At Home with the Aztecs

An Archaeologist Uncovers Their Daily Life

Michael Smith

• Editorial: Routledge
• Año: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781317328247
• Edición: 1
• Categoría: Social Sciences
• Categoría: Archaeology

At Home with the Aztecs provides a fresh view of Aztec society, focusing on households and communities instead of kings, pyramids, and human sacrifice. This new approach offers an opportunity to humanize the Aztecs, moving past the popular stereotype of sacrificial maniacs to demonstrate that these were successful and prosperous communities. Michael Smith also engagingly describes the scientific, logistic and personal dimensions of archaeological fieldwork, drawing on decades of excavating experience and considering how his research was affected by his interaction with contemporary Mexican communities. Through first-hand accounts of the ways archaeologists interpret sites and artifacts, the book illuminates how the archaeological process can provide information about ancient families. Facilitating a richer understanding of the Aztec world, Smith's research also redefines success, prosperity and resilience in ancient societies, making this book suitable not only for those interested in the Aztecs but in the examination of complex societies in general.

1

RUSTY NAILS, STONE WALLS, AND A DRUM

The first sign that something was wrong was when a student excavator called me over to see what looked like a rusty nail she had just excavated from an Aztec house. Iron artifacts are typical at historical and recent sites in Mexico—but not deep in Aztec-period trash deposits. The peoples of Mexico did not have iron technology before Cortés arrived in 1519 to conquer the Aztec Empire. A few days later a different excavator—my wife, Cynthia Heath-Smith—found a similar artifact that looked like a piece of stiff copper wire. We sat down in the shade to examine this wire or nail carefully.

“This thing is covered with layers of corrosion,” she said, “but it doesn’t look like rust.”

“Look. Here, where it’s chipped.”

“Yes, it has the color of copper or bronze, not iron. This can’t be a nail.”

“I’ll have Kris tell her workers to be more careful not to damage artifacts during excavation.”

“But that isn’t the point! See how one end is pointed and the other has a small hole? This is a sewing needle, and it must be made of copper or bronze! And it came out of an Aztec trash deposit!”

Cindy was right. This object turned out to be a sewing needle, not a nail or wire at all! And tests later showed it to be made of bronze, not iron or copper (Figure 1.1). That solved the problem of modern iron objects in an Aztec site (there were none), but introduced a deeper mystery of its own.

It was 1986 and we were beginning excavations in the Aztec village of Capilco, not far from the modern city of Cuernavaca in Mexico. I had chosen this site for my first excavation after receiving my Ph.D. because I wanted to find out what life was like for Aztec farmers. As a small and isolated village far away from any major cities, located in an area conquered by the Mexica or Aztec Empire, Capilco sat at the bottom of the Aztec social hierarchy. Therefore, I reasoned, these Aztec peasants should not have owned or used things made of bronze. This was one of the most sophisticated technologies of ancient Mexico. Bronze tools and ritual items were manufactured in the Tarascan Empire of western Mexico and traded to the Aztec realm, and they were highly valuable items. Most of the surviving examples had come from ceremonial offerings at Tenochtitlan, the Aztec imperial capital (buried under Mexico City today).

FIGURE 1.1 Bronze needles from Capilco. Photograph BY Michael E. Smith.

In the two months we dug at Capilco more bronze items turned up. Besides the needles, we uncovered some small bells, a couple of awls or punches, and a few other items. I was totally unprepared for these finds. An expert in Aztec pottery analysis (at least I thought so upon completing my Ph.D.), I had researched the kinds of artifacts we were likely to find at these sites: knives made from the volcanic glass obsidian, grinding tools made from basalt rock, animal bones, and the like. But bronze? The possibility that we might find such artifacts at a site like Capilco had not even crossed my mind. I wrote to my friend Dr. Dorothy Hosler at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the leading expert on ancient Mexican bronze technology, and asked her how to handle our artifacts. She got excited and arranged to fly down at the end of the field season to see them. Dorothy later did a full scientific analysis, and our collection of bronze artifacts turned out to be extremely important for understanding the technology and trade of bronze in ancient Mexico. But these finds really puzzled me. What were these exotic and valuable imported goods doing in a small rural village?

The second mystery that season consisted of irregular rows of stone on the hillsides surrounding Cuexcomate, a larger site three kilometers from Capilco. When we finished excavating at Capilco, I moved our crew to this new site. Houses at Cuexcomate were spread along the top of a ridge surrounded by rocky slopes. We had walked all over these slopes for weeks when a newly arrived student, Osvaldo Sterpone, came up to talk with me.

“Look at that slope over there,” he said, “The one with all the rocks.”

“Yes? All the fields around here are full of rocks.” I had twisted my ankle on one of these loose stones, and I was not thrilled about the rocks spread all over the place.

“But over there, it looks like some of the rocks are arranged in parallel rows. Could these be the remains of ancient agricultural terraces?”

We walked over to take a closer look. When we got close, I saw it immediately: horizontal rows of rocks, one after another, running down the slope. Osvaldo was right. These hillsides had once been covered with the stone walls of agricultural terraces. Many of the walls had collapsed, sending stones rolling down the hill and leaving only traces of the original terrace lines. Cuexcomate turned out to be both surrounded by, and filled with, agricultural terrace fields. The extent of these fields was almost as puzzling as the bronze tools. I asked myself why they needed so many walled fields. Terracing is a form of intensive agriculture, a type of farming that requires considerable labor, skills, and coordination. Why would a provincial town like Cuexcomate require this level of investment in farming?

As excavations continued at Cuexcomate, a third puzzle presented itself in the form of an amorphous pile of rocks. We had noticed rock piles near some of the houses. Osvaldo Sterpone was doing his excavation practicum on the project, which meant he needed to spend four weeks excavating as part of his training at the Mexican National School of Archaeology. I assigned him a rock pile to excavate, figuring he couldn’t do much harm clearing off a bunch of rocks that probably meant nothing. But the rocks turned out to be a ceremonial deposit created as part of the Aztec New Fire Ceremony—and Osvaldo turned out to be an excellent archaeologist. He excavated the rock pile with skill and his maps and notes were first-rate. This feature is one of the few archaeological finds proving the Aztec peoples did indeed celebrate the possible end of the world every fifty-two years. But that wasn’t the only mystery of this rock pile.

Another puzzling thing was the strange pot we were able to glue together (back in the lab) from sherds, or pot fragments, that Osvaldo excavated under the rocks. It was clear that someone had taken a bunch of ceramic vessels and deliberately thrown them into a big pile where they broke into fragments. While this sounds like fun to me, the people who broke these pots were carrying out a ceremony. The heap of pot fragments sat under the layer of rocks, and the first broken pot to emerge from excavation was an unusual jar-like object. Big pottery expert that I thought I was, it took me several years to identify this thing, and it remains one of the strangest objects I have ever excavated. It was a ceramic drum, used in ceremonies. I didn’t identify it as a drum at first, but I figured it probably had a special ceremonial purpose. It did not look anything like Aztec cooking or storage pots.

There is an archaeological joke suggesting that whenever we find some strange artifact we can’t figure out, we say that it must have been a ritual object. Most archaeologists think they are too sophisticated to interpret unusual artifacts this way—rigorous archaeologists don’t think like that. In fact, this joke is closer to the truth than many of us would like to admit. That odd ceramic vessel didn’t fit any standard category, so I concluded that it must have been a ritual object. When I finally determined that the object was a drum, my ceremonial interpretation turned out to be correct. But at the time of excavation, the idea that some kind of sophisticated ritual drum was used at Cuexcomate, and then discarded in a big ceremonial dump, seemed unlikely. Why did the provincial peoples at this small Aztec town have such a fancy object? And why did they break it deliberately?

These three mysteries—bronze sewing needles, agricultural terraces, and a ceramic drum—bothered me for years to come. But as I discovered more about the Mexica Empire and its people—through further excavations and historical research—I came to a new understanding of what life was like for the people of ancient Capilco, Cuexcomate, and other sites in this imperial province. My excavations showed that even the most remote Aztec village had marketplaces visited by professional merchants who brought rare foreign goods such as bronze needles and bells. How could Aztec peasants afford bronze needles, crystal jewelry, and other valuable imports? The residents of these communities were skilled farmers who built terraced fields where they reaped rich harvests of grain, cotton, and other crops. Not only were they well off economically, but they also had a rich ceremonial life, full of music and dance. The ceramic drum was only the first indication; we later found fragments of flutes, whistles, and rattles. These provincial farmers had access to new styles and ideas from distant parts of the empire. More than this, these were resilient communities. They were able to withstand conquest by the Mexica Empire without giving up their traditional lifestyle and without becoming enslaved or impoverished by their new overlords. Their resilience, however, had a limit; the Spanish conquest of 1521 would destroy these communities.

That 1986 excavation season paved the way for a new understanding of life in Aztec society. For decades archaeologists had concentrated on Aztec pyramids and palaces, while historians gave their attention to kings, nobles, and ceremonies. This focus, which I call “monumental archaeology,” still dominates the study of the early civilizations, from Mesopotamia and Egypt to the Inca and Aztec Empires. When commoners are mentioned at all, they are portrayed as downtrodden farmers who labored in their fields to produce food for the city people. Indeed, a common view of ancient civilizations—promoted by National Geographic Magazine and television documentaries—is that non-elite peoples were slaves toiling under the whip of a cruel overseer to build the pyramids and other monuments demanded by ancient despotic kings. But this is a highly inaccurate picture.

The bronze tools, musical instruments, and agricultural terraces we uncovered in 1986 no longer seem so mysterious or puzzling. For one thing, many more sites have been excavated in recent years. After my 1986 fieldwork at Capilco and Cuexcomate I followed up in the 1990s with more household excavations at an urban site, Yautepec. By the time my students started finding bronze tools, musical instruments, and agricultural terraces in my most recent excavations at the Aztec city of Calixtlahuaca in 2007, such finds no longer raised any eyebrows. At the same time, my colleagues and I have improved our understanding of how ancient societies were organized. We now know that most ancient farmers and other common people were not downtrodden, poverty-stricken laborers, but instead the architects of prosperous and satisfying lives. They were able to do this not because ancient kings were benevolent and kind to their subjects, but rather because some communities of commoner households had the means to avoid or resist being exploited.

When these two developments—new fieldwork and conceptual advances—are applied to the Aztecs, the result is a very different picture of the society than when I started excavating in 1986. This book tells the story of Aztec provincial peoples and their lives. But to tell that story, I also need to tell another about my archaeological efforts to bring these common people to life after more than five centuries. And before that, I must try to dispel the old picture of Aztec society.

The Aztecs: bloodthirsty savages or just regular folks?

Of all ancient peoples, the Aztecs have one of the worst reputations (for general works on Aztec society and culture, see, Berdan 2005, 2014; Matos Moctezuma 1995; Rojas 2012; Smith 2012; Townsend 2009). When people hear the word Aztec, most think immediately of human sacrifice. The media promotes this image, with re-enactments of sacrificial ceremonies on television, in Hollywood movies about the bloody ceremonies of the Maya (cultural cousins of the Aztecs), and in magazine articles about the bloodthirsty Aztecs. Aztec religion has been sensationalized to the point where it is difficult to achieve a clear and objective picture. This faulty impression of the bloodthirsty Aztecs does have a historical origin, though.

Spanish conquistadors exaggerated the extent of Aztec human sacrifice in order to justify their actions. Cortés and his soldiers killed thousands of Aztecs in warfare, and the diseases they brought—smallpox, hemorrhagic fever, and others—killed millions more. The Aztec peoples were then enslaved and forced to work in mines and on plantations. Their culture was destroyed. The Spaniards justified their actions by claiming the Aztecs were savages who engaged in human sacrifice on a grand scale. This activity had to be stopped, they argued, and the people converted to Christianity. Writers today who accept the words of the conquistadors at face value tell us that the Aztecs sacrificed many thousands of victims each year. At the other extreme, some writers today claim the Spaniards made up the whole idea of Aztec human sacrifice. The Aztecs, they say, had a peaceful religion that did not include the ritualized killing of people. Modern scholars (such as me) are sometimes accused by these writers of accepting the lies of the conquistadors and promoting the bloody Aztecs stereotype.

So where does the truth lie? Archaeological excavation proves beyond a doubt that the Aztecs did indeed practice human sacrifice. Although I have not excavated any sacrificial burials in my own projects, my colleagues who work on temples and ceremonial deposits have uncovered countless examples of human bones and offerings from sacrificial rituals. For example, a chamber under the floor of a small shrine at the site of Teopanzolco (in Cuernavaca) contained ninety-two human skulls, one-third of which were found together with the upper neck bones, a sure signal of decapitation (Smith 2008: 35). The sacrifice-deniers are wrong, and the conquistadors were right—at least about the existence of human sacrifice. Current evidence, unfortunately, does not indicate clearly the extent of human sacrifice in Aztec society. Did they sacrifice ten victims a year, 100, or 1,000? We simply cannot say (Dodds Pennock 2008; Smith 2012: 219–225).

Regardless of the precise number of sacrifices carried out at Aztec temples, the fact remains that this bloody and violent act was part of Aztec religion and society. But should this one practice color our whole view of these people? Most writers who want to counter the over-emphasis on sacrifice, blood, and violence point to art and poetry. Aztec artists created many exquisite works of art, particularly stone sculptures, gold jewelry, and beautiful and unique works of feather art (Figure 1.2). Aztec poets wrote poignant lyrical verse. Poetry was called “flowery speech,” and this verse is an ode to a poet:

FIGURE 1.2 aztec gold pendants, made with the lost-wax method. © Dumbarton Oaks, Pre-Columbian Collection, Washington, Dc. Reproduced with permission.

The flowers sprout, they are fresh, they grow;

they open their blossoms,

and from within emerge the flowers of song;

among men You scatter them, You send them.

You are the singer!

(León-Portilla 1963: 77)

The Aztecs had a complex, multifaceted culture, some of which appeals to us today while other parts repel us.

My own approach to correcting the sacrificial bias of popular accounts is to look at the lives of Aztec commoners. Their artifacts show that people participated in a variety of rituals and ceremonies, but not human sacrifice, which was a state-sponsored spectacle engineered by nobles and priests. The separation between the lives of commoners and the lives of the Aztec rich and famous—those nobles, kings, and priests—was deep. For now, I want to emphasize one aspect of the social cl...