The Aztecs

by Michael E Smith

  9. I should note that it is very hard to determine the actual frequency of human sacrifice. The Spanish conquerors deliberately exaggerated the extent of human sacrifice to make the Aztecs appear more barbaric; this helped justify their conquest and domination. Although we cannot make a quantitative estimate, however, most scholars agree that sacrifice was widespread and frequent in Aztec central Mexico. In an interesting cross-cultural study, Winkelman (1998) reports that societies that practice human sacrifice tend to suffer from population pressure, they tend to engage in warfare to capture land and resources, and they tend to have nonhierarchical religions. The Aztecs fit the first two characteristics but not the third.

  10. Much has been written on the symbolism and significance of human sacrifice in Aztec religion and society. The dominant scholarly interpretation for over a century has been that sacrifice was viewed as feeding the sun with blood and hearts to ensure the health and continuity of the sun and the gods (e.g., D. Carrasco 1999; León-Portilla 1993). Michel Graulich (2000) suggested an alternative view of sacrifice that was more important in many contexts. He notes that sacrifice was initiated by the gods in mythical time as a means of atonement for their transgressions. It was carried out on earth by humans in the belief that sacrifice helps them atone for their own transgressions, enabling individuals to reach a more favorable afterlife. More recently, Graulich (2005a, 2005b) has stressed that what we call “human sacrifice” was a broad category that included a wide variety of practices, carried out in diverse settings, with a number of kinds of religious and social meanings. In many ways, these practices were not so greatly different from some modern practices. Caroline Dodds Pennock (forthcoming) has suggested: “While one would not want to overstate the case, it would not be inappropriate to parallel a victim of human sacrifice with an early modern Christian martyr – both were believed to have laid down their lives for the gods and found paradise as a result.”

  11. See Harner (1977). Bernard Ortiz de Montellano (1978; 1990:85–94) published the strongest of several refutations of Harner's protein deficiency theory of cannibalism.

  12. When considering the political and social context of human sacrifice, it makes sense to compare this practice to capital punishment in modern societies. Like capital punishment, Aztec sacrifice was a legal and public act of killing carried out by the state. Indeed, capital punishment today is a form of ritualized killing. The major differences between the two practices, of course, lie in the reasons and justifications for the acts. Aztec sacrifice was not a punishment for a crime; it was a religious act done for both political and religious reasons. The comparison of capital punishment and human sacrifice in general is explored by Melissa Ptacek (2011) and Brian Smith (2000); see also Dodds Pennock (forthcoming).

  13. For overviews of the sacred precinct and Templo Mayor, see Boone (1987a), Marquina (1960), and Matos Moctezuma (1988).

  14. There are numerous excellent publications on the Templo Mayor project. Some of the major works are Chávez Balderas (2007b), López Luján (2005, 2006), Matos Moctezuma (1995, 1999), Olmeda Vera (2002), and Olmo Frese (1999).

  15. Leonardo López Luján (2005:52–54) reviews the various schemes that have been proposed for identifying the rulers responsible for each construction stage of the Templo Mayor.

  16. Excavations at the Eagle Warrior Hall were done by Leonardod López Luján (2006). The Cathedral excavations are described in Matos Moctezuma (1999).

  17. The offerings are described and analyzed by López Luján (2005). Recent excavations in the sacred precinct continue to uncover offerings. Perhaps the most spectacular is Offering 102, which by chance had been sealed airtight, resulting in outstanding preservation of organic materials. In addition to the incense burners, sculptures, and other nonperishable objects found in most offerings, Offering 102 yielded a dyed cloth cape and numerous other pieces of textile and plant remains. The contents of this offering appear to represent the complete outfit and paraphernalia of an Aztec priest (Barrera Rivera et al. 2001). Artifacts and other objects excavated by the Templo Mayor project are on display at the Templo Mayor Museum, a stunning museum recently built at the site. Many of the objects are illustrated in Bonifaz Nuño and Robles (1981) and D. Carrasco and Matos Moctezuma (1992).

  18. Emily Umberger (1987, 1996a) discusses the way Aztec artists drew upon earlier imperial styles. López Luján (2005) describes the Templo Mayor offerings; the burial at the Eagle Warrior Hall is particularly noteworthy for containing heirloom ceramic vessels from both Teotihuacan and Tula (Román Berrelleza and López Luján 1999). See discussion in chapter 8.

  19. Codex Telleriano-Remensis, f.8v (Quiñones Keber 1995:258). Gussinyer (1969a, 1969b) discusses the Pino Suárez temple; Marquina (1964) describes the Calixtlahuaca example, which was excavated by García Payón; and Guilliem Arroyo (1999) discusses the Tlatelolco temple and its offerings. Pollock (1936) describes circular temples throughout Mesoamerica and their association with Ehecatl.

  20. González Sobrino et al. (2001) describe the Teopanzolco skulls. In this and other cases we know that these were decapitated heads – rather than skulls removed from earlier graves and reburied – because they were accompanied by the top cervical vertebrae. This only occurs when the head is cut off at the time of death. Severed skulls like this have also been found at other Aztec sites. While we were excavating at Yautepec, for example, construction workers digging a trench for a water pipe near the excavations uncovered a large bowl containing a severed skull with cervical vertebrae. The Tlatelolco skull rack is described by Pijoan and Mansilla (1997) and Pijoan et al. (1989).

  21. Smith (1992:327–333).

  22. Durán (1971:412–470). Sahagún (1950–1982:bk.2) devoted an entire book of the Florentine Codex to the monthly ceremonies. The Toxcatl ceremonies are described in Durán (1971:426–429) and Sahagún (1950–1982:bk.2:64–73); see also Heyden's (1991) analysis. Excellent descriptions and analyses of selected monthly ceremonies may be found in Broda (1970) and Graulich (1992a). See also the chapters in Quiñones Keber (2002) and Peperstraete (2009).

  23. The timing of the monthly ceremonies with respect to the agricultural cycle is the subject of some debate. While some of the ceremonies seem appropriate to their seasonal timing at the time of the Spanish Conquest, others seem out of step with the seasons (e.g., harvest rituals during the dry season). Graulich (1992a) is of the opinion that the failure of the Aztecs to add extra days for leap years led to a slippage in the timing of the monthly ceremonies to the point where they were many months out of tune with the seasons by 1519. Other scholars disagree with him (e.g., Hassig 2001); the Aztecs knew the length of the solar year to a high level of precision, and they were aware that adding days for leap years was needed to keep the calendar in line with the seasons. This issue of leap years is a complicated technical one that remains an open question in need of more research.

  24. Sahagún (1950–1982:bk.2:64).

  25. Durán (1971:426).

  26. Sahagún (1950–1982:bk.7:27). It is interesting that the supposed Maya prediction of the end of the world in the year 2012 has received much attention from the press and the public, whereas the Aztec prediction is rarely mentioned. The Maya did not, in fact, predict the end of the world; this idea is a modern fabrication by new age authors. Aveni (2009) is a rigorous and authoritative treatment that explains the Maya calendar and why the date of AD 2012 was mentioned by ancient Maya scribes.

  27. Elson and Smith (2001) describe these deposits and others excavated by George Vaillant at Chiconautla and Nonoalco in the Valley of Mexico.

  28. For the Mesoamerican ballgame, see Scarborough and Wilcox (1991) and Whittington (2001).

  29. Durán (1971:318). People also gambled on the board game patolli, in which beans were moved around a course in a manner similar to the game pachisi.

  30. Durán (1971:463, 452).

  31. Louise Burkhart (1997) explores the reasons why the early Spanish priests were usually quite ignorant of what happened within
the confines of the house and home. I discuss archaeological evidence for domestic ritual in Smith (2002).

  32. Seler (1991) provides a brief introduction to magic and divination, and mentions modern survivals. Anders et al. (1993b) and Boone (2007) discuss calendrical divination. These are the primary themes of most of the ritual codices (see chapters 1 and 11). Of the chroniclers, Sahagún (1950–1982) and Ruiz de Alarcón (1982) have the most information on magic and divination. There are some fascinating survivals of Aztec magic practices, in modified form, among some of the Nahua peoples of today (Knab 1997; Sandstrom 1991).

  33. Ruiz de Alarcón (1982:213–214).

  11 Science and Art

  1. The Nahuatl term for the wild fig is amatl; the trees are Ficus benjamina or Ficus involuta. Aztec books and paper are discussed in Sandstrom and Sandstrom (1986) and von Hagen (1944).

  2. Sandstrom and Sandstrom (1986) describe modern Otomi papermaking, and Stromberg (1976) describes the Guerrero tourist paper industry. In technical terms, bark paper is actually a “felt.”

  3. Important Aztec books mentioned in the text include the following: the Codex Borbonicus (1974); the Codex Borgia (Anders et al. 1993a). See also Díaz and Rogers (1993); the Codex Telleriano-Remensis (Quiñones Keber 1995); the Codex Magliabechiano (1983); the Codex Mendoza (1992); Berdan and Anawalt (1997); the Tira de la Peregrinación (1944) and the Tira de Tepechpan (Noguez 1978). For general discussions of Aztec codices, see Berger (1998), Boone (2000a, 2007), and Robertson (1959).

  4. Díaz del Castillo (1963:227–228).

  5. Sahagún (1950–1982:bk.10:28). See also Alva Ixtlilxochitl (1975–1977:v.1:527). See Douglas (2010) for a detailed analysis of palace scribes and manuscript painting in the Texcoco palace.

  6. Classic Maya writing is discussed by Coe (1992), Coe and Van Stone (2001), and the essays in Houston et al. (2001). Justeson and Kaufman (1993) describe their decipherment of Epi-Olmec writing; see also Mora-Marín (2010). Marcus (1992) reviews Maya, Aztec, Mixtec, and Zapotec writing, with an emphasis on the Oaxaca scripts. Systems of signs at Teotihuacan and Xochicalco are discussed in the chapters in Diehl and Berlo (1989); Taube (2000b) is an important recent study. Oudijk (2008) reviews the different scholarly approaches to the study of codices and writing in Mesoamerican studies.

  7. For discussions of Aztec writing see Berdan (1992b), Prem (1992, 2008), and Whittaker (2009). Berdan (1992a) is a catalog, description, and translation of all of the glyphs in the Codex Mendoza (1992), the single largest corpus of Aztec glyphs.

  8. These concepts – pictographs, ideographs, and phonetic elements – are simplified descriptive terms. In technical studies, linguists classify glyphs instead into logograms (signs for words), morphograms (signs for units of meaning), and phonograms (signs for a sound or sounds) (e.g., Whittaker 2009).

  9. In English, rebus writing is often used in children's games. For example, the sentence “I saw Aunt Rose” can be written with four glyphs: an eye, a carpenter's saw, an ant, and a rose; similarly the word “belief” can be depicted by a bee and a leaf. Marcus (1992:20, 65) discusses the use of the rebus principle in Mesoamerican writing systems.

  10. In 2008 Maya writing expert Alfonso Lacadena (2008) proposed that phoneticism was far more prevalent in the writing practices of Aztec Texcoco than had been previously believed; see also Zender (2008). Lacadena argued that several distinct regional scribal traditions existed in central Mexico, with the scribes of Texcoco taking the phonetic principle much further than their colleagues in Tenochtitlan and other cities. Lacadena even suggested that Texcocan Aztec writing was a complete writing system, not unlike that of the Classic Maya, that is, the glyphs were sufficiently phonetic that they could record anything that could be said in Aztec speech. This is a considerable departure from prior analyses of Aztec writing, and Lacadena's views were challenged by experts in Aztec writing. Gordon Whittaker (2009) and Hanns Prem (2008), for example, reject Lacadena's views of the extent and significance of phoneticism in the Texcoco documents, and they point out a number of technical errors in his readings and analyses of individual glyphs. Much of this debate centers on technical linguistic details, and it does not appear to be fully resolved by the experts yet.

  11. Aztec calendars are discussed by Aveni (2001), Hassig (2001), and Tena (1987).

  12. A common misunderstanding concerning the use of ancient calendars in Mesoamerica and in other civilizations is that peasant farmers were dependent upon priests or other leaders to interpret the calendar in order to guide their farming. Unless instructed by leaders, peasants would not know when to plant their fields, which must be done just before the rainy season starts. This secret knowledge is said to have been the basis for the power of priests over peasants. Anyone familiar with traditional farmers in Mesoamerica or other parts of the world, however, knows that they do not need to consult priests or formal calendars to know when to plant and cultivate their fields. Peasants are very aware of weather and the seasons. They make decisions about planting based upon their observations, experience, and the benefit of many generations of accumulated practical knowledge of the environment and technology. Leaders achieve and maintain domination over subjects through their control over more tangible factors such as land and labor, not calendars.

  13. Torquemada (1975–1983:v.1:260, bk.2:ch.64); translated by León-Portilla (1963:142).

  14. Archaeoastronomy is the study of ancient astronomy. Aveni's research provides the best introduction to the astronomical accomplishments of the Aztecs and other Mesoamerican cultures: see Aveni (2001) and the chapters in Aveni (2008). For Aztec astronomy, Aveni (1992) is a good introduction; see also Aveni and Calnek (1999) and Šprajc (2000).

  15. Motolinía (1971:24, ch.16); translated by Aveni (1992:150). In other words, because the alignment of a new construction stage of the Templo Mayor was incorrect, and the sun did not rise between the temples as expected, Motecuhzoma ordered the temple torn down and rebuilt correctly.

  16. Aztec conceptions of time and history are discussed by Hassig (2001) and León-Portilla (1963). Boone (2000a) has the most complete discussion of the various types of historical codices and their implications for conceptions of time and history.

  17. Unfortunately there is no systematic work on the ancient technology of the Aztecs or the other peoples of Mesoamerica. The notes to chapters 03 and 04 contain references to the technology of Aztec agriculture and various craft industries.

  18. Gussinyer (1974) discusses lime plaster. Much of Roys's (1934) excellent discussion of Maya construction methods applies equally to the Aztecs. The engineering of the Tenochtitlan aqueduct is described by Bribiesca Castrejón (1958).

  19. For Aztec arithmetic and mathematics, see Closs (1997), Payne and Closs (1986), and Williams and Jorge y Jorge (2008). Castillo F. (1972) discusses measurement systems.

  20. Aztec medicine is discussed by Ortiz de Montellano (1990) and López Austin (1988). The Aztecs owed their good health in part to the lower levels of infectious disease in the ancient New World compared to the premodern Old World. With the exception of the llama of Andean South America, the New World lacked the large domesticated animals that were often vectors of disease transmission and contributors to poor sanitation in the Old World. Also, in the New World urbanism developed later and was less widespread than in the Old World. Dense, urbanized populations are the prime breeding ground for infectious disease. The Aztecs and other native peoples, however, paid a heavy price for the lack of these diseases when Old World epidemics swept the New World in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries; see Crosby (1972, 2004).

  21. Sahagún (1905–1907:v.3:f.119r), translated by León-Portilla (1963:26).

  22. Sahagún (1950–1982:bk.10:161–162).

  23. Motolinía (1971:160), translated by Ortiz de Montellano (1990:181).

  24. The best discussion of ancient and modern Mesoamerican sweat-baths is the classic paper by Cresson (1938). Excavations of Aztec sweat-baths are described by Ortega Cabrera and Álvarez
Arellano (2008). Archaeologists identify these features by their small size, a pile of fire-cracked rocks, and a channel to carry away the excess water.

  25. Ruiz de Alarcón (1982:267–269).

  12 Art, Music, and Literature

  1. Nicholson and Quiñones Keber (1994:vii). A number of authors have confused the Mixteca-Puebla style with the earlier coastal tradition, treating the two as manifestations of a single phenomenon. My wife and I criticized this approach, however, because the coastal style occurred earlier in time and was not present in the Mixteca-Puebla area (Smith and Heath-Smith 1980). The chapters in Nicholson and Quiñones Keber (1994) provide numerous examples and analyses of the Mixteca-Puebla style proper.

  2. Mixteca-Puebla style murals are discussed by Robertson (1970), Smith and Heath-Smith (1980), and the chapters in Nicholson and Quiñones Keber (1994). Painted manuscripts from the outer imperial provinces are discussed in Berdan et al. (1996) and Boone (2000a). For recent views of the role and context of the Mixteca-Puebla style, see chapters in Smith and Berdan (2003). The Mesoamerican world system is discussed in chapter 13.

  3. Aztec stone sculpture is discussed in López Luján and Fauvet-Berthelot (2005), Matos Moctezuma and Solis (2005), and Nicholson and Quiñones Keber (1983). Monumental imperial sculptures and their religious and political significance are analyzed by R. F. Townsend (1979) and Umberger (2007).

  4. There is a debate over the identity of this deity. The traditional view – that this god is Tonatiuh – was challenged by R. F. Townsend (1979) and others, who argued that it was the earth lord Tlaltecuhtli. I follow the interpretations of Graulich (1992b) and Nicholson (1993), who favor a return to the traditional view. There is extensive discussion of this issue in the chapters in Villela and Miller (2010).