Mesoamerican state formation in the Postclassic period

MICHAEL E. SMITH

During the period under consideration in this volume, Mesoamerican soci­eties underwent two major episodes of fundamental transformation and restructuring. The year 500 ce saw the height of development of the so-called “Classic” period societies, including the well-known Maya of the southern lowlands, Teotihuacan, and Zapotec society of Oaxaca.

The stories of the Classic-period societies are told in other volumes of this series. In this chapter I begin with the Classic period in order to establish the background for the changes that followed. I focus on the Mesoamerican Postclassic period, c. 700-1519. The levels of technology in Mesoamerica and other New World societies were considerably lower than in contemporary Europe and Asia in many domains, from transport to weaponry to industry to writing and literacy. But Postclassic Mesoamerica saw the operation of the same kinds of processes operating in other parts of the world at this time. Peoples migrated, demographic levels fluctuated, commerce expanded, empires and city-states rose and fell, and ideas and styles traveled widely.

The region known as Mesoamerica was initially defined by anthropolo­gists and archaeologists following the “culture area” approach popular in mid-twentieth century North American anthropology.

The volcanically derived soils in highland areas are quite fertile, and the topography is no major barrier to human occupation. Large highland valleys - such as the Basin of Mexico and the Valley of Oaxaca - were centers of population and society over the several millennia of the agricul­tural epoch. The environmental diversity within Mesoamerica acted as a stimulus for commerce, and archaeologists have documented extensive long­distance exchange in all periods.

Scholarly approaches

Scholarship on ancient Mesoamerica has traditionally been dominated by the anthropological archaeology approach, in which cultural evolution has long been a major research theme. Mesoamerica is one of the areas of the world where important crops were domesticated and where state-level societies developed from earlier non-state societies independently. Because of their emphasis on cultural evolution and the very earliest, or pristine, states, archaeologists have emphasized early farming societies and the initial states in the Classic period, with a relative neglect of the Postclassic period. This bias is compensated by the far greater abundance of written documents for the final pre-Spanish period in comparison with earlier eras. The study of Mesoamerican texts is usually referred to as ethnohistory, although research by art historians and linguists is also important.

The anthropological basis of Mesoamerican studies has a number of implications for comparative and world-historical analysis. First, many or most research topics within Mesoamerica have developed out of the traditional emphasis of cultural anthropology on non-western, non-state societies. One consequence is that Mesoamericanists have been slow to recognize some of the more sophisticated economic and political institutions (such as price-setting markets, forms of fiscal organization, and empires) that developed in the Postclassic period. Second, this anthropological emphasis has channeled comparative considerations more in the direction of recent tribal societies or ancient states in the Near East and less in the direction of societies in Europe or Asia that were contemporaneous with Postclassic Mesoamerica. Third, the disciplinary separation between anthropology and history has contributed to a lack of knowledge about Mesoamerica among historians, and hence its poor representation in comparative research by historians. Another contributing factor is the lower levels of empirical data from Mesoamerica compared to other world areas during the target period.

Data and methods

Archaeological data for Postclassic Mesoamerica is particularly strong for economic phenomena such as agricultural systems, craft production, and long-distance exchange.^[682] Nevertheless, the small number of fieldwork pro­jects to focus on the Postclassic period limits the resolution of the available data. For example, archaeologists working on the early farming villages of the Formative period in the Valley of Oaxaca count on time periods on the order of a century, while the Postclassic period in the same region has yet to be reliably subdivided chronologically. Needless to say, it is virtually impos­sible to generate reliable interpretations of economic or political phenomena when the relevant chronological resolution is on the order of five centuries.

A variety of kinds of written texts are informative of Postclassic Mesoa­merican dynamics. Several indigenous writing systems were in operation at this time, including the Aztec script of central Mexico and the Mixtec script of Oaxaca. These writing systems were more limited in their ability to encode spoken language than was the earlier Classic-period Maya script, and the range of phenomena described is somewhat limited. Nevertheless, we do have some Aztec cadastral maps and tax records, as well as dynastic histories and ritual texts.^[683] The writings of the Spanish conquerors are crucial for

Mesoamerican state formation in the Postclassic period providing an outside perspective on native society at the time of conquest, and during the century after conquest a number of Spanish friars and others made systematic attempts to gather information about history, society, and religion in ancient times.

The native rulers of Mesoamerican states maintained historical accounts of dynasties, ethnic groups, and a limited range of other phenomena. The purpose of these accounts was to legitimize and glorify dynasties and ethnic groups. The keeping of history combined oral and written accounts, and the level of detail in written histories varied among regions. For the Classic Maya no oral accounts have survived, but the written histories contain detailed descriptions of rulers and dynasties, framed by an accurate calendar. By contrast, indigenous historical documents for the Postclassic period were mostly mnemonic devices whose calendrical dates and schematic outlines of events were meant to aid professional historians in recounting oral accounts. After the Spanish conquest, Spanish chroniclers recorded many histories - predominantly from the Aztec capital Tenochtitlan - by interviewing nobles and sometimes consulting the painted documents themselves.

This body of indigenous historical scholarship is often referred to as the native historical tradition.

MICHAEL E. SMITH

Mesoamerica in the Classic period

Most regions of Mesoamerica experienced two major demographic peaks prior to the Spanish conquest. The first came late in the Classic period, immediately prior to the various regional collapses of states and cities, and the second occurred shortly before the Spanish conquest. The best- documented of Classic-period societies was the Classic Maya society in the southern lowlands of present-day Guatemala, Mexico and Belize (see Map 23.1). Sprawling settlement surrounded towering stone pyramids and palaces in a lush jungle setting. Urban population densities were quite low, leading many to categorize these settlements as “non-urban” in character. Nevertheless, they were the location of administrative and religious activities that inte­grated whole regions, and thus the Maya centers can be called urban from a functional perspective. The entire landscape filled up, and urban food supply became a problem as the Classic period proceeded. Written inscriptions describe hereditary kings who competed with one another through warfare and theatrical ritual productions.

During the ninth century, the major cities in the southern lowlands were abandoned and the fates of millions of people are unknown. Elite culture, including writing, the calendar, and courtly life, came to an end. Paleocli- matic data indicate a series of droughts across the Maya lowlands, although their timing and severity are not yet well understood. The end of Classic Maya civilization is one of the “textbook cases” for societal collapse, and it fits four out of five of Jared Diamond's features of collapse: (ι) overpopulation in relation to the environment; (2) increasing warfare; (3) droughts at key times; and (4) rulers who do not respond well to these problems and crises. Recent environmental data suggest that Diamond's fifth feature - deforestation and soil erosion - may not have been a significant factor in the collapse.⁶ The

Eighteenth Centuries (Stanford University Press, 1992); Matthew Restall and John F. Chuchiak, IV, “A Re-evaluation of the Authenticity of Fray Diego de Landa's Relacion de las Cosas de Yucatan,” Ethnohistory 49 (2002): 651-70; Michel R. Oudijk, Historiography of the Benizda: The Postclassic and Early Colonial Periods (1000-1600 a.d.) (Leiden: Research School of Asian, African, and Amerindian Studies, Universiteit Leiden, 2000), vol. 84.

6 Jared Diamond, Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed (New York: Viking, 2004); Cameron L. McNeil, David A. Burney and Lida Pigott Burney, “Evidence Disputing Deforestation as the Cause for the Collapse of the Ancient Maya Polity of Copan, Honduras,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 107 (2010): 1017-22; David Webster, The Fall of the Ancient Maya: Solving the Mystery of the Maya Collapse (New York: Thames and Hudson, 2002).

Map 23.i. Maya sites

Classic Maya collapse did not affect all of the Maya-speaking regions of Mesoamerica. The Puuc Maya culture was a distinctive variant that flour­ished in Yucatan, north of the southern lowlands. Its cities developed somewhat later than their southern neighbors, and they were unaffected by the collapse in the latter area.

Another Classic-period society was that of Teotihuacan, a city whose ruins lie close to Mexico City in the Valley of Mexico. Teotihuacan stood out as a unique settlement in Mesoamerica for its large size (c. 100,000 residents) and strict orthogonal planning. Its rulers forged a small empire in central Mexico through conquest, and they traded with cities as far away as the Maya lowlands. After a growth surge around the first century of the Common Era, Teotihuacan maintained its size and influence for many centuries until brought down by invasion or rebellion in the seventh century. Many public buildings show signs of burning, but the city was never completely aban­doned and continued as a smaller urban center into the Postclassic period. Large urban centers (although not as large as Teotihuacan) were also the norm in other parts of Classic-period Mesoamerica. Monte Alban, a powerful hilltop capital in the Valley of Oaxaca, is one of the best known of these. Although never completely abandoned, like Teotihuacan, its political power declined and the settlement shrunk significantly at the end of the Classic period.

Postclassic society: regional trajectories

By the year 900 all of the major Classic-period capital cities had collapsed or declined in size and power, and only a few major urban centers were flourishing. Although the basic processes such as urbanization and the growth of commercial exchange occurred throughout Mesoamerica, each region exhibited its own distinctive trajectory of change. In this section I review briefly the nature of Postclassic society and its change in seven key regions of Mesoamerica. I begin with the central Mexican highlands, the best-documented region of Postclassic Mesoamerica. There has been more archaeological fieldwork in this area, and more native and Spanish docu­ments describing Postclassic societies have survived from central Mexico.

Figure 23.ι shows the basic archaeological periods for Postclassic Mesoa­merica. In some areas one or more of these periods have been further subdivided chronologically, whereas in others the chronological resolution is much coarser.

Central Mexico

Central Mexico consists of the Basin of Mexico and surrounding highland valleys. The Basin of Mexico is the largest of the highland valleys/basins of Mesoamerica, and it has good rainfall and rich soils. At around the first century of the Common Era, the Basin became the center for a large urban society (Teotihuacan), and it has remained the dominant urban and political core of Mesoamerica and then Mexico through the present day. Because of the abundance of archaeological sites and the presence of Mexico City, the Basin of Mexico has seen more archaeological fieldwork than most other parts of Mesoamerica. Excavations in the early twentieth century at Teotihuacan, Tula, and other sites established a basic archaeological

Figure 23.1 Chronological outline for Postclassic Mesoamerica

chronology, and then in the 1960s and 1970s William T. Sanders and col­leagues directed the innovative Basin of Mexico Archaeological Survey Project. This was the first time in Mesoamerica that archaeologists had walked over a large continuous portion of the landscape, recording thou­sands of archaeological sites. Although fieldwork in Oaxaca has now sur­passed the Basin of Mexico in the extent of surveyed area and quality of data-collection, the central Mexican research transformed archaeological knowledge of central Mexico.^[686]

The two major Mesoamerican demographic peaks mentioned above (in the Late Classic and in the Late Postclassic periods) were first identified by the Basin of Mexico Archaeological Survey Project. The hyper-urbanization of Teotihuacan in the Classic period resulted from simultaneous processes of population growth throughout the Basin of Mexico and rural depopulation in many areas as people moved into the city. The decline of Teotihuacan led to both ruralization and demographic decline at the regional level. After several centuries of a cyclical rise and fall of urban centers, population rebounded in the Middle and Late Postclassic periods, reaching its peak at the time of the Spanish conquest. This pattern of twin population peaks has been identified in subsequent survey and excavation projects in most parts of Mesoamerica, although the specific contours of change in each region varied.

Much of Teotihuacan's civic architecture was burned and destroyed in the sixth century, and this episode is often referred to as the “collapse” of the city. Nevertheless, a significant population - perhaps 30-40,000 people - continued to reside in the city in the following Epiclassic period (700-900), and Teotihuacan remained the largest city in central Mexico. Unfortunately we know very little about the post-collapse city or its residents, although it is almost certain that it had ceased to be an influential polity at this time.

The Epiclassic period saw the rapid growth of a series of large, fortified, hilltop cities throughout central Mexico. The regions of these new cities had all previously been part of the large zone of influence of Teotihuacan, whether part of that city's empire or not. Xochicalco, located near Cuerna­vaca in the state of Morelos, is the most extensively studied Epiclassic fortified city.^[687] The city was founded with a small population during the Classic period, but reached its largest extent in Epiclassic times. Monumental civic architecture was concentrated on top of a small mountain, whose slopes were terraced for residential occupation. A series of walls and ditches helped protect much of the city. Archaeologists have located an abundance of public­relief sculpture that adorned temples and other civic buildings. These images stress dynastic and military themes, with several elements of Classic Maya style and content (the Epiclassic period in central Mexico coincided with the final flourishing of the Classic Maya cities).

The basic parameters of Xochicalco's setting and external connections were duplicated at other Epiclassic central Mexican cities such as Cacaxtla and Teotenango. Cacaxtla is best known for an elaborate series of mural paintings showing battles and rituals, executed in Maya style. These were found in excavations at a palace compound located on a hilltop, surrounded by a large fortification ditch. Archaeological research at these and other sites suggest that Epiclassic central Mexico was a period of political decentral­ization and warfare. Long-distance social interaction with the Maya cities,

Mesoamerican state formation in the Postclassic period involving imagery and art styles, increased dramatically from Teotihuacan's day, although the social processes responsible have yet to be determined. The Epiclassic cities also traded with one another and shared a series of artistic and intellectual traits.

The Epiclassic cities collapsed after two centuries, leaving their hinterlands in a highly decentralized state with ruralized populations. At Xochicalco, the collapse involved the burning and destruction of much of the city, including defacement of much of the public art. Only a few small pockets of the city continued to be occupied by small communities. The multiple Epiclassic capitals were replaced in the Early Postclassic period by a single large urban center, Tula. Away from the Tula region, most parts of central Mexico had small, dispersed populations in Early Postclassic times.

Tula was the home and capital of the historically documented Toltec peoples.^[688] This is the earliest city and people to receive unequivocal treatment in the Aztec native historical sources, but scholars cannot agree on the level of accuracy or relevance of those sources with respect to Toltec society. The Aztec kings traced their origin and legitimacy to their descent from the Toltec kings, and the descriptions of Tula and the Toltecs contain many obviously mythological elements (e.g. buildings constructed of gold, or fantastic god-kings who lived hundreds of years). Earlier credulous interpret­ations of the Toltecs have given way recently to more skeptical accounts, and many scholars now doubt that Aztec native history contains any reliable historical information about the Early Postclassic period.^[689]

If the later native historical accounts are not useful for historical analysis, archaeology does provide considerable information about political and eco­nomic phenomena in the Early Postclassic period. With a population of 50,000, Tula was the largest city since Classic-period Teotihuacan. The urban plan of Teotihuacan had been highly aberrant in Mesoamerica, including numerous unusual traits such as strict orthogonal planning, the lack of a large central civic plaza, and Axial layout around a central avenue. These planning traits were abandoned by the Epiclassic cities, and then the designers of Tula returned to ancient Mesoamerican planning canons in an extreme form. Tula is the most formally planned urban center in all of Mesoamerica, with a highly symmetrical and monumental layout of buildings around a formal plaza.

Although some scholars argue that Tula was the capital of an empire, this judgment owes more to a loose interpretation of Aztec native history than to empirical evidence. Nevertheless, Tula did engage in some kind of intensive interaction with the distant Maya city of Chichen Itza in Yucatan. One portion of the Maya city is laid out in a similar fashion to the civic center at Tula, and the two cities share a number of architectural forms and styles that are otherwise rare in Mesoamerica (such as buildings employing numer­ous stone columns). The nature of this relationship has been debated actively for over a century, and although there is now a consensus view backed by archaeological evidence, many details remain obscure. The architectural and urban commonalities between Tula and Chichen Itza developed at approxi­mately the same time, and it is impossible to assign temporal priority to either city. The current model stresses dual processes of commercial exchange and movements of elites, who generated the stylistic similarities between the cities.

The collapse and abandonment of Tula around 1100 are not well under­stood. At approximately this time, a series of migrating central Mexico from the north. The native histories from many of the Aztec city-states assert that their ancestors came from Aztlan, a perhaps mythological homeland to the north.^[690] Linguists have reconstructed a northern homeland for Nahuatl (the Aztec language) and an arrival date in central Mexico sometime between 200 and 1200. Because the timing of their arrival is not well established, it is not known whether the Nahuatl peoples played a role in the collapse of Tula. Archaeologically, however, it is clear that new cities were founded through­out central Mexico in the twelfth century, with new types of artifacts and architecture. These new cities, of the Middle Postclassic period, developed into the Aztec cities that flourished at the time of the Spanish conquest. The simplest explanation is that the Nahuatl migrants arrived in central Mexico in the eleventh or twelfth century to found cities and states, whether or not they contributed to the end of Tula and the Toltecs.

The Middle Postclassic period was a time of population growth and the expansion of cities and settlement across the landscape of central Mexico. Numerous city-states (altepetl in Nahuatl) were founded. These consisted of small urban centers with modest monumental architecture (a royal palace and one or more temple-pyramids, arranged around a central plaza), small resident populations, and surrounding farmland settled with villages and towns. Kings and nobles pursued marriage alliances across city-state lines, and soon an interlocking nobility covered all of central Mexico. City-states also traded with one another, and a dynamic system of periodic marketplaces soon developed. Alongside these friendly relations, city-states also engaged in antagonistic activities. Kings waged wars with their neighbors to extract tribute, and some managed to create conquest-states or small empires. Tenayuca was one of the largest and most powerful Middle Postclassic cities in the Basin of Mexico, and it may have been the capital of a small empire. The entire political situation in central Mexico was highly dynamic, however, and no polity lasted very long.

As populations grew and settlement expanded, a variety of intensive agricultural methods were employed.^{[691] [692]} Rivers were dammed and canals built, leading to large and productive irrigation systems in some areas. Hillsides were terraced, and the swampy lakes in the Basin of Mexico were converted to highly productive raised fields. Population growth and agricul­tural intensification continued into the Late Postclassic period, and by 1500 irrigation and terracing covered much of the central Mexican landscape. Nevertheless, droughts brought crop failures and famines to the Basin of Mexico with increasing frequency, although other areas seem to have fared better.

For the Late Postclassic period, scholars can rely on an abundance of written documentation assembled in the early decades of Spanish rule.1³ This material permits a detailed reconstruction of social, political, economic, and cultural patterns in central Mexico, although the sources are heavily biased toward Tenochtitlan and the Basin of Mexico. Society was divided into two legally defined classes, nobles and commoners. Nobles monopolized the positions of power in city-state government, and they owned most of the land. Although this was not “private property” in the modern sense, much of the land could be sold (only to other nobles). Commoners gained access to farmland through a variety of arrangements, including rental and sharecrop­ping. Many commoners belonged to a corporate group called the calpolli, which consisted of a group of households residing in the same community, subject to the same noble overlord, and usually sharing economic occupa­tions or activities. Calpolli councils allocated land to individual households, and organized collective activities. Commoners who did not belong to a calpolli had to work directly for a lord or king, and they were less well-off economically and had less control over their own destiny.

In the first part of the Late Postclassic period two small empires formed in the Basin of Mexico, based in the cities of Azcapotzalco and Texcoco. By this time the native historical accounts provide relatively good information on political dynamics. Then in 1428, war broke out leading to a major political realignment. Azcatpotzalco, the more powerful capital, was defeated and three cities - Tenochtitlan, Texcoco and Tlacopan - formed an alliance to conquer other city-states and generate taxes. This “triple alliance” soon became a powerful empire of conquest. Although the alliance remained intact officially until the Spanish conquest, Tenochtitlan grew in power and wealth at the expense of its allies until it could be regarded at the sole capital of the empire. This polity was organized around several practices of indirect rule, and most of the rulers and governments of the conquered city-states were left in power.

Yucatan

After the collapse of the southern lowland Maya cities, the focus of Maya urban society shifted to the northern part of the Yucatan peninsula. A group of cities with a distinctive style of public architecture known as “Puuc” had been founded prior to the lowland collapse, and these cities grew and flourished after it. Although some populations fleeing the southern area probably moved into the Puuc cities, the demographic growth was insuffi­cient to account for more than a small part of the southern population loss. The Puuc cities exhibited only a small portion of the set of elite cultural traits that had characterized the southern lowland cities. The long-count calendar, whose dates were so prominently displayed on public stone monuments in the south, was not used in the Puuc area; other Maya calendars, however, continued in use. A more limited version of the Maya script was used at these sites.1⁴

The overall configuration of urban form at the Puuc cities resembled the earlier southern cities. Monumental stone pyramids and palaces, often arranged around large formal plazas, dominated the city centers, and housing surrounded the centers in a low-density pattern. Chemical analyses of soils at some of these cities have established that the areas between the houses were

14 Nicholas P. Dunning, Lords of the Hills: Ancient Maya Settlement in the Puuc Region, Yucatan, Mexico (Madison, WI: Prehistory Press, 1992).

Mesoamerican state formation in the Postclassic period farmed with a high degree of intensity. As these cities grew, one of them - Chichen Itza - outpaced the others and began a program of political expan­sion. Although the nature and extent of this city's political domination is not clear, this was the largest Puuc city and it exhibits the most extensive record by far of interactions with distant areas (including Tula), as measured in both art styles and imported goods.^[693]

As noted above, in spite of an extensive record of research and publication on Tula and Chichen Itza - the largest urban centers in Mesoamerica at the time - scholars have still not determined the nature of their relationship. One of the few firm conclusions now agreed on is that an older model positing the Toltec conquest of Chichen Itza and Yucatan is not correct. In the twelfth century Chichen Itza started to decline, and by around 1200 the city had been largely abandoned. Soon after, the nearby city of Mayapan expanded rapidly as an imperial capital, its armies conquering much of Yucatan. The final centuries before the arrival of Cortes in 1519 saw much warfare in the Maya region. Mayapan was one of the few large walled cities of ancient Mesoa­merica. The rulers of Mayapan emulated some of the architectural forms of Chichen Itza, but on a much smaller scale. Mid-twentieth-century archaeolo­gists thought the simpler, smaller buildings of Mayapan were pale reflections of those at Chichen Itza and earlier Maya cities, and labeled Mayapan's period as one of cultural “decadence.” This concept of the decadence of Postclassic Maya culture is parallel to older views of the decadence of post­Roman Mediterranean society (“late antiquity” in current parlance). During the fifteenth century Mayapan too came to an end, and when the Spaniards arrived, Yucatan was the setting for a large number of warring petty states or chiefdoms.

Other regions

Much less is known about regions other than the Valley of Mexico or the Yucatan. Scholars generally identify five of these: the southern Maya low­lands, the Maya highlands, the Gulf of Mexico Coast, the Valley of Oaxaca, and west Mexico.

After the Maya collapse, the southern Maya lowland environment (Guatemala and Belize) was converted from a densely settled landscape with numerous bustling urban centers, to a quiet isolated jungle setting with only a few scattered villages. The area would never return to its former condition

of high population, urbanization, and intensive agriculture. New villages were founded, most likely by refugees fleeing the warfare and chaos of the collapsing central cities; many of these sites were located on the eastern edge of the region, in what is now Belize. This area witnessed a gradual growth of population and its residents traded and interacted with other parts of Mesoa­merica, but it would never again be the setting for large states or cities. In the Late Postclassic period, a series of migrating groups moved into, and through, the southern lowlands. Many of these were fleeing south to avoid the troubled situations after the falls of the cities of Chichen Itza and Mayapan. Some of these groups set up fortified towns deep in the lowland

16

region.

The Maya highlands, consisting of a chain of mountainous regions that parallels the Pacific coast from Mexico through Guatemala and into Hon­duras, had been the home to speakers of Maya languages for millennia. With the exception of the city of Copan in Honduras, this area was largely isolated from the processes of urbanization and cultural fluorescence that character­ized lowland Classic Maya society. During the Middle and Late Postclassic periods, populations grew and numerous small city-states emerged. Their capitals were typically placed on the tops of mountains or ridges and fortified with walls and ditches. Many of these polities corresponded to language groups. The largest and most powerful of these groups was the Quiche (or Kich'e) Maya, whose capital city, Utatlan, was a large and complex settle­ment with a series of individually fortified hilltop zones or neighborhoods. The Kakchiqel group, centered at Iximche, was another large powerful polity.^{[694] [695]}

The art and material culture of the highland Maya polities included a large number of exotic elements, including both individual motifs and styles that also appear in the art of central Mexico. The traditional interpretation views these traits as spread by migration or conquest from central Mexico in a process called "Mexicanization.” The world systems model (see below), on the other hand, interprets these traits as components of what has been called the “Postclassic International Style,” a widespread phenomenon whose place of origin is difficult or impossible to identify.

Along the Gulf of Mexico, the Postclassic epoch was a time of smaller cities, capitals of small polities or city-states, after a Classic period of high populations and large, highly planned urban centers. The people of this area were a complex mix of different linguistic and ethnic groups, some of which had distinctive styles of architecture and material culture. Many of the elements of the Postclassic International Style were incorporated into the artistic repertoire of Gulf Coast peoples in mural paintings and painted ceramic vessels. The southern portion of the Gulf Coast presents a major enigma of interpretation: early Spanish explorers described large, dense populations, but archaeologists cannot identify sites from the Late Postclassic period.

The Valley of Oaxaca, south of the Basin of Mexico and the second largest highland valley in Mesoamerica, was home to speakers of the Zapotec language. The Classic-period capital city, Monte Alban, declined in power during the ninth century, setting in a process of decentralization. Smaller cities were founded throughout the valley, and in the fifteenth century the area was conquered by the expanding Aztec Empire. Postclassic processes of change will remain impossible to reconstruct, however, until archaeologists succeed in establishing and applying a more refined chronological scheme. Presently, the entire interval from the fall of Monte Alban (c. 900) until the Spanish conquest consists of a single archaeological period. To judge from native historical sources of the Zapotec and Mixtec peoples, the ruined city of Monte Alban retained a symbolic importance for the rulers of the many Postclassic city-states in and around the Valley of Oaxaca. Although the city was largely abandoned, important individuals were still buried there in tombs with rich offerings. Some of these contain objects from the Mixtec culture, another Oaxacan group based outside of the central valley.^[696]

West Mexico is a vast region whose ancient cultures remain very poorly understood, largely because much of the area is difficult to access today and has seen far less archaeological research than other regions. Two major developments of the Postclassic period can be emphasized. First, the tech­nology for smelting bronze was introduced into west Mexico from South America early in Postclassic times. Merchants or other voyagers brought the knowledge by sea along the Pacific coast. Within a century or two, west Mexican metalsmiths were developing a distinctive tradition of both utilitar­ian items (sewing needles and punches) and ritual objects (bells and tweezers); bronze in Mesoamerica was not used for agricultural tools or weapons. A second development was the formation and expansion of the powerful Tarascan Empire in the final century prior to Spanish arrival. From a base in the Lake Patzcuaro Basin, the Tarascan kings expanded their control quickly at the same time as the Aztec Empire, culminating in a major defeat of the Aztec armies in the 1480s. Outside of Tarascan hegemony, most regions of west Mexico were organized into small polities at the time of Spanish conquest.^[697]

Processes and connections

The Postclassic period in Mesoamerica was a time of major change and growth in many dimensions, from demography to political organization to economics. Although archaeological coverage is uneven and native historical accounts do not contribute useful information until well into the Late Postclassic period, it is possible to summarize the major processes and changes on a large scale.

Demographic and agricultural growth

As a broad pattern, almost every region of Mesoamerica experienced its two greatest demographic peaks at the end of the Classic period and during the Late Postclassic period. The best-documented regions, however - the south­ern Maya lowlands and central Mexico - exhibit contrasting demographic trajectories. In the Maya region, Classic-period population growth was exponential in form, starting slowly and accelerating into a major surge just prior to the collapse of the ninth century. Although there was a slow recovery from the demographic disaster of the collapse, leading to higher populations in 1500 than in 1000, the region never fully recovered its popula­tion after the Classic period. In central Mexico, Teotihuacan's Classic-period demographic profile was radically different from its Maya contemporaries: rapid early growth, followed by several centuries of stability. Other parts of central Mexico witnessed more population growth within the Classic period, leading to a region-wide peak in the seventh century. Populations then dropped rapidly in most areas in Epiclassic times, only to begin an exponen­tial growth surge in the Late Postclassic period.^[698]

Paleoclimatologists working in central Mexico have used lake sediments to identify a period of lower rainfall between approximately 600 and 1200, and recent research on tree rings suggests a series of shorter droughts.^[699] Although we do not yet have sufficient evidence to link these data firmly to the changes identified by archaeologists, climate changes must have impacted the dem­ography and historical trajectories of the region. Without proposing causal models, I will simply point out that the start of the period of lower rainfall coincides with the fall of Teotihuacan, and its end coincides with a major demographic surge.

Migrations

The topic of Postclassic migrations is a difficult one, for both empirical and historiographic reasons. Empirically, it can be difficult to identify migra­tions through archaeological data. When extensive excavations of many kinds of contexts have been carried out, coupled with scientific analyses of skeletal remains, migrations are amenable to archaeological study. Unfor­tunately this level of coverage is only available for a few sites and regions of Postclassic Mesoamerica, and the evidence for migrations is equivocal and controversial.

The nature of Mesoamerican native historical accounts introduces another obstacle for the study of migrations. For Late Postclassic peoples, ancestral migrations were important parts of group identity. Many ethnic groups claimed to have migrated to their Late Postclassic locations from elsewhere, and native histories are full of migration stories. A still significant Mesoamer­ican historiographic tradition tends to accept native historical accounts at face value, and thus many scholars interpret what appear to be mythological charters as empirical events.^[700]

From a critical perspective, two sets of Postclassic migrations can be accepted as valid, based on both native historical traditions and archaeo­logical fieldwork: the Aztlan migrations that brought Nahuatl speakers to central Mexico from the north, and a series of southward movements from Yucatan into the southern lowlands and beyond in the final century of the Postclassic period. Both of these migrations had significant effects on their destination areas. There were probably other migratory movements in Mesoamerica during Postclassic times, but they cannot be regarded as historical events until additional historical and archaeological evidence becomes available.

Polity growth and decline

With numerous examples of the rise and fall of states, the expansion and contraction of empires, and wars, Postclassic Mesoamerica was very dynamic politically. Within this complex region of multiple historical trajectories several long-term political trends can be identified. Three of these trends are illustrated schematically in Figure 23.2: changes in the duration, size, and despotism of polities.

First, in terms of duration: The major cities included in the chronology chart (Figure 23.ι) illustrate a trend that started with the long-lasting states of the Classic period and ended with the much shorter-lived polities of the Late Postclassic period. The table in Figure 23. ι does not include the entire Classic period (which began in the first century Ce), which would have accentuated the contrast to a greater degree. The reduction of duration of Maya polities is particularly striking in Figure 23.1. After the fall of Teotihuacan, central Mexico witnessed a somewhat regular rise and fall of states, each of which lasted about two centuries. In contrast, Teotihuacan had flourished for five or six centuries. The downward arrow in Figure 23.2 for polity duration levels off at the end of the sequence. Although some of the Middle Postclassic Aztec cities (such as Tenayuca) did not survive into the Late Postclassic period, most did continue, giving them a lifespan of three or four centuries before being cut short by Hernan Cortes.

Second, in terms of size: With the exception of the (Late Postclassic) Aztec Empire, the Mesoamerican states with the largest areal extents flourished during the Classic period. The Epiclassic and Early Postclassic states that followed were smaller polities; the Epiclassic polities and Tula in central Mexico, and the Puuc cities of Yucatan are the best documented of these. Finally, the city-state form spread throughout all of Mesoamerica in the Middle and Late Postclassic periods. In the latter period, the expansionist Aztec and Tarascan empires created a counter-trend of increasing size (Figure 23.2). Even with the expansion of the Aztec Empire, the city-state remained the predominant form of polity in both central Mexico and the outer imperial provinces. The growth of systems of city-states, what Mogens

Figure 23.2 Trends in Postclassic polities

Hansen calls “city-state cultures,” is one of the most striking Postclassic trends in Mesoamerica.²³

Third, in terms of despotism: Although the documentation of patterns of political dynamics such as despotic versus participatory rule is difficult for [1] Mogens Herman Hansen (ed.), A Comparative Study of Six City-State Cultures (Copen­hagen: The Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters, 2002); Smith and Berdan (eds.), The Postclassic Mesoamerican World.

archaeologists, new methods and data reveal some general trends during the Postclassic period.^[701] As revealed by spatial patterns of civic architecture, the content of public art, and other measures, the decline in polity size was accompanied by a reduction in what Michael Mann calls “despotic power,” or the ability of rulers to carry out their will without consultation with other groups.^[702] This trend is best documented in central Mexico, but in most regions the conquest-era city-states were less despotic than their Classic­period antecedents. Again, the two late empires (Aztec and Tarascan) developed in contradistinction to this trend. As documented by historical records, the Aztec emperors of Tenochtitlan were engaged in a systematic effort to exclude from power not only their allied kings but the nobles and other civic groups within Tenochtitlan. The decline of despotic power was in many cases accompanied by increases in Mann's “infrastructural power,” referring to the ability of the state to penetrate civil society to implement its actions throughout its territory. Although this is difficult to monitor with archaeological data, historical documents reveal elaborate systems of taxation and state monitoring in the conquest-period city-states.^[703]

Cities and urbanization

Nearly all Mesoamerican cities were capitals of polities, and city size was correlated with the territorial extent and power of states. The two largest Mesoamerican cities - Teotihuacan and Tenochtitlan - were capitals of empires. The Epiclassic and Early Postclassic cities were smaller than Teoti­huacan and ruled smaller domains, while the city-states of Late Postclassic Mesoamerica were ruled by small cities. The median size of Late Postclassic cities was 11,000 residents in an area of 2.5 square km.^[704] Most Mesoamerican cities had relatively low population densities, leaving considerable open space available for urban agricultural production. Although farming within Post­classic cities has been established conclusively for only a few cases, it is likely that the practice was quite common.

Just as Mesoamerican cities were generally small in size, the urbanization levels (the percentage of population living in cities) were small in most Mesoamerican societies. As is the case in many other realms, Classic-period Teotihuacan stands out as different from other Mesoamerican cities as the most urbanized society in ancient Mesoamerica. The Classic-period city's rapid growth was fed by rural to urban migration, probably through coer­cion, leaving the countryside largely empty. Fully 80 per cent of the popula­tion in the Basin of Mexico resided in the city at its height. After the collapse of Teotihuacan, conditions in central Mexico quickly returned to the Mesoa­merican baseline of low urbanization. Of the population of the Basin of Mexico, 30 per cent lived in cities in Epiclassic times, none in the Early Postclassic period, and 35 per cent in the Late Postclassic. Of the Late Postclassic urban population, 70 per cent lived in the capital Tenochtitlan and 30 per cent in city-state capitals.^[705]

The two best-known Mesoamerican cities - Teotihuacan and Tenochti- tlan - were not only the largest urban centers, but also the most aberrant in terms of their planning and layout. These imperial capitals showed strict orthogonal planning of the entire city, including residential neighborhoods. In contrast, most Mesoamerican cities (Postclassic and earlier) had carefully planned civic centers surrounded by unplanned residential zones. Mesoamerican urban planning followed a set of principles that differed from cities in other parts of the world. The formal civic plaza was the nucleus of urban design. Plazas were usually framed by the royal palace, temple­pyramids, and other monumental civic buildings. These central buildings were often aligned orthogonally and linked together with platforms and subsidiary plazas. Many of the Aztec city-state capitals explicitly copied the ancient urban plan of Tula, which included a large square plaza with the largest temple-pyramid on the east side, opposite a ballcourt. The conjunc­tion of archaeological and historical data show how the kings of Aztec city­states employed urban planning to legitimize and extend their rule.^[706]

As capitals of polities, all Postclassic cities showed the stamp of rulership, including royal palaces, large temple-pyramids of the state religion, and planning models that were expressions of ideological precepts. Much more variable, however, was the influence of economic factors on urban processes and layouts. The extent of urban-based craft production varied greatly. Just within the small sample of well-studied Aztec city-state capitals, archaeolo­gists have identified one example with numerous major craft industries (Otumba), one city with no craft production beyond the ubiquitous Aztec household textile industry (Huexotla), and several cities (Yautepec, Xaltocan) with varying levels of production between these extremes.^[707] In contrast to this variation in craft activities, Postclassic cities show more uniformity in the prevalence of markets and commercial exchange practices.

Growth of commercial networks

The expansion of commerce was one of the most significant social trends in Postclassic Mesoamerica. Historical sources describe a flourishing commer­cial economy in all parts of Mesoamerica at the time of Spanish conquest. The very first group of Mesoamerican people encountered by Christopher Columbus were Maya merchants traveling along the coast in 1502 in a large canoe (with twenty-five people) full of trade goods and money, and when Cortes entered Tenochtitlan eighteen years later the central marketplace was the feature that most impressed the conqueror and his soldiers.

Documentation of commercial institutions is strongest for Aztec central Mexico.³¹ Cortes wrote that 60,000 people attended the central marketplace of Tenochtitlan every day, and there are several lengthy first-hand descrip­tions of this facility. Hundreds of goods were offered for sale, by both petty vendors and professional merchants. Stalls were arranged in an orderly fashion, and a panel of judges heard complaints. Most or all cities in central Mexico had marketplaces that met once a week (the Aztec week was five days in length). Several types of merchants traveled among marketplaces buying and selling. A number of forms of money were used, of which the most common were cacao beans (for small purchases) and cotton textiles of a standard length. The Aztec economy was a commercial economy but it was not a capitalist one. Wage labor was extremely rare, as were sales of land. Commercial practices such as account books, partnerships, and loans existed in only rudimentary fashion.

Although historical documentation is much sparser in other regions, existing accounts do indicate the presence of similar commercial practices and institutions in all parts of Mesoamerica at the time of Spanish conquest. Furthermore, archaeologists have identified increasing exchange during the course of the Postclassic period.^[708] Although it is difficult to determine the full extent of commercial institutions during the Classic Period, recent methodo­logical innovations now aid the identification of markets and commercial exchange using archaeological data.^[709] These methods suggest that commer­cial exchange was far less widespread in the Classic Period. The timing and contours of the expansion of commerce between 700 and 1300 have yet to be established, however.

Writing systems and literacy

Changes in the nature of writing and literacy accompanied the political and economic trends of Postclassic Mesoamerica. The Classic Maya had developed the only complete phonetic writing system in ancient Mesoamer­ica; anything that could be expressed in spoken Mayan could be recorded with hieroglyphs. After the Maya collapse, only a more restricted form of writing was used by the Maya peoples. Several Mesoamerican societies, including Teotihuacan and Xochicalco, had limited scripts whose nature is debated by linguists. At the time of Spanish conquest, the Aztec and Mixtec peoples were using distinctive limited-purpose written scripts. Mixtec writing primarily recorded royal genealogies, while Aztec writing was used for mnemonic dynastic histories, tax and land records, and esoteric religious lore.^[710]

The most significant development in writing during the Postclassic period was the creation of a distinctive art style and a set of common symbols that were used all over Mesoamerica. This style and symbol set are often called “international” because they spanned many diverse polities, cultures and languages. The scripts of the Mixtecs and Aztecs are components of the Postclassic International Style and the Postclassic Symbol Set, as are painted murals, polychrome ceramics, and painted manuscripts from many regions. These media were not restricted to a particular language or group of languages, and thus they did not comprise a complete phonetic writing system. Their independence from a particular language, however, facilitated communication between speakers of different languages, and contributed to long-distance communication. In the Late Postclassic Period, Mesoamerica reached its highest level ever of aesthetic and religious interaction and similarity.^[711]

Postclassic Mesoamerica and world history

When Cortes landed on the Gulf Coast of Mexico in 1519, Mesoamerica had reached its highest level ever of social and cultural integration, and the accompanying similarities of social and cultural phenomena. Through much of the twentieth century scholars posited migrations, conquests, or vague processes such as “Mexicanization” as the mechanisms for creating the Late Postclassic similarities across Mesoamerica. Starting in the 1980s, such explan­ations were recognized as inadequate, however. Mesoamerica was never united linguistically or politically. The region was always the home to many diverse language groups and numerous independent polities.

At an international conference in 1999, a group of scholars developed a new model for the dynamics of Postclassic Mesoamerica. They identified six major processes of change and innovation: population growth; proliferation of small polities; greater diversity of trade goods; commercialization of the economy; new forms of writing and iconography; and new patterns of stylistic interaction. To understand these changes across the area of Meso­america, these scholars adopted a modified version of the world systems theory first articulated by Immanuel Wallerstein, based loosely on research by Janet Abu-Lughod, Christopher Chase-Dunn and Thomas Hall.^[712] Their model differed from other world-systems models in its incorporation of religious and intellectual dynamics alongside political and economic pro­cesses. This modified world-systems model integrates a diverse range of processes and developments, helps scholars understand the nature of Mesoa­merica as it was observed by Columbus and Cortes, and allows for compari­sons with other contemporaneous regions.

If “world history” is about connections among geographically separated societies, then Postclassic Mesoamerica is irrelevant to mainstream world history in the Old World prior to the adventures of Hernan Cortes between 1519 and 1521. But if world history is about a broadly comparative approach to history, then the “expanding webs of exchange and conquest” in Postclassic Mesoamerica provide a unique case study that can help illuminate general processes of societal change. Many of the economic, political, and social processes that characterized the Old World between 500 and 1500 have parallels in Postclassic Mesoamerica. The levels of technological proficiency, economic development, and societal scale were lower in the New World, but such differences can be illuminating in broad comparative studies.^[713]

FURTHER READING

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Blomster, Jeffrey P., ed. After Monte Alban: Transformation and Negotiation in Oaxaca, Mexico. Boulder, CO: University Press of Colorado, 2008.

Boone, Elizabeth H. Stories in Red and Black: Pictorial Histories of the Aztecs and Mixtecs. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 2000.

Carmack, Robert M. The Quiche Mayas of Utatlan: The Evolution of a Highland Guatemala Kingdom. Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 1981.

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Chase-Dunn, Christopher and Thomas D. Hall. Rise and Demise: Comparing World-Systems. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1997.

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Schele, Linda, and Peter Mathews. The Code of Kings: The Language of Seven Sacred Maya Temples and Tombs. New York, NY: Simon and Schuster, 1998.

Smith, Michael E. Aztec City-State Capitals. Gainesville, FL: University Press of Florida, 2008.

“Aztec Taxation at the City-State and Imperial Levels,” in Andrew Monson and Walter Scheidel (eds.), Fiscal Regimes and the Political Economy of Premodern States, forthcoming.

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Smith, Michael E. and Frances F. Berdan, eds. The Postclassic Mesoamerican World, Salt Lake City, UT: University of Utah Press, 2003.

Stahle, David W., Jose Villanueva-Diaz, Dorian J. Burnette, Julian Cerano Paredes, Richard Heim Jr, Falko K. Fye, Rodolfo A. Soto, et al. “Major Mesoamerican Droughts of the Past Millennium,” Geophysical Research Letters 38 (2011): 1-4.

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