Our lab is in the newspaper

The Mexican newspaper Milenio just ran a full-page spread of photos taken in our lab (at the Colegio Mexiquense). For a pdf of the article, click here.

The article is called: "Desentierran varias piezas arqueológicas en la entidad."  Milenio, July 15, 2010. Section: Milenio Edomex, page 8. It is a "fotoreportaje" with photos by Iván Carmona, and text by Caludia Hidalgo. They visited us July 14 (Bastille Day). The photos in this post were taken by Carmona, but not used in the article; they are reproduced here with his permission. A longer text piece by Ms. Hidalgo is scheduled to appear in the newspaper Tuesday July 20.

Mysterious Calixtlahuaca: Memo to TV producers

Memo to TV producers:

Tonight I watched the PBS/National Geographic show, “Ghosts of Machu Picchu” that emphasized the mysterious nature of this Inca site. When you make your million-dollar documentary on Calixtlahuaca, here are some of the mysteries you could emphasize. Based on the fact that many of the so-called “mysteries” that structured the Machu Picchu show have not been at all mysterious since John Rowe’s 1990 paper (Rowe 1990), I will list some “mysteries” of Calixtlahuaca and their solutions (so that you can avoid the real information until the end of the show, for dramatic effect).

• Why was the main pyramid circular in form? Was this a sacred shape, perhaps a symbol of the cosmos? Might the shape relate to the statue of the wind god found buried in the pyramid? Could it indicate that the people of Calixtlahuaca were in tune with the weather and the cosmos? You can use haunting and spooky flute music in this segment.
• Reality check: The role of circular temples and the wind god has been known since the first codices were studied, and the topic was thoroughly analyzed in Pollock (1936).
• Why did so many of the human long bones excavated at Calixtlahuaca in the 1930s have deep parallel notches? Could these have been sacred musical instruments that produced an eerie percussion sound used in secret rituals? Why did these skeletons disappear after 1935?
• Reality check: The uses of these objects as musical instruments has been understood at least since Seler’s work over a hundred years ago (Seler 1992). We don’t know what happened to the bones, though.
• Why was this city built on a hill? Was it to worship the gods of the sky, or perhaps the sun god? Can this be explained by the “sacred landscape theory” that explains Machu Picchu according to Nova last night? (actually I prefer Rowe’s more prosaic explanation). Just like Machu Picchu, there were sacred volcanoes to the south and the east of Calixtlahuaca (and probably to the north and west, although I haven’t looked yet).
• Well, I guess I have to admit that the placement of the city on a hill is really a mystery of sorts, something that we are working on. But it is hard to attribute the location to a “sacred landscape theory” when nearly all other Aztec-period cities were NOT built on mountains, whereas the basic belief system was widespread.

Sincerely yours,

M. E. Smith, skeptical archaeologist

Now, here are some REAL mysteries, but probably not the kind of mystery that TV producers would be interested in:

• Why do so many people insist in attributing mystery to archaeological sites and ancient peoples? Weren’t ancient people humans like you and me, living regular lives like people all over the world? Why must the past be portrayed as mysterious and so very different from the present?
• Why do people seem amazed that ancient peoples did the things they did? Inka stonework is admirable for its skill and aesthetics, but there is nothing mysterious about it. They put thousands of people to work cutting stone, they had expert masons, and they took whatever time was needed to do things right. The Mayas had an advanced calendar and writing system, and they were pretty smart people, but there is nothing mysterious about this. (And no, the world will NOT end in 2012). The Aztecs used one of the most highly productive agricultural systems known to the preindustrial world (chinampas, or raised fields), but this is not mysterious. They had the skills, the labor, and the economic and political structure to do what they needed to do.

REFERENCES:

Pollock, Harry E. D.

1936 Round Structures of Aboriginal Middle America. Publications, vol. 471. Carnegie Institution of Washington, Washington, DC.

Rowe, John H.

1990 Machu Picchu en la luz de documentos del siglo XVI. Histórica (Lima) 14(1):139-154.

Seler, Eduard

1992 Ancient Mexican Bone Rattles. In Collected Works in Mesoamerican Linguistics and Archaeoalogy, pp. 62-73, vol. 3. Labyrinthos, Culver City.

Calilxtlahuaca lectures draw a big crowd !

The AIA lecture that Emily and I gave last week drew a big crowd (see photo). Now either Calixtlahuaca is becoming hip and popular among the in-crowd, or else some professors bribed their intro classes into coming by giving extra credit points. Hmmm ........The actual attendance was 217, perhaps not enough to fill a big arena like this, but a good crowd nevertheless. And people asked some excellent questions:

• Q: Were the terraces centrally planned and built by the state, or were they organized and built by individual households?
• A: Very good question by Cinthia Carvajal. I'll let my grad students figure out an answer to that one. This is an important issue in both the terracing/agriculture literature, and in the urban literature.
  

• Q: Was there some special local weather condition related to the winds on Cerro Tenismo that may have influenced the placement of the wind-god temple half-way up the hill?
• A: Another good question. My answer was "I have absolutely no idea!"
  

Calixtlahuaca lectures at ASU

On November 12, Emily Umberger and I will each give a half-hour talk on our research at Calixtlahuaca. This is part of the Archaeological Institute of America lecture series, called "Notes From the Field: Aztecs."

New and Old Excavations at Calixtlahuaca, an Aztec Regional Capital
Speaker: Michael E. Smith

Reassembling the Calixtlahuaca Sculptural Corpus
Speaker: Emily Umberger

This even will be Thursday Nov 12, 6:30 - 7:30, in Business Administration C, Room 316.

Aztec pyramids on the Discovery Channel

In 2008 I was filmed by a crew from the Discovery Channel for a new series called "Out of Egypt." The idea was to compare Egypt with other ancient civilizations, based on real ideas and research, something more sophisticated than the normal simplistic and sensationalist archaeology on TV. The host, Dr. Kara Cooney, is an Eygptologist at UCLA. I tried to get them to come shoot at Calixtlahuaca, but for various reasons the work had to be done in Mexico City, so we filmed at Tlatelolco, together with Salvador Guilliem Arroyo (the archaeologist in charge of Tlatelolco).

The first two episodes of this series will air Monday, August 24, from 9:00-11:00 pm (EDT and PDT). My segment on Aztec pyramids will be in the second show.

Below is a view of the main double-stair pyramid at Tlatelolco, with a 16th century Christian Church and a 20th century apartment building in the background. (This is called the "Plaza of the Three Cultures"). For more information on Tlatelolco, see my book, Aztec City-State Capitals.

Calixtlahuaca in the newspaper

A full-page article on Calixtlahuaca just appeared in the newspaper, Milenio, June 18, 2009. Written by Ernesto de la Cueva, the article is a nice summary of what we know about the site from both earlier excavations and from our project. There are several color photos.

Click on the title to see the article.

I found only two errors, an excellent rating for newspaper journalism. One was calling the occupation Classic, instead of Postclassic indate. The other was attributing the project to the "Universidad de Arizona", rather than Arizona State University. Oh well. I corrected these on the pdf of the article, posted at the above address.