The Materiality of Remembering

Although oral narrations are the way in which history has survived in Mexican indigenous contexts, they have been long disregarded as a valid source of information for archaeological research. The Materiality of Remembering argues that orality as a tool for research does not only provide clues for exploring indigenous uses of space, but that these narrations become central when investigating the way materiality changes through the act of remembrance. It is then through oral histories that materiality becomes fluid-moves and changes-through the constant process of remembrance. Then, by exploring orality in Mixtla de Altamirano in the Zongolica Mountain Range, Flores-Muñoz provides a corpus of data that helps us explore the interwoven relationship established between people (in this case the Nahuas in Mixtla de Altamirano) and their material world in the process of accounting history.