Macuahuitl, 2025.
3D reconstruction, online research project
https://macuahuitl.xyz/
Famous among the Mesoamerican peoples of the Late Postclassic, the macuahuitl was one of the most feared and representative weapons of its time. It consisted of a wooden club with prismatic obsidian blades set along its upper edges. Today only two archaeological specimens are known: one found in Mexico City and another in the Royal Armoury of Madrid (Real Armería de Madrid). The latter was mistakenly classified as part of an Asian armor and was destroyed in a fire at the Armoury in 1884. This project, titled Macuahuitl, draws on sixteenth-century codices and chronicles, together with two nineteenth-century Armoury catalogues, to reconstruct in 3D that weapon reduced to ashes. This research accompanies the digital reconstruction of Macuahuitl and shows how imperial collecting misinterpreted and lost a unique piece, while gathering multiple interpretations woven around the history of an object that eludes our desire to revive it—an object that has engendered its own hrönir: copies and conjectures that mirror each era’s expectations of the macuahuitl.
