The Aztecs

by Michael E Smith

  The Aztec countryside did not consist solely of isolated farming families; small home-based cottage industries thrived in many areas, and a large number of lords lived in small towns and country estates. Peasants were well integrated into an extensive system of marketplace trade, and they had access to goods from all over the empire. In short, the Aztec countryside was a thriving and complex social landscape, not a rural backwater of impoverished peasants. The next two chapters describe how agricultural production was complemented by craft industries, and how a dynamic system of markets and merchants served to distribute goods throughout the rural and urban settlements of Aztec central Mexico.

  Chapter four

  Artisans and their Wares

  The last sign, the twentieth, called Xochitl, means Flower . . . and was a sign which was associated with masters and craftsmen. Thus it was said that those born under it were to be painters, metal-workers, weavers, sculptors, carvers – that is to say, [workers in] all the arts that imitate nature.

  Diego Durán, Book of the Gods and Ritesand the Ancient Calendar

  The producers of goods played an important role in Aztec society. Work was heavily specialized, and a relatively small group of people was relied upon to manufacture most of the goods that people used in their homes, temples, and workplaces. There were two types of craft industries in Aztec central Mexico – utilitarian and luxury – and the nature and organization of work in each of these sectors had very different implications for the lives of both producers and consumers. Utilitarian goods such as reed sandals or pottery vessels were produced by part-time artisans, who worked in their homes and sold their goods in the marketplace. Luxury items such as gold jewelry or stone sculptures were fashioned in the workshops of full-time artists who worked directly for elite patrons.1

  Utilitarian Crafts

  Early Spanish observers had little to say about Aztec utilitarian objects such as kitchen utensils or household tools and even less about how these items were produced. Archaeologists, on the other hand, can say much about these objects because the bulk of the artifacts recovered from most sites are the detritus of mundane, daily activities. Furthermore, the production of utilitarian items often left clear traces in the archaeological record. Increasingly those who study ancient civilizations, including the Aztecs, are turning their attention to issues of utilitarian craft production and specialization.2

  Obsidian

  Obsidian cutting tools are among the finest achievements of Mesoamerican manufacturing technology. Obsidian is a naturally occurring, black volcanic glass which is available in several highland areas of Mesoamerica. Although brittle and easily broken, obsidian can fracture into pieces with extremely sharp edges. In fact, microscopic studies have shown obsidian blades to have the sharpest edges of any known tool, ancient or modern. The edge of a well-made prismatic blade can be sharper than a surgeon's scalpel. No wonder that the earliest Mesoamericans, many millennia before the Aztecs, selected obsidian as the material of choice for the manufacture of stone tools. By Aztec times, the technology of obsidian-working had been perfected, and stoneknappers could produce a wide range of domestic and industrial tools.3

  Obsidian tools are the second most abundant type of artifact found at Aztec residential sites, surpassed only by ceramic potsherds. Every Aztec household maintained a collection of implements used for a variety of purposes. Prismatic blades – long, thin, parallel-sided flakes with a characteristic prism-shaped cross-section (figure 4.1) – were the most common type. These versatile tools were used chiefly as knives, but hafted onto wooden handles, they also served as sickles and razors. Prismatic blades were often reworked into new tools, including drills, scrapers, and arrow points. Other common obsidian tools were bifacially flaked knives and projectile points, scrapers, and simple unmodified flakes that could be used for a number of cutting jobs.

  Figure 4.1 Obsidian blade-core and four prismatic blades from Aztec houses at Yautepec (photograph by Michael E. Smith)

  Implements of obsidian also were used outside of the home. The Spanish conquerors first encountered obsidian in Aztec swords. The maquahuitl sword consisted of a stout wooden shaft with opposing rows of prismatic blades (see chapter 7). These swords were sharp enough to decapitate a man. The more mundane industries such as carpentry and woodworking, textile production, basketry, and farming also utilized obsidian tools.

  The technology of obsidian tool production began at the mines. The Aztecs were fortunate to have several nearby obsidian sources, both in the Valley of Mexico and in the mountains north of the valley.4 The Otumba source, located in the Otumba city-state in the Teotihuacan Valley, and the Pachuca source, just north of the Valley of Mexico, were the most important to the Aztec industry. Because of its chemical composition and crystal structure, Pachuca obsidian was better suited for prismatic blade technology than most other obsidians. The stone was mined from pits and shafts using basalt tools, although in some areas boulders had eroded from the ground and were easily picked up.

  Obsidian knapping is a “subtractive” technology in that, during the process of toolmaking, waste flakes are removed or subtracted from a core. Each stage of the process – from quarry to finished tool – produces a distinctive type of waste material, which allows archaeologists to reconstruct the various toolmaking activities that took place at a site. The presence of initial shaping flakes at quarry sites indicates that excess material usually was chipped from the mined chunks at the quarry prior to carrying the obsidian back to the knapper's home or workshop. At the workshops, most nodules were used in one of two basic technologies: biface production or prismatic blade production. A biface tool is flaked on both its upper and lower surfaces. Biface production is an old technology that has been used throughout the world for tens of millennia. Prismatic blade production is far more difficult and has a more limited distribution.

  To make prismatic blades, the obsidian first was worked into a rough, cylindrical macrocore, which then was refined into a symmetrical blade-core through careful chipping. The upper, flat surface of the blade-core was ground with a basalt tool to roughen it in preparation for blade making. The actual blades were removed from the core through the application of steady force to a small area on the edge of the core. This step, known as pressure flaking, was the most difficult part of the whole process. The force required is greater than a person's arm-strength, and it must be applied evenly at just the right place on the core. It took archaeologists many years of experimentation to figure out how the Aztecs and other Mesoamerican peoples accomplished the removal of blades.5 After many blades had been produced from a core, the exhausted core was either discarded or else fashioned into a new tool; figure 4.1 shows one of these exhausted cores.

  The high degree of skill required to produce prismatic blades suggests that blade making was done by specialists. Since all households used many blades, which broke easily, the demand for these blades must have been enormous. A skilled blade-maker could produce some 200 blades from a single core in a short period of time, however, so the number of specialists was not necessarily high. It is likely that many obsidian workers, at least in the rural areas, were part-time specialists who used their obsidian work to supplement farming activities. Archaeological excavations confirm that blade production was carried out in only a few places. The city of Otumba, located next to the Otumba obsidian source, had several obsidian blade workshops that supplied the surrounding area (see below). The rural sites Capilco and Cuexcomate (see chapter 3) were not located near an obsidian source, yet their inhabitants had ready access to blades and other tools. More than 12,000 obsidian artifacts were recovered from the excavations at these sites (mostly blade fragments), but there was virtually no evidence for the production of cores or blades. These farmers bought their blades, ready-made, in the marketplace.

  Pottery

  Aztec kitchens were equipped with a variety of pottery vessels for cooking, preparing, and serving food. Each family probably owned one or two painted water jars;
several flat tortilla griddles (comalli); cookpots of various shapes and sizes for beans, sauces, and other foods; a pot to soak maize in; a rough-bottom tripod grinding dish for chilis and tomatoes (molcaxitl); a salt basin; and various plates, bowls, and cups for meals (figure 4.2). In addition to kitchenware, pottery was used for religious items: figurines, incense burners, and musical instruments such as flutes, rattles, and drums. It was also used to make tools (spindle whorls and special bowls to support the spindle during the spinning of cotton thread) and a range of small objects, of uncertain uses, such as stamps, disks, balls, tubes, and miniature cookpots (figure 4.3). With all of these breakable objects in common use, it is not surprising that broken pieces of pottery, or sherds, are by far the single most abundant type of artifact at Aztec sites.

  Figure 4.2 Ceramic vessels from Aztec kitchens (from M. E. Smith 2007b)

  Figure 4.3 Small ceramic objects recovered from excavations of houses at Cuexcomate and Capilco. These are tobacco pipes (upper left), miniature cookpots (upper right), bells (lower left), and whistles (lower right) (photograph by Michael E. Smith)

  Aztec pottery was produced by hand. For most objects, the clay was shaped over a mold made of fired clay and then baked in open fires or in kilns. Unfortunately there is little direct archaeological evidence of pottery manufacture among the Aztecs. Unlike subtractive technologies such as obsidian toolmaking, additive technologies like potting leave far less debris for the archaeologist to find. Although molds for figurines, incense burners, and spindle whorls have been recovered from Otumba, Yautepec, and other sites, no Aztec kilns or firing areas have been found, in spite of excavations at a number of sites.

  Several lines of indirect evidence provide clues to the techniques of pottery production. For example, sherds from jars sometimes show horizontal join-marks where two halves of a vessel – each formed in a convex mold – were joined together. Small cavities in the body of Aztec orangeware sherds indicate the addition of plant fibers (reeds or grasses) to the clay as temper to improve its workability. A pink tint in many of these sherds, caused by the presence of salt in the moist clay, suggests some potting near the saline lakes. In chapter 5 I discuss chemical analyses of Aztec sherds and the insights they provide into ceramic production and trade.

  Ethnohistoric sources contain bits of information on the Aztec pottery industry. In his descriptions of occupations, Sahagún lists two types of potters: a general “clay worker,” who made many different types of vessels, and a “griddle-maker,” who specialized in tortilla griddles:

  The griddle maker [is] one who moistens clay, kneads it, tempers it with [soft pieces of] reed, makes it into a soft paste . . . He makes griddles; he beats [the clay], flattens it, polishes it, smoothes it; he applies a slip. He places [the unfired pieces] in the oven; he feeds the fire, makes the oven smoke, cools the oven.

  He sells hard-fired [griddles] which ring, [which are] well tempered, [as well as those which are] poorly fired, smudged, blackened, discolored, poorly made, inferior, sounding as if cracked – cracked in firing.6

  From this passage, two things may be inferred. One, a griddle-maker was a specialist who made only one type of vessel, which indicates a division of labor within the overall pottery industry. Two, some potters sold their own wares in the market, a common pattern among the artisans described by Friar Sahagún. Many questions, however, remain unanswered. Did most towns and villages have some potters, or did a few large production centers supply all of central Mexico? How large were individual workshops? Were potters full-time or part-time specialists? Some tentative answers are suggested below and in chapter 5, but archaeologists continue to search for more evidence concerning the manufacture of Aztec pottery.7

  Cotton textiles

  Cotton cloth had many uses in Aztec Mexico. Much of it was made into clothing for men (loincloths and capes) and women (skirts and huipils or pullover shirts). Cloth also was used for bedding, bags, awnings, decorative hangings, battle armor, adornments for statues of the gods, and shrouds for the dead.8 Cotton textiles served as items of exchange, most commonly in the form of the quachtli, a long narrow folded cloth or cape. Quachtli served as money in the markets, were exchanged as gifts among the nobility, and formed the dominant item of tax payment at all levels. Commoners used them to pay nobles and subordinate city-states to pay the Aztec Empire.

  Cotton cloth had symbolic importance in addition to its practical uses. Clothing and capes came in both plain and highly decorated styles. Fancy, colorful types were reserved for important nobles or priests, and a special kind of decorated cape was worn exclusively by the Mexica kings. Some sources state that among the Mexica, only nobles were permitted to wear cotton clothing; commoners wore clothing of maguey cloth or animal skins. Thus cotton symbolized the privileges of nobility.

  Women made cotton cloth in the home. From ethnohistoric documents, we know that spinning and weaving were viewed as women's work and that all Aztec women, from the lowliest slave to the highest noblewoman, engaged in cloth production. Cloth production was a fundamental part of female gender identity. Newborn girls were presented with miniature spinning and weaving tools to symbolize their later adult activities (see chapter 6). Women worked at these tasks off and on, throughout the day, interspersed with their other domestic activities. Textile production began with the cleaning and combing of the raw cotton. The cleaned cotton was spun by hand into thread, and the thread was twisted into yarn. In the Codex Mendoza an illustration of a women teaching her daughter to spin cotton shows the method and tools that were used (figure 4.4, top). The fibers were drawn out and twisted onto a twirling wooden spindle or distaff. A round ceramic weight, the spindle whorl, gave the spindle momentum and provided a base on which the thread rested. Because cotton fibers are short, the spinner had to use care to control the spindle. A small bowl kept the base of the twirling spindle from sliding out of control.

  Figure 4.4 Girls being taught by their mothers to spin and weave cotton. Top: A 7-year-old learns to spin (Codex Mendoza 1992:v.4:123:f.59r). Bottom: A 13-year-old learns to weave with a backstrap loom (Codex Mendoza 1992:v.4:125:f.60r)

  Two of the spinning tools depicted in figure 4.4 – the spindle whorl and the small bowl – were made of fired clay. These artifacts survive as direct archaeological evidence for Aztec cotton-spinning (figure 4.5). Spindle whorls have been found at almost every excavated Aztec house in central Mexico, which supports the statements in ethnohistoric sources that all women – nobles and commoners, rural and urban – spun thread in their homes.

  Figure 4.5 Ceramic cotton-spinning tools from the Aztec village of Capilco. Compare these bowls and spindle whorls to those illustrated in the Codex Mendoza (figure 4.4, top) (photograph by Michael E. Smith)

  Once the thread was twisted into yarn, it was dyed if necessary. A variety of plants and insects were crushed and then boiled with water by specialists to extract dyes. The residue was removed in cake form and sold to consumers in the market. Women reconstituted the dyes, soaked the yarn, and then fixed the colors with a mordant. Cloth was woven on a backstrap loom. A woman hooked one end of the loom over a tree branch or pole and attached the other end to a harness that wrapped around her back. She leaned back to weave, using her posture and position to adjust the tension of the loom (figure 4.4, bottom). Unfortunately, the cross-pieces, shuttles, and other parts of the loom were made of wood or bone, and few of these have survived at Aztec archaeological sites.

  Cotton is a warm-country crop that does not grow at the chilly, high altitude of the Valley of Mexico. Families in the Aztec heartland obtained raw cotton from warmer areas through the market, and cotton was probably somewhat expensive when compared with the fibers of the locally grown maguey plant. Most households in the Valley of Mexico produced more maguey cloth than cotton cloth. In areas of lower elevation, like Morelos, the situation was reversed: cotton was cultivated in great quantities, but the fiber-producing species of maguey did not grow well in the warmer, moister climate. Fortunately f
or archaeologists, the ceramic spindle whorls used to spin cotton and maguey are easily distinguished by size. At Aztec houses excavated in Morelos, the small, cotton-spinning whorls are ubiquitous, but very few of the large, maguey-spinning whorls are found. In the higher and colder Valleys of Mexico and Toluca, however, maguey whorls are preponderant.

  The maguey industries

  The maguey plant is a remarkable cultigen whose leaves and sap the Aztecs used for many products (figure 4.6).9 The sixteenth-century Spanish naturalist Francisco Hernández described its benefits as follows:

  This plant has almost innumerable uses. The plant itself serves as firewood and for fencing fields . . . its leaves serve to cover roofs, as roof tiles, as plates or dishes, to make paper, and to make thread for footwear, cloth, and all kinds of garments . . . They make nails and tacks from the thorns, with which the Indians formerly perforated their ears in order to mortify their flesh when they worshipped demons . . . From the juice that drips out into the plant's central cavity when the interior leaves are cut out with stone knives, they make wine, honey, vinegar, and sugar.10

  Figure 4.6 A maguey plant at the Aztec city of Otumba (photograph by Michael E. Smith)

  The two major maguey industries were production of fiber and of pulque or wine. To make fiber, the long fleshy leaves or pencas were cut off the plant and the flesh was loosened by soaking the leaves in a solution or by roasting them in a pit. The fibrous flesh was then scraped from the outer membrane of the leaf with a stone scraper and allowed to dry. The dried fibers were spun tightly to make thread or twisted coarsely to make rope or twine. A coarse fiber, with long filaments, maguey thread was spun by hand onto a spindle outfitted with a large, heavy ceramic whorl. Unlike cotton, maguey fiber was drop spun, a method in which the twirling spindle hangs in the air, spinning freely. The thread was woven into clothing and other textiles on a backstrap loom similar to that used for cotton cloth.