The interplay between form, message and medium in the Codex Nuttall Side 2

Abstract

Since the mid-twentieth century, when the region of origin of the Mixtec historical codices was determined, studies on their content have progressed remarkably. The stories recorded in the manuscripts have been deciphered and placed in the Mixtec landscape. In addition, the genealogical ties and the character of the political relations maintained by the ruling elites of the region were reconstructed. All these advances make even more striking the gap between the degree of understanding of those narratives –together with their characters, locations, and chronologies–, on the one hand, and the graphic communication system used to record them, on the other. The mechanisms responsible for the creation of meaning in the Mixtec codices have not been investigated as a complete system that operates on multiple levels. The present work aims to analyze the formal strategies chosen by the authors of the Codex Nuttall Side 2 to write down the message in the codex and investigate the ways in which the form, the message and the medium enter into dialogue and work together to create the final meaning.