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The primary data for Aztec warfare are largely published accounts of sixteenth-century chronicles of Aztec conquests and lists of Aztec tributaries. The importance of this reconstruction is in the interpretation and analysis: many conquests have been recorded, but their significance is not always clear. Some towns fell after major combat, others accepted the barest suggestion that they become tributaries, others came into the empire when the towns to which they were subordinate were incorporated, and still others were conquered but remain unrecorded. Thus any attempt to reconstruct what really happened will necessarily be incomplete and inaccurate about specific events. My aim is an account of the main events and an interpretative analysis that informs the data. |
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Some attention must be directed to the way I have reconstructed the Aztec historical sequence in the latter half of the volume. Given the multiple sources detailing the sequence of conquests and the numerous lists of tributary towns under the various kings, inconsistencies inevitably arise. I have considered these, but the vast bulk of this material has been put in the notes rather than in the body of the text. Since most readers probably lack interest in these sometimes arcane debates, I have presented the historical sequence as a straightforward account, relegating full consideration of the various source inconsistencies and debates to notes, along with my reconstructions of the various march routes. While this may render the body of the text somewhat less immediately useful to the scholar, the advantages to most readers, in my estimation, more than offset this slight inconvenience. |
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In reconstructing Aztec conquests, I have placed the conquered towns in a temporal frameworkby specific year where possible, in |
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