Friar Sahagún lists obsidian blades among the goods traded by the pochteca, and Pachuca obsidian has been found at Late Aztec sites throughout much of Mesoamerica, including Yucatan and other Maya-speaking areas far beyond the borders of the Aztec Empire. Pachuca obsidian even found its way to sites in the enemy Tarascan Empire, and obsidian from Tarascan-controlled sources has been found at Aztec sites in Morelos. Native historical accounts give the impression that the Aztecs and Tarascans had little to do with each other beyond their battles and imperial activities (see chapter 7). The archaeological record, on the other hand, provides direct evidence for the concrete actions of people. Whatever Aztec and Tarascan nobles may have said about each other, merchants crossed imperial borders, and commoners bought and used obsidian tools that originated in enemy territory.
Ceramic Exchange
The use of chemical analysis to study exchange is much more difficult for ceramic artifacts than for those of obsidian, partly because the raw material – clay – is far more widely distributed. In most cases, the fired clay cannot be traced to a specific point of origin. Nevertheless, from patterns in the chemical composition of potsherds, the archaeologist often can infer the number of different ceramic production centers represented in a collection of artifacts, and sometimes the region of origin of imported objects. Research in the 1990s on the chemical composition of the most abundant type of Aztec decorated ceramic (Aztec III Black-on-Orange) overturned prior models of Aztec ceramic exchange and revealed that the system of production and exchange was more complex than previously thought. More recent studies have extended these findings to other ceramic categories.22
Fine-paste, orange ceramic bowls and plates painted with black designs were in use throughout the time of Aztec occupation of the Valley of Mexico. During the Early Aztec period, there were several distinct painting styles, each with limited spatial distributions (these styles are variants of the types Aztec I and Aztec II Black-on-Orange). This suggested to scholars that three to five regional production-exchange systems had operated in the valley. Chemical analyses of sherds from the different styles confirmed this interpretation and revealed the operation of several different local market systems with little exchange of ceramics between them. The production and exchange of plain ceramics (without painting) was even more decentralized, without apparent control by a single center.
In the Late Aztec period, a single style of painted ceramic, called Aztec III Black-on-Orange, came to dominate the inventories of households in the Valley of Mexico. The painted designs on these ceramics are simple and busy, with many thin parallel lines combined with other motifs (figure 5.6). These ceramics give the impression of being mass produced. In comparison with the Early Aztec types, Aztec III ceramics show a high degree of stylistic uniformity throughout the Valley of Mexico and in the foreign areas to which they were traded (the sherds in figure 5.6 were imports I excavated at the provincial town of Cuexcomate in Morelos). Most archaeologists had assumed that this uniformity of style resulted from the operation of a single workshop or cluster of workshops, which supplied the entire Valley of Mexico with these pots through the market system.
Figure 5.6 Sherds from imported Aztec III Black-on-Orange ceramic plates excavated at Cuexcomate (photograph by Michael E. Smith)
The chemical analyses indicated a different situation, however. There were in fact at least four production zones for Aztec III ceramics, located in or near the cities of Tenochtitlan, Texcoco, Chalco, and Ixtapalapa. The workshops in each zone used local clays from around the lakes, shaped the clay into the same forms, and painted the vessels using a single, Valley-wide style. Analyses of plainware ceramics by also found four production zones, two of which match those for the Aztec III ceramics (Tenochtitlan and Texcoco), and two of which were distinct (Otumba and Cuauhtitlan). These findings show that ceramic production was more decentralized than previously thought, and they imply a high level of exchange and stylistic interaction within the Valley of Mexico that led to a single popular style being produced in several different areas. This study also illustrates the pitfalls of studying ancient artifact exchange and interaction on the basis of style alone, without the benefit of chemical analysis.
During the Early and Late Aztec periods, the potters of each region of central Mexico developed their own distinctive ware of painted ceramics. Various styles of polychrome painting, with red, black, and orange designs on a white background, were applied to serving vessels in the valleys to the east, south, and west of the Valley of Mexico. These painted bowls were widely traded among regions, and many Aztec families, commoners and nobles alike, owned and used vessels from several different areas. The most elaborate polychrome ceramics were produced in Cholula (figure 5.7) and were among the most widely traded wares in central Mexico. It was said that Motecuhzoma II would only eat off plates and dishes from Cholula, the finest in the empire.23
Figure 5.7 Cholula Polychrome ceramic tripod plate (diameter 23 cm) (Saint Louis Art Museum, Museum Purchase, no. 85–1950; reproduced with permission)
The simpler Aztec III Black-on-Orange pottery was also popular outside of its zone of origin in the Valley of Mexico. Examples imported from the valley are found at Late Aztec archaeological sites throughout central Mexico. But it was not the only pottery from the Valley of Mexico that was exported to other areas. Excavations in Morelos typically uncover several decorated types imported from the Valley of Mexico (figure 5.8). One of these ceramic imports, called Texcoco Fabric-Marked, was a basin for salt transport (see figure 4.2).
Figure 5.8 Imported Valley of Mexico ceramic sherds excavated at Cuexcomate and Capilco in Morelos. Upper left: Aztec III Black-on-Orange. Upper right: Texcoco Fabric-Marked salt vessels. Lower row: Xochimilco Polychrome (photograph by Michael E. Smith)
The Aztecs produced salt by boiling and evaporating the salt water from the Valley of Mexico lakes in large crude ceramic basins. The salt was packed into the same basins for transport.24 Broken sherds from these salt vessels are easy to identify because their surfaces bear the impressions of coarse, burlap-like, maguey cloth that was applied to the vessels before firing to give them texture (figure 5.8). Salt vessels are found in large quantities at most Aztec archaeological sites in central Mexico. Every Aztec-period house I have excavated in Morelos yielded numerous sherds of this type – further evidence for extensive trading relations between the Valley of Mexico and this region. Major salt works were present in several of the outer provinces of the Aztec Empire, but within 100 km or so of the Valley, most households obtained their salt through trade with producers from around the Valley of Mexico lakes.25
A Complex Economy
The various economic institutions and practices described in chapters 3, 4 and 5 all worked together in a dynamic and complex economy that bound the various parts of the Aztec Empire into a single economic, social, and cultural unit. The growing populations required increased production of food and tools; the craftsmen who manufactured obsidian tools or ceramic vessels required merchants to sell their goods and to obtain raw materials; the merchants required money to facilitate their transactions; the use of money required additional production (for cloth) and trade (for lowland cacao); and the overall dynamism and prosperity of the economy encouraged further population growth. These trends are evident in the results of archaeological studies that have focused on the transition from the Early Aztec to the Late Aztec periods. Late Aztec occupations yield many more imported artifacts, have more evidence for craft production activities, and show signs of heavier reliance on intensive farming methods (see chapter 13).
This dynamic economy, with a significant commercial component, was not limited to the Aztec Empire. The Aztec economy was closely linked to other regional economies in Late Postclassic Mesoamerica through processes of commercial trade and the exchange of information; this wider Mesoamerican context will be explored more fully in chapter 13. One component of the expanding Aztec economy was a major increase in the trade of commodities. A commodit
y is simply a good that is bought and sold. In earlier periods, many Mesoamerican trade goods were not commodities; they were gifts between nobles, tax items, objects distributed by leaders to their subjects, or other politically controlled goods not traded through market systems. Of the hundreds of commodities in the Late Aztec economy, the most important ones are listed in table 5.1. This list shows clearly the links between the Aztec economy and other areas of Mesoamerica and beyond. The example of polychrome pottery illustrates the importance of commodities in the Aztec economy. In the earlier Teotihuacan and Classic Maya economies, polychrome pottery was a luxury good strongly controlled by elites. But in Aztec central Mexico, polychrome pottery was sold in markets, and even peasant farmers purchased some vessels, whose broken fragments we excavate today.26
Table 5.1 Key trade commodities in Late Postclassic Mesoamerica.
Commodity Place of origin Images
Utilitarian Goods
Obsidian and obsidian tools Central Mexico Fig. 4.1
Raw cotton Lowlands
Polychrome pottery (widespread) Figs. 5.7, 5.8, 6.11, 9.6
Salt (widespread)
Slaves (widespread) Fig. 5.2
Plain textiles (widespread) Figs. 4.4,
Luxury Goods
Cacao (as money and beverage) Southern Mesoamerica Figs. 5.4, 5.5
Greenstone jewelry Southern Mesoamerica Fig. 5.3
Copper axe-money Tarascan empire
Copper/bronze bells Tarascan empre Fig. 4.7
Feathers and feather ornaments Tropical lowlands Figs. 4.8,
Gold jewelry Oaxaca and Tenochtitlan Figs. 4.10, 5.3
Turquoise jewelry Southwestern US Figs. 4.12, 5.3
Obsidian jewelry and mirrors Central Mexico Figs. 4.11, 4.14, 5.3, 9.4
Painted manuscripts (widespread) Fig. 11.1
Decorated textiles (widespread)
Stone sculpture Central Mexico Fig. 10.4, 12.1 to 12.7
Data from: Smith and Berdan 2003
The market system was the institution that linked the various sectors and regions within this dynamic economy. Marketing, using one or more of the forms of currency discussed above, was also an activity that allowed the average person to get ahead economically. As might be expected, some people tried to profit through deception. This concerned the first Spanish priests in central Mexico, and Friar Molina's confessional manual contains the following entries for petty traders:
And when you sell chilis, perhaps you mix the small ones, the damaged ones with the large ones, whereby you deceive the people?
And when you bought good capes, perhaps you inserted them among the poor ones? And when you filled in the holes of the holey capes, perhaps you did not show your customer that the capes were holey, damaged, whereby you made sport of him?27
That such practices were singled out by Friar Molina shows how important marketing was and how far some people would go to gain from their commercial dealings (see also Friar Molina's admonition about counterfeit cacao beans above).
Clearly the Aztec economy was highly commercialized and dynamic, but it was not a capitalist economy. There was no wage labor, land was not a commodity to be bought and sold (except under certain limited circumstances), and opportunities for investment were limited to pochteca expeditions. Marketplace trade gave the Aztec commoners and merchants a chance to advance themselves, but only up to a point.28 Aztec markets and the overall economy were embedded in a rigid system of social classes, and no amount of economic success would enable one to cross class barriers.
Chapter six
Family and Social Class
Seventh house. Here is the home of some people none of whom is baptized. Here is the home of one named Yaotl. His wife is named Mocel. He has one child named Huitzitl, now twenty years old. Here is Yaotl's younger sibling, who is married, named Huelitl . . . . Yaotl works 20 [matl], 10 matl wide, and his younger sibling works 7 matl by 6 matl wide. Here is his tribute: every 80 days he delivers one quarter-length of a Cuernavaca cloak and one quarter-length of a doubled cloak. They do it jointly, so that in one year [they deliver] one Cuernavaca cloak and one tribute cloak. This is all; no narrow cloaks, no turkey hens, no turkey eggs. That is all. Five are included in one house.
S. L. Cline, The Book of Tributes (entry for a commoner household in a Nahuatl-language census from the town of Quauhchichinollan, Morelos, ca. 1540)
The family or household was the basic social unit in Aztec society, but only in the past two decades have we begun to learn much about Aztec families. Thanks to translations of Nahuatl documents, such as the one quoted above, and archaeological excavations of houses, we are now gaining an appreciation for patterns of family life, household organization, and gender roles. One of the important new findings is the great influence that social classes played in structuring Aztec life and society. There were two social classes, nobles and commoners, separated by a wide and unpassable chasm.1
Nobles or lords ran the government, owned the land, commanded the army, and lived a more luxurious lifestyle than commoners. Although commoners greatly outnumbered nobles, they were obliged to serve these lords and support them with food and other goods. These great inequities might suggest that Aztec commoners were oppressed serfs leading bleak lives of servitude. This was not the case, however. Commoners had considerable control over their own destinies, and most managed to meet their basic needs and even provide themselves with some level of economic comfort in spite of their duties to lords and kings. Much of the evidence for this observation comes from recent excavations of houses and villages, where the hidden lives of anonymous peasants and artisans are being revealed for the first time.
Growing up Aztec
In spite of the importance of social classes, there were many similarities in the ways noble and commoner children were raised. Basic Aztec notions of children's behavior and gender roles cut across the class divide. The Codex Mendoza provides the most vivid and complete description of the Aztec life cycle.2
Birth and Childhood
As in all cultures, childbirth was an important event among the Aztecs. Women were aided by a midwife, whose duties went beyond simply helping with the birth process. Midwives also supervised the rituals that accompanied birth and named the newborn child. The Codex Mendoza describes the midwife's duties after birth as follows (see figure 6.1):
At the end of four days after the infant's birth, the midwife carried the infant, naked, and took it to the courtyard of the house of the one who has given birth. And in the courtyard they had placed a small earthen tub of water on rushes or reeds [as a mat] called tule, where the said midwife bathed the said infant . . . And after the said bath, the said midwife ordered [three] boys to call out loudly the new name of the infant . . . And the name they gave it was that which the midwife wished. And at the beginning, when the infant was taken to be bathed, if it was a boy, they carried him with his symbol in his hand, and the symbol was the tool used by the boy's father, whether of the military or professions like metalworker, woodcarrier, or whatever other profession [figure 6.1, top] . . . And if the infant was a girl, the symbol they gave her for bathing was a distaff with its spindle and its basket and a broom, which were the things she would use when she grew up [figure 6.1, bottom]. And they offered the male infant's umbilical cord, along with the little shield and arrows symbolized in bathing, in the place where they warred with their enemies, where they buried it under the ground. And likewise for the girl, they buried her umbilical cord under the metate, a stone for grinding tortillas.3
Figure 6.1 Aztec childbirth customs. The midwife is about to bathe the newborn (Codex Mendoza 1992:v.4:119:f.57r)
This presentation of symbols to the newborn established the child's gender identity early in life. Boys were expected to grow up to be warriors and to have an occupation like their father's, and girls were expected to grow up to manage the household, where cooking, weaving, cleaning, domestic offerings, and child-rearing were their major activities. The descriptions of Aztec chil
dhood in the Codex Mendoza show the differential training of boys and girls. By five years of age, boys were already “toting light loads of firewood and carrying light bundles to the tiangues, or market place. And they [mothers] taught the girls of this age how they had to hold the spindle and distaff in order to spin.”4
By the age of seven, boys had learned to use nets to catch fish, and girls were spinning cotton (see figure 4.4). To the Aztecs, gender identities were not natural or inherent; rather they had to be achieved or produced through key ceremonies – such as the presentation of symbols by the midwife – and through the encouragement of tasks appropriate to each gender – such as fishing and spinning (see below).
The young were kept in line by a combination of threats of corporal punishment and speeches that stressed correct behavior. Parents “gave them good advice so they would always apply themselves and spend their time in something to avoid all idleness.”5 Aztec punishments were severe, as these examples from the Codex Mendoza show:
An 8-year old boy is being warned by his father not to be deceitful, or he will be punished by being pierced in the body with maguey spikes.
Likewise they punished them [10-year olds] for being rebellious, beating them with sticks and offering other threats.
They punished the 11-year-old boy or girl who disregarded verbal correction by making them inhale chile smoke, which was a serious and even cruel torment.6
The Aztecs Page 15