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.

AUTHOR
Julieta Flores-Muñoz holds a PhD in Archaeology from the University of Southampton. She has a strong interest in Mesoamerican landscape and urban understandings and the way people preserve knowledge. Julieta has wide experience working within indigenous communities from different parts of Mexico.

REVIEW
‘The data are new and fascinating in many ways, especially in revealing some very interesting features of the history and social circumstances of the Nahua, their relationship with the land and dwelling. The spatial variation in architecture with a single social group is fascinating. This is one of the most interesting and absorbing discussions of ethnographic re-orientation (changing the nature and subject of research through encounter and engagement) that I have read for some time.’ Professor Colin Richards, University of the Highlands and Islands