Patolli: Calendar, Cosmos, and the Spirituality of Risk

Reading order

1. 1
   Florentine Codex: General History of the Things of New Spain, Book 8Book

   Bernardino de Sahagún, compiled 1545–1590 (trans. Arthur J. O. Anderson and Charles E. Dibble, School of American Research, 1950–1982)

   Begin with Sahagún. Book 8 gives the fullest account of Patolli in play — the invocation, the wager, the violence. Read it as an eyewitness account of what devotional gaming looked like.

2. 2
   Book of the Gods and Rites and the Ancient CalendarBook

   Fray Diego Durán, c. 1574–1576 (trans. Fernando Horcasitas and Doris Heyden, University of Oklahoma Press, 1971)

   Durán for the devotional framing. His account complements Sahagún's with distinctive detail on Macuilxochitl's patronage and the ritual obligations of the players.

3. 3
   On the Game of Patolli in Ancient Mexico, and its Probably Asiatic OriginPaper

   E. B. Tylor, Journal of the Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, Vol. 8, 1879, pp. 116–131

   Tylor for the controversy. The 1879 paper comparing Patolli to Pachisi launched a debate that continues — read it for the question it raised, not the answer it gave.

4. 4
   An Archaic-Period Gaming Board and Pieces from the Site of Tlacuachero, Chiapas, MexicoPaper

   Barbara Voorhies, Latin American Antiquity, Vol. 24, No. 2, 2013, pp. 213–230

   Voorhies for the archaeological deep time. The Tlacuachero evidence pushes Mesoamerican gaming back to the Archaic period, giving Patolli a longer prehistory than the colonial sources alone suggest.