Title: LIFE IN THE PROVINCES OF THE AZTEC EMPIRE , By: Smith, Michael
E., Scientific American, 00368733, Sep97, Vol. 277, Issue 3
LIFE IN THE PROVINCES OF THE AZTEC EMPIRE
The lives of the Aztec common people were far richer and more complex
than the official histories would have us believe
In 1519, when Hernan Cortes led his army into
Tenochtitlan in the Valley of Mexico, that Aztec city was the capital
of a far-flung tributary empire. The emperor Motecuhzoma sat atop a
complex social and political hierarchy, and the Aztec populace owed
allegiance and tribute to nobles at several levels. Below the emperor
were the kings of subject city-states. The Aztec dominion employed a
policy of indirect rule, and imperial authorities supported local dynasties
so long as they delivered their quarterly tribute payments on time.
Officials recorded these payments in documents such as the Codex Mendoza
[see "The Codex Mendoza," by Patricia Rieff Anawalt and Frances
F. Berdan; SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN, June 1992]. Local nobles, who lived
in both urban and rural areas, were subjects of their city-state king.
At the bottom of the hierarchy were the commoners. whose tribute payments
supported all these nobles.
Aztec commoners must have had a heavy tribute
obligation. How were they able to meet their payments? First of all,
there were millions of commoners, so the tribute burden was spread over
a large population. During the 1970s, surveys of patterns of settlement
turned up the startling discovery that the Aztec period witnessed one
of the major population explosions of antiquity. The number of people
in the Valley of Mexico, the heartland of the Aztec Empire, increased
from 175,000 in the early Aztec period (A.D. 1150-1350) to nearly one
million in the late Aztec period (A.D. 1350-1519). Similar patterns
of growth occurred in other parts of Aztec territory as well.
The Aztec population explosion placed a heavy
stress on the environment of central Mexico. New villages and towns
sprung up everywhere, and all available land was cultivated, often at
considerable labor expense. Wherever possible, farmers built dams and
canals to irrigate cropland; they also built terraced stone walls on
hillsides to make new fields; and they drained the swamps outside Tenochtitlan
to create raised fields (chinampas), one of the most highly productive
agricultural systems of the ancient world. These intensive farming practices
transformed the central Mexican countryside into a managed landscape
of cultivation.
What were the effects of tribute extraction,
population growth and agricultural intensification on the Aztec common
people? Did these processes leave people impoverished and powerless,
or did they allow commoners to prosper and thrive? Few of the available
written accounts have information on conditions beyond the imperial
capital, and thus it is up to archaeologists to study these questions.
Until very recently, no major archaeological
excavations had been carried out at Aztec sites. Most Aztec cities and
towns either were destroyed during the Spanish Conquest or were occupied
and then buried under later settlements. The few surviving sites were
small, unassuming peasant villages. Most archaeologists working in Mesoamerica
bypassed Aztec sites on their way to the spectacular jungle ruins of
classic-period Maya civilization. Aztec sites were deemed either too
difficult to excavate or too small to bother with. This neglect came
to an abrupt end in 197X, when the Mexican government mounted an extensive
excavation of the Great Temple of Tenochtitlan. Situated in the middle
of Mexico City today, the magnificence of this structure, and the richness
of the offerings associated with it, awakened a new interest in Aztec
society. Unfortunately, these excavations did not provide much new information
about the commoners or life in the provinces.
To address these issues, my wife, Cynthia Heath-Smith,
and I embarked on archaeological projects at rural and urban sites in
the modern Mexican state of Morelos. Located just south of the Valley
of Mexico, this was the first area outside the valley to be conquered
when the Aztecs began their military expansion in the 1430s.
We first excavated two rural sites--Capilco and
Cuexcomate--southwest of the modern city of Cuernavaca. Later we turned
to the Aztec city of Yautepec in north-central Morelos. By excavating
the houses of both rich and poor, we have found that provincial society
was far more complex than previously thought. Aztec peasants were not
simple farmers whose lives were dominated by the need to pay tribute
to their elite overlords. Commoners living in both rural and urban areas
of the provinces made heavy use of a thriving marketing system. They
exchanged craft goods produced in their homes for a variety of foreign
goods, and most of this economic activity was accomplished outside imperial
control and ignored by early writers on the Aztecs.
Peasant Life
A Archaeologists have found that excavations of houses and associated
remains often provide the best data on ancient social and economic patterns.
Capilco and Cuexcomate were good examples because traces of house walls
were visible above the ground, and we did not have to waste time trying
to find buried structures. Capilco was a village with 21 houses, and
Cuexcomate a town with more than 150 structures, including temples,
storehouses and ritual dumps. Houses at these sites were small (with
a mean area of 15 square meters) and built of adobe brick walls supported
on stone foundations. We excavated test pits in 29 houses selected at
random. We then chose 10 of these for more complete clearing of architecture
and associated deposits. These excavations allowed us to refine the
Aztec chronology by splitting the late Aztec period into two subperiods--late
Aztec A (A.D. 1350-1440) and late Aztec B (A.D. 1440-1519)--to yield
a more detailed analysis.
Capilco was founded by a few peasant families
in the early Aztec period. The population explosion began in the late
Aztec A period, when Cuexcomate was founded and both settlements grew
rapidly. The residents of these communities could not support themselves
using rainfall agriculture alone, so they had to intensify their agricultural
practices. Farmers built terraces on slopes and in ravines to create
additional, more productive plots in which they grew maize, beans and
cotton. Houses at these sites were not packed very closely together,
and open areas were probably devoted to farming.
Cotton was an important crop in this part of
the Aztec Empire, and household production of cotton textiles soon became
the major craft. Every excavated house yielded large quantities of ceramic
artifacts used in the hand spinning of cotton. Beadlike spindle whorls
provided weights for the twirling wooden spindle, and small bowls with
tripod supports were designed to control the spindle. Documentary sources
state that all Aztec women, from the lowest slave to the highest noblewoman,
spun and wove cloth. Cotton textiles had two economic functions beyond
use as clothing. First, they were the most common item of tribute demanded
by both city-states and the Aztec Empire. Second, they served as a form
of money in the marketplaces, where they could be used to obtain a range
of goods and services.
In addition to textiles, some residents of these
sites manufactured paper out of the bark of the wild fig tree, as attested
to by "bark beaters" made of basalt. The Aztecs used paper
to make books of picture-writing and to burn in ritual offerings.
The many ceramic vessels used and discarded at
each house were probably purchased in the marketplaces. Although local
potters produced a full range of vessels, people often bought many decorated
foreign pots. About 10 percent of all ceramic vessels excavated from
these sites had been imported from the Valley of Mexico and other areas.
These vessels did not have any functional superiority to the wares made
locally, and people must have simply enjoyed using a variety of decorated
serving bowls.
In addition to ceramic vessels, people had other
foreign goods in their homes. We recovered thousands of broken obsidian
blades, whose closest geologic source was 100 kilometers away. Obsidian
blades, which had extremely sharp cutting edges, served in many household
and craft activities. Needles and other items of bronze were imported
from western Mexico. People obtained salt from the Valley of Mexico,
where specialists extracted it by boiling and evaporating the saline
lake water. Salt was transported in distinctive ceramic basins, and
in every excavated house we found many shards of these vessels. The
market system connected the inhabitants of these rural sites to the
rest of the Aztec Empire and beyond.
These excavations also revealed something of
the noneconomic life of Aztec peasants. For example, every house contained
a variety of incense burners and small ceramic figurines in the forms
of humans and deities. These artifacts played a role in domestic rituals,
which focused on purification and curing. Such ceremonies complemented
the more spectacular public celebrations that took place at the towering
temple pyramids in the larger cities and towns. Early Spanish priests
described in detail the Aztec public religion, and excavation of the
Great Temple has shown where these activities occurred. Before the recent
excavations of houses, however, scholars had no idea of the nature of
domestic rituals.
Not surprisingly, the larger town of Cuexcomate
was a more complex community than Capilco. The town was laid out around
a public plaza with a small temple pyramid on its east side. Across
the plaza from the temple was a distinctive residential compound that,
at 540 square meters, was significantly larger than the other houses.
Its rooms were elevated above ground level by stone platforms. The compound
employed finer construction materials and methods than most houses,
including ample use of lime plaster These features, combined with a
floor plan that corresponds to the layout of Aztec palaces, led us to
conclude that the compound was the residence of a noble household.
The artifacts left by the nobles who lived in
this compound differed in quantity but not in kind from the artifacts
found in the dwellings of commoners. For example, this structure yielded
significantly greater numbers of imported and decorated ceramics than
did the commoners' houses, as one might expect. Nevertheless, nobles
did not have exclusive use of any category of artifact. We uncovered
the most costly imported goods, such as polychrome bowls from the religious
center of Cholula, bronze objects and jade jewelry, at both common and
noble residences, showing that both groups had ready access to the extensive
Aztec marketing system of central Mexico.
The conquest of this region by the Aztec Empire
around A.D. 1440 ushered in the late Aztec B period. Soon after, the
noble's compound at Cuexcomate was abandoned, and a new, smaller elite
compound was built on the north side of the plaza. Populations continued
to grow; Cuexcomate expanded from 200 to 800 persons, and Capilco grew
from 35 to 135 persons in the late Aztec B period. Agricultural workers
constructed extensive terracing to keep up with population growth, but
farming reached a point of diminishing returns as all available land
was terraced.
Artifacts and architecture provide clues to ancient
standards of living, and evidence at these sites points to a significant
decline between periods A and B. For example, nobles as well as commoners
had fewer imported goods and fewer decorated ceramic vessels in the
later period. Wealth indices, which we calculated from the quantities
of valuable artifacts found at each house, showed a consistent decline.
Some commoners tried to compensate for their economic difficulties by
increasing their production of textiles. At each site, the houses with
the most cotton spinning artifacts were the ones with the lowest wealth
indices. In other words, the poorest households put the greatest efforts
into craft production, probably to compensate for low crop yields or
a lack of land. This pattern has occurred in many parts of the world
when overpopulation and land scarcity have led to declining standards
of living.
Urban Life
To round out our study of provincial life, we turned to Yautepec, the
capital of a powerful city-state in Aztec times. Former Aztec cities
in central Mexico are still occupied today, with the ancient ruins buried
under layers of historical and more modern settlement. The early Spaniards
built Christian churches on top of the remains of Aztec pyramids and
placed their own towns over the Aztec cities. In this respect, Yautepec
is unusual. There the Spanish settlement covered only part of the city.
In 1989 Hortensia de Vega led a team of archaeologists from Mexico's
National Anthropology Institute in the excavation of a large mound at
the edge of modern Yautepec. This mound turned out to be the ruin of
the royal palace of Yautepec. It is the only Aztec palace to be extensively
excavated. We were invited to join the work at Yautepec to study houses
from other parts of the ancient city.
At that time, very little was known about Aztec
cities except for Tenochtitlan. Although archaeologists had collected
surface artifacts from cities in the Valley of Mexico, no one had excavated
any urban Aztec houses. The first field season, in 1992, we devoted
to a surface survey that established the size and extent of the Aztec
settlement. Even within the modern town it was not difficult to trace
the extent of ancient Yautepec, which covered just over two square kilometers.
In 1993 we returned to excavate houses. We began by digging test pits
in open fields and vacant lots and succeeded in locating and uncovering
seven houses and their yard areas.
The Yautepec excavations encountered quite dense
concentrations of artifacts, and in six months of fieldwork, we recovered
1.2 million potsherds and nearly 50,000 obsidian artifacts, mainly blades
and other tools. The classification and study of these materials are
still in progress, but preliminary results reveal some fascinating similarities
and differences with respect to the earlier findings at Cuexcomate and
Capilco.
Of the seven houses excavated at Yautepec, five
were small dwellings of commoners, which had an average size of 26 square
meters. Like their rural counterparts, the houses were built of adobe
bricks placed on foundation walls of stone cobbles. We also excavated
an elite residence that was much larger (430 square meters) than the
common houses and made greater use of lime plaster and dressed stone
masonry. Another house was a poorly preserved structure of intermediate
size (80 square meters) whose class affiliation is not clear.
Yautepec commoners, like their country cousins
at Capilco and Cuexcomate, had ready access to foreign goods. The same
kinds of imported ceramics, obsidian, salt, jade and bronze were found
in residences at Yautepec. We cannot make quantitative comparisons,
however, until all artifact studies have been completed. A number of
technical analyses currently under way will determine the places of
origin of the raw materials used for various artifacts at Yautepec.
At this point, we do know that most of the obsidian came from a source
near Pachuca, a city north of the Valley of Mexico. We are applying
x-ray fluorescence techniques to determine the geologic sources of the
remaining obsidian artifacts. Compositional studies of ceramics, including
thin-section petrography and neutron-activation analysis, will help
distinguish wares manufactured in the Yautepec Valley from those imported
from other parts of central Mexico.
One set of analyses recently completed illuminates
the origins of the bronze artifacts. Dorothy Hosler of the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology analyzed the chemical composition, design and
metallurgical properties of metal artifacts from all three of the sites.
These objects include sewing needles, awls, bells and tweezers, all
composed of copper-tin or copper-arsenic bronze alloys. Morelos was
not a metal-producing zone in ancient times, and these artifacts closely
resemble the bronze artifacts made in the Tarascan Empire of western
Mexico.
Hosler has completed the first application of
lead isotope analysis to ancient Mesoamerican metallurgy by sampling
ore sources m several areas and artifacts from a variety of sites, including
Yautepec. A number of the Yautepec bronze objects match ore samples
from the Tarascan territory. Although written sources report that the
Aztecs and Tarascans were constantly at war, the excavations nonetheless
provide clear evidence that Tarascan bronze and obsidian were traded
across the border and that they made their way into the homes of provincial
commoners through the Aztec marketing system.
Yautepec, unlike the rural sites, had numerous
craft industries in addition to domestic textile production. Several
households made obsidian blades, and a few excavations uncovered evidence
of the production of lip plugs, ear plugs and other obsidian jewelry.
We also recovered molds used to make ceramic spindle whorls and figurines.
Although these molds are not abundant, they were found in many different
excavations at Yautepec. Bark beaters for the manufacture of paper were
also present. At this point, it appears that many of the common households
at Yautepec produced various craft items in addition to cotton textiles.
Provincial Aztecs
What do these excavations tell us about the people who lived in the
provinces of the Aztec Empire? The overall impression is that provincial
commoners were relatively prosperous, enterprising people. In spite
of an economic decline after conquest and incorporation into the Aztec
Empire, commoners in both urban and rural settings still enjoyed access
to a wide range of imported goods. These goods were obtained through
the markets. Both documentary and archaeological data indicate that
the Aztec market system operated largely outside state control. The
markets connected people in even the smallest peasant villages with
the larger informal Aztec economy of central Mexico. Family members
engaged in a variety of craft activities to produce goods to sell in
the markets. At sites in Morelos, the most important of these products
were cotton textiles manufactured by women in their homes.
Written sources tell us that Aztec commoners
were subject to nobles, who owned most of the land and monopolized power
within the city-states. Archaeological excavations suggest that at least
in several provincial settlements, this burden was not excessive. There
is no evidence to suggest that nobles controlled craft production or
exchange. The people in the provinces managed to achieve a degree of
economic success through channels unconnected to the state and unreported
in the official histories of the Aztecs. Illuminating the lives of these
previously invisible people is one of the rewards of being an archaeologist
today.
The Aztec Empire
MAP: The Aztec Empire covered much of central and southern Mexico when
Spanish conquerors arrived in A.D. 1519. The sites described in the
article were part of the tributary provinces of Cuauhnahuac and Huaxtepec,
located in what is now the Mexican state of Morelos. Four times a year
the people of these provinces delivered large amounts of tribute in
cotton textiles and other products to the imperial capital, Tenochtitlan.
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