Multiethnicity and Migration at Teopancazco Investigations of a Teotihuacan Neighborhood Center Edited by Linda R. Manzanilla University Press of Florida Gainesville Tallahassee Tampa Boca Raton Pensacola Orlando Miami Jacksonville Ft. Myers Sarasota
Copyright 2017 by Linda Manzanilla All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper This book may be available in an electronic edition. 22 21 20 19 18 17 6 5 4 3 2 1 ISBN 978-0-8130-5428-5 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data The University Press of Florida is the scholarly publishing agency for the State University System of Florida, comprising Florida A&M University, Florida Atlantic University, Florida Gulf Coast University, Florida International University, Florida State University, New College of Florida, University of Central Florida, University of Florida, University of North Florida, University of South Florida, and University of West Florida. University Press of Florida 15 Northwest 15th Street Gainesville, FL 32611-2079 <BOG logo>
1 Teopancazco A Multiethnic Neighborhood Center in the Metropolis of Teotihuacan Linda R. Manzanilla Few preindustrial urban settlements may be cited as key sites for their regions; in ancient times Chang an, Rome, Constantinople, Alexandria, and Teotihuacan are perhaps the greatest urban developments. Yet few of these urban developments are as complex, corporate, exceptional, and multiethnic as Teotihuacan in central Mexico. René Millon (1973, 1981, 1988, 1993) brilliantly unveiled the urban grid and orthogonal plan of Teotihuacan, identifying its likely foreign wards and craft production areas. During the Classic period, the first six centuries AD, this huge metropolis housed a corporate society involved in impressive construction activities, massive production of craft goods, and extensive movement of sumptuary pieces along trade routes (Manzanilla 2001b, 2006a, 2006b, 2009a, 2011b, 2015). A number of features make Teotihuacan exceptional in Mesoamerica (Manzanilla 1997, 2007b): 1. Its large physical layout, urban planning, and grid (20 km 2 ) (Millon 1973) (Figure 1.1). 2. Its multiethnic society, evident by foreign neighborhoods on the periphery (the Oaxaca Barrio, the Merchants Barrio, the Michoacán Compound, and probably others) (Figure 1.2), as well as foreign labor fostered by the intermediate elites of the neighborhood centers (Manzanilla, ed. 2012; Manzanilla 2015). 3. Its polarized settlement pattern with a huge metropolis along with numerous scattered villages and hamlets in the Basin of Mexico where the food producers lived. 4. Its corporate organization, evidenced in multifamily apartment compounds housing independent families that shared a particular
2 Linda R. Manzanilla task, and perhaps also evident in an apparent system of corulership by four lords, representing the four administrative sectors of the city (Manzanilla 2009a) (Figure 1.3). 5. As the capital of a peculiar type of state that I have called the octopus type, where the head is represented by a great planned city and the tentacles are the corridors of allied sites extending toward regions where sumptuary goods and raw materials are found, most of them consumed by elites (Manzanilla 2006d, 2007c, 2009a). The eruptions of the Popocatépetl volcano in the first century AD (Plunket and Uruñuela 1998, 2000) stimulated the arrival of large groups of people from Puebla and Tlaxcala to a Teotihuacan Valley already dotted with Formative period villages, such as Cuanalan (Manzanilla 1985, 2001b). As Millon has pointed out, the Teotihuacan Valley offered several advantages: an abundance of freshwater springs; volcanic raw materials for construction (e.g., volcanic scoria, andesite, basalt, volcanic tuff); obsidian deposits in Otumba and Pachuca (obsidian being the main raw material from which the lithic technology in central Mexico was produced); a location on the most direct route from the Gulf Coast to the Basin of Mexico, skirting the high Sierra Nevada (Manzanilla 2001b; Millon 1973). Beginning in the Tlamimilolpa phase (AD 200 350) the great orthogonal city was aligned 15 17' east of north; before this time we find large building complexes in different parts of the valley that might represent migrant groups or factions who participated in the construction of the three main pyramids at the site over long periods. During the Tlamimilolpa phase construction modules appear for the first time: there were multifamily apartment compounds and foreign neighborhoods; the streets and buildings were arranged at right angles; the San Juan River was channeled to follow the urban grid plan; there was an east-west avenue that crossed the Street of the Dead at right angles and may have divided the city into four quarters (Millon 1973). Just as fifteenth-century Tenochtitlan was divided into four campan, or districts, the city of Teotihuacan may have had four sectors (see Figure 1.3) corresponding to the administrative seats for the state and corulership system (see Manzanilla 2009a). My team and I have wondered if the area named La Ventilla 92 94, in the southwestern sector of the city, is a neighborhood center or the administrative center of the southwestern district of the city. It seems unusual for its planning, its functional formalization, and the location of a huge administrative space in the Glyph Courtyard (Gómez Chávez 2000; Gómez Chávez et al. 2004).
Figure 1.1. Location of Teopancazco in the Teotihuacan metropolis (base map by René Millon 1973; redrawn by Rubén Gómez).
Figure 1.2. Hypothesized concentric rings of Teotihuacan: the outer ring contains foreign wards, the inner ring contains multiethnic neighborhoods headed by intermediate elites of Teotihuacan (drawing by Linda R. Manzanilla and Rubén Gómez; see Manzanilla 2009a:Figure 2.15).
Figure 1.3. Four proposed districts in Teotihuacan, from which the four co-rulers may have come (drawing by Linda R. Manzanilla, Rubén Gómez, and César Fernández; see Manzanilla 2009a:Figure 2.17).
6 Linda R. Manzanilla Around AD 350 there may have been a crisis in the city, as evidenced by various termination rituals (the destruction of numerous pots and objects at ritual sites; the decapitation of a large number of adults and deposition of their heads in vessels at Teopancazco; the destruction of the Pyramid of the Feathered Serpent in the Ciudadela); and the building of the Xolalpan city on top of the former construction phase (Manzanilla 2002b, 2006b). There are at least two potential causes of this crisis: (1) a possible eruption of the Xitle volcano in the southern sector of the Basin of Mexico (Siebe 2000:Table I) and the resulting demographic displacements it entailed; and/or (2) a political crisis that climaxed with the destruction and burning of the Temple of the Feathered Serpent, the construction of another platform that concealed its facade, and the possible expulsion of its adepts. I hypothesize that a rivalry between two groups in the corporate corulership system jaguars and serpents may have provoked a struggle that weakened the serpent group (Manzanilla 2002c, 2008a). I believe this conflict might be depicted in the Mural of the Mythological Animals, which shows different animals (felines, canids, birds) attacking serpents. In addition, the presence of two prehispanic tunnels under the main axis of the two pyramids whose facades face west (the Pyramid of the Sun and the Pyramid of the Feathered Serpent) may indicate that these two factions were competing to claim control of the axis mundi, or center of the cosmos, at their power base (Manzanilla 2009c, 2010). The new construction phase (Xolalpan, AD 350 550; Beramendi Orosco, González, and Soler Arechalde 2012; Beramendi Orosco, González Hernández, et al. 2009; Manzanilla 2009b) was built on top of its predecessor; the monochrome red painting of this phase contrasts with the polychrome mural paintings of the Tlamimilolpa phase. The great city seems to have been the capital of a powerful and organized state; each building in the city fell within a planned urban grid, and one might assume that the society was highly controlled. This may have been the case early on, with attempts to articulate ethnic and social diversities through state ritual, neighborhood ceremonies, and domestic ritual. An examination of Teotihuacan s internal structure reveals a variety of neighborhoods (many of which may have represented the original enclaves of groups of different proveniences that arrived in the valley, where the intermediate elites orchestrated relations, production, and movements in the pursuit of particular interests. My hypothesis is that at the end of Teotihuacan s history, the contradiction between the corporate structure of the state and the exclusionary
Teopancazco: A Multiethnic Neighborhood Center in the Metropolis of Teotihuacan 7 structure of the strong houses that ruled the different neighborhoods reached a breaking point, and the social and political fabric that had once seemed highly resistant revealed its fragility and was torn. In fact, Teotihuacan may have been founded as the result of a multiethnic pact, a weak coalition formed for massive craft production and movement of sumptuary goods. The homelands of the ethnic groups that actively participated in this work eventually pulled out of Teotihuacan s centripetal force (Manzanilla 2011a). The intermediate elites who managed the neighborhood centers were intensively involved in organizing trade and craft production activities, which required a large labor force. Each neighborhood procured sumptuary goods and workers from a particular region in Mesoamerica. The city was the central destination for cotton cloth, exotic animals, hides, pigments, minerals, rocks, semiprecious stones, and minerals, not to mention the people who carried the goods, expert craftspeople who served different functions, and perhaps others who were sacrificed. I believe that in the Tlamimilolpa and Xolalpan phases, Teotihuacan was more or less a cluster of neighborhoods, each with a central hub and various functional sectors: a ritual space, an administrative sector, a military area for the guard, a specialized craft production area, probably a medical and childbirth sector, and a series of kitchens and storerooms to feed the workers. These neighborhood centers may have been headed by the intermediate elite of Teotihuacan, who had relative autonomy of movement and were involved in bringing expert craftspeople (including garment makers, painters, and lapidary experts) from other regions to make attire and headdresses, as well as importing sumptuary objects and raw materials (Manzanilla 2006b, 2007a, 2009a, 2015). These nobles sponsored caravans that traveled along a route of allied sites toward enclaves on the Gulf Coast, in the Bajío region and western Mexico, in southeastern Mexico, and other areas (Manzanilla, 1992, 2001b, 2011b), bringing feline hides, feathers, cotton cloth, pigments, cosmetics, slate, mica, onyx, travertine, greenstone, jadeite, and other goods to the great metropolis (Manzanilla 2001b). Teopancazco was one such neighborhood, divided into functional sectors devoted to administration, ritual, garment making, medical care, food preparation for workers, and housing of military personnel (Figure 1.4; see also Manzanilla 2006a, 2006b, 2009a, 2012c; Manzanilla et al. 2011), as discussed below. This chapter opens with an overview of current knowledge about Teopancazco, an interesting multiethnic neighborhood center situated south