Thomas H. Charlton

Aztec craft production and specialization: Archaeological evidence from the city‐state of Otumba, Mexico

Abstract Recent (1987–9) archaeological research within the Aztec city‐state of Otumba located in the northeastern Basin of Mexico has provided data relevant to a consideration of the role of craft specialization in the evolution of city‐states between the fall of Tula (c. AD 1150) and the arrival of the Spaniards (AD 1519). Designed to evaluate alternative models of such evolution the investigations have confirmed the presence of extensive archaeological evidence for craft specialization in the city‐state centre of Otumba. Items manufactured at the site include obsidian cores, prismatic blades, and bifaces, ornaments of obsidian and rare stones, figurines, ceramic censers, spindle whorls (and their moulds), fibres, and groundstone implements. Craft specialization at rural dependencies was more restricted. The results of the project shed important light on the intricacies of the Aztec economic system.

Specialization, Market Exchange, and the Aztec State: A View From Huexotla [and Comments and Reply]

Archaeological data from Huexotla, an Aztec-period site in the Valley of Mexico, are used to test the proposition that Mexican states arose and expanded to facilitate specialization and market exchange. By and large, this proposition is not supported by the Huexotla data. During Early Aztec times, the Valley of Mexico was divided into a number of small, autonomous city-states. The Huexotla data suggest that the local economies of these city-states were not characterized by a complex division of labor. Thus, their existence does not seem to have depended upon their facilitating specialization and exchange at the local level. During Late Aztec times, most of Central Mexico came to be dominated by the territorially extensive, administratively complex Aztec empire. The Huexotla data provide evidence of more intensive participation in market exchange, but they also suggest that urban demand for rural foodstuffs and urban control of imperial tribute goods were factors of primary importance in determining the Late Aztec pattern of market exchange. More intensive specialization, or greater complexity in the division of labor within the Valley of Mexico, seems to have played a minor role in the growth of the Late Aztec market system despite the environmental diversity of the marketing region.

Teotihuacán, Tepeapulco, and Obsidian Exploitation

Current cultural ecological models of the development of civilization in central Mexico emphasize the role of subsistence production techniques and organization. The recent use of established and productive archeological surface survey techniques along natural corridors of communication between favorable niches for cultural development within the Central Mexican symbiotic region resulted in the location of sites that indicate an early development of a decentralized resource exploitation, manufacturing, and exchange network. The association of the development of this system with Teotihuac�n indicates the importance such nonsubsistence production and exchange had in the evolution of this first central Mexican civilization. The later expansion of Teotihuac�n into more distant areas of Mesoamerica was based on this resource exploitation model. Later civilizations centered at Tula and Tenochtitl�n also used such a model in their expansion.

PROVENIENCE INVESTIGATION OF CERAMICS AND OBSIDIAN FROM OTUMBA

Obsidian and ceramic artifacts from the Otumba project were analyzed by instrumental neutron-activation analysis. Sources for the obsidian were determined by comparison to a databank of Central Mexican source analyses. Ceramic sources were determined by comparison to a series of reference groups from the Basin of Mexico and by comparison with raw material samples. Obsidian from the lapidary workshop (Operation 11) comes predominantly from the Otumba and Pachuca sources. There is also an unknown compositional profile present among the artifacts. This profile may derive from a not-yet-sampled flow within one of several nearby obsidian-source areas, such as Otumba or Paredon. The majority of Otumba ceramics fall into a large group derived from clays of the Teotihuacan-valley alluvium. Aztec II Black-on-Orange and red-ware samples come from other sources in the eastern basin. Ceramics from sites along the trade route leading northeast toward Tulancingo include figurines derived from Otumba, figurines probably made locally near Tepeapulco and Tulancingo, and long-handle censers probably made in the latter two locations.

OTUMBA AND ITS NEIGHBORS

Otumba is one of a few Late Aztec-period city-states in the Basin of Mexico whose central city or town is not obscured by post-Conquest occupation. Long-term research there began in the early 1960s, with more recent fieldwork between 1987 and 1989, and has been complemented by intensive laboratory and technical analyses that are still underway. Traditional typological analyses have been aided by neutron activation analyses providing strong evidence of economic linkages between the Otumba city-state and raw material sources, as well as evidence of tribute and market distribution channels for finished products within and outside the Otumba city-state.

The Paredón, Mexico, Obsidian Source and Early Formative Exchange

In 1975, archeological surface surveys of trade routes located again a pre-Hispanic obsidian source in central Mexico first reported in 1902. Initial trace element studies of the Pared�n source through an analysis by neutron activation have been compared with similar studies of the obsidian found at Chalcatzingo 150 kilometers from the source. These comparisons indicate that obsidian from Pared�n, rather than Otumba, was of primary importance during the Early Formative in central Mexico.

Population trends in the Teotihuacan Valley, A.D. 1400-1969.

Abstract Despite abundant data on preconquest sites and population in the Valley of Mexico, recent surveys yielded little information on post‐conquest settlement, sites being classified as either Aztec or modern on the basis of pottery. Through an integrated research project involving surface survey, documentary data (including especially dated site occupation), and studies of recent and modern pottery in the area, sites have now been identified for the whole period 1400–1969. Detailed seriation to establish phases is not yet completed, and absolute population estimates will depend on this. But three main periods can be identified already, and relative population shifts recognized. Contrary to general assumption hitherto, Aztec pottery styles can now be seen to continue well into the seventeenth century: thus the first period, 1400–1650, appears to be one of gradual rather than dramatic population decline. Between 1650 and 1800 ‘modern’ ceramics appear and become increasingly common. During this time, pop...

Urban and Rural Dimensions of the Contact Period

The conquest and transformation of Mesoamerican civilizations during the Colonial and Republican periods provide one of the most dynamic and widespread examples of acculturation known to anthropology. Ethnologists, ethnohistorians, and historians have studied in some detail both the processes and the results of this acculturation (e.g., Farriss 1984; Foster 1960; Gibson 1964, 1981; Hassig 1985; Lovell 1985; MacLeod 1973). Archaeologists, despite statements about interest in processes of culture change and cultural evolution (e.g., Blanton et al. 1981; Sanders, Parsons, and Santley 1979; Wolf 1976), with few exceptions (e.g., Gasco 1987), have either neglected or oversimplified the processes and the results of the postconquest changes. This is most unfortunate.

On the Identification of Pre-Hispanic Obsidian Mines in Southern Hidalgo

An examination of reports by Tylor (1861), Holmes (1900, 1919), and Spence and Parsons (1967) describing obsidian mines near Cerro de las Navajas in southern Hidalgo indicates that not one but three mine groups have been visited and described.

From Teotihuacan To Tenochtitlan: the Early Period Revisited

Blantons use of a hypothesis of warfare among Early PostTeotihuacdn sociocultural entities of the Basin of Mexico to account for selective reoccupation following the end of Teotihuacdn is based ultimately on a conceptualization of a dichotomy between a peaceful Classic period and a warlike Postclassic period. Except for unoccupied areas between local concentrations of Early Toltec sites there are no data to support the warfare hypothesis. Through a presentation of available Early Toltec settlement pattern data from the Basin of Mexico and a consideration of the sociocultural connections between Teotihuacdn and the Early Toltec epi-Teotihuacdn states, I support my earlier model which utilizes a tightly reasoned cultural ecological (sociocultural factors plus environmental features) framework to account for and predict the locations of concentrations of Early Toltec period sites. Continuity between Teotihuacdn and the Early Toltec period sites is stressed.