Tenochtitlan

Tenochtitlan was the capital city of the Aztec empire that occupied highland central Mexico during the 14th through 16th centuries. The city was composed of a ceremonial and administrative core surrounded by palaces and residences of the society's elite. Aztec urbanites, numbering as many as a quarter of a million, comprised a diverse array of ethnic groups that immigrated to the city from the distant reaches of the empire and represented a range of specialized occupations, including farmers, artisans, warriors, priests, and bureaucrats. The invasion and conquest of the city by Spanish conquistador Hernán Cortés in 1521 brought world attention to Aztec culture. Since that time, archaeological and historical studies of Tenochtitlan have made significant contributions to anthropology's understanding of pre-Hispanic urbanism in the Americas.

According to Aztec oral tradition, Tenochtitlan was founded by the Mexica people in AD 1325 on an island and reclaimed swamp land near the western edge of Lake Texcoco in the Basin of Mexico. The city was connected to the mainland by three large artificial causeways, which extended from the lakeshore to the city's central civic-ceremonial district that contained the major politico-religious buildings of the capital. These causeways, along with a complex network of freshwater aqueducts, canals, dams, and irrigation and sewer systems, made the city a technological marvel. Beyond the central district were the opulent palaces of the rulers and other bureaucrats, the houses of the nobility, and numerous buildings dedicated to administering the empire. The remainder of the city was composed of urban dwellings of the commoners, some of which were situated upon and surrounded by raised agricultural fields. Tenochtitlan's layout and built environment established the city not only as the geographical core of the empire but also as the conceptual center of the universe.

The central ceremonial district of Tenochtitlan measured approximately 13 hectares and was enclosed by a 30-meter-thick wall called coatepantli (“serpent wall”) that was said to have been decorated with representations of serpents. The Spanish priest Bernardino de Sahagún counted 78 different buildings in this district, although only 30 have been archaeologically identified to date. In addition to buildings, numerous sculpted monuments adorned [Page 2176]public spaces and sacred places, populating the ceremonial district with representations of key players in Aztec cosmology. For example, the colossal statue of Coatlicue, the old goddess of the earth and mother of all Aztec gods, was erected as a powerful symbol legitimizing Aztec hegemony and rulership. Other monuments record notable events in Aztec mytho-history, such as the monument depicting the dismembered body of Coyolxauqui (representing the moon), who was slain by her brother, Huitzilopochtli (representing the sun), for attempting to kill their mother, Coatlicue. Together, buildings and monuments combined to form a microcosm of the social order and a blueprint of the composite natural/cosmic landscape encompassed by the empire, where worldview and beliefs were materialized and grounded in the physical realities of daily life.

Source: © iStockphoto/Skip Hunt.

In the center of the ceremonial district rose a giant platform, which served as the principal stage for state religious rituals, including human sacrifice. The raised platform supported a number of buildings:temples, shrines, a school and residence for high priests, a sanctuary for eagle warriors, a ball court, and a large skull rack (tzompantli) where trophy heads of sacrificial victims were publicly displayed. The largest building on this platform was the Templo Mayor (“Great Temple”), a twin-towered pyramid dedicated to the two most important Aztec gods, Huitzilopochtli (god of war) and Tlaloc (god of rain and fertility). The temple was constantly under construction and renovation during the 200-year history of the city, but reached its final height of 45 meters by the time the Spanish arrived in 1519. The building was covered with white lime plaster while the upper temples were painted bright red and blue. The pyramid and its precinct were clearly designed to impress the citizens of Tenochtitlan as well as foreign visitors. By conducting political and religious performances on the summits of monumental edifices, Aztec rulers visually and symbolically reinforced their position at the top of the social ladder. Thus, public celebrations staged within the milieu of the Templo Mayor and the ceremonial district allowed Aztec ruling nobles to capitalize on the physical hierarchy of spatial forms by transcribing the phenomenological sense of ordered spaces into social hierarchy.

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