaeology
  • Zoology

  Abstract Previous studies suggest that late postclassic and early colonial Nahua viewers understood specific artistic creations to contain tonalli, a solar-derived animating force. This article advances understanding of the animacy of Nahua featherworks by examining attention to tonalli in the various stages of featherwork production. Analysis of a classificatory distinction used in the sixteenth-century Florentine Codex between tlazohihhuitl (beloved feathers) and macehualihhuitl (commoner feathers) suggests that this distinction registers specific types of feathers’ differential ability to contain tonalli. Ultimately, this classification posited tlazohihhuitl as living beings and macehualihhuitl as inanimate materials. The relationship between these two classes of feathers is integral to Nahuatl descriptions of the treatment of specific feather types in the production stages of bird hunting, dyeing and selling feathers, and mosaic construction. Understanding these production practices through Nahuatl descriptions suggests that care for tonalli represented a central commercial and artistic concern in featherwork production.

  PublisherDOI

• Introduction: Knowledge of Birds and Feathers in the Ancient and Colonial Mesoamerican World

  Ethnohistory · 2020 · 3 citations

  Senior authorCorresponding
  • Sociology
  • Political Science
  • Anthropology

  Abstract Birds and their feathers have long occupied a unique place in the social, cultural, and intellectual life of the Americas. This was particularly so in Mesoamerica, where ancient civilizations and colonial societies developed extensive knowledge of birds, their behaviors and habitats, and their vibrant plumage. This special issue brings together scholars from a variety of disciplines, including art history, history, and biology, to promote discussion among the arts, social sciences, and natural sciences on the role of birds and feathers in Mesoamerica. This introductory essay first provides a discussion of the major trends in the scholarship on birds and feathers in ancient and colonial Mesoamerica. It then highlights the contributions of the articles in the special issue to our understanding of the multifaceted roles that both symbolic and real birds and their feathers played in indigenous and transatlantic knowledge systems and societies.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Bridging Biology and Ethnohistory: A Case for Collaboration

  Ethnohistory · 2020-07-01 · 1 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract Interdisciplinary scholarship that combines research questions and methodologies from biology and ethnohistory generates new insights into historical interactions between human and bird populations in ancient and colonial Mesoamerica. Codices, ethnohistorical sources, and surviving feather art point to the religious, economic, and artistic importance of various types of birds to Nahua people. Alongside the well-known resplendent quetzal and lovely cotinga, many additional species were significant to ancient and colonial Nahuas. This article presents potential directions for scholarship that bridge biology and ethnohistory and surveys key resources, including natural history collections and online databases. Finally, the article employs the biological literature to describe eleven bird species of great importance to Nahuas, detailing the species’ appearance and plumage, geographic range, variation, habitat, behaviors, and current status. Ultimately, the article demonstrates how insights from natural history and ethnohistory together allow for a fuller understanding of Nahuas’ material and conceptual interactions with these birds.

  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Sarah Hamilton

  Idaho National Laboratory

  1 shared

• Rebecca Stone

  Ethnological Museum

  1 shared

• Rex Koontz

  Ethnological Museum

  1 shared

• Chris Pool

  Ethnological Museum

  1 shared

• Denise Fallena

  Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México

  1 shared

• Mary Cowden Clarke

  Ethnological Museum

  1 shared

• Andrew Sullivan

  1 shared

• William Gassaway

  Ethnological Museum

  1 shared

Labs

• Bridging Biology and Ethnohistory: A Case for CollaborationPI

Education

• PhD, Art History and Latin American Studies

  Tulane University

  2019

• MA, Art History and Latin American Studies

  Tulane University

  2014

• BA, Comparative Literature and Society, Art History

  Columbia University Columbia College

  2011

Awards & honors

• Best Dissertation Award from the Association for Latin Ameri…
• Fellowship from the American Council of Learned Societies
• Fellowship from Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collecti…
• Fellowship from Interdisciplinary Humanities Center at UC-Sa…
• Fellowship from Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts