Ancient neighborhoods

The organization of Calixtlahuaca into neighborhoods is one of the themes of our project. Julie Novic is focusing on this issue in her dissertation project, and maybe she will write a post on her research soon.

For comparative discussion of urban neighborhoods, see my new blog, Wide Urban World.

• There is a post on the universality of neighborhoods
• And there is a post on Mark Twain's description of London neighborhoods.

Tarascan urbanism in the news

West Mexico seems to be the exciting place for new archaeological research on Postclassic urbanism See my prior post on the French work in Michoacan. And now Chris Fisher's fieldwork at early Tarascan urban, or proto-urban, sites is making the news (LA Times). Read more about his project on his website, the "Legacies of Resilience Foundation."

I'm sure that the people of Calixtlahuaca were in touch with Tarascans, but why haven't we found any Tarascan pottery at the site? When we analyze the obsidian, we will probably find that a good part of it comes from sources near Lake Cuitzeo, and it is also very likely that much of our copper-bronze is from Tarascan territory. But the lack of ceramics remains puzzling.

New blog on Postclassic urban sites in Michoacan

Marion Forest has just started an informative blog on "Le Projet Uacusecha." This project is investigating some very interesting urban sites in an area of lava flows near Zacapu, Michoacan.As you can see from the photo, many of the stone foundation walls are very well preserved at these sites. This is an important project for expanding our understanding of the forms and organization of urbanism in Postclassic Mesoamerica.

Who built the temples and palace at Calixtlahuaca?

Many people will probably interpret this question in ethnic terms. Were the buildings built by the Otomis, the Nahuas, the Matlatzincas, or someone else? Unfortunately, we don’t have an answer to the question of the ethnic or linguistic affiliations of the people of Calixtlahuaca. This question, on the other hand, is meant to address the kinds of people and the kinds or labor organization behind the construction of large buildings at Calixtlahuaca and other Aztec-period cities. I discuss this issue briefly in my book, Aztec City-State Capitals (Smith 2008), but here I will elaborate on the issue of labor taxation.

I should first justify using the term “taxation” for Aztec society. In reading both the primary sources and the entire scholarly literature on the Aztecs, one rarely encounters the term “tax.” Aztec specialists (including myself) typically use the term “tribute” to refer to the obligations people had to their local king or to the Aztec Empire. But if one wants to compare the Aztecs to other early states, then it makes sense to use standard comparative terminology. Most of the obligations that are typically called “tribute” are in reality taxes – payments that were regular, specified, organized, and recorded.

Of the many types of taxes in Aztec society, the one most relevant to building large buildings was called coatequitl, an example of the category of corvée labor. One definition of corvée labor is: “compulsory, unpaid labor demanded by a lord or king and the system of such labor in general.” The best analysis of coatequitl in Aztec society is by Teresa Rojas (Rojas Rabiela 1979). To summarize a complex set of information, each commoner household owed a certain number of days of labor each year to their local king. People were organized into groups or squads of 20 workers called a centecpantli, each with an overseer.

These work squads were sometimes further organized into larger groups of 100 or 200 workers, again under an overseer. The Codex of San Andrés (Galarza 1963) shows a group of 400 laborers, divided into 20 squads of 20 workers each (see first figure). The flag (“pantli”) is a sign for 20. These 400 workers face the overseer, who stands in front of a public building.

In early colonial Mexico City, Spanish officials adapted the Aztec system of coatequitl and work squads to their own purposes, obtaining the labor to build churches, houses, and other buildings. In the second figure here, the Codex Osuna (Códice Osuna 1973) shows a group of workers who owed service to the Viceroy (pictured at the bottom). There are 20 unspecialized laborers (note the flag; the digging stick signals coatequitl labor), as well as a stonemason, a carpenter, and a plasterer. At the right is shown an emblem for 20 “indios de servicio,” personal servants for the Viceroy’s household.

We do not have any specific documents from Calixtlahuaca that talk of labor service or temple construction. But from a general knowledge of Aztec systems of labor and taxation, we can conclude that the large buildings were built by the commoner residents of the city, perhaps aided by residents of nearby towns subject to the king of Calixtlahuaca. People were expected and required to provide this labor service, which was a regular part of life for Aztec-period commoners. The situation is somewhere in between two popular views: (1) The old National-Geographic-Magazine view that ancient temples were built by gangs of slave laborers; and (2) the view that people willingly contributed their labor voluntarily to build temples to the gods (just as today people voluntarily give up their taxes to the IRS out of patriotic devotion to one’s country).

For more information on coatequitl labor in Aztec society, see: (Hicks 1978; Rojas Rabiela 1979; Rojas Rabiela 1986; Valle 2003). For some discussion of a theoretical context for this kind of labor taxation, see my publishing blog.

References

Códice Osuna (1973) Pintura del Gobernador, Alcaldes y Regidores de México: "Códice Osuna". 2 vols. Ministerio de Educación y Ciencia, Direccíon General de Archivos y Bibliotecas, Madrid.

Galarza, Joaquín (1963) Codex San Andrés (juridiction de Cuautitlan): Manuscrit Pictographique du Musée de l'Homme de Paris (II). Journal de la Société des Amréicanistes 52:61-90.

Hicks, Frederic (1978) Los calpixque de Nezahualcoyotl. Estudios de Cultura Náhuatl 13:129-152.

Rojas Rabiela, Teresa (1979) La organización del trabajo para las obras públicas: el coatequitl y las cuadrillas de trabajadores. In El trabajo y los trabajadores en la historia de México, edited by Elsa Cecilia Frost, Michel C. Meyer and Josefina Zoraido Vázquez, pp. 41-66. El Colegio de México, Mexico City.

Rojas Rabiela, Teresa (1986) El sistema de organización en cuadrillas. In Origen y formación del estado en Mesoamérica, edited by Andrés Medina, Alfredo López Austin and Mari Carmen Serra, pp. 135-150. Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia, Mexico City.

Smith, Michael E. (2008) Aztec City-State Capitals. University Press of Florida, Gainesville.

Valle, Perla (2003) Por obra pública y coatequitl: mano de obra indígena en códices jurídicos del siglo XVI. In Proyecto etnohistoria: visión alternativa del tiempo pp. 17-21. Diario de Campo, Supplement. vol. 25.

Animation of the Ehecatl pyramid

Raúl Miranda Gómez, a Mexican student who worked on the project in 2007, created a short animation file that shows Structure 3, the Ehecatl pyramid.

View the animation here

Has William Sanders been to Calixtlahuaca?

One of the reasons we are working at Calixtlahuaca is to try to understand the site as an urban center. This was a major Aztec-period city, and not to many such sites have been intensively studied. I've been working on and off on Mesoamerican urbanism since my first fieldwork in Mexico, with William T. Sanders in 1974. I'm sure that Bill Sanders visited Calixtlahuaca during his long archaeological career. But the title of this entry refers to the influence of Sanders's thought on my own approach to urbanism in general and to Calixtlahuaca in particular.

William Sanders passed away a few weeks ago. I've already blogged about my relationship with Sanders and about his impressive publication record, and I just sent in a post to H-Urban, a listserv on urban history, that outlines Sanders's work on urbanism. I often argued with Sanders, in person and in print, and I frequently criticized his approach to urbanism as too limiting and confining for ancient Mesoamerican cities. That said, much of what we are doing at Calixtlahuaca are things that Sanders would consider important activities for urban archaeology.

After two seasons of fieldwork, we are still not in a position to make a credible population estimate for the site. This is completely unacceptable to me--probably because of the influence of Sanders on my thinking. Yes, it is limiting to put too much emphasis on urban population levels. But we certainly do need those data. So in our next grant we will include funds for some geophysical prospecting that will allow us to figure out how many people lived at Calixtlahuaca. We are also working to document the houses of Calixtlahuaca, and the entire spectrum of the urban economy, from gardening to using imported bronze bells, topics that Bill Sanders would want to know about the site.

So apart from any personal visits he may have made, the ideas and inspiration of William Sanders have certainly been to Calixtlahuaca, and they continue to influence this project.

Terraced Hill Cities in Postclassic Codices

Calixtlahuaca covered the top and most of the slopes of Cerro Tenismo (see photo). There were a number of other terrace hill cities in ancient Mesoamerica. The best known are from the Classic and Epiclassic periods: Monte Alban and Xochicalco. Both were large complex cities with abundant public architecture on top of the hill and residential areas on terraces on the hillslopes. The site of El Palmillo in Oaxaca has less spectacular public architecture, but the residential preservation is good and recent fieldwork by Gary Feinman and Linda Nicholas is providing important new information (Feinman, and Nicholas 2004; Feinman, et al. 2002; Feinman, et al. 2006).

The terraced hill cities of the Late Postclassic period are less well known, but this was a major settlement type. Just 15 km south of Calixtlahuaca is Tlacotepec, another Postclassic terraced hill city. It was damaged severely by Frederick Starr by his “excavations” around 1900, and today we know little about the site beyond the several thousand objects that Starr sold to the Field Museum of Natural History (McVicker 1992).

There are a number of representations of terraced hill cities in the codices. One such image from a Cuicatec codex, the Códice Fernéndez Leal (f. 13-14), is shown here (van Doesburg 2001: v.2, f.13-14). There is a battle in progress, with warriors standing on all of the terraces and fending off attackers at the base. Another Oaxacan example (see photo) is from the Relación Geográfica of Texupan (Acuña 1984-88: v.2, p222). The terraced site, on a hill looming above the Spanish colonial town, may have been the Postclassic citey of Texupan.

One final example is provided in the Historia Tolteca-Chichimeca (Kirchhoff, et al. 1976:f. 42v), which is also the scene of a battle. The fact that two out of three codex images show battles suggests that military defense may have been important in the decision to build cities on hills in the Postclassic period. This is the interpretation of Gerardo Gutiérrez, whose 2005 article pointed me toward these images (Gutiérrez 2005).

For Calixtlahuaca, however, the defensive argument has less to support it. It is always difficult to argue from archaeological remains whether features such as city walls were built for defense or for symbolic reasons (there is a big literature on this, I won’t cite sources here). At Calixtlahuaca, two public buildings were built on the flat land at the base of the hill—the royal palace and a ceremonial platform that may have been a ballcourt. If defense were of paramount importance in the design of the site, one would expect that the royal palace would be built on the slopes, or perhaps on top of the cerro.

As far as we can tell from the native historical sources, Calixtlahuaca had no rivals as a political capital early in its history (this is from a paper by Brian Tomaszewski and me that is now in preparation), so perhaps its rulers did not worry about defense in laying out their city. But had they thought more of defense, perhaps they could have held off Axayacatl and the invading Mexica army a bit longer in the 1470s.

I wish someone would write a paper synthesizing what we know about terraced hill cities in Postclassic Mesoamerica.

REFERENCES:

Acuña, René (1984-88) Relaciones geográficas del siglo XVI. 10 vols. Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Mexico City.

Feinman, Gary M. and Linda M. Nicholas (2004) Hilltop Terrace Sites of Oaxaca, Mexico: Intensive Surface Survey at Guirún, El Palmillo, and the Mitla Fortress. Fieldiana, Anthropology vol. 37. Field Museum of Natural History, Chicago.

Feinman, Gary M., Linda M. Nicholas and Helen R. Haines (2002) Houses on a Hill: Classic Period Domestic Life at El Palmillo, Oaxaca, Mexico. Latin American Antiquity 13:251-278.

Feinman, Gary M., Linda M. Nicholas and Helen R. Haines (2006) Socioeconomic Inequality and the Consumption of Chipped Stone at El Palmillo, Oaxaca, Mexico. Latin American Antiquity 17:151-176.

Gutiérrez, Gerardo (2005) Jardines defensivos: un acercamiento histórica-arqueológico al use de la vegetación en la guerra antigua. Anales de Antropología 39(1):51-78.

Kirchhoff, Paul, Lina Odena Güemes and Luis Reyes García (editors) (1976) Historia tolteca-chichimeca. Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia, Mexico City.

McVicker, Donald (1992) México: La Visión del Cosmos: Three Thousand Years of Creativity. The Mexican Fine Arts Center Museum, Chicago.

van Doesburg, Sebastian (2001) Códices Cuicatecos Porfirio Díaz y Fernández Leal. 2 vols. Grupo Editorial Miguel Angel Porrúa, Mexico City.