Throughout the Mesoamerican world, feasts were the catalyst for significant ritual, social, and political interchange. We know from historical documents and hieroglyphic texts that pre-Hispanic peoples held over a dozen annual feasts, and that they commemorated life and death events, and brokered political and economic deals, in a milieu of feasting. These occasions were comparable to, or even exceeded, the bounty and significance of present-day state dinners or our own religious and national …