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The central theme of this session addresses the circulation of ancient Mesoamerican images/objects and the way that circulation served to constitute knowledge and spread visual systems. We ask: How did Mesoamerican objects instantiate and transmit knowledge? What features allowed transmission? What agency was seen to adhere in the object that allowed such transmission? How does one speak about the historical development of visual systems in this context? We encourage the analysis of Mesoamerican image/object agency in the religious, political, social and economic spheres, in order to better describe and define the formation and transmission of knowledge via visual systems. One of our working hypotheses—that should be tested here—is that the visual cultures of Mesoamerica shared a common conceptual ‘vocabulary’—a dynamic but foundational Mesoamerican visual language—around which separate interpretive communities developed with different perspectives and social, political, artistic and other attitudes, forming a sort of Mesoamerican lingua franca with individual instantiations in visual terms.

Conceiving of ancient Mesoamerican images/objects as active vehicles that participated in networks across time, space, cultures and media should encourage us to consider our intellectual predecessors who have already explored the nature of images/objects as vehicles. A key figure in this area is the work of Aby Warburg, whose approaches may represent a productive way to problematize and bring nuance to the notion of networks and exchange in world art histories, including the Mesoamerican. We welcome exploration of historiographies of the mobile images/objects in Mesoamerica and, in general, in the Amerindian world.