The Aztecs

by Michael E Smith

  Tlaxcalla, the independent eastern Aztec state surrounded by the empire, is another case in point. When some Spanish soldiers asked Motecuhzoma and his generals why they did not complete their conquest of this renegade area, they received the following excuse: “We could easily do so; but then there would remain nowhere for the young men to train [militarily], except far from here; and, also, we wanted there to always be [nearby] people to sacrifice to our gods.”27

  In other words, the Mexica claimed that the Triple Alliance was not really trying to conquer Tlaxcalla but preferred to engage in “practice” wars. The Mexica called these battles “flowery wars” (xochiyaoyotl) to distinguish them from wars of conquest. In my opinion, however, the concept of “flowery war” was a propagandistic smokescreen invented by the Mexica to rationalize their failure to conquer Tlaxcalla. The Tlaxcallan rulers, however, responded to this question quite differently. They told the Spaniards that the Aztecs had them surrounded, had cut off their foreign trade in luxuries and salt, and were trying hard to defeat them, but had yet to succeed. Again, the Mexica words ring more of propaganda than of truth.28 The Tlaxcallans were formidable foes indeed, and the Triple Alliance simply was not powerful enough to defeat them. The Tlaxcallans later delivered a fatal blow to their enemy when they allied themselves with Hernando Cortés and participated in the conquest of Tenochtitlan in 1521.

  The Triple Alliance may not have managed to “conquer all the nations,” but the “wealth and opulence” that so impressed visitors to Tenochtitlan were real enough. When one considers the imperial taxes pouring into the capital two to four times a year together with the trade goods imported by Aztec merchants, the volume of incoming wealth was immense. This imperial wealth was instrumental in the growth of Tenochtitlan, and the size and grandeur of the capital city were concrete manifestations of the economic success of the empire.

  Chapter eight

  Cities and Urban Planning

  As long as the world will endure, the fame and glory of Mexico-Tenochtitlan will never perish.

  Chimalpahin

  Tenochtitlan, the Aztec imperial capital, was the largest city ever built in the ancient New World. Founded in AD 1325, Tenochtitlan grew into an island metropolis of 200,000 inhabitants. Until recently, almost all surviving information on Aztec urbanism concerned this great metropolis, and next to nothing was known about other Aztec cities. Most had been destroyed or buried under Spanish and, later, modern communities. Once Spain took control over Mesoamerica in 1521, Spanish colonists moved into many Aztec cities and immediately began to refashion them into European-style urban centers. These settlers rarely left descriptions of the earlier communities. Yet other cities and towns were abandoned soon after the Spanish Conquest.

  Today the few surviving Aztec urban settlements have become rather unassuming archaeological sites. Because they lack the huge pyramids and other grandiose architecture that for so long attracted archaeologists, these sites were ignored by early investigators. Many modern writers have assumed that other Aztec cities were simply small versions of Tenochtitlan, but recent archaeological work has shown this to be false. When fieldworkers following the “social archaeology” approach turned their attention to urban centers such as Otumba, Huexotla, Xaltocan, and Yautepec, they discovered a very different type of settlement from the imperial capital.

  Outside of Tenochtitlan, urban settlements were small in size and today would be considered quite rural in appearance. Houses were small and widely spaced, with orchards and gardens filling the area in between them. Yet these towns and cities functioned as urban centers. People from the entire polity depended upon the city-state's central settlement. It contained markets, temples, and administrative buildings that served a wider hinterland, and these institutions, not size or population density, made a community urban.1 In this chapter I review the new evidence concerning smaller Aztec cities and then discuss the more traditional information on the imperial capital.

  City-State Capitals

  Fictional Visit to Amecameca, an Aztec city

  The following fictional vignette gives an idea of how a typical Aztec city-state capital in the Valley of Mexico might have appeared to a visitor.2

  Opan, whose name means “On the road,” is an itinerant merchant approaching the city-state capital of Amecameca in the southeast Valley of Mexico. He is a young pochteca merchant from the Acolhua capital Texcoco, and his small party of five tlameme (carriers) are bringing obsidian tools and jade jewelry from Otumba to exchange for various local and imported goods at the Amecameca market. Situated near the major pass between the Valley of Mexico and Morelos, Amecameca lies along an ancient trade route, and its markets offer imported goods from lowland areas to the south.

  The edge of the city is demarcated by low, stone field walls that separate the surrounding cornfields from urban houselots. The walled houselots are fairly large, and include gardens, turkey pens, trash heaps, and open yard areas in addition to the adobe-walled houses and storehouses. Opan notices that houses in Amecameca are somewhat smaller than those in his native Texcoco but their construction and form are quite similar. In some cases, two or three houses are arranged around a small patio (much like the rural town of Cuexcomate described in chapters 3 and 6); in other cases, a single house occupies a lot. Although most houses are within shouting distance of one or more neighbors, privacy is maintained by the large size of the houselots and the dense foliage of the many fruit trees and other garden crops tended by each family.

  After a short walk past the green gardens of the outer city, the travelers pass a small market plaza next to a modest temple-pyramid. There are a few other unassuming stone buildings nearby. A number of people look with interest on the merchant's party. This plaza must be the center of one of the calpolli of Amecameca, he thinks. Opan wonders how many of these neighborhoods make up the city of Amecameca, certainly far fewer than in Texcoco. Nevertheless, Amecameca is a good-sized city for one so far from the central lakes of the Valley. A vendor beckons from under her awning, but her wares hold no allure for Opan. What a change from Otumba, he muses. There, many of the neighborhoods specialize in one or more crafts, and good bargains can be found in the small calpolli markets; in fact several bundles of the obsidian blades Opan carries were purchased at such a neighborhood market in Otumba. But this calpolli market in Amecameca offers only some corn, beans, and ceramic cookpots. Opan becomes anxious. Will the central market have the cotton, paper, feathers, and other goods he is seeking?

  The group moves on toward the city's center, and Opan continues to silently compare Amecameca to other settlements they have just passed through. The residential areas of this urban center, an important city-state capital with more than one tlatoani, so far look identical to the small villages along the Chalco–Amecameca road. The large houselots and gardens with ample greenery make all of these hinterland cities and towns appear rural to an urbanite from Texcoco, the second-largest Aztec city. How do these provincials react when they visit a real city like the imposing imperial capital Tenochtitlan, which dwarfs even the great ancient city of Texcoco? Opan's thoughts are interrupted when the group at last reaches the center of town and the features that distinguish Amecameca from a village appear.

  Their first glimpse of the city's center is the temple-pyramid, which towers over all other structures. The road they have followed ends at the back of the royal palace, a complex of stone buildings built on a large, low platform. It is still early, and several peasants from the countryside wait listlessly in the shade for a palace official to assign them tasks for the day. The palace and temple, the largest buildings in the city-state, both face onto an open plaza, where many people mill around, perhaps waiting for a ceremony to begin. The market is on the opposite, southern side of the plaza, so the group must go around the central area. Opan turns right, along the west side, passing to avoid the crowd gathering near the pyramid. Here, on the west side of the plaza, a game is in progress in the ballcourt, and the bearers slow down to
catch a glimpse of the action. Opan hurries them on, however, since his destination is now in view.

  It is market day in Amecameca, and the market plaza is filled with throngs of buyers amid the many stalls and booths. Opan notes with satisfaction that only a few vendors offer obsidian blades or jewelry. A local associate of Opan's guild has already paid the market tax and saved a choice stall, so after a brief conversation with the market judge, Opan unpacks his wares. These are what separate cities from villages, he thinks – the market, the pyramid, the palace, the plaza, and the throngs of people who gather around them to take care of their personal and professional needs. What would a merchant do without cities and towns?

  Urban Planning and Layout

  Most Aztec cities and towns were founded by Aztlan immigrants in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. The layout of the capital cities followed a plan with a long heritage in Mesoamerica. In this tradition, cities were arranged around a sacred central zone that comprised a rectangular public plaza bordered by the important civic and religious buildings. The orientation and placement of the central buildings were carefully planned, sometimes following the dictates of astronomical principles. Outside of the central precinct, however, formal planning was abandoned. Houses, workshops, markets, schools, and neighborhood temples were dispersed throughout the city, separated by gardens and open lots. This ancient pattern of urban layout was used by most Mesoamerican civilizations of the Classic and Postclassic epochs, including the lowland Classic Maya and the Zapotecs of the Valley of Oaxaca.3 The specific configuration of public buildings in the center of most Aztec cities was copied from the central ceremonial zone of Tula (figure 2.3).

  Aztec city-state capitals – such as Amecameca, Otumba, and Yautepec – played a more important role in daily life than did the distant imperial metropolis. Peasants came to town to attend the market, to participate in religious ceremonies, to pay their taxes, and to take care of innumerable other social and administrative obligations. A large, open public plaza formed the heart of the city, with the tlatoani's palace, a temple, and other civic structures arranged along its four sides (figure 8.1). The temple-pyramid always occupied the east side (as at Tula), probably because east was the direction of the sunrise. A single or double stairway led up the west or front side of the pyramid to the platform on top. Roofed temple rooms that housed the idols of the city-state's patron gods crowned the pyramid. This structure was the central focus of supernatural power in the city and polity. Many cities had a ballcourt along the plaza, where the Mesoamerican ballgame was played (see chapter 10). Other civic buildings that faced the plaza could include a telpochcalli school or various smaller temples or shrines.

  Figure 8.1 Main plaza at Coatetelco, Morelos, as excavated by Raúl Arana Alvarez (modified after Konieczna 1992; drawing by Michael E. Smith)

  These stone buildings and the plaza itself were laid out with a common orientation, usually close to the cardinal directions. The consistency of this pattern among surviving city centers suggests that urban central zones were carefully planned in accordance with basic principles of political and religious cosmology. The close proximity of the palace and temple would have reinforced the link between the earthly realm of the tlatoani and the sacred realm of the gods. The king ruled for the gods, and his political power had supernatural backing. The layout and orientation of these central precincts is consistent with the Aztecs' preoccupation with the east-west passage of the sun and a four-directional cosmology.4

  Outside of the sacred central zone, Aztec cities showed little evidence for planning or controlled growth. Houses and house groups were scattered here and there, buildings did not follow a common orientation, and formal streets or avenues were absent. Nobles and commoners lived in wards and calpolli. At least some of these urban calpolli were specialized economically.5 Houses in most Aztec cities were small, simple structures built of adobe bricks. Cuexcomate, a rural town, not a city-state capital, is one of the few centers whose housing pattern has been mapped completely (figure 3.7). The houses and patio groups of its 800 residents were distributed across an area of 14.6 ha with considerable open area within the town that was probably devoted to farming. Most Aztec cities were larger than Cuexcomate; the average city-state capital had about 5,000 inhabitants in an area of 110 ha (1.1 sq km). The population densities of the larger urban settlements, however, were similar to that of Cuexcomate (the city-state capitals averaged 50 persons per hectare, whereas the density at Cuexcomate was 55 persons per hectare). This suggests that Cuexcomate's pattern of scattered houses separated by large open lots may also have characterized other Aztec urban centers.

  Only a few cities managed to grow beyond the modest size of their contemporaries, usually when a polity experienced great political and economic success as capital of a large domain or empire. Apart from the obvious case of Tenochtitlan, examples include Azcapotzalco (the Tepanec capital before 1428) and Texcoco (Tenochtitlan's partner in the Triple Alliance) in the Valley of Mexico, and Cuauhnahuac in Morelos. Little survives of these cities archaeologically, and only Texcoco has any useful ethnohistoric descriptions.6 These cities all had more than 20,000 inhabitants, and their central precincts were probably larger and more impressive than most cities.

  Provincial Cities and Towns

  The general urban patterns reviewed above are best illustrated with concrete examples. The archaeological sites of Coatetelco and Calixtlahuaca were provincial Aztec cities whose public architecture has been excavated and restored. Yautepec is a site where fieldwork has concentrated on houses rather than large buildings. These three sites provide a cross-section of the available information about Aztec cities in central Mexico outside of the Valley of Mexico.

  Monumental Archaeology: Coatetelco and Calixtlahuaca

  Coatetelco was a medium-sized urban site in the Late Aztec period.7 The central part of the city was excavated and restored by Raúl Arana Alvarez in the 1970s, revealing a ballcourt (figure 10.14), a small temple-pyramid (figure 10.9), and several other structures, all grouped around a public plaza (figure 8.1). The residential areas of the site are buried today under the modern town of Coatetelco. The Coatetelco ballcourt is one of the few Aztec ballcourts to be excavated. Under the main stairway of the west ballcourt platform, Arana encountered elite burials with hundreds of grave goods, including ceramic vessels, obsidian, jade, and copper-bronze objects. The cacao vase in figure 6.11 is from this offering.

  Coatetelco is important because it is one of the few Aztec cities whose central precinct has been excavated extensively. The numerous small platforms in the plaza adjacent to the ballcourt are an unusual feature. Several of these contained buried offerings, including a collection of long-handled incense burners similar to the one shown in figure 10.1. The rather modest temple-pyramid at Coatetelco shows that not all Aztec cities had large imposing pyramids like those at Tenochtitlan, Tenayuca, or Teopanzolco. Unfortunately the Coatetelco excavations did not target the likely palace nor any of the residential zones.

  Calixtlahuaca, the setting for the royal palace described in chapter 6, was a city of nearly 3 sq km in the Toluca Valley.8 The best-known building is a large circular pyramid dedicated to Ehecatl, the wind god (see figure 10.11, below). This structure was built in four stages. A series of rich burials were placed in front of the stairs, and a large stone sculpture was excavated from the fill of the pyramid – a life-size image of a man wearing an Ehecatl mask. Adjacent to the stairs, García Payón found two cylindrical stone sacrificial altars covered with relief carvings of symbols of human blood (see figure 10.4A). Also noteworthy is the large palace compound (figure 6.10), and several groups of temples arranged around small plazas (figure 8.2). At 3,500 sq m (not including the open courtyard) the Calixtlahuaca palace is the second largest Aztec palace (after Yautepec) to be excavated.

  Figure 8.2 Temple group at Calixtlahuaca in the Toluca Valley (photograph by Michael E. Smith)

  The layout and planning of Calixtlahuaca remain somewhat of a myste
ry. The city lacked a central public plaza flanked by a large pyramid and palace. The palace sits alone at the base of the hill, not far from a large, low platform that has not been excavated yet. The circular pyramid – like circular temples at other Aztec sites – does not seem to lie in the urban core district, but rather sits by itself at some distance from the palace. None of the other temple groups (e.g., figure 8.2) are large enough to have served as the central temples of the city. Because García Payón focused his excavations on the major architecture, he uncovered numerous elite or other special burials and offerings at Calixtlahuaca, and these proved to be quite rich. They included hundreds of ceramic vessels; numerous objects of copper and gold; much jewelry of obsidian, rock crystal, and other precious stones; and hundreds of human bones that had been cut with parallel notches (see figure 9.10 below).

  Social Archaeology: Yautepec

  Sites like Coatetelco and Calixtlahuaca, excavated following the “monumental archaeology” approach (see chapter 1), provide important information on urban public architecture and the layout of urban core districts, but reveal little of the nature of life in Aztec cities. To gain an idea of the kinds of people who lived in cities and towns, their activities and ways of life, it is necessary to excavate residential structures. This was the goal of my excavations at Yautepec.