Central Mexico (Archaeology)

This article examines the productivity of agriculture at the Postclassic polity of Xaltocan, Mexico. Employing multiple lines of data (remote sensing, artifactual, ecofactual, chronological, demographic, historic, ethnographic, and environmental), it reconstructs the potential productivity of an integrated raised field, chinampa system that surrounded the polity. This exercise reveals that the system was capable of producing a sizeable caloric surplus above the needs of the kingdom's estimated total population and the number of laborers necessary to maintain full production. To situate the processes related to agricultural production, the paper considers how farmers' strategies were articulated with multiple institutions. Increased integration between political, social, and household institutions possibly fostered residents' incorporation into the body politic and provided mechanisms to finance the political economy. Such integration and dependency fractured, however, when Xaltocan was conquered.

In this article, see pages 164, 166-168 for Stuart's discussion of the Grolier Codex.  It is highly significant that the Mexican State of Chiapas and the Universidad Autonoma de Chiapas chose to include the Grolier Codex as an authentic ancient Maya book in 1985 and make a fine color facsimile available along with the Dresden, Paris, and Madrid codices for further research. 

This review and essay of "Los Codices Mayas" is being posted as a personal tribute to my friend and colleague, the late George E. Stuart, Ph.D. (1935 - 2014) for his great generosity and many extraordinary contributions promoting world archaeology over several generations.

This article has been posted on Academia.edu as part of the Grolier Codex Project of the Center for Archaeoastronomy under the directorship of John B. Carlson, Ph.D.  The Grolier Codex Project seeks to further advance the study of the Maya Grolier Codex.

Archaeological methods extend beyond excavations and their analysis and interpretation. This dissertation uses an artifact-based approach to understand the culture of the Tlatilco community who lived in the Basin of Mexico 3000 years ago. I use the many collections of artifacts found in museums across the United States to better understand Tlatilco and relate my findings to the existing archaeological record where it exists.
Wherever there are written records available from the archaeological field seasons, I have related museum artifact findings to the knowledge gained from these. The ancient site of the Tlatilco was heavily looted prior to systematic archaeological excavation and has therefore, I assert, never received the academic attention it deserves. A chance encounter with Tlatilco artifacts that had been in storage and uncurated in a museum moved me to change the course of my Mesoamerican research and provided the foundation for this dissertation. Building on the objects in that collection and many other collections, I aim to understand the identities of the population of Tlatilco. Dating to the Early Formative period (1400-1100 BCE, calibrated), Tlatilco had extensive contact with its contemporaries, which is evident in its ceramic variability and other ritual traditions known from the burial records. The questions I address revolve around the sociopolitical transformation of the Early Formative period as experienced by Tlatilco as we start to see a rise in the civilizations in Mesoamerica and communities that develop to new levels as the complexity broadened. Through comparative analysis of the mainly ceramic Tlatilco objects including figurines, vessels, masks, roller stamps and seals, as well musical instruments, I have identified local trends as well as unique occurrences. I relate these findings to the social
dynamic of Early Formative Mesoamerica in relation to Tlatilco culture and what can be inferred about their customs and practices. This dissertation also addresses the ongoing debate about incorporation of objects without provenance, including the ethics behind excluding the material, as well as methods available to potentially establish provenance.

El altepetl de Ixmiquilpan posiblemente fue fundado en el periodo Epiclásico (750-900 DNE). La cabecera fue desplazada y reinstaurada varias veces hasta quedar ubicada en su lugar final, con características particulares: ser un sistema dual, con un gobernante otomí y otro nahoa, cada uno de ellos controlaba sus propios sujetos dentro de un fenómeno de continuidad territorial. Entre los siglos XVI y XVIII, en un proceso que muestra resonancias de la organización social prehispánica, algunos sujetos se independizaron del gobierno indígena, elevando su rango y jerarquía. El proceso histórico del altepetl colonial puede iluminar la forma en que se construyó el territorio en la época prehispánica y la forma en que pudieron generarse los procesos de segregación y colapso de las grandes confederaciones del Altiplano Central Mexicano.

The altepetl of Ixmiquilpan was possibly founded in the Epiclassic period (750-900AD). The center of government was moved and reestablished several times before being located in its final place, with particular characteristics. While it was a dual system, with an Otomi and a Nahoa leader, each of them controlled their own subjects within the phenomenon of a single territory. Between the sixteenth and the eighteenth centuries, during a process that shows echoes of pre-Hispanic social organization, some subjects declared their independence from the native government, raising their rank and hierarchy. The historical process of the colonial altepetl could illuminate the way the territory was built during the pre-Columbian period and how the process of segregation and collapse of the great
confederations of the central Mexican highlands took place.

This study evaluates how prehispanic central Mexicans made stone tools—primarily from obsidian—and used them in their homes over a period of 3,000 years. Mesoamerican scholars have often assumed the functional purposes of different lithic tools based on their material or technological attributes. Most limit their studies to single sites and extrapolate broader reconstructions of economic activities. I assess stone tool functions and associated economic activities through technological analyses of more than 43,000 lithic artifacts and, in addition, a feasibility study for high magnification use-wear analysis utilizing 589 of these artifacts from multiple household contexts in the central Mexican villages of Amomoloc (900-650 B.C.), Tetel (750-500 B.C.), and Mesitas (600-500 B.C.); the town of La Laguna (600 B.C.-A.D. 150); the city of Teotihuacan (A.D. 200-550); and the Aztec village of Cihuatecpan (A.D. 1150-1550).

I determine that pressure blades—the most common tool form—were multifunctional. They were regularly modified via pressure trimming or notching and recycled through bipolar percussion to suit specific tasks. Blade production error rates decreased consistently, especially after the invention of core platform grinding near the end of the Classic period (A.D. 100-600). Preliminary results of the use-wear feasibility study suggest that certain tools became associated with specific tasks. Scrapers were mainly used to produce goods of maguey, wood, and hide. People came to use hafted atlatl dart points and bifacial knives almost exclusively for hunting and meat butchering tasks, respectively, and smaller bifacial drills mostly for shell craft production. Bipolar tools created through anvil percussion were more common during the Formative period (1500 B.C.-A.D. 100), when they were probably used as expedient kitchen utensils.

Obsidian tools in central Mexico were not exclusively staple goods. Ritual bloodletting implements are spatially associated with communal altars and commoner and elite residences, but after the Epiclassic period (A.D. 600-900) bloodletting was restricted primarily to temples. Likewise, although weaponry was common during the Classic through Postclassic periods, and jewelry was relatively common during the Late Postclassic period (A.D. 1325-1521), in prehispanic times their spatial distributions were much more restricted across site contexts compared to obsidian staple goods.

I demonstrate that in prehispanic central Mexico stone tools were produced and used primarily in household spaces, contrary to models that have emphasized sponsorship by elites or religious institutions. Residents produced stone tools in their homes primarily to satisfy their own needs during the Formative period. As rising populations contributed to urban densities and the development of marketplace economies, household lithic production increased to satisfy broader consumer demand. Producing households often specialized in blade production or followed a multicrafting strategy, in which the scale of production exceeded their own needs.

Obsidian tools are ubiquitous at archaeological sites throughout the pre-Hispanic period (ca. 1500 B.C.-A.D. 1521) in central Mexico. However, the method of high-magnification use-wear analysis has been underutilized for functional interpretations of obsidian tools in the region, especially compared to lithic studies in sub-Saharan Africa, Europe, Oceania, and North America. In order to establish a reliable foundation for future archaeological investigations of obsidian tool functions, I performed approximately 300 experiments with 145 obsidian tool specimens controlling for two obsidian sources, two activity durations, and 29 different materials that were accessible to prehispanic residents of central Mexico. This paper synthesizes results from prior experimental obsidian use-wear studies with the results from my experiments and discusses their broader impacts for use-wear analysts working in all regions as well as specific implications for future use-wear projects in central Mexico. This paper also presents high-quality images of use-wear characteristics and their patterns linked to specific materials in order to stimulate student training and comparisons between studies. Results indicate that the start times for initial use-wear patterns resulting from slicing meat, fish, maize, and soft plants, respectively, can be revised down to 5 min of tool use. There are distinct use-wear patterns for maguey heart scraping and maguey leaf scraping, which are new and crucial findings for archaeologists interested in ancient practices of pulque and fiber production. Finally, human and animal blood residues can be observed microscopically on obsidian tool surfaces and removed for presumptive testing using Hemastix® strips.

This article offers new understanding to commoner ritual in central Mexico before the rise of the Aztec Empire through an examination of domestic ritual and everyday practice in
Early to Middle Postclassic (AD 900–1350) households in Xaltocan. It also seeks to better understand the ways in which elites negotiate and reinvent ritual traditions to gain and maintain power. In this study, I integrate multiple lines of evidence including ethnohistory, household archaeology and burials to understand the organization, practice and meaning of ritual among commoners before the rise of the Aztec Empire. I argue that pre-Aztec commoner ritual worked to foster solidarity, social continuity and collective memory and was intimately concerned with the protection of household members and the maintenance of household and universal equilibrium. While some of the symbolism and rituals documented in pre-Aztec domestic contexts appear similar to those depicted in Aztec contexts, I argue that state rituals held different meanings as Aztec elites adopted and transformed widely-held commoner rituals and symbols to craft an ideology that promoted their own political agenda. Ultimately, domestic- and state-level ritual should be seen as part of an ever-changing, but necessarily intertwined, historical and political process.

What does being an archaeologist mean to those Indigenous persons who have chosen this profession? How did they become archaeologists? What led them down a career path to what some in their communities have labeled a “colonialist” venture, or, alternatively, what others see as a way to challenge colonialism’s legacy? What were the circumstances that brought them to this career, and what were the challenges they faced along the way? What were (and are) the motivations that have enabled their success? How have they managed to balance Indigenous traditional values and worldviews (that is, if they embrace these) with Western modes of inquiry? Finally, how are their contributions broadening the scope of archaeology? Such questions frame this collection of autobiographical chapters on what it means to become and be Indigenous archaeologists....

Teotihuacan, located in the northeastern Basin of Mexico, is best known for its Preclassic and Classic period occupations (ca. 150 B.C.-A.D. 700) but was also an important city-state during the Aztec and Early Colonial periods, circa A.D. 1200-1650. Much has been written about political relations among Aztec city-states in the basin. However, the internal political structures of most city-states remain largely unknown because colonial chroniclers focused mostly on Tenochtitlan-Mexico City and collected little information on the 40 to 50 smaller city-states in the basin. This article addresses the internal political organization of Aztec Teotihuacan and how it changed over time based on analyses of pottery data from the surface collections of the Teotihuacan Mapping Project. A seriation of sherd assemblages using correspondence analysis provides a chronological framework for diachronic analyses. Changes through time pertaining to interresidential status differences and the spatial distributions of elite residences suggest a gradual process of political decentralization. Additionally, pottery and obsidian data, in conjunction with settlement pattern changes, reveal a relocation of the city-state center in the late 1300s or early 1400s, possibly indicating an episode of political upheaval or reorganization.

During the tumultuous Epiclassic period (AD 600-900), several smaller polities in Central Mexico and the Gulf Coast rose to prominence in the wake of the collapsed metropolis of Teotihuacan. Although this period is often characterized by rampant militarism, wide-ranging economic activities, and eclectic monumental art programs that incorporate foreign styles, few studies have considered the role that religious ideology played in these phenomena. Flower World imagery is prevalent in the monumental and portable artwork of Cacaxtla, Xochicalco, Teotenango, and other Epiclassic polities. While beliefs pertaining to a solar paradise inhabited by the souls of deceased warriors were inherited from Teotihuacan, Epiclassic elites adapted and modified aspects of the Flower World complex to suit new political and economic strategies. The Epiclassic Flower World complex valorized warfare and linked elites through shared ritual practice, identity, and exchange of exotic prestige goods.

This article explores the role of material culture, specifically ceramics, in the construction of identity, social memory, and understandings of the past in the Postclassic Basin of Mexico. As ceramics are used in everyday activities and eventually discarded and abandoned, they come to take on different meanings, associations, and roles and, thus, may influence the ideas and actions of those around them. This article examines patterns of use of ceramics within domestic contexts at the site of Xaltocan, Mexico, coupled with regional patterns of stylistic change and distribution, to explore the ways in which ceramics and ceramic style both shaped and were shaped by people’s conceptions of themselves and others. The results suggest that the adoption (and rejection) of style was an active choice on the part of producers and consumers. It is argued that Black-on-Orange ceramics were used by emerging city-states in Postclassic central Mexico to help materialize an idealized Toltec heritage.

A B S T R A C T This article uses evidence of regional-scale ceramic exchange to evaluate three proposed causal factors (Aztec imperial expansion, bottom-up demand, and elite competition) for the development of the market-based economy of Postclassic Central Mexico. The factors used to evaluate these models may be applied more widely to other cases of market development. Using previously published datasets, I compare the quantities and diversities of non-local ceramics from sites in the Basin of Mexico, Morelos, and the Toluca Valley regions of central highland Mexico across the Middle (CE 1150–1350) and Late (CE 1350–1521) Postclassic periods. The results show that the highest proportion of trade occurs under Aztec rule, and is dominated by ceramics exported out of the Basin of Mexico. However, areas outside the Basin of Mexico have higher numbers of trading partners, and these ties are well developed during the Middle Postclassic. These results provide partial support for both bottom-up demand and elite competition as causal factors for market development. This article also demonstrates the continued utility of legacy data and emphasizes the need to make basic data sets available for new analyses.

This article explores the complex, multidimensional nature of Aztec social organization and, specifically, the concept of “eliteness,” as it applies to the Aztecs. I discuss both why we can speak of Aztec “elites” and how we can monitor them using ceramic data. I argue it is possible to distinguish elites archaeologically by identifying the ceramic attributes and variables that best reflect feasting behavior, one of the primary practices the Aztecs used to socially construct and reproduce unequal relations of power, wealth, and estate. Ceramics thus served as one of the primary media through which politically and socially charged “communication” occurred among the Aztecs. I define and evaluate six ceramic indices of eliteness using Late Aztec ceramic data (ca. a.d. 1350–1520) from Teotihuacan, an Aztec period altepetl (city-state) located in the northeastern Basin of Mexico. I use the most effective eliteness indices to interpret the intrasite spatial patterning of elite residences at Late Aztec Teotihuacan and infer some observations about the social and political organization of the altepetl.

A single page astronomical study guide of the ten Maya Grolier Codex pages.  This guide labels pages 1-9 and Carlson's reconstruction of page 10/11 based on the author's discovery that Codex pages 10 and 11 are actually two parts of the same "page 10".  One of four known ancient Maya books, the Grolier Codex depicts different manifestations of the planet Venus; the column of glyphs on the left of each panel records days in a 104-year Venus almanac. These plaster-coated bark-paper pages, carbon-dated to the 13th century, represent only half of the 20-page original.

This guide has been posted on Academia.edu as part of the Grolier Codex Project of the Center for Archaeoastronomy under the directorship of John B. Carlson, Ph.D.  The Grolier Codex Project seeks to further advance the study of the Grolier Codex.

(English abstract) One important way that empires consolidate power is to undercut the traditional revenue bases of subject elites and redirect resource flows from subject areas to the imperial capitals. To this end, Aztec imperial rulers implemented a strategy to appropriate marketplace revenues from subject elites in the imperial heartland in the Basin of Mexico. Recent chemistry-based provenance studies of undecorated Aztec plainware and Black-on- orange vessels suggest that pottery made in the Tenochtitlan area penetrated market domains of neighboring polities, including their Acolhua allies in Texcoco. The imperial rulers in Tenochtitlan likely invested in marketplace development to stimulate commercial craft production and export, thus boosting government revenues from market taxation.

In this article was invited by the National Endowment for the Humanities for its "Humanities" magazine special issue on "Technology", John B. Carlson defines the development of the field of archaeoastronomy as the study of astronomy in culture through such fields as history, art, architecture, religion, and writing.  Focusing on the Maya of ancient Mesoamerica, the author outlines the interdisciplinary approach used to understand the Venus cycle's impacted on ancient Maya society.  Of particular note is the study of the Grolier Codex, one of four known ancient Maya books, which depicts different manifestations of Venus; the column of glyphs on the left of each panel records days in a 104-year Venus almanac. These plaster-coated bark-paper pages, carbon-dated to the 13th century, represent only half of the 20-page original.

This article has been posted on Academia.edu as part of the Grolier Codex Project of the Center for Archaeoastronomy under the directorship of John B. Carlson, Ph.D.  The Grolier Codex Project seeks to further advance the study of the Maya Grolier Codex.

Archaeological research at the UNESCO World Heritage site of Teotihuacan (AD 1–AD 550) in the Basin of Mexico provides evidence for leporid (cottontails and jackrab-bits) breeding and/or management within a residential complex of the city, Oztoyahualco. The present study tests this notion by analyzing Teotihuacan leporid bone collagen samples (n = 134) for stable isotope ratios of carbon (δ 13 C collagen) and nitrogen (δ 15 N collagen) to provide information on ancient leporid diet and ecology. Results demonstrate that carbon-stable isotope values from Oztoyahualco specimens are significantly higher than those from other contexts at Teotihuacan and from a sample of modern specimens from the region. These data are consistent with the notion that leporids from Oztoyahualco consumed diets high in C 4 and CAM plants, such as the human-cultivated staples of maize (Zea mays), nopal cactus (Opuntia sp.), and maguey (Agave sp.). Nitrogen-stable isotope results show no significant differences between Oztoyahualco and other contexts, suggesting that Oztoyahualco leporids inhabited similar environments , ate food grown on similar soils, and were feeding at the same trophic level. When considered in combination with archaeological data and previously published isotopic results, δ 13 C collagen data from Oztoyahualco support the idea that leporids were artificially provisioned by humans, consistent with the hypothesis that they were bred and/or managed through human labor. More broadly, these results hint that food production at Teotihuacan was at least in part conducted by specialized workers in a manner similar to that of commercialized market economy of the later Aztec Empire (AD 1428– 1521).

ABSTRACT This article studies archaeological and local versions of the past at Xaltocan, Mexico. At Xaltocan, the
past provides a vehicle for statements of ethnic, national, and community identity. Community organizations seek to
glorify the town as the descendant of an ancient kingdom that, had a different constellation of historical processes
transpired, could have become both the center of an empire and a nation. This process raises questions regarding
archaeology’s utility and points of convergence and divergence between archaeological and local versions of the past.
Rather than disregard the local appropriation of archaeological knowledge, this article attempts both to recognize
the relationship between the past and identity politics and to assess local claims by examining archaeological and
historical data. This article also considers the problems of this project, particularly the unintended consequences of
archaeological research connected to identity politics. [identity, heritage, empire, Mexico, Aztec empire]

RESUMEN Este art´ıculo estudia las versiones arqueolo´ gicas y locales del pasado en Xaltocan, Me´ xico. En Xaltocan,
el pasado proporciona un veh´ıculo para la manifestacio´ n de la identidad e´ tnica, nacional y comunitaria. Las organizaciones
de la comunidad tratan de glorificar a la ciudad como descendientes de un antiguo reino que, habiendose
dado una constelacio´ n diferente de procesos histo´ ricos, podr´ıa haberse convertido en el centro de un imperio y una
nacio´ n. Este proceso plantea dudas sobre la utilidad de la arqueolog´ıa y los puntos de convergencia y divergencia
entre las versiones arqueolo´ gicas y locales del pasado. Este art´ıculo intenta reconocer la relacio´ n entre el pasado y
las pol´ıticas de identidad y evaluar los reclamos locales mediante el examen de los datos arqueolo´ gicos e histo´ ricos.
Tambie´ n, este art´ıculo considera los problemas de este proyecto, en particular, las consecuencias impremeditadas
de la investigacio´ n arqueolo´ gica ligadas a la pol´ıtica de identidad.

A color reconstruction of pages 9 and 10-11 of the Grolier Codex depicting Carlson's discovery that Codex pages 10 and 11 are actually two parts of the same "page 10".  One of four known ancient Maya books, the Grolier Codex depicts different manifestations of the planet Venus; the column of glyphs on the left of each panel records days in a 104-year Venus almanac. These 10 plaster-coated bark-paper pages, carbon-dated to the 13th century, represent only half of the 20-page original. This reconstruction was featured in May 1983 issue of "Science 83" magazine published by the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

This document has been posted on Academia.edu as part of the Grolier Codex Project of the Center for Archaeoastronomy under the directorship of John B. Carlson, Ph.D.  The Grolier Codex Project seeks to further advance the study of the Grolier Codex.

Esta semana en Raíces recibimos a Iris Hernández Bautista, arqueóloga de la Subdirección de arqueología subacuática del Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia y directora del Proyecto Nahualac, el cual se realiza en condiciones extremas, puesto que combina un contexto acuático en altitud. ¿Qué implica la organización de una temporada de excavación en estas condiciones? ¿Por qué Nahualac es un lugar relevante para entender la cosmovisión de los antiguos pobladores del Valle de México? ¿En qué se distingue Nahualac de proyectos parecidos como el Nevado de Toluca o el manantial de Los Reyes? ¿Cuáles objetos fueron depositados? ¿Quién acudía a este lugar?