Articles
ANCESTRAL MESOAMERICAN COSMETICS: PLANTS FOR BEAUTY AND BODY PRACTICES
Article number
964_21
Pages
169 – 179
Language
English
Abstract
Ethnohistorical documents from European conquerors, explorers, evangelists, and colonizers from the XVI to the XVII centuries describe the care which Mesoamerican inhabitants lavished on their bodies.
Despite the Eurocentric view of these documents writers, they are still very useful when inquiring into the ways in which Mesoamerican society used phyto-products in the care and embellishment of their bodies.
The present work describes the different kinds of plants which were used for cleaning, protecting, modifying, or correcting some superficial aspects of the body, and groups them into phyto-products formulated to be used on the hair and face.
What kind of plants did the Mesoamericans use to formulate their hygienic and beauty products? How were extracts obtained from these plants, how were these extracts transformed in preparation for their application to the body, and for what purposes were they employed? Were the plants and their preparations, which Mesoamericans created and used for beautification and hygiene, part of the material culture, which acted as an interface for personifying, conveying, creating, and standardizing social body practices? In order to answer these questions, a direct historical approach methodology was used to cross-reference and analogize known ethnohistorical, anthropological, archaeological, and contemporaneous phyto-cosmetic data.
This was then transposed into a vertical-temporal cultural context in order to surmise the corporeal cosmetic practices of Mesoamerican society in the ways of using the body, or body practices, as a subject of cultural and social activities.
Despite the Eurocentric view of these documents writers, they are still very useful when inquiring into the ways in which Mesoamerican society used phyto-products in the care and embellishment of their bodies.
The present work describes the different kinds of plants which were used for cleaning, protecting, modifying, or correcting some superficial aspects of the body, and groups them into phyto-products formulated to be used on the hair and face.
What kind of plants did the Mesoamericans use to formulate their hygienic and beauty products? How were extracts obtained from these plants, how were these extracts transformed in preparation for their application to the body, and for what purposes were they employed? Were the plants and their preparations, which Mesoamericans created and used for beautification and hygiene, part of the material culture, which acted as an interface for personifying, conveying, creating, and standardizing social body practices? In order to answer these questions, a direct historical approach methodology was used to cross-reference and analogize known ethnohistorical, anthropological, archaeological, and contemporaneous phyto-cosmetic data.
This was then transposed into a vertical-temporal cultural context in order to surmise the corporeal cosmetic practices of Mesoamerican society in the ways of using the body, or body practices, as a subject of cultural and social activities.
Authors
L. de Batres, C. Batres
Keywords
body care, cosmetics, health, phyto-products, social practices
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