Migrations in Late Mesoamerica (Maya Studies) [1 ed.] 0813066107, 9780813066103

Table of contents :
Cover
MIGRATIONS IN LATE MESOAMERICA
Title
Copyright
CONTENTS
List of Figures
List of Plates
List of Tables
Foreword
Acknowledgments
1. Migrations in Late Mesoamerica
I. NORTHERN MESOAMERICA
2. How Mesoamerican Are the Nahua Languages?
3. Three Migration Case Studies from the Tula Region
4. Migration and the Coyotlatelco Ceramic Tradition: Evidence from El Bajío
5. El Grillo: The Reestablishment of Community and Identity in Far Western Mexico
6. “Then They Pressed On”: Indigenous Migration in the Nahuatl Annals of Chimalpahin
II. SOUTHERN MESOAMERICA
7. Classic Period Migration in the Maya Area: A Morphometric Analysis
8. The Murals of Cacaxtla: Monumental Art as Evidence of Migration
9. The Itzá Maya Migration Narratives: Historic Reality, Myth, or . . . Weighing the Idea of Migrations in Light of New Research
10. The Pipil Migrations in Mesoamerica: History, Identity, and Politics
11. Dialectology and the History of Nahua Peoples in Guatemala
List of Contributors
Index

Citation preview

Migrations in Late Mesoamerica Maya Studies

University Press of Florida Florida A&M University, Tallahassee Florida Atlantic University, Boca Raton Florida Gulf Coast University, Ft. Myers Florida International University, Miami Florida State University, Tallahassee New College of Florida, Sarasota University of Central Florida, Orlando University of Florida, Gainesville University of North Florida, Jacksonville University of South Florida, Tampa University of West Florida, Pensacola

MIGRATIONS IN LATE MESOAMERICA Edited by

Christopher S. Beekman Foreword by Arlen F. Chase and Diane Z. Chase

University Press of Florida Gainesville · Tallahassee · Tampa · Boca Raton Pensacola · Orlando · Miami · Jacksonville · Ft. Myers · Sarasota

Copyright 2019 by Christopher S. Beekman All rights reserved Published in the United States of America This book may be available in an electronic edition. 24 23 22 21 20 19

6 5 4 3 2 1

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Beekman, Christopher Stockard, editor. | Chase, Arlen F. (Arlen Frank), 1953– author of foreword. | Chase, Diane Z., author of foreword. Title: Migrations in late Mesoamerica / edited by Christopher S. Beekman ; foreword by Arlen F. Chase and Diane Z. Chase. Other titles: Maya studies. Description: Gainesville : University Press of Florida, 2019. | Series: Maya studies | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2018055502 | ISBN 9780813066103 (cloth : alk. paper) Subjects: LCSH: Indians of Mexico—Migrations. | Indians of Central America—Migrations. | Mexico—History. | Central America—History. Classification: LCC F1219.3.M54 M548 2019 | DDC 304.872—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018055502 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 2046 NE Waldo Road Suite 2100 Gainesville, FL 32609 http://upress.ufl.edu

Contents

List of Figures vii List of Plates ix List of Tables xi Foreword xiii Acknowledgments xv 1. Migrations in Late Mesoamerica 1 Christopher S. Beekman

I. Northern Mesoamerica 2. How Mesoamerican Are the Nahua Languages? 43 Jane H. Hill

3. Three Migration Case Studies from the Tula Region 66 Dan M. Healan and Robert H. Cobean

4. Migration and the Coyotlatelco Ceramic Tradition: Evidence from El Bajío 88 Christine Hernández and Dan M. Healan

5. El Grillo: The Reestablishment of Community and Identity in Far Western Mexico 109 Christopher S. Beekman

6. “Then They Pressed On”: Indigenous Migration in the Nahuatl Annals of Chimalpahin 148 Susan Schroeder

II. Southern Mesoamerica 7. Classic Period Migration in the Maya Area: A Morphometric Analysis 173 B. Scott Aubry

8. The Murals of Cacaxtla: Monumental Art as Evidence of Migration 205 Andrew D. Turner

9. The Itzá Maya Migration Narratives: Historic Reality, Myth, or . . . Weighing the Idea of Migrations in Light of New Research 241 Erik Boot

10. The Pipil Migrations in Mesoamerica: History, Identity, and Politics 285 William R. Fowler

11. Dialectology and the History of Nahua Peoples in Guatemala 327 Sergio Romero

List of Contributors 347 Index 349

Figures

1.1. Map of Mesoamerica with major sites mentioned by the chapter authors 11 1.2. Rollout drawing of vase, Problematic Deposit 50, Manik phase, Tikal 14 1.3. One of several pseudo-cloisonné vessels from Alta Vista, Zacatecas, with depiction of raptor with snake in its beak 14 3.1. The Tula region and its location in Central Mexico showing the location of Teotihuacan 67 3.2. Classic period settlements 70 3.3. Calibrated radiocarbon dates discussed in text 75 3.4. Epiclassic Period settlements showing the location of Tula, La Mesa, and Cerro Magoni 77 4.1. Map of Central and Near West Mexico showing sites discussed in the text 91 4.2. Spatial distribution of sites in Central Mexico where Chupícuaro ceramics have been identified 93 5.1. Map of central Jalisco showing El Grillo phase centers in relation to the older Teuchitlán culture settlement core 124 5.2. Reconstruction of the site of Ixtépete 125 5.3. Map of El Grillo 126 5.4. Secondary El Grillo phase sites from the La Venta Corridor between the Atemajac and Tequila Valleys 128 7.1. Map of Mesoamerica showing the sites included in this study 174 7.2. Multidimensional scaling plot of Mahalanobis distances for Maya sites 185 7.3. Multidimensional scaling plot of Mahalanobis distances for Maya and Central Mexico sites 190

viii · Figures

8.1. Map of the acropolis of Cacaxtla showing locations of major mural programs 212 8.2. Merchant God from Red Temple mural, Cacaxtla 217 8.3. Figures from Structure A murals, Cacaxtla 219 8.4. Cacaxtla and Late Classic Lowland Maya warriors 222 8.5. Maya-style Tlaloc masks from Cacaxtla and Maya sites 224 9.1. Distribution of the titles with Itza and the anthroponym Kanek’ in the Maya area 262 9.2. “International” name caption at Chichén Itzá, Great Ball Court, South Building, Pillar 5 270 10.1. West Ceremonial Center at Cihuatán 295 11.1. The dialects of Nahuan (Aztecan) 329

Plates

Plates follow page 176. 1. Red-painted ceramics from the Chupícuaro and Mixtlan phases 2. Choromuco phase orange-painted and red-painted ceramics from the Atzimba and Ramon complexes 3. Red-painted and/or incised/engraved ceramics from the Perales and Lerma phases 4. Whole and partial red-painted vessels from Tula and the eastern El Bajío 5. Red-painted and incised motifs from Tula and the eastern El Bajío 6. Red-painted ceramics from the Tula Region and the eastern El Bajío 7. Large-format red-painted ceramics from the Tula region and the eastern El Bajío 8. Incised red-on-brown vessels from Prado phase Tula, the U-Z source area, and Teotihuacan 9. Spatial and temporal distribution of painted red-on-brown ceramic types/groups 10. Map of western Mexico showing geographic features and the vulnerable zone of transition for rainfall agriculture 11. Map of western Mexico showing language groups discussed in the text 12. Map of the two migration routes described in Tello 1653 13. Pseudo-cloisonné jar and detail of central figure interpreted as god-bearer 14. Detail of eastern talud of Battle Mural, Cacaxtla 15. The Chan Tuun Itzam and Itzamna at Chichén Itzá 16. Location of Cihuatan, Santa María, and other Guazapa-sphere sites in El Salvador

Tables

1.1. Chronological table showing periods commonly used in central Mexico and southeastern Mesoamerica 12 3.1. Chronological table for Tula, the Tula region, and Teotihuacan 68 4.1. Chronological table of the U-Z source area, Teotihuacan, and the Tula region 89 4.2. Identification of vessels in Plate 9 99 5.1. Chronological table for regions discussed in the text 122 7.1. List of analyzed sites with sample sizes 181 7.2. R-matrix results for Maya sites 184 7.3. Mahalanobis distance matrix for Maya sites 186 7.4. Mahalanobis distance matrix for Maya and Central Mexico sites 188 9.1. Reconstructed chronology of events following the order in the Yucatec Maya ethnohistoric sources, including events relative to Mayapan, Yucatan, and the Lake Petén area 256 9.2. Overview of dates and events for Chichén Itzá, including some dates for Mayapan, Yucatan, and the Lake Petén area 273 10.1. Calibrated means in years CE and one-sigma standard deviation ranges of radiocarbon dates from Cihuatán and Santa María 304 11.1. Some isoglosses between Eastern and Central Nahuan 330 11.2. Some diagnostic differences between Guatemalan and Mexican Central Nahuatl varieties 333 11.3. Fragment from the Historia de los Xpantzay de Tecpán Guatemala 337

Foreword

With this volume, the Maya Studies series is intentionally expanding its scope to recognize that the ancient Maya were not isolated. They were always interconnected with the rest of Mesoamerica, not only through longdistance trade but also through the physical movement of peoples. This volume focuses on “Late Mesoamerica” from the time of Teotihuacan through Spanish contact, drawing upon epigraphic and linguistic data, historic and ethnohistoric records, art styles, and archaeological and skeletal materials. In making migration their specific focus, Beekman and his colleagues have significantly moved our field forward well beyond the tenets V. Gordon Childe and the subsequent proponents of culture history endorsed. Migration has been and continues to be one of the more problematic issues addressed by archaeological data. In the mid-1950s, Gordon R. Willey and some of the then-greatest American archaeological minds addressed archaeological contact situations between cultures as a series of eight potential variants of either “site-unit intrusions” or “trait-unit intrusions” (see Seminars in Archaeology: 1955, Society for American Archaeology, 1956). Needless to say, the complexity of knowledge about population contact and movements has greatly expanded in the last sixty years, as this volume attests. Driving the resurgence in migration analysis forward is the realization that it is possible to recognize the presence of foreign individuals in a local archaeological record. While linguistics and ethnohistory have traditionally been used in migration studies, archaeological data have been more difficult to employ, as only rarely can the physical presence of foreign individuals be securely established in such a way as to rule out a situation of trade. Advances in the laboratory, however, have brought the issue of migration to the foreground of research, particularly with regard to stable isotope analysis and DNA studies of ancient skeletal materials. For example, strontium analysis and oxygen studies have been used to demonstrate

xiv · Foreword

that the sacrificed warriors surrounding the Temple of Quetzalcoatl at Teotihuacan, Mexico, came from areas across Mesoamerica. In combination with archaeological data, isotope analyses have also been able to demonstrate the influx and movement of people at sites such as Copan, Honduras, and Tikal, Guatemala. Perhaps not surprising is that it appears that there was variation in how open past cities were to the influx of peoples. Calakmul, Mexico, for example, appears to have been a center that was more closed to population influx than the cities of Tikal or Copan. Archaeological data also amplifies the movement of peoples. For instance, the cremated individuals and artifacts included in an Early Classic interment at Caracol, Belize, follows burial patterns previously seen only among the highest elite at Teotihuacan, strongly suggesting that personal relationships existed between Caracol and Teotihuacan well before the inferred epigraphic date of 378 CE for a Teotihuacan intrusion into the Maya Southern lowlands. Again, all of these data reinforce the facts that migration and population movement was always widespread throughout Mesoamerica and that these encounters had a significant impact on past cultures and lifeways. Migration is a topic that will continue to be of importance to our field and we welcome the contributions of the authors in this important volume. Arlen F. Chase and Diane Z. Chase Series Editors

Acknowledgments

The editor is pleased to acknowledge the support of several sources that allowed us to include color images in this volume: the Office of Research Services, the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, and the Department of Anthropology, all of the University of Colorado Denver; and the Institute for Latin American Studies of Tulane University. I would also like to thank the authors for setting aside their customary disciplinary conventions in favor of a more uniform format. Thank you to our acquisitions editor, Meredith Babb, for her rapid response to all our queries and submissions. Kate Babbitt and Marthe Walters deserve special mention for their hard work in shaping this volume out of a diverse set of contributions. Melissa Stearns Hyde compiled the index thanks to financial support from the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, University of Colorado Denver.

1 Migrations in Late Mesoamerica Christopher S. Beekman

This volume gathers scholars from different disciplines to address the role of migration during the most tumultuous centuries of Mesoamerican prehistory (500–1500 CE). Ethnohistoric, linguistic, biological, and archaeological data coupled with visual imagery and hieroglyphic texts associate the final millennium of Mesoamerican prehistory with political, economic, and social changes that often unmoored populations from ancestral lands. Some of these processes are associated with the peak of political activity of Classic period centers such as Teotihuacan or Monte Albán. Soon afterward, Mesoamericans experienced climate change, human impacts on the environment; the fall of Teotihuacan, Monte Albán, and many Maya cities; the rise and fall of many of their successors over just a few centuries; and changing political ideologies and the artistic programs that expressed them. Surviving pictorial and written accounts detail the founding of new centers in Central Mexico, the Mixteca, Yucatan, and the Guatemalan highlands. Although independent investigations into these topics have repeatedly discerned the movement of social groups at their core, migration itself has rarely been the central focus of theoretical analysis. The ongoing rehabilitation of migration as a subject for study now allows prehistorians to reexamine its relationship to other areas of social life. In this volume, selected representatives from archaeology, biological anthropology, linguistics, ethnohistory, epigraphy, and art history present contributions on the dynamics, causes, and impacts of migration; indigenous perceptions of migration; and the methods and assumptions we use when identifying or analyzing our specific cases. The goal of this volume is to enhance our understanding of the occurrence and significance of migration in the millennium preceding that most consequential migration of all—the European encounter. No one seeks to

2 · Christopher S. Beekman

bring back migration as a deus ex machina explanation for culture change. Yet it is apparent that social groups are frequently willing or forced to migrate for many disparate reasons and that the social and material consequences are similarly varied. Against the background of archaeology’s shift toward agency and the flexibility of social relations, long-term demographic continuity should not be treated as a given (Fowles 2011; Morrissey 2015). From this perspective, the comparative stability of the Classic period is in equal need of explanation. Centers such as Teotihuacan, Monte Albán, and the Maya city-states, which were occupied for up to 1,000 years or more, represent deliberate efforts at place-making and demographic capture and manipulation. Their decline released their vast populations to transform governance, social organization, and economy. Recent multidisciplinary studies (Arnauld et al. 2019; Cabana and Clark 2011a, 5; Garcia and La Bras 2017; Tsuda et al. 2015, 19) have concluded that migration has certain characteristics that together distinguish it from everyday forms of human mobility (Van Dommelen 2014). First, migration is social in nature, in that it is carried out by households, lineages, communities, and other groups that provide the infrastructure for decision making, organization, defense, and reestablishment of community. Migrants do not form undifferentiated demic masses, as is posited in early models from Europe (Ammerman and Cavalli-Sforza 1979, 1984). The term “migration” should thus not evoke visions of faceless hordes but population movements structured around existing social groups following culturally relevant procedures for mobilization and incorporation. As Bernardini (2005, 15) has nicely phrased it, the older models were designed to describe the movement of people, not a people. Second, migration is not the cyclical or habitual human mobility found in the commute from home to farm, mercantile activity, or urban circulation (see in particular Arnauld et al. 2019; Isayev 2017; Van Dommelen 2014). Migration is associated with a permanent realignment of prior social arrangements as people move into a new social context (Cabana and Clark 2011a, 5; Nelson et al. 2014). Baker and Tsuda (2015) give particular attention to this theme of disruption for both the migrants and the receiving population. Migration thus brings together only those forms of human movement that lead to a fundamental re-orientation of habitus and not simply a temporary setting aside, as when we go on vacation and must acclimate to a new schedule and activity space. Thus, the complete process incorporates the withdrawal of people from one physical and social setting (already the focus of notable research, e.g., Cameron and Tomka

Migrations in Late Mesoamerica · 3

1996; Darras 2003), their physical movement across the landscape (rarely captured archaeologically), and their accommodation to the new setting, in which they may or may not be able to rebuild prior social relationships. The need for and memory of former institutions and practices will vary and will be reassembled in different ways at the destination. Exact replication is unlikely. Even in cases where migrants return to their place of origin, their experiences prevent them from simply resuming their prior way of life, underlining that migration is not reversible (Gmelch 1980). These points are critical for many of our contributing disciplines because much of the material evidence cited for migration is part of the processes of incorporation after migrants have arrived at their destination, not the migration itself. One characteristic feature that has not received sufficient attention from archaeologists is that migration is not an independent process; it is always embedded in similarly disruptive social activities (Castles 2010). The archaeological search for a single material signature for “migration” makes us the last discipline to see migration as an isolated social act (Smith and King 2012). When we treat migration as a discrete process, we fail to engage with a substantial literature that situates migration as either the cause or the effect of social, economic, and political changes (Brettell and Hollifield 2008). Only when we appreciate the contextual variability in migration will we be able to discern the relevant datasets for a particular case. The analytical complexity required for studies of prehistoric migration thus transcends any one discipline and favors maintaining the links between anthropology’s four fields (see Beekman and Christensen 2003; Cabana and Clark 2011b; and Baker and Tsuda 2015 for similar sentiments). Theoretical Issues

Migration has reemerged as a topic of theoretical importance after decades of neglect by archaeologists, stemming at least partly from the discipline’s failure to decipher direct material correlates. At the birth of the field of anthropology in the nineteenth century, cultural anthropology, linguistics, biological anthropology, and archaeology were largely in agreement that a high degree of correspondence existed between ethnicity, language, biology, and material culture (see Terrell 2001 for critiques of this perspective). This assumption remained the touchstone for the later culture-historical program of plotting the presence and movement of ethnic groups using the archaeological record (e.g., Childe 1925, 1926, 1928, 1929; Kossinna 1896, 1909, 1912, 1936). Both empirical failures and the ease with which such

4 · Christopher S. Beekman

simplistic interpretations could be manipulated for political ends (Adams et al. 1978; Arnold 1990) undermined migration as a topic of study. Nonetheless, many researchers have continued to identify ethnolinguistic groups based on material culture, even when migration per se went undiscussed. Ethnic identity has commonly been invoked in southeastern Mesoamerica, where archaeological remains have a long history of being identified as “Maya” or “non-Maya” (e.g., Thompson 1941; Tozzer 1957). In northern Mesoamerica, scholars have proposed the presence of Nahuatl speakers at Teotihuacan through evidence for religious beliefs found among Uto-Aztecan speakers of Mesoamerica and the Southwest (Hays-Gilpin and Hill 1999, 2008). Others have identified Otomí as an ethnolinguistic group at Xaltocan by their use of distinctive labrets (Brumfiel 1994). In each case, scholars attributed specific beliefs or practices to a corresponding cultural or linguistic group, largely following what Barth (1969) called a primordialist perspective. Apart from the difficulty of isolating characteristics truly limited to a single target group, one must take into account the historically situated nature of such traits. When did the practice originate? How normative was its use? Many scholars acknowledge these tensions but continue to pursue this perspective. With the coming of more consciously theory-driven approaches, migration was often rejected as a legitimate subject for research (Adams et al. 1978). As discussed elsewhere (Cabana 2011), the processual school in archaeology considered migrations to be too historically situated and unique to draw useful inferences about systemic social processes. Theory dictated that systemic behavior and stable adaptations were the proper focus of research and because of their historical contingency and disruptive elements, migrations could not contribute to our understanding of these research topics. While adhering to a processual perspective, Anthony (1990, 1997, 2010) countered that known historical migrations followed recognizable patterns and processes that could be analyzed through archaeological proxies. Leap-frogging, in which migrant groups bypass others to form a string of related communities, was one such pattern. Chain migration, in which migrants tend to move to locales where fellow migrants have already established themselves, was another. This nascent network perspective was more true to the migration process than the often-aquatic metaphors such as streams, flows, or waves that some scholars still use. Related research into the spread of Indo-European languages led to the development of the Farming Language Dispersal Hypothesis (Ammerman and Cavalli-Sforza 1984; Bellwood 2004; Renfrew 1987), which associates

Migrations in Late Mesoamerica · 5

the biological success of early farming populations with the spread of their associated language and material culture. Its proponents argued that a more optimal farming adaptation facilitated the outcompetition and replacement of forager populations and their languages and customs. However empirically complicated that model has turned out to be (Renfrew and Bellwood 2002), it provided theoretical justification for processualists to return to migration. Many arguments for the replacement of Neanderthals in Europe by Homo sapiens out of Africa are anchored in similar assumptions, although this is rarely discussed as a case of migration (but see Hublin 2017). More effective cultural or biological adaptations (including the capacity for language) have been put forward to explain the ultimate success of our African ancestors following their migration, and these assumptions have influenced the assignment of material culture to Neanderthal or sapiens (Hublin 2017; Riel-Salvatore 2009). Studies of migration have moved beyond strict scenarios of environmental adaptation and evolutionary competition. Scholars of modern and historical migrations have had little difficulty finding political and economic reasons for them and prehistorians have begun to address those pertinent to the ancient world. Some have proposed the existence of climate or political refugees (Beekman 2015, 2019) or have drawn attention to migration as a response to changing labor markets (Blanton et al. 1996). Others have demonstrated that slavery or taking captives in warfare can introduce people of different backgrounds and social practices to close contact with others (Cameron 2011, 2013; Gelb 1973; Ibarra Rojas 2012). Factionalism has been a particularly durable explanation for the departure and resettlement of social groups. This theory focuses on how political disagreements have triggered the departure of one faction across a spectrum of communities, from hunter-gatherer camps to dynastic kingdoms (Houston 1993; Kirch 1984; Lee 1968; Stone 2005). Symbolic perspectives have focused less on the causes of migration and more on how migrants inhabit their new home by equating landscape features with those from their former territory (Escamilla and Fowler 2013; López Austin 2015, positions 2817–2840). Followers of various schools of thought have addressed migration by highlighting the complex relationship between identity and material culture, particularly at the destination (Berdan et al. 2008; Faust 2006; Fennell 2007; Hornborg and Hill 2012; Stone 2003, 2015). Scholars have aggressively pursued this line of research in the American Southwest, where migrations recounted in oral history have been effectively incorporated into theoretical models of human movement (Bernardini 2005; Cameron 1995; Clark

6 · Christopher S. Beekman

2001; Cordell 1995; Duff 2002; Glowacki 2015; Kohler et al. 2010; Lyons 2003; Nelson 1999; Nelson and Strawhacker 2011; Neuzil 2008; Ortman 2012; Snead et al. 2009; Stone 2015; Wilshusen et al. 2012). Much of this literature refers back to the archaeological concept of style, in the senses of both active discursive style and practical and unconscious style. Those who pursue the first-order goal of identifying migrants have tended toward the latter, as unconscious behaviors are less likely to be altered through contact and are more indicative of a particular community of practice (cf. Burmeister 2000), such as dietary preferences, clay recipes for pottery, and the organization of domestic space. The culture-historical assumption that artifacts reflect group membership has thus been usefully reframed and nuanced as nondiscursive practice (see also Frankel 2000; Jones 1997). While archaeologists who follow the nondiscursive approach have made notable progress in determining that a migration did indeed take place, the focus on discourse is more directed toward second-order goals such as reconstructing the social relationships between migrants and natives at the point of destination. The latter approach draws on the well-known communicative aspects of style and the factors that encourage the expression or suppression of group identity, especially when contrasted with unconscious style (Burmeister 2000; Stone 2003). Decoration on pottery (and elsewhere) is framed as a form of discourse, the conscious communication by individuals of particular claims and perspectives. Much like writing or art, external aspects of material culture could be made to selectively communicate information. This approach clearly harks back to Barth’s (1969) situationalist approach, in which the expression of group membership can be avoided or accentuated depending on context. Barth tended to reduce ethnic identity to a convenient mask that people donned when they chose to in interactions with other individuals. Stone (2003, 2015; Stone and Lipe 2011) has instead concentrated her analyses on the specific structural contexts that may push individuals to signal or suppress their identity. This approach thus does not reduce expressive culture to mere propaganda or subterfuge (e.g., Marcus 1992) and it does not so much contradict reality as selectively present it based on the context. This perspective relies the least on specific characteristics of identity to label a particular group as one or another. Instead, the intent is to identify the circumstances in which people choose to “stand out or blend in” (Stone and Lipe 2011) in relation to their neighbors, not the traits themselves. More specifically Marxist variations on this perspective focus on ethnic identity as largely imposed from above and less of an individual choice.

Migrations in Late Mesoamerica · 7

Those in power may assign normative characteristics to groups targeted for oppression. Alternatively, the persecution of groups may provoke the expression of identity as a form of resistance (e.g., Brumfiel 1994, 89–90). This leads some to argue that ethnicity per se did not exist prior to highly complex societies that intentionally labeled groups for purposes of control (various contributions in Berdan et al. 2008; Braswell 2016; Emberling 1997; McCafferty 2011). Certainly the relevant identities cited in native accounts of migration appear to be lineages or groups of families rather than ethnolinguistic groups (Anthony 1990; Beekman 2019; Braswell 2016; Van Akkeren 2005, 2016) and archaeological evidence tends to support this (Beekman and Christensen 2011; Overholtzer and De Lucia 2016). Some recent proposals suggest a more emergent view of the specific association between identity and material culture as applied to migration. Clark (2011) and Beekman and Christensen (2011) each found evidence for an initial heterogeneity in material culture followed by convergence in the generations subsequent to a proposed migration. These authors saw this as an eventual accommodation between migrants and their hosts in which some degree of social integration occurred but underlying identities remained in place, potentially to reassert themselves at a later date. I have characterized this process elsewhere (Beekman 2019) as an “alignment of interests” among migrants and their hosts. John Robb (2013) has addressed this issue in a reassessment of the Neolithic expansion of agriculturalists into Europe. He notes that what was once considered a unitary process of migration is today seen as a patchwork of movements by small groups of farmers alongside the adoption of farming by existing populations. Although this resulted in an initial diversity in practices across a broad area, these local practices converged over time as all participants began to establish new material connections with one another. Robb is describing the emergence of a community of practice (Wenger 1998) that is formed not through shared identity but through shared approaches to daily life (see Hendon 2009; Joyce et al. 2014). Alongside the waxing and waning of migration as a topic of social research, empiricist approaches have remained important and some have made further contributions. This perspective sees migration as a methodological problem that can be solved through more sophisticated analysis of archaeological data (Peregrine 2009). Some researchers have sought artifact classes thought to be more inherently resistant to change—mortuary patterns, household architecture, dietary practices, and so forth (Rouse 1986). McCafferty’s (2011) thoughtful discussion of his own assumptions about the

8 · Christopher S. Beekman

identification of Chorotega migrants in Nicaragua is a rare and welcome example of self-reflexivity. As with any form of empiricism, however, the application of these methods is not independent of theory but depends on unarticulated or unrecognized assumptions. Thus, supposedly empirical approaches must be treated at least as cautiously as theoretically informed ones (Johnson 2011). One promising method-centered approach has been to examine demographic changes at various levels. Arnauld and colleagues (2017; see also Varien 1999), who have used refined excavation and dating methods to identify successive periods of occupation and abandonment in individual households, provide empirical data on levels of movement. Smith’s (2002) very large-scale reconstructions of trends in Mesoamerican settlement patterns document demographic shifts within and across regions. Even so, what is interesting and important about migration is not simply establishing its occurrence; it is the interplay between migration and other social changes. This significant gap in research is in need of closer consideration. A more effective engagement with migration eludes us primarily because archaeologists have historically sought to isolate migration through its own unique material culture signature by trying to identify key artifact categories or quantitative thresholds of difference. This assumes movement to be an isolated act independent of other activities. Archaeologists are apparently unique in this assumption (Smith and King 2012). Context is critical for defining the manifestation of migration through material culture or other means (Beekman 2015, 73; Beekman and Christensen 2003, 115; Beekman and Christensen 2011, 148–149). There is little reason to assume that the aggressive colonization of forager territory by early farmers will resemble the acceptance of families of skilled migrants into an existing community, yet some scholarly efforts proceed from this assumption because they both involve the common act of “migration” (Peregrine 2009). The assumption, which has existed since the days of Kossinna and Childe, that migration is one of several competing explanations for changes in material culture is powerful. Thus conceptualized, migration, economic interaction, status emulation, or conquest all become discrete and parallel explanations that do not co-occur or overlap. Those who wish to do so can easily dismiss migration because evidence for trade goods, emulation, or conquest can often be found. In reality, of course, these are not discrete explanations at all and the demonstration of one factor does not disprove the others, for migration does not occur in the absence of other processes and is not neatly detached from competing interpretations. Instead, it is

Migrations in Late Mesoamerica · 9

rooted in more accepted topics of study such as exchange, the founding or abandonment of settlements and polities, conquest and colonization, and adaptation to changing environmental conditions. Migration can interlock with political strategies or ideology (Inomata 2004) and with the artistic programs that expressed them (Beekman 2015). An interesting study by Christensen (1998) scrutinized a number of interpretations of Oaxacan prehistory and found that most (the founding of capitals, trade diaspora, territorial incorporation) had testable demographic repercussions that in other contexts would be called migration. Even when movement is disruptive and outside the usual range of human mobility, it is still embedded in social action and thus can be theoretically analyzed. Methodologies

Neighboring disciplines have much to contribute to the study of ancient migrations. Biological anthropology can be especially effective at establishing the fact of migration, whether through epigenetic (Christensen 1998), isotopic (Price et al. 2008), or DNA approaches (Mata-Miguez et al. 2012). Demographic profiles for migrant populations can be identified. Biological data can also be used to assess important second-order questions, such as the impact of migration on health or reproductive practices (Cucina 2015). Human movements may carry plant and animal species and can be substantiated through the study of faunal remains or DNA (Boivin et al. 2017; Valadez Azúa et al. 2007). The scale of linguistic evidence is usually at a greater remove and more difficult to correlate with material culture (evident in Heggarty 2008). Nevertheless, the structural relationships between parent and daughter languages significantly constrain potential explanations when language can be identified through historic, ethnographic, or epigraphic evidence. The reconstruction of proto-vocabulary for material objects or crops, as Mallory (1989) has replaced for Indo-European, can establish criteria that may be sought archaeologically (Davletshin 2012; Fowler 1983). Loanwords can be fruitfully used in the same way, although one must be very cautious about the array of potential culture-historical explanations (Dakin and Wichmann 2000; Kaufman and Justeson 2007). Although native accounts, whether in pre-conquest forms or filtered through the writings of Europeans, can rarely be mapped onto material culture, they are nonetheless powerfully informative. Their accounts detail emic reasons for migration, how migrations were organized and carried out, the social mechanisms by which migrants could be accepted into new

10 · Christopher S. Beekman

locales, and the ways migrations added meaning to the new landscape (partial examples are García-Zambrano 1994; König 2016; Romero Frizzi 2010; see Escamilla and Fowler 2013 for an effort to identify this archaeologically). Native accounts are frequently downgraded to myth-history because of fabulous elements, but focusing solely on their factual accuracy ignores their value as statements in an indigenous voice. The living descendants of ancient peoples of the American Southwest provided the impetus for archaeologists to take their oral history of migrations seriously from an early date (e.g., Anyon et al. 1996; Fewkes 1902). This has not been the case in Mesoamerica, and native accounts are frequently reinterpreted in mythical, propagandistic, or structural terms as if that diminishes their utility (Graulich 1984; López Austin and López Luján 1999, 2000; Marcus 1992). We often forget how our own historical events, including scientific findings, may be selectively assembled into tidy narratives with mythic, heroic, or symmetrical aspects (Latour and Strum 1986). This gives these events broader meaning and marshals them in the service of a particular goal, but it does not necessarily invalidate the reality of the events described. These features can coexist. Given the problems of equifinality that remain when we rely exclusively on archaeological data, the role of migration is most profitably addressed in areas where these additional datasets can be brought into play. A spate of recent regional syntheses have appeared that use data from different disciplines to map out biological, ethnolinguistic, and material culture variations across a geographic area or within an ethnolinguistic group (e.g., Arnaiz-Villena 2000; Blench 2006; Cunliffe and Koch 2012; Friedlaender 2007; Hornborg and Hill 2012; Jin et al. 2002; Martinez-Laso et al. 2000; Petraglia and Allchin 2007; Petraglia and Rose 2009; Sanchez-Mazas et al. 2004; Sagart et al. 2005; Seymour 2012). These are massive collaborative undertakings with a strongly empiricist orientation and could be most profitably guided by more explicit discussion of theoretical assumptions. The one example along these lines that has been developed for Mesoamerica (Berdan et al. 2008) focused on speakers of the Nahuatl language, tracing them longitudinally through time and space. The present volume emphasizes context and the contributors examine a particularly disruptive period in Mesoamerican history with various recorded instances of migration.

Migrations in Late Mesoamerica · 11

The Focus on Late Mesoamerica

Mesoamerica—that arbitrarily bounded cultural area that includes most of modern-day Mexico and upper Central America—has been the subject of sustained anthropological attention for well over a century (figure 1.1). Studies and collections of skeletal remains, material culture, ecology, living populations, linguistics, hieroglyphic texts, and visual culture have accumulated to form a data-rich environment that is ideal for the study of human migrations across a variety of contexts. Compared to many areas of the world where large-scale migrations have taken place—Neolithic and Bronze Age Eurasia or Iron Age eastern Africa, for instance—Mesoamerica is spatially compact. Even the most extreme claims posit migrations across significantly shorter distances than the Bantu and Indo-European migrations that were deduced from linguistic data in the nineteenth century (Bleek 1862; Mallory 1989). Migrations are explicitly or implicitly invoked in Mesoamerica’s initial colonization, the diversification into ecological niches, and the aggregation of its earliest communities. Major urban centers drew in diverse

Figure 1.1. Map of Mesoamerica including major sites mentioned by the chapter authors.

Table 1.1. Chronological table showing periods commonly used in central Mexico and southeastern Mesoamerica Calendar Date (CE)

Highland Mexico

Southern Mesoamerica

1600

Spanish Contact

Spanish Contact

Late Postclassic

Late Postclassic

Early Postclassic

Early Postclassic

  1500   1400   1300   1200   1100   1000   900

Terminal Classic

  800  

Epiclassic

Late Classic

700   600   500

Middle Classic

 

Early Classic

400   300

Early Classic

  200   100

Late Formative

Late Preclassic

  Note: The boundaries assigned to these periods can vary by up to a century depending on the location and preference of the investigator.

Migrations in Late Mesoamerica · 13

populations, many of which were spatially segregated from one another (Manzanilla 2017; Spence et al. 2005). However, it is not until the Classic period (table 1.1) that migration received attention in Mesoamerica’s visual culture.1 The portrayal of emissaries from Central Mexico to the Maya region on the Tikal vase (figure 1.2) likely corresponds to epigraphic evidence for Teotihuacan’s fourth-century entrada into the central Maya lowlands (Stuart 2000) or to the archaeological evidence of a significant intrusion at highland Kaminaljuyú around the same time (Braswell 2003a, 2003b; Sanders and Michels 1977). The Monte Albán IIIa portrayal of a procession of Central Mexicans on Monument 9 on the South Platform (Acosta 1958–1959, 14–21, fig. 16; Marcus 1980) testifies to the perceived role of the physical movement of people as a component of interaction between Mesoamerica’s cities. Places of emergence such as Chicomoztoc (Nahuatl for “7 Caves”) may be attested archaeologically from this period (Heyden 1975; Taube 1986) but not within the context of a migration narrative. It is only with the decline of the highland Classic centers of power around 550 CE that we see the first components of a specific migration narrative beginning to form. Several Epiclassic pseudo-cloisonné vessels that Manuel Gamio excavated at Alta Vista in 1910 share a central image of a raptor with a snake in its beak (figure 1.3). Gamio proposed that these were the earliest use of the motif that would become famous as the culminating event of the Mexica migration to Tenochtitlan (Gamio 1910; see also Medina González and García Uranga 2010, 215–221). Hers (2013, 246–252) has recognized that contemporary imagery on other pseudo-cloisonné vessels from Jalisco and Zacatecas also portrays processions of teomamaque (Nahuatl; “god bearers”) such as those who appear in Postclassic migration narratives (see figure 5.8, this volume). Hasso von Winning (1982; Von Winning and Gutiérrez Solana 1996) discussed these teomamaque scenes in pottery and sculpture from other Epiclassic sites such as Xochicalco and El Tajin and in the Río Blanco basin of southern Veracruz. By the Postclassic period (900–1550 CE), the migration account had become an established part of Mesoamerican myth and social memory (Megged 2010). Seemingly, no migration narratives have survived from before the conquest, but numerous versions were committed to paper in the century afterward. Some of the many surviving genres tell of nomadic movements from beyond the northern frontier of Mesoamerica, of movements back and forth between Central Mexico and the Gulf Coast, of migrations within the Yucatan Peninsula, and of the intrusion of groups into

Figure 1.2. Rollout drawing of image from a ceramic vessel depicting the Teotihuacan entrada into Tikal, Problematic Deposit 50, Manik phase, Tikal. Drawing by Linda Schele © David Schele, SD-2033.

a.

b. Figure 1.3. One of several pseudo-cloisonné vessels from Alta Vista, Zacatecas, depicting a raptor with snake in its beak. Alta Vista phase, ca. 600–900 CE. A) Photo from Gamio 1910, Lámina 6; B) drawing by Chris and Kathy Beekman from Gamio 1910, Lámina 6.

Migrations in Late Mesoamerica · 15

Central America (Brotherston 1995; Carrasco and Sessions 2007; Edmonson 1982, 1986; Jopling 1994, 35 and many others). While many of these incorporate mythical elements, more subdued and pragmatic accounts occur in secular documents from the sixteenth century such as the Relaciones Geográficas (Beekman 2019) and in oral histories recorded in recent times (Dehouve 1976, 2015). Migration was a topic of recurring importance in late Mesoamerica; it was embedded in origin myths, land claims, cosmological narratives, and narratives of military conquest and political consolidation. Northern Mesoamerica In accordance with the Mesoamericans’ interest in migration, the earliest cases in this volume pertain to the Classic period hegemony of Teotihuacan and the immediate aftermath of its political and demographic collapse in the Epiclassic. Both periods have undergone significant chronological revision in recent decades. The Epiclassic period was defined to encompass the era of reorganization after the fall of Classic period centers such as Teotihuacan and before the emergence of Tula as a new political center in the Early Postclassic (Jiménez Moreno 1959, 1966). The concept was biased toward events in Central Mexico (Almendros López and Beekman 2019), but it recognized coeval events in southeastern Mesoamerica such as the Maya collapse. The period was originally situated between the Metepec phase at Teotihuacan in the Basin of Mexico and the major construction at Tula, occupying a narrow block of time from 750–900 CE, defined particularly by Coyotlatelco ceramics and related ceramics running through Central Mexico (Rattray 1966; Solar Valverde 2006). Other major Classic period centers such as Monte Albán also declined (González Licón 2011; Marcus 2009, 98, 101; Winter 1989), while communities such as Dainzú rose in scale and importance (Faulseit 2012). New centers emerged between the Teotihuacan and Tula horizons at Xochicalco (González Crespo et al. 2008; Hirth 2000), Cacaxtla-Xochitecatl (Serra Puche and Lazcano Arce 2011), Tula Chico (Healan 2012; Mastache et al. 2002), Angamuco (Fisher

16 · Christopher S. Beekman

and Leisz 2013), and Malpaís (Michelet 2008). There was also a rapid rise in the size and importance of existing cities such as El Tajín (Pascual Soto 2006) and Cantona (García Cook 2004; García Cook and Merino Carrión 2006). In the ensuing decades, scholars noted the similarity between the Coyotlatelco ceramics that defined the Epiclassic and those from northwestern Mexico (Braniff 1972; Jiménez Moreno 1959, 1966) and identified “Maya” imagery at some of the new highland centers and “Mexican” imagery in lowland cities from Ceibal to Chichén Itzá (e.g., Diehl and Berlo 1989; Foncerrada de Molina 1982). Proposals of migrations of ethnolinguistic groups (particularly Nahuas from northwestern Mexico but also the shadowy Olmeca Xicalanca from the Gulf Coast and the Putun Maya around the Yucatan Peninsula) were thus intimately part of the definition of the Epiclassic (see Manzanilla 2005). Many changes in our understanding of chronology have since transformed the Epiclassic from a short transitional period into a substantial era in its own right and brought it into closer proximity to Teotihuacan’s major period of expansionism. The Great Burning associated with Teotihuacan’s downfall (Millon 1988) has been dated to the mid-sixth century CE (Manzanilla 2009; Wolfman 1990), at the transition between Xolalpan and Metepec phases (Cowgill 2015). A period of diversity and temporal overlap (Anderson 2015; Cobean 1990; Crider 2013) gave way to the widespread distribution of Coyotlatelco ceramics by 600 CE (Manzanilla 2009; Manzanilla et al. 1996; Parsons et al. 1996). Tula’s origins as a major center now lie deep in the Epiclassic and alongside the late Teotihuacan sequence in the Mezquital Valley (Beekman and Christensen 2011; Cobean 1990; Healan 2012; Mastache and Cobean 1989; Sterpone 2000–2001). Changes have come from the other direction as well. Teotihuacan’s later chronology has been greatly refined and pushed back earlier in time (Beramendi-Orosco et al. 2009; Manzanilla 2009; Manzanilla et al. 1996). Some researchers condense the major construction at Teotihuacan into the last three centuries before the site’s decline (Sugiyama et al. 2013 and subsequent debates), pressing Teotihuacan’s peak and the Epiclassic disruptions into even closer proximity. Furthermore, one must be careful to distinguish between contemporary evidence for Teotihuacan’s expansion (e.g., Bove and Medrano 2003; García-Des Lauriers 2007) and retrospective accounts from the Epiclassic that looked back on the Teotihuacan era (perfectly contrasted in Stuart 2000). These examples highlight the importance of tight chronologies for interpretation and the significance of iconographic evidence for topics such as the introduction of languages.

Migrations in Late Mesoamerica · 17

Native sources are explicit about Nahuatl being spoken at Tula, but the poor fit between archaeological and documentary datasets means that we do not know whether that refers to Tula’s heyday in the Early Postclassic or to its Epiclassic origins at the nearby locus of Tula Chico. Nahuatl rebus writing occurs at Cacaxtla and Xochicalco in the Epiclassic (Berlo 1989; Wichmann 1998, 302) and Nahuatl loanwords occur in dated Maya inscriptions from the seventh to the eighth centuries (Macri 2005; Macri and Looper 2003). Jane Hill has previously argued that Nahuatl speakers were tropical maize cultivators within the bounds of Mesoamerica from a very early date. In her contribution to this volume, she addresses the controversy over Nahuatl’s presence in Central Mexico and particularly Teotihuacan (Dakin and Wichmann 2000; Kaufman and Justeson 2007), concluding that Nahuatl was certainly spoken in Mesoamerica and likely at Teotihuacan prior to its downfall. The implications are great, as its presence at Teotihuacan would mean that Nahuatl speakers could have reached southern Mesoamerica earlier as representatives of state expansion. If Nahuatl was not represented among Teotihuacan’s languages but was introduced from the northwest concurrent with its collapse, then the distant chain of UtoAztecan, Otomanguean, and Hokan communities found in lower Central America would more likely be a mix of refugees from Teotihuacan’s collapse, migrants from the north who were continuing southward, or other migrations that were not sponsored by any state. In their chapter, Dan Healan and Robert Cobean bridge the Classic period hegemony of Teotihuacan and the disruptions of the Epiclassic through a focus on the Mezquital Valley of Hidalgo. Although the valley is best known for the Early Postclassic site of Tula, the authors address the archaeological and isotopic evidence for three earlier migrations. One relates to Teotihuacan’s efforts to dominate the region and the establishment of enclaves in the Tula region. A second details the presence of Zapotec groups in this area during the period of Teotihuacan’s control, suggesting an ethnic group working under the umbrella of the state. The third is associated with the Epiclassic Coyotlatelco complex. Their comparison of multiple patterns of population movements in a single area allow them to draw out distinctions between state-sponsored and less coordinated movements and identify their different archaeological characteristics. The Coyotlatelco ceramic complex has intrigued archaeologists for decades (e.g., Clayton 2013; Crider 2013; Cyphers 2000; Gamboa Cabezas 1998; Gómez Chávez 1995; Rattray 1966, 1987; Sugiura 2005, 2009). Christine Hernández and Dan Healan address the origins of the distinctive

18 · Christopher S. Beekman

red-on-buff and related ceramics in their chapter. They conclude that the complex likely originated in eastern Guanajuato and was in Teotihuacan’s outer orbit during the Classic period. This chapter and the preceding one support earlier arguments that the migrants who formed part of the Tula polity came from Guanajuato and that they moved into the area in the Epiclassic rather than the Early Postclassic. This has significant repercussions for how we view the role of migration in Tula’s formation as a state. The historical narratives suggest the relatively sudden emergence of the Tula polity following the arrival of foreign migrants, but the archaeological evidence suggests that these two events should be decoupled. Christopher Beekman’s chapter examines a migration into central Jalisco. He assigns its origins to the eastern part of the state or farther into western Guanajuato. He synthesizes the less widely known evidence for language distribution and migration accounts in far western Mexico and relates them to the limited array of archaeological evidence. He and Alexander Christensen (2003, 2011) have previously contrasted the differing patterns of evidence for Epiclassic population movements into western and Central Mexico. Beekman (2015) has argued that these movements were sequential responses to the gradual drying of the northern Mesoamerican frontier over the course of the Classic period that peaked in the Epiclassic (Bernal et al. 2011; Metcalfe and Davies 2007; Metcalfe et al. 2010, 2015; Rodríguez-Ramírez et al. 2015; Stahle et al. 2011; Vázquez-Castro et al. 2008). The initial response of populations in the Bajío was to pursue an aggressive conquest into the Tequila valleys in Jalisco, where they rapidly established new polities and a new material culture complex. Barely a century later, however, the intrusion into Central Mexico was considerably less organized and may reflect worsening conditions in the source area. Migration and the founding of dynastic lines and settlements form intertwined narratives throughout the native histories of the following Postclassic period and may be preserved as pictorial documents in the native tradition or as native or Spanish renderings into Latin characters (Brotherston 1995; Navarrete Linares 2000). These stories formed a common conceptual background for many Mesoamericans at the time of the Spanish arrival (Megged 2010; Megged and Wood 2012). While several well-known accounts share consistent features suggesting that they promote an underlying political ideology (López Austin and López Luján 1999, 2000), others do not. Numerous migration narratives among the Mazahua/Matlatzinca, Cohuixca, Pipil, or Chiapanec (to name just a few) lack the formulaic elements of this ideology and describe a more historically and geographically

Migrations in Late Mesoamerica · 19

specific landscape (e.g., Beekman 2019; Dehouve 2015; chapter 10, this volume; Navarrete 1966, 5–8). The best-known accounts follow the migrations of the Mexica and their predecessors into Central Mexico from the northwest. Although these accounts are typically written in Nahuatl, the migrations they describe need not be of Nahuatl speakers. The ancestors of the royal family of Texcoco were specifically stated to have learned Nahuatl from their Central Mexican predecessors after their arrival (e.g., Ixtlilxochitl 1975, 2, 34). The date of Nahuatl’s introduction is never specified. Susan Schroeder’s contribution draws on one particularly detailed account, the Nahuatl texts that Chimalpahin wrote in Latin characters at the beginning of the seventeenth century. These valuable sources present an indigenous conception of migration and how it was interwoven with factional conflict, land tenure, and gender. Schroeder demonstrates how both historical and legitimizing aspects could exist side by side in their pages. She addresses the political impacts that the Middle to Late Postclassic movements had on the origins of the altepetl (Nahuatl; “water-mountain,” indicating polity) (Gutiérrez Mendoza 2012; Hirth 2003). She demonstrates how the altepetl took shape as new migrants arrived and were grafted on through political processes. Schroeder’s analysis show how particular political forms may facilitate the incorporation of organized migrants more effectively than others and suggests that an altepetl form may be more likely to appear during periods of disruption. Besides polity building, other political factors such as warfare and oppression are frequently cited causes of migration. They might be profitably divided into two main categories with different trajectories. Politically sponsored enclaves such as Chingú in Hidalgo (Díaz Oyarzábal 1980; chapter 3, this volume) may have greater longevity due to external backing, but they may also be more prone to decline if that support is withdrawn (Beekman 2019). Their external ties make them easier to identify. A second category is that of groups of political refugees, such as those triggered by conflict along the boundary of the Mexica and Tarascan empires. Several different ethnolinguistic groups fled the Mexica conquest of the Basin of Mexico and the Toluca Valley, leading the Matlatzinca and Otomí to request lands from the Tarascan ruler, while the Cohuixca streamed into lands in Guerrero outside the control of either empire (Dehouve 2015). These migrants were likely more vulnerable in that they were dependent on their host communities for at least some of the resources needed to rebuild their lives, such as land. Depending on the circumstances, the migrants could be assimilated into their host population or maintain/adopt distinctive practices that kept

20 · Christopher S. Beekman

them apart (Beekman 2019). Both archaeology and ethnohistoric accounts have successfully identified such multiethnic communities during a period when the migrants were still pursuing distinctive practices (e.g., Castañeda de la Paz 2013; Overholtzer and De Lucia 2016), but longer-term studies might find them difficult to recognize. While central and western highland Mexican peoples made significant use of migration narratives or present more evidence of migrations, this is not the case everywhere. Migration was deemphasized in the southern highland state of Oaxaca in favor of narratives that told of local origins. This could be due to cultural differences in the use of migration for legitimization or to Oaxaca’s position off the more easily traversed lowland corridor down the Gulf Coast. However, there are exceptions. Pohl and Urcid (2014) identified a Postclassic migration narrative Mixtec-Chocho elites of Coixtlahuaca used that shares common features with narratives from Central Mexico. The colonization of Tututepec on the Oaxaca coast around 1200 CE included both a demographic and linguistic component (Byland and Pohl 1994; Joyce et al. 2004, see note 2 on chronology). And Franz Boas (1917) documented an enclave on the coast at Pochutla, near Huatulco. Its few remaining members spoke a variant of Nahuatl that must have separated from Aztecan even before Pipil and thus before the Postclassic (Campbell and Langacker 1978). Given its location, Pochutec may have arrived via a physical migration of speakers down the Pacific coast from western Mexico. Southern Mesoamerica The Classic period Maya are seen largely as looking inward and engaging in intense interaction with other Maya centers. The central exception is Teotihuacan’s impact on economy, political ideology, warfare, and imagery. The highland city’s influence took various forms, from the south coast of Chiapas and Guatemala to highland centers like Kaminaljuyú and to centers such as Tikal in the tropical lowlands (well sampled in Braswell 2003c). Interpretations of Teotihuacan’s impact received epigraphic support with the decipherment of multiple texts that refer to a military entrada across the lowlands and into Tikal in 378 CE (Stuart 2000). Although the establishment of a foreign garrison might be inferred from this event, the elite-focused narratives do not address such issues. Scott Aubry’s chapter provides an opportunity to assess this and other possible migrations through very different methods. His use of population-level biological data is in many respects the opposite of a historical approach in both scale and

Migrations in Late Mesoamerica · 21

specificity. He uses cranial nonmetric data to evaluate population-scale relationships between selected highland and lowland Maya centers from the Classic through Early Postclassic. While there is significant internal homogeneity across the Maya lowlands, there is increased diversity around the edges of the region, particularly toward the coasts. Aubry also identifies evidence for gene flow between Central Mexico and lowland Maya centers, which suggests that the 378 CE entrada was likely only one event in a broader range of processes of interaction. Aubry’s analysis thus lacks information about the specific modalities of migration but provides a broader perspective. The Late Classic in southeastern Mesoamerica tends to show continuity with earlier periods, culminating in high demographic profiles in places like the lowland Maya region (Culbert and Rice 1990; Inomata et al. 2018). Accordingly, we might expect the region to be more of a source of migrations than a recipient region prior to the Terminal Classic. Accounts of migrations from the Gulf Coast or the Maya region toward the west appear to originate in the early part of the Late Classic, although they are less formulaic than the Chichimec narratives. Many of these movements are attributed to the obscure group known as the Olmeca Xicalanca, while others are not given a specific identity (see Brotherston 1995 for some of these lesser known documents). Several significant treatments of the Olmeca Xicalanca in recent years have reached similar conclusions about their status as an ethnolinguistic group. Nagao (2014, 501–515) sees the sources as highly diverse and contradictory, with little in common as to origins, language, or history. Testard (2017) sees the term Olmeca Xicalanca as more of a metaphorical reference to the people of the east and the Maya, and this is largely how Sahagún (1961, Book 10, chapter 29) uses the term. Andrew Turner (2016) had previously argued that the term may encompass a variety of peoples, and in his contribution to this volume he addresses their proposed presence at the site of Cacaxtla, Tlaxcala. He addresses a dataset that would normally be considered expressive discourse and more subject to manipulation—namely monumental artwork in the form of Cacaxtla’s famous murals. While he covers larger issues such as the narratives portrayed in the murals, he also discusses subtle details of the art that he proposes as more unconscious conventions that are indicative of the artists’ origins. He also points out that the Cacaxtla murals were painted over a period of generations and argues that their interpretation must take the sustained nature of foreign presence into account. He concludes that in the wake of Teotihuacan’s decline, Maya merchants established a trade diaspora

22 · Christopher S. Beekman

at Cacaxtla to maintain their access to trade routes and that Maya artists accompanied them. Their uneasy dominance over local actors was reaffirmed periodically, with varying emphasis, in mural painting. The decline of the southern Gulf Coast and lowland Maya cities and the subsequent rise of the Puuc and Chichén Itzá during the Terminal Classic incorporated considerable demographic complexity (Aimers 2007; Demarest et al. 2003; Stark and Eschbach 2018). As have events in the north, the Maya collapse has been repeatedly linked to episodes of drought (Brenner et al. 2002; Hodell et al. 2005; Hoggarth et al. 2017; Kennett et al. 2012; Medina-Elizalde et al. 2010; Medina-Elizalde and Rohling 2012; Webster et al. 2007, to name only a few). Because of the decline of so many centers and their evident movement into neighboring regions, there should be many opportunities to study the migration of organized groups, the founding of new centers, and the absorption of the migrants into existing centers. Many studies have sought to parse out this complexity (e.g., Bazy and Inomata 2017), but some particularly prominent cases are always at the forefront. One of the most notable claims of a migration in southern Mesoamerica remains the case of Chichén Itzá in north-central Yucatan. Driven by accounts in the cryptic native Maya Books of Chilam Balam (e.g., Craine and Reindorp 1979; Edmonson 1982, 1986), the synthetic work of Fray Diego de Landa (Tozzer 1941) and various lesser sources, archaeological work at Chichén Itzá has sought to identify distinct subgroups with clear material culture boundaries. Erik Boot’s chapter in this volume revisits his earlier work on one of these groups—the Itzá—and seeks to reconstruct their identity and long-term history. He concludes that they migrated northward out of the southern Maya lowlands as a self-consciously defined group. He considers the migrants to have been limited in numbers but significant in their historical impact because they took over the city’s political leadership. Erik passed away before revising his chapter and I present his chapter here edited primarily for length. It must fall to someone else to write a similarly detailed treatment of the Yucatan’s Tutul Xiu migrants, whose name refers directly to a “Toltec” identity and who first appear in the Chilam Balam in the Gulf Coast area. Ethnohistoric accounts have generated much of the initial interest in possible migrations into Central America. Early Spanish records noted the presence of enclaves whose members spoke languages normally limited to areas far to the north and west and ethnographers and linguists continued to add examples over the ensuing centuries (e.g., Lothrop 1942). Linguists

Migrations in Late Mesoamerica · 23

have successfully reconstructed many of these relationships, locating Otomanguean isolates such as Chorotega/Mangue and Subtiaba in Honduras, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica; possible Hokan speakers in Honduras (Jicaque); and Southern Uto-Aztecan speakers in Guatemala and El Salvador (Pipil), Nicaragua (Nicarao), and Panama (Sigua) (Beekman and Christensen 2003; Costenla and Ibarra 2009; Ibarra Rojas 2001; Salgado González and Fernández-León 2011).2 Native accounts, filtered through Spanish writings, attribute some Central American isolates to migrations before and at the time of the conquest (Carmack 1973; Fowler 1989; Fox 1987; Lothrop 1942). Analyzing these migrations archaeologically has occupied numerous investigators (e.g., McCafferty and Dennett 2013). William Fowler’s contribution to this volume is an analysis of the archaeological evidence attributed to the Pipil of El Salvador. Based on excavations at Cihuatán, he associates their arrival in El Salvador with the emergence of a material culture complex that dates to the beginning of the Early Postclassic and has no local antecedents. The complex intriguingly incorporates elements also found in Tula’s contemporary Tollan phase, raising the likelihood of ongoing contact between Nahuatl-speaking communities. He posits that their migration may have been triggered by factional strife at Tula and could well have incorporated non-Nahua speakers who did not stand out from the larger group in terms of material culture. It is reasonable to question whether the isolated languages in Central America were introduced by native troops brought by the Spaniards in the early sixteenth century or somewhat earlier by Aztec merchants such as the Sigua, but this would in any case only explain some Nahuatl groups, not the variety of Otomanguean or Hokan speakers found in the same regions. Sergio Romero addresses this point in his chapter by examining Nahuatl dialects spoken on the southern piedmont and south coast of Guatemala in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. He concludes that both central and eastern varieties of Nahuatl were introduced prior to Spanish arrival and not necessarily by groups that identified as Pipil. As do several other authors in this volume, he notes that the migrants seemed to identify as small social groups and not by ethnicity or language. A central implication of language isolates in Central America and elsewhere is that their speakers passed through intervening areas of Mesoamerica, a conclusion supported by the presence of related languages along their potential routes (the Otomanguean languages of Tlapanec in Guerrero or the extinct Chiapanec in Chiapas; the possibly Hokan language of

24 · Christopher S. Beekman

Tequistlatecan in Oaxaca). Some of these isolates are also distributed along the coast; greater consideration needs to be given to waterborne modes of migration. Final Thoughts

The recent upsurge of interest in migration is not a return to older modes of explanation that equate pots with people, or diffusionism. The increased attention stems from broader developments across the social sciences. The past focus on stable social and political structures, types of societies, and normative ideologies is increasingly problematic. Dynamism and variability are increasingly recognized as the rule. Even so, migration is a greater break than normal. It highlights migrants’ choices and priorities as they dismantle their lives and try to rebuild them in a new setting. Some of the periods the authors in this volume cover present unsettling parallels to our own world (see also Garcia and La Bras 2017). During the period covered by this volume, migration was closely linked to both environmental and political disruption in the same causal triangle that scientists envisage for the 21st century. Changing climate may disrupt subsistence regimes, provoking movements that trigger political and social changes. Environmental overexploitation or political upheaval can be either the cause or the effect of shifting concentrations of population. The position of migration as the connecting tissue between these processes gives it an importance that has not been sufficiently addressed by prehistorians. Censoring it out of our interpretations cannot result in a better understanding of the past or in observations that are useful for the future. Notes 1. The Formative/Preclassic, Classic, and Postclassic periods were defined at a time when chronological sequences often incorporated development trajectories into their nomenclature. Today period date ranges are fairly static and they primarily serve as frames of reference for discussion. Their internal divisions (Early, Middle, Late, Terminal, Epi) tend to be treated more dynamically and may vary by a century or more depending on the investigator and the region. 2. Hokan as now largely discredited as a distinct language family, but the term is useful to reference a set of related languages likely within Otomanguean.

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I NORTHERN MESOAMERICA

2 How Mesoamerican Are the Nahua Languages? Jane H. Hill

The Epiclassic Expansions of the Nahua in Historical Perspective

The date by which Nahua-speaking peoples emerged as important agents in Mesoamerican regional systems is hotly debated. Kaufman (2001) summarizes a widely shared view based on lexicostatistical evidence that Nahua speakers were not part of the Mesoamerican world (in his view, not in contact with any other Mesoamerican languages) until after 500 CE and that their expansion into their historic distribution began around 800 CE, when the ancestors of Eastern Nahua speakers began to be involved in the ethnogenesis of the so-called Toltecs, the people of Tula. Between 800 and 1200 CE, Eastern Nahua speakers spread into the Sierra de Puebla, the Huasteca, and the Gulf Coast. By early Epiclassic times, loans from Gulf Coast Nahua begin to appear in Yucatecan and Cholan epigraphic texts, and by 1000 CE these also appear in Mopan (Justeson et al. 1985). A different group of Eastern Nahua speakers, the Pipil, moved even farther south, establishing colonies in Chiapas, Guatemala, and El Salvador, perhaps in a single migration (Campbell 1985), or perhaps in a series of moves that continued from about 800 to 1200 CE (Fowler 1989). While the Epiclassic expansions of the Nahua have been extensively researched, the earlier history of the group has remained obscure. The goal of this chapter is to provide the background of this early history and to review new suggestions emerging from linguistic and epigraphic research that the Epiclassic expansions and migrations are a late stage in a long history of Nahua involvement in the Mesoamerican world. The first section reviews

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reconstructions of the lexicon of Proto-Nahuan that show that speakers of this language were cultivators living in the tropics. A review of key constructions in the grammar of this proto-language shows that it was thoroughly Mesoamerican, even to the point of elaborating patterns associated with the “Mesoamerican linguistic area” (Campbell et al. 1986). The major ideas about the early diversification of the languages are discussed in a third section. The debate about the earliest emergence of the Nahua as important players in Mesoamerican politics centers on the directionality of loanwords between early stages of Nahua and other Mesoamerican languages. The final section of this chapter reviews the major points of difference among linguists involved in these debates about the Nahua role in Mesoamerica prior to the Epiclassic. Proto-Nahua: A Language of Tropical Maize Cultivators

The Nahua languages (the subfamily is sometimes labeled Aztecan) belong to the Uto-Aztecan family (often called Yuto-Nahua in the Spanish-language literature). A set of shared innovations define Nahua as a subgroup of Uto-Aztecan, and all the Nahua languages descend from a single common ancestor, Proto-Nahua (PNa). The best example of such a diagnostic shared innovation is the restructuring seen in list 1, which involves the loss of the first vowel of the Proto-Uto-Aztecan (PUA) form, yielding the juxtaposition of the first two consonants. If the first of these is *p or *t and if the second is *s, *1, or *w, as in 1a and 1b, then the two consonants undergo a metathesis (reversal of order) (Campbell and Langacker 1978a, 204). Finally, an “epenthetic” vowel /i/ is inserted before the two consonants so the word will not begin with a consonant cluster, a structure prohibited in the Nahua languages. This set of changes is sufficiently complex that it is unlikely that it would have been occurred independently in all the different Nahua languages, so linguists conclude that the changes took place only once, in Proto-Nahua, and are inherited in the descendant languages. The stars in list 1 mean that the words have been reconstructed using the comparative method in historical linguistics. For instance, for 1a, “to tie,” we find puunat (to tie a knot) in Tübatulabal, a Northern Uto-Aztecan language, and vura/vuri (to tie) in Warihío, a language of the Southern group (among other examples in Stubbs 2011, 371). Tübatulabal /p/ and Warihío /v/ match in many other form-meaning pairs, as do Tübatulabal /n/ and Warihío /r/, and the vowels are the same. We are not sure about

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the quality of the second consonant (Merrill 2013 reviews debates on this point), but it is clear that the items are cognate and were present in PUA. We can reconstruct the restructuring of these lexical items, as described above, to Proto-Nahua because it appears in all the descendant languages, such as Pochutec ilpi’, Pipil ilpia, and Classical Nahuatl ilpia, all meaning “to tie, tie up.” List 1 a. b. c. d.

PUA **puliPUA **tosa PUA **sutun PUA **kupa

to tie white fingernail, claw string

→ → → →

PNa PNa PNa PNa

*ilpi*ista*iste*ikpe-

Uncontroversial historical linguistic findings support Beekman and Christensen (2003) and Beekman (2010), who have emphasized that the stereotype of Nahua speakers as “barbarian invaders,” hunter-gatherers from the far north, is wrong. Vocabulary that Fowler (1983) and Campbell and Langacker (1978b) reconstructed for Proto-Nahua, including the examples in list 2, shows that speakers of Proto-Nahua must have lived in the tropics, not in an arid zone beyond the Mesoamerican boundaries. List 2 a. b. c. d. e.

*a: waka*a: ma*toma*tsapo*kwïc-

avocado fig tree, paper tomato sapote iguana

A vocabulary for cultivating and preparing maize can be reconstructed for Proto-Nahua. It must have been much more extensive than the list of examples in list 3, but our reconstruction is constrained by the very limited documentation of Pochutec (a Nahua language spoken around Pochutla, Oaxaca, that Boas (1917) recorded from a few elderly speakers). Pochutec is a good candidate for an independent branch within Nahua and is crucial as a source of evidence for reconstruction to Proto-Nahua. The examples in list 3 are from Campbell and Langacker (1978), including only those that they judge to be secure. The exception is 3j, contributed here based on Pochutec pict (tamal) and Classical Nahuatl pi: ki (to wrap, especially tamales). A possible loan of this item into Mayan languages will be discussed below in the section on loanwords. The reconstructability of this suite of

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lexical items means that it is unlikely that speakers of Proto-Nahua were hunter-gatherers. List 3 a. b. c. d. e. f. g. h. i. j. k. 1. m. n.

*ička*ayoh*či: 1*to: tol*sïn*tlayo: 1*e: lo: *to: to: moč*tïš*pi: k*ato: 1*to: ka *mi: 1*pï: ška

cotton squash chili domestic turkey mature ear of maize maize, shelled maize fresh ear of maize dried corn husk maize dough, masa to wrap tamales maize gruel, atole to plant field for planting to harvest, especially corn

Proto-Nahua Belonged to the Mesoamerican Linguistic Area

Proto-Nahua itself was part of an emerging Mesoamerican linguistic area (Campbell et al. 1986), a region in which contact among speakers caused diverse unrelated languages to converge in many basic structures. Kaufman (2001) pointed out that the change in Proto-Nahua from PUA *t to PNa *tl may reflect the influence of Totonacan, the only other Mesoamerican language family with the sound /tl/. The direction of influence is debatable, but this shared feature is suggestive of language contact. Word order in Nahua exhibits a Mesoamerican verb-first pattern. Proto-Nahua and Cora (Casad 1984) acquired this feature. In all of the other Uto-Aztecan languages, the verb is usually the last element in a sentence. Almost all the other Uto-Aztecan languages exhibit switch reference, where suffixes on sequential verbs in complex sentences mark whether they share a common grammatical subject or have different subjects. Huichol has a particularly elaborate system (Comrie 1983). Switch reference marking is correlated with verb-final order (Jacobson 1983). Its loss in Cora and Nahua is thus probably a correlate of the change to verb-first order (for this reason, switch reference is also absent in other Mesoamerican languages [Campbell et al.

How Mesoamerican Are the Nahua Languages? · 47

1986, 548]). This shows that the change was not a superficial matter of style. However, both Cora and the Nahua languages retain other traces of their verb-final antecedents, such as postpositions (instead of prepositions) that encode locatives and some other cases, such as the indirect object and the instrumental. Nahua languages exhibit another Mesoamerican feature: postpositional markers that are body-part labels. An example is cal-i:htic (in the house), contracted from calli i:-htic (house its-belly). They have numeral systems with base 20. For instance, ye:-po:hualli ’60’ is literally “three-twenty.” They use metaphorical expressions found widely in the region such as mah-pilli (finger; literally, hand-child). “Numeral classifiers” appear in Mixe-Zoquean, Lowland Maya, Totonacan, Tarascan, Huave, and Nahua. Languages with numeral classifiers require that nouns being pluralized or enumerated be “classified” into a larger category (like English “four sheets of paper” rather than “four papers”). Classical Nahuatl had five of these classifiers (Wichmann 2012). The best-known (and the only survivor into many modern varieties) is -tetl (literally rock, used for counting “round, plump things”) (Andrews 1975, 188), for instance ye:-po:hual tetl ayohtli (60 squashes, literally three-twenty rock squash). The Diversification of the Nahua Languages

Among the Southern Uto-Aztecan languages, Proto-Nahua was most closely related to Proto-Corachol, the ancestor of Cora and Huichol.1 Kaufman (2001) suggests that many of the resemblances among these languages are areal, diffused among them during a period when they were geographic neighbors instead of reflecting a common inheritance. However, the three languages share a suite of sound changes in both consonants and vowels, suggesting that they share a common ancestor that is more recent that Proto-Southern Uto-Aztecan (Campbell and Langacker 1978). If such a common ancestral language, Proto-Nahua-Corachol, existed or if there was a Nahua-Corachol areal system, communities of its speakers may have been located as far west as the Mexican state of Jalisco and as far north as Nayarit or even Durango. However, evidence for loanwords from languages such as Totonacan, Huastecan, and Zoquean into Proto-Nahua (Kaufman 2001; Kaufman and Justeson 2007, 197) suggest that communities that spoke this language were located far enough east and south to permit such contact. The Bajío, which Beekman (2010) and Beekman and Christensen (2003, 2011) propose as a Nahua homeland, may satisfy this

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requirement, since prior to the Toltec and Aztec expansions, these donor languages were probably spoken farther to the west and north than their historic distributions. However, Kaufman (2001) argues that contact with Totonacan did not take place until Nahua were in the Basin of Mexico, after 500 CE by his reckoning. Two possibilities have been proposed for the initial diversification of Proto-Nahua into its daughter languages. One is that Proto-Nahua first split into Pochutec and General Nahua (Canger 1988, Dakin and Canger 1985, Kaufman 2001). General Nahua then split into its eastern and western descendants. The second idea is that the first division was into Eastern and Western Nahua, followed by the separation of Pochutec from the western variety (Dakin and Canger 1985, Dakin 2008). If the latter scenario is correct, then Pochutec evidence is not crucial for reconstructing Proto-Nahua, although it would be a particularly aberrant western variety with many phonological peculiarities.2 While varieties of Western Nahua are found along the Pacific coast from Michoacan (and from Oaxaca if Pochutec is a western variety) to Nayarit and in the states of Jalisco and Durango, speakers of Eastern Nahua, as discussed above, eventually spread their languages from the Huasteca in the northeast to Guerrero, the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, and Central America as far south as Nicaragua. At some point, perhaps as a result of migration from the west into the Basin of Mexico in the Epiclassic (Cowgill 2013), speakers of western varieties encountered previously established easterndialect communities with the result that a koiné emerged (Dakin 2010a, 180), a mixed variety that incorporated both western and eastern features and is often called Central Nahua. This formation, which occurred at more or less the same time as the Eastern Nahua diversification and expansions, should be considered a major component of the ethnogenesis of the diverse Nahua communities that were in formation in the Epiclassic. Communities that speak varieties descended from this Central Nahua variety are found in the Basin of Mexico and much of the state of Mexico and in Tlaxcala, Morelos, and Puebla. Documents in Classical Nahuatl dating from the middle of the sixteenth century are our best evidence for the properties of Central Nahua at the time of contact. This variety was written by Nahuaspeaking scribes and notaries and by Spanish missionaries and may not represent exactly the spoken language of any community. Along with migration by speakers, the spread of Nahua languages must have included language shift when communities that spoke other heritage languages, including Huastec Maya, Totonacan, Pamean, Otomían,

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Matlatzincan, and Chiapaneco-Mangue, abandoned them and adopted Nahua varieties (Kaufman 2001, 3). Such language shifts may have begun by Proto-Nahua times, since the partial list of possible loans into ProtoNahua from these languages in Kaufman and Justeson (2007, 197) includes several items suggestive of a “nursery word” substratum that may represent the voices of foreign women who bore children into Nahua-speaking communities. These include words for “ant,” “snail,” and “baby” (from MixeZoquean) and “spider” and “diminutive suffix” (from Totonacan). At least “ant” and “spider” are questionable and will be discussed further below. Dating the Emergence of Nahua Prominence in Mesoamerica: The Problem of Loanwords

The most hotly debated questions about Nahua prehistory today involve dating the separation and expansion of Eastern Nahua. Canger (1988) associated that spread with the Toltecs, which would imply that it began no earlier than about 800 CE. Fowler (1989) dates moves of Nahua speakers into Central America to between 800 and 1200 CE. Kaufman (2001) and Kaufman and Justeson 2007) concur that Nahua-speaking peoples had no significant presence in the Mesoamerican mainstream prior to the Epiclassic (600–900 CE). Justeson and colleagues (1985, 70), discussing foreign influence on the lowland Maya, advanced the dominant view that the Eastern Nahua were not important in that region prior to the Terminal Classic (800–900 CE), when Nahua loans such as Yucatec kó:t (eagle) from Gulf Coast Nahua *koh-(ti) began to appear in lowland Maya languages. They reject the possibility that Nahua was an important language at Teotihuacan, favoring Totonacan as the most likely candidate for that status, based on influences seen in Mayan languages. Dakin (2001, 2003, 2005, 2010b, 2010c), Dakin and Wichmann (2000) and Wichmann (1995, 1998, 2010) have advanced a contrary view that the spread of Eastern Nahua began much earlier and that at least some speakers of Proto-Eastern Nahua were among elite groups at Teotihuacan at least as early as the fifth century CE.3 Berlo (1989), Cowgill (1992), Davletshin (n.d.), Taube (2000), and Whittaker (2012) have also proposed evidence for this perspective, linking iconographic and epigraphic elements at Teotihuacan to later attestations in demonstrably Nahua sources. Especially notable is an apparent place-name glyph that includes a severed arm, an element used in Aztec times to represent the element (a:)kol, as in Acolhuacan and Coliman (Berlo 1989, 22), from Nahua ahkol- (shoulder). Some place-name

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glyphs at Cacaxtla include the mouth with teeth, which makes good sense if the phonetic realization is the place-name element -tlan, from Nahua tlan-tli (teeth) (Baddeley 1983). This word has a rock-solid Uto-Aztecan etymology; it is one of the most stable form-meaning combinations in the family (Stubbs 2011, 327). Debates among linguists about dating draw on two sets of methods. The first are lexicostatistical methods, the best known being glottochronology. Lexicostatistical dates support the hypothesis of the late spread of Eastern Nahua. Hale (1959, 106) calculated 1,252 “glottochronological years” for the deepest division among the Nahua languages, which would date the breakup of Proto-Nahua as late as 750 CE. Kaufman (2001, 3,4) cites glottochronological dates for the separation of Pochutec at 500 CE and the separation of Eastern Nahua at 800 CE. Dates recently proposed for the split of General Nahua into Eastern and Western Nahua are widely separated: Holman et al. (2011) propose 500 CE and scholars at the University of Auckland suggested 1200 CE (Russell Gray, personal communication). Lexicostatistical dates are based on the hotly disputed theory that languages change at a relatively constant rate. Different lexicostatistical techniques do not always yield the same or even similar results, as is apparent from the summary above (and see Chang et al. 2015 for dramatically contrasting results for dating, depending on methodological details, in the better-known Indo-European languages). Lexicostatistical results probably do not have much to contribute to chronological questions, especially those at the relatively fine-grained level that deal with hundreds rather than thousands of years that we confront in dealing with the history of the Nahua. The second set of methods aims to calibrate the content of proto-language vocabularies that have been reconstructed using the comparative method in historical linguistics with absolute dates such as radiocarbon dates. One problem with this method, often called linguistic paleontology, is that phonological and especially semantic reconstructions of protolanguage vocabularies are often provisional (as, of course, are radiocarbon dates). Furthermore, old words can be assigned to new ideas. A good example is the Uto-Aztecan etymon *(a)wata, which in the daughter languages means “spear-thrower” (as in Nahua), but in other languages means “bow” (in Hopi) or even “rifle” (in Upper Piman). Presumably “spear-thrower” was the original meaning. Examples of vocabulary reconstructed for Proto-Nahua appear in lists 2 and 3 above. No word in these lists permits a really interesting calibration with radiocarbon dates. The claim by Speller et al. (2010) that the earliest

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remains of domestic turkeys in highland Mexico date to about 180 CE suggested that item 3d, *to:tol- (domestic turkey) might provide such a calibration, permitting us to conclude that the Proto-Nahua speech community did not form before this date. However, based on an exhaustive review of sources, Thornton and Emery (2017, 342) conclude that “turkey husbandry was practiced at a fairly small scale throughout the Preclassic in many different parts of Mesoamerica.” While this implies that Proto-Nahua, with its word for “domestic turkey,” probably did not exist prior to the Preclassic, this conclusion is not very restrictive chronologically. Cacao and Chocolate While linguistic methods do not shed much light on the chronology of the formation of the Proto-Nahua speech community, linguistic evidence has recently been important in debates over later stages of the spread and diversification of Nahua-speaking peoples. The current debate over the timing of the Eastern Nahua expansion and the emergence of Nahua speakers as the major players in the Mesoamerican world Europeans encountered at the time of first contact centers on the form-meaning pair %kakawa.4 Campbell and Kaufman (1976) included this item in a list of loans from Proto-Mixe-Zoquean (PMZ) into Proto-Nahua and other Mesoamerican languages. Wichmann (1995) reconstructed the form to PMZ but noted a number of irregular developments, commenting that “all these irregularities point to the possibility that a complicated flow of borrowings between MZ languages, which may or may not have involved MZ sources, took place” (Wichmann 1995, 344). Dakin and Wichmann (2000) concluded that these irregularities ultimately forced a conclusion that the word could not be reconstructed for PMZ but that it had been loaned into Mixean and Zoquean independently, perhaps more than once, from another language. They argued that this source language was Proto-Eastern Nahua and reconstructed a deep etymology for %kakawa in this language. However, Kaufman and Justeson (2007) insisted that the word has a valid PMZ reconstruction and that Wichmann’s concerns have been resolved with new data on Mixe-Zoquean languages (Wichmann [2010] agreed that one of his concerns, about a possibly aberrant development of stress in Zoquean, has been successfully resolved). The form-meaning pair %kakawa is useful for linguistic paleontological methods because it can be calibrated with calendrical inscriptions. The word appears on a chocolate pot in Teotihuacan style recovered from Grave 10 at Tikal, the burial of a Maya official (who may have been the

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son of a Teotihuacan lord) who died in 420 CE (Dakin and Wichmann 2000). Given Tikal Grave 10’s possible connection to Teotihuacan, Dakin and Wichmann argue that this attestation is evidence that Teotihuacan elites included Nahua speakers. This epigraphic attestation is not unique. Other Classic period Maya inscriptions may include Nahua lexical material (Macri and Looper 2003; Macri 2005). The word appears on a chocolate pot from Grave 19 at Río Azul dated to 480 CE. Macri (2005) argues that the entire text on this vessel is in a variety of Nahua. If Macri’s analysis is correct, then at least a few Nahua speakers had reached Guatemala by the end of the fifth century and were prominent enough that their language appeared on objects associated with elite practices. Kaufman and Justeson (2007), modifying the earlier preference of Kaufman (2001) for entry in the Basin of Mexico by no earlier than 500 CE, agree that it is possible that Nahua speakers arrived “in the Basin of Mexico by circa 200 CE to have direct contact with Mije-Sokean elites in and around Teotihuacan” (Kaufman and Justeson 2007, 199). They argue, though, that Nahua speakers would not have constituted “an important presence in this new dwelling place.” However, if the word %kakawa comes from Proto-Eastern Nahua, speakers of that language must have enjoyed status and influence sufficient to impose their own label for an important trade item centuries earlier than the Epiclassic period dates that have been preferred for the Eastern Nahua expansion. The debate about %kakawa involves the direction of the loan: from Mixe-Zoquean into Nahua or the opposite. In evaluating an argument for directionality, a first consideration is etymology—the demonstration that a word can be traced to earlier stages of a language. If an item has an etymology in language A but not in language B, this supports a loan direction A → B. In the case of %kakawa, leading scholars have proposed both MixeZoquean and Uto-Aztecan etymologies. The problem is which proposal to choose. The Mixe-Zoquean etymology traces the diverse forms in the MixeZoquean languages to PMZ **kakawa. The Uto-Aztecan etymology proposed that the source of the word is Proto-Eastern Nawa *ka-kawa (with the reduplication or copy of the first syllable occurring in Proto-Eastern Nahua), reflecting PUA **kaN-paN.5 Evaluation of these competing proposals turns on understandings of fine-grained details of language change. Problems for the Mixe-Zoquean etymology that remain following the exchange between Kaufman and Justeson (2007) and Wichmann (2010) include, first, the probable irregularity of the loss of the final /a/ in Mixean

How Mesoamerican Are the Nahua Languages? · 53

*kakaw (Wichmann 1995, 2010), and second, that an underived stem consisting of three open syllables (that is, syllables of the form CV(:)) would be nearly unique in PMZ, with only one other attested example (Wichmann 2010, 438). Against the proposed Uto-Aztecan etymology, Kaufman and Justeson (2007) do not accept a reconstruction PUA *kaN-paN but do admit a “Sonoran” *kapa. But, they insist, this item could not become *kawa in Proto-Eastern Nahua, since we expect an intervocalic /p/ to appear as /h/ or to be lost entirely, leaving a long vowel. Dakin (2010c) replied with materials showing that when /wa/ from PUA **pa with a short vowel is final in the Nahua stem, not followed by any derivational suffixes, /wa/ is retained and the /w/ does not weaken or disappear. Another point that should be made is that the reconstruction to PUA is probably valid, since the Cupan languages of southern California have *kavám- (pot), meaning that the form must be PUA in origin rather than simply Sonoran, since it occurs in both Northern and Southern Uto-Aztecan languages (Hill 2012). Since linguistic reconstruction is at least partly an art, evaluation of these etymologies will no doubt continue and new proposals will be made, but my own view is that the proposal for an Eastern Nahua source has survived the initial round of critique. While it is unlikely that we have heard the last word on the details of the sound laws invoked in the competing reconstructions to PMZ and PUA for %kakawa, a second criterion can be applied. This is morphological transparency. If a relatively long word like %kakawa can be analyzed as made up of separate morphemes, each with its own etymology, in language A but not in language B, this favors the reconstruction in language A and the loan direction A → B. In this case, the weight is on the Uto-Aztecan side. No morphological breakdown has been proposed for Mixe-Zoquean **kakawa. However, Dakin and Wichmann (2000) argue that Nahua kakawa-tl reflects Uto-Aztecan elements for “hard” (**kaN) and “round container” (**paN) (which together mean “egg”), along with reduplication of a descendant Nahua syllable *ka-. This type of reduplication is a process that is well known in Nahua languages and forms diminutives and pejoratives. Based on this analysis, they gloss kakawa-tl as “little egg-like thing,” referring to the cacao bean. A word is more likely to be a loan into a language if it is isolated in its domain in the target language. However, kakawa-tl is not so isolated, since it is not the only item in the Nahua “chocolate” domain with an Uto-Aztecan etymology. Dakin and Wichmann (2000) and Dakin (2010c) have argued for an Uto-Aztecan etymology for another Nahua word in the chocolate

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domain, chi(h)kol-li (beater, swizzle stick). Dakin and Wichmann (2000) proposed that chokol-a:-tl, literally “beater-water,” reflected an assimilation of the first vowel to the second that took place in the Central Nahua dialects. The base chi(h)kol- has a secure Uto-Aztecan etymology. It is perfectly cognate in all four consonants and both vowels with the word tsiqo7onO (stirring stick for cooking) in Western Mono, a Northern UtoAztecan language spoken in California (Bethel et al. 1993). The Western Mono and Nahua words both reflect PUA **tsi-kori (stir with a stick-like object). A word is more likely to be a loan if there are other loanwords circulating in the same domain. A possible case here for the cacao domain is that Proto-Nahua *pi:k- (to wrap tamales) was loaned into Mayan languages as a word for the bags for cacao. The Nahua root has an Uto-Aztecan etymology with cognates in Eudeve na-vikura (where na- is reflexive/reciprocal) “enredar uno con otro,” and Western Mono pigatusU (purse; the capital letter means that the vowel is voiceless), suggesting that Nahua *pi:k- is a reflex of a PUA word *pikV- (wrap). This reconstruction adds *pi:k to the list of Nahua verbs with initial /p/ that have Uto-Aztecan etymologies (Dakin 2008). Kaufman and Justeson (2007) mention Lowland Mayan pi:k (gunny sack for cacao). The word appears in Cholan languages as pik; the long vowel is attested only for Yucatec pi:k (skirt) in Kaufman and Justeson (2003, 1105). In Epigraphic Mayan, the word meant “8,000,” based on the use of an image of a bag of cacao as a representation of this large number, and the word in this sense was loaned into Yucatec and Tzeltal. The word also means “skirt” in Epigraphic Maya and Yucatec and has been loaned in this sense into Mopan from Cholan with the short vowel (Kaufman and Justeson 2003, 1105). The “skirt” meaning suggests that the word included a sense “to wrap.” In relation to this point, Kaufman and Justeson (2003, 1105) note that Tuzanteco Maya pe:q “hoja para enredar tamales” is possibly related to the set (Tuzanteco is a dialect of Mocho, a Q’anjobalan language spoken on the Pacific coast of Chiapas). Kaufman and Justeson (2007, 201) argue that the word comes from Central Mayan *pe:q (cacao; actually documented in this meaning only for Kakchiquel, where it refers to the cacao tree) (glossed as “pataxte” in Kaufman and Justeson 2003, 1105). The form pik results from a regular change of Proto-Mayan *q to /k/ in Yucatecan, Cholan and Chuj-Tojolabal and from a regular sound change in Cholan of Proto-Mayan *e: to Cholan /i/ (Campbell 1984). Thus there is a possible Mayan etymology. However,

How Mesoamerican Are the Nahua Languages? · 55

I believe that evidence such as the “skirt” sense in Epigraphic Maya suggests that a Nahua source for the Mayan word should be explored. If this hypothesis is supported, it would add another Nahua word associated with the cacao domain that was loaned into another Mesoamerican set of languages (in this case into the lowland Maya diffusion area) and would locate this loan as part of the vocabulary of Epigraphic Mayan, dating it before the Epiclassic. Central Mayan has *pix “to wrap, tie up” (Kaufman and Justeson 2003, 999). However, /ix/ is very stable in Mayan languages and a change to /ik/ would not be regular development, so it is unlikely that Mayan pik is related to this word, despite the phonological and semantic similarity. Another criterion for evaluation is that in cases where one language has borrowed a number of words from another, we expect similar patterns across the entire suite of loans in how they reflect the source. This criterion is helpful to Kaufman and Justeson’s (2007) position. They point out that the Nahua “absolutive” suffix *-tla nearly always appears in a large suite of known loans from Nahua languages into other Mesoamerican languages. This suffix does not appear for %kakawa, where Nahua had kakawa-tl with—tl from *-tla. Thus the word in languages such as Mayan is unlikely to be a loan from Nahua. The Mixe-Zoquean etymon does not have any suffixes, so it does not have to pass this test. However, Wichmann (2010) argues that the most ancient loans from Nahua may not exhibit this pattern and mentions that ko-sa-ka perhaps reflects a word that appeared much later in Classical Nahuatl as ko:ska-tl (jewel, ornament, necklace) on Tikal Stela 31. He also mentions e-je-ke, perhaps reflected in Classical Nahuatl e’e:ka-tl (wind) on Seibal Stela 13.6 Both of these Nahua words have excellent Uto-Aztecan etymologies that trace to PUA. Evaluating Other Proposed Loans into Proto-Nahua Kaufman and Justeson (2007) argue that Dakin and Wichmann have considered the question about “cacao” and “chocolate” in isolation from the larger context of patterns of loan vocabulary in Mesoamerica. Among many other contributions to our understanding of these contexts, which are too numerous for detailed consideration here, they provide a list of items that they claim were borrowed into Nahua from Mixe-Zoquean, Huastecan, and Totonacan (Kaufman and Justeson 2007, 197). However, there are problems with this list. First, it is very diverse and does not reflect any particular pattern of cultural contact (as I remarked above, it does contain several items, some disputable, that seem to me to be “nursery words”). This is in contrast to the rather clear pattern of “Olmec” cultural content

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in the list of proposed Mixe-Zoquean loans into other Mesoamerican languages that Campbell and Kaufman (1976) originally proposed. This lack of clear cultural patterning for loans into Nahua specifically may simply reflect a general low frequency of loanwords, but it is still noticeable. Kaufman and Justeson (2007) provide a detailed analysis and assessment of only a few of the items in their list of probable loans into Proto-Nahua as an illustration of method. In fact, many of these items are clearly questionable as to directionality of loan (as Dakin 2001, 2003, 2005, 2008 has already suggested). As an example, we can return to the word for “domestic turkey” in item d on list 3 above. To:tol- (domestic turkey) appears in Kaufman and Justeson’s (2007, 197) list of loans into Proto-Nahua as a probable loan from PMZ (or some early descendant) *tu(7)nuk. Wichmann (1998, 308) reconstructs the word only to Proto-Zoquean. Dakin and Wichmann (2000) suggest that the more likely case is that Nahua tol- was loaned into Mixe-Zoquean, since Nahua has contrastive /1/ and /n/ and PMZ, which largely lacks the phoneme /l/, would have borrowed this as its much more common /n/. Kaufman and Justeson counter that Mixe-Zoquean /n/ can sometimes be heard as /l/ and appears as /l/ in some other borrowing languages (2007, 196). In my own view, an argument based on these phonetic issues cannot be decisive because in my work on loans from Spanish into indigenous languages of California and the Southwest, I have observed that the realization of Spanish /n/ as /l/ or /n/ in borrowed words is nearly random. For instance, Hopi has mansáana, mansáala, and malsáana as variants from Spanish manzana (apple) (Kenneth C. Hill, personal communication). Instead, a more important consideration is that Proto-Nahua definitely had *to:to:- (bird [in general]) (Campbell and Langacker 1978b, 263), appearing as to:to:-tl in Classical Nahuatl. The Classical Nahuatl word for domestic turkey, to:tolin, must be derived from *to:to:, with a well-known increment -l—in that seems to mean something like “varmint.” This is also seen in ase:lin (nit), okwilin (worm), chapolin (grasshopper), sa:yo:lin (fly), temo:lin (black beetle), tla:lpipiyo:lin (a kind of black bee), chamolin (scarlet parrot), kwezalin (scarlet macaw), witzitzilin (hummingbird), and so:lin (quail).7 Thus, the word for “domestic turkey” looks like a Nahua coinage from their word for “bird” and its phoneme /l/ is probably simply a suffix, making it less likely that it reflects Mixe-Zoquean /n/. Furthermore, /to/ is the initial syllable of the word for “turkey” in several Southern Uto-Aztecan languages, for example, ProtoTepiman *tova (turkey) (Stubbs 2011, 380) (following Stubbs [2011, 82], I

How Mesoamerican Are the Nahua Languages? · 57

would judge Warihío to7tori, Tarahumara tori [chicken], and similar forms in Tepiman languages to be colonial-period loans from Central Nahua [probably Tlaxcalan] rather than cognates). An additional consideration is that Rensch (1976, 213) reconstructs **Yhnu(n)3 ~ **htuhn3~ **Ytu ~ **tu’ ~ **htu3 for various subgroups of Otomanguean. Rensch provides no semantic reconstruction, but the word means “turkey” in several daughter Otomanguean languages. Kaufman (1990, 101) reconstructs *tu (turkey hen; similar to Rensch’s Zapotecan variant **Ytu ~ **tu’) for Chinantecan, Tlapaneco, and Zapotecan and notes that this distribution is “areal.” This word looks much more like Mixe-Zoquean (or Zoquean) *tu(7)nuk than the Nahua form does and raises the question of whether the Mixe-Zoquean word may have an Otomanguean origin. Note that Proto-Otomanguean is far too old to have had a word for “domestic turkey.” At least in this meaning it must be a late addition to the lexicon that must have spread internally in Otomanguean or come in several times from some outside source. Campbell and Kaufman (1976) and later works including Kaufman and Justeson (2007) have, in my view, neglected Otomanguean as a possible source for loanwords and substratum effects. There are many candidates besides “turkey” where such a source should be investigated. For instance, Suárez (1985) has suggested that PMZ *way (to grind corn) is not the source of a large number of similar words in the maize domain in diverse languages but that instead the PMZ word (and the others) originated in an early stage of Otomanguean. I am sure I am not the first to suggest that the extreme weakening and eventual disappearance of PUA *p in word-initial position in Proto-Corachol and Proto-Nahua may have been stimulated by the consonantal preferences of neighboring Otomanguean speakers, among whom /p/ was “rare to non-existent” (Kaufman 1990, 98). Given the difficulties outlined above, I think it most likely that the Nahua word for “domestic turkey” is an independent development, probably on a base *to:to-, which was some kind of Southern Uto-Aztecan bird label, and that the resemblance to the Mixe-Zoquean word is merely coincidental. In summary, many questions remain about the history of words for “turkey” in Mesoamerica. However, tracing the Nahua word to its source does not really matter for the question of dating. It seems clear that a form-meaning pair with the meaning “domestic turkey” appeared in Proto-Nahua. Some items in the Kaufman and Justeson list raise another issue: whether resemblant forms are loans or independent inventions. In fact, this is an issue with the words for “turkey,” since bird names are known

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to be sound-symbolic. It is quite likely that several of the Mesoamerican words for this animal involving syllables like /tu/, /tsu/, and /to/ are of onomatopoeic origin. Another good example of the problem involves Nahua tsi:ka-tl (a large biting ant). Kaufman and Justeson (2007, 197) suggest that this word is a loan from PMZ *(jaj)tzuku(7). Wichmann (1995) does not reconstruct this word to PMZ, identifying it only in Mixean languages. If this item is a loan into Proto-Nahua, it would contribute to my hypothesis that these loans include a cluster of nursery words. However, it is important to recall that ants are sacred for many Mesoamerican groups because of their movement to and from the underworld, so it could be a loan in the ritual domain. Another example of this type is Nahuatl so:lin (quail), Totonac so:lim, Epigraphic Yucatecan (Justeson et al. 1985, 25). This bird was a preferred sacrifice in a number of rituals (Sharp 2014), so the word probably diffused as part of a complex of loans in that domain. In order for Nahua tsi:— to have come from Mixe-Zoquean tzu-, the word would have had to have been borrowed into Nahua at an early stage, before the change of PUA **u to Proto-Nahua *ï (and then later to *i). This is also the case for *pï:ška (to harvest) (item n on list 3 above) if it is from a reflex of Totonacan *pu’š, as Kaufman and Justeson (2007, 197) suggest (they reconstruct this form only to Tepehuan, but a Proto-Totonacan reconstruction [T95] appears in Brown et al. 2011, 350). This would be a problem for Kaufman’s (2001) idea that contact with Totonacan is relatively late. Another point is that very similar words for “ant” (list 4 above) appear in other Southern Uto-Aztecan languages. While the words are similar, they are not obviously cognate, although Dakin (1996, 2003) proposes an UtoAztecan etymology for this suite of items. 4) Opata sikku-tsi, Eudeve siku-ts, Guarijío sekúi, Tarahumara sikúl, Mayo ere7e-suúkim, Tubar sík Insect labels are notoriously sound-symbolic. Note that the PMZ word for “cicada,” *sikitiw, which Kaufman and Justeson (2007, 210) cite as an example of a tri-syllabic PMZ stem, is very similar to the ant words. The Takic languages, an Uto-Aztecan group of southern California, have *sisko(stinkbug, Pinacate beetle), reflecting a reduplication /si-siko/. I suspect that the idea that insects, including biting ants, say “sik,” “tsik,” or “tsuk” is widespread in the world’s languages and that insect words repeatedly contain this kind of sound-symbolic sequence. Thus, alongside the hypothesis that the Nahua word is a loan from PMZ and the proposal that it has

How Mesoamerican Are the Nahua Languages? · 59

an Uto-Aztecan etymology, we must entertain the possibility that all these items are independent inventions. At least one item in Kaufman and Justeson’s (2007, 197) list of loans, Nahua toka-tl (spider), almost certainly has at least a Southern Uto-Aztecan etymology, rather than being, as they suggest, a loan from Totonacan tukáy. The items Stubbs (2011, 342) recorded from Uto-Aztecan languages in addition to Nahua appear below. Kitanemuk is a Takic language of southern California. It seems to me much more likely that Nahua toka-tl belongs to this cognate set than that it is a loan from the Totonacan resemblant. 5) Kitanemuk tokoko (tarantula), Tohono O’odham tokidhuD, Eudeve tóka, Tarahumara ro’ká, Tubar tok-wá-t (spider) Another item where an Uto-Aztecan etymology seems preferable is Nahua a:-kal-li (boat, canoe), which Kaufman and Justeson (2007, 197) suggests reflects PMZ **7a (canoe) (/7/ is their symbol for the glottal stop). Contrary to this hypothesis, it has been traditionally assumed that the a: in the Nahua word is simply “water” (the root for a:-tl from PUA *pa-) and that kal-li is the usual word for “house.” This assumption is surely strengthened by the facts that the word for “boat” in Hopi, a Northern Uto-Aztecan language, is pa:-ki (water-house) and that the widespread Uto-Aztecan word for “house” is **ki. Questions along the same lines could be raised for many other items in Kaufman and Justeson’s list of possible loans. In many publications Kaufman and Justeson have demonstrated the utility of studying loanwords in the reconstruction of Mesoamerican prehistory. However, it should be clear that mere resemblance is not an adequate criterion for assigning a word to a class of borrowed vocabulary and that the evaluation of arguments and counterarguments for particular claims is a complex effort. Conclusions

Many lines of evidence converge to suggest that the Nahua languages underwent their entire evolution within the boundaries of Mesoamerica and that they are thoroughly Mesoamerican in nearly every detail. The question that is currently dividing the Mesoamericanist linguistic world is how early Nahua speakers became mainstream players in Mesoamerican regional systems. Loanword evidence is crucial in research on this question—and also crucial, as Kaufman (2001) has suggested, in locating the Proto-Nahua homeland and in dating the various stages of the history of diversification

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of the languages. However, loanword evidence requires very careful evaluation, item by item, of the type that has now been brought to bear on “cacao” and “chocolate” in the literature cited here. This debate is a model for what is needed and has already resulted in bringing into the published scholarly literature large amounts of data that were previously unavailable except among a few small groups of close collaborators. I suspect that the results of new research modeled on the work on %kakawa will eventually show us a very complex and layered history of linguistic exchange with loans going in many different directions and with many cases of indirect borrowings where the original source is lost, all complicated by simultaneous processes of substratal interference and linguistic convergence in sound systems. It is unclear what the results of research will ultimately be for the Mixe-Zoquean hypothesis, the association of MixeZoquean with the spread of “Olmec” features through Mesoamerica in the Formative period. I suspect that much of the hypothesis will stand, but within a larger picture that is more complex and admits of more participants at all stages. The role of Otomanguean groups requires more attention. The presentation of an important case for linking Mixe-Zoquean to Totonacan as two descendants of Totozoquean (Brown et al. 2011), will, as Wichmann (2010) suggests, require the reevaluation of lexical items claimed as loans between these two language groups. It will be exciting to see what this new line of research will yield. For the topic of this volume, which examines the massive reassortment of ethnic identities and territories that took place in the Epiclassic and Postclassic periods, the main implications of the debate involve how to understand the spread of Nahua speakers and their languages. The Epiclassic emergence of Nahua-speaking groups as obviously important players in the Mesoamerican system may have been preceded by other expansions of these languages that took place in more stages and began earlier than has been hitherto suspected. There are questions here not only for archaeologists but also for linguists. If there are multiple layers of spread, many Nahua varieties should probably be understood as koinés, mixed varieties in which features that have developed locally are continually overlaid with features from newly arriving groups. The “Classical” language has been understood this way by linguists for a number of years, but other varieties may be just as mixed. Such an understanding should guide new research into the forbidding palimpsest of Nahua linguistic history.

How Mesoamerican Are the Nahua Languages? · 61

Acknowledgments

I thank Karen Dakin and Søren Wichmann for providing unpublished manuscripts and copies of hard-to-obtain published materials and an anonymous referee for a crucial recent reference on turkey domestication. Notes 1. I use “Southern Uto-Aztecan” as a term of convenience; historical linguistic questions about the validity of this subgroup are reviewed thoroughly in Merrill (2013). 2. Note that the distinction between “Nahuatl” and “Nahuat” often mentioned in the nonlinguistic literature (e.g., Stark and Chance 2008, 2) is not considered by linguists to be a historically significant dialect difference. The sound change *t >tl occurred in ProtoNahua. The change /tl/ >/t/ occurred independently in several daughter varieties and does not define any clade. 3. Note that while I have suggested that PUA itself was a Mesoamerican language, with communities located on the northwest frontier at a date around 2000–2500 BCE (Hill 2001, 2012), this possibility has no bearing on the history of the Nahua 2,000 years later. Two thousand years is a long time. 4. I use the % sign, rather than the *, to indicate neutrality on the provenance of the word and reserve * to indicate claims for a reconstruction to a proto-language. 5. The symbol “N” means that we believe that there was a final nasal in the syllable in Proto-Uto-Aztecan, but we do not know whether it was /n/ or /m/. 6. Tikal Stela 31 was erected in 445 CE (Stuart 2011). The later Seibal Stela 13 cannot be dated exactly, but it is from the ninth century CE (Just 2007). 7. These words are from the sections “insectes” and “oiseaux” in the Dictionnaire de la langue nahuatl classique, an electronic document at http://sites.estvideo.net/malinal/ nahuatl.page.html.

References Andrews, J. Richard. 1975. Introduction to Classical Nahuatl. Austin: University of Texas Press. Baddeley, Oriana. 1983. “The relationship of ancient Mesoamerican writing systems to the visual arts.” In Text and image in Precolumbian art, edited by Janet C. Berlo, 55–77. International Series 180. Oxford: British Archaeological Reports. Beekman, Christopher. 2010. “Comment on Kaufman and Justeson, The history of the word for cacao in ancient Mesoamerica.” Ancient Mesoamerica 21: 415–418. Beekman, Christopher, and Alexander F. Christensen. 2003. “Controlling for doubt and uncertainty through multiple lines of evidence: A new look at the Mesoamerican Nahua migrations.” Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory 10: 111–164. ———. 2011. “Power, agency, and identity: Migration and aftermath in the Mezquital area of North-Central Mexico.” In Rethinking Anthropological Perspectives on Migration, ed-

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ited by Graciela Cabana and Jeffery Clark, 147–174. Gainesville: University of Florida Press. Berlo, Janet Catherine. 1989. “Early writing in Central Mexico: In tlilli, in tlapalli before AD 1000.” In Mesoamerica after the Decline of Teotihuacan, AD 700–900, edited by Richard A. Diehl and Catherine Berlo, 19–48. Washington, D.C.: Dumbarton Oaks. Bethel, Rosalie, Paul V. Kroskrity, Christopher Loether, and Gregory A. Reinhardt. 1993. “A dictionary of Western Mono.” Unpublished manuscript. Boas, Franz. 1917. “El dialecto mexicano de Pochutla, Oaxaca.” International Journal of American Linguistics 1: 9–44. Brown, Cecil H., David Beck, Grzegorz Kondrak, James K. Watters, and Søren Wichmann. 2011. “Totozoquean.” International Journal of American Linguistics 77: 323–372. Campbell, Lyle. 1984. “The implications of Mayan historical linguistics for glyphic research.” In Phoneticism in Maya hieroglyphic writing, edited by John Justeson and Lyle Campbell, 1–16. Institute for Mesoamerican Studies Publication 9. Albany: State University of New York, Albany. ———. 1985. The Pipil language of El Salvador. Berlin: Mouton. Campbell, Lyle, and Terrence Kaufman. 1976. “A linguistic look at the Olmec.” American Antiquity 41: 80–89. Campbell, Lyle, Terrence Kaufman, and Thomas C. Smith-Stark. 1986. “Mesoamerica as a linguistic area.” Language 62: 530–570. Campbell, Lyle, and Ronald W. Langacker. 1978. “Proto-Aztecan vowels, III.” International Journal of American Linguistics 44: 262–279. Canger, Una. 1988. “Nahuatl dialectology: A survey and some suggestions.” International Journal of American Linguistics 54: 28–72. Casad, Eugene. 1984. “Cora.” In Studies in Uto-Aztecan grammar. Vol. 4, Southern UtoAztecan grammatical sketches, edited by Ronald W. Langacker, 151–459. Dallas: Summer Institute of Linguistics, University of Texas at Arlington. Chang, Will, Chundra Cathcart, David Hall, and Andrew Garrett. 2015. “Ancestry-constrained phylogenetic analysis supports the Indo-European steppe hypothesis.” Language 91: 194–244. Comrie, Bernard. 1983. “Switch-reference in Huichol: A typological study.” In Switchreference and universal grammar, edited by John Haiman and Pamela Munro, 17–38. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Cowgill, George L. 1992. “Teotihuacan glyphs and imagery in the light of some early colonial texts.” In Art, Ideology, and the City of Teotihuacan, edited by Janet Catherine Berlo, 231–246. Washington, D.C.: Dumbarton Oaks. ———. 2013. “Possible migrations and shifting identities in the Central Mexican Epiclassic.” Ancient Mesoamerica 24: 131–149. Dakin, Karen. 1996. “‘Huesos’ en el Náhuatl: etimologías yutoaztecas.” Estudios de Cultura Náhuatl 26: 309–326. ———. 2001. “Animals and vegetables: Uto-Aztecan noun derivation, semantic classification and culture history.” In Historical linguistics 1999: Selected Papers from the 14th International Congress of Historical Linguistics, edited by Laurel J. Brinton, 105–117. Philadelphia: John Benjamins. ———. 2003. “Uto-Aztecan in the linguistic stratigraphy of Mesoamerican prehistory.” In

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Language contacts in prehistory: Studies in stratigraphy, edited by Henning Andersen, 259–288. Philadelphia: John Benjamins. ———. 2005. “Xolotl.” In La metáfora én Mesoamerica, edited by Mercedes Montes de Oca, 193–223. Estudios sobre lenguas Americanas No. 3. México, DF: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Instituto de Investigaciones Filológicas, Seminario de Lenguas Indígenas. ———. 2008. “Reflexes of initial pUA *p in Nahuatl: Complicated or straightforward?” Paper presented to the annual meeting of the Friends of Uto-Aztecan, Tucson. ———. 2010a. Lenguas francas y lenguas locales en la epoca prehispanica. In Historia Sociolingüística de México. Vol. 1, México Prehispánico y Colonial, edited by Rebeca Barriga Villanueva and Pedro Martín Butragueño, 161–184. Mexico DF: El Colegio de México. ———. 2010b. “Linguistic evidence for historical contact between Nahuas and northern Lowland Mayan speakers.” In Astronomers, scribes, and priests: Intellectual interchange between the northern Maya lowlands and highland Mexico in the Late Postclassic period, edited by Gabriel Vail and Christine Hernández, 217–240. Washington, D.C.: Dumbarton Oaks. ———. 2010c. “Comment on Kaufman and Justeson, The history of the word for cacao in ancient Mesoamerica.” Ancient Mesoamerica 21: 420–424. Dakin, Karen, and Una Canger. 1985. “An inconspicuous basic split in Nahuatl.” International Journal of American Linguistics 51: 358–361. Dakin, Karen, and Søren Wichmann. 2000. “Cacao and chocolate: A Uto-Aztecan perspective.” Ancient Mesoamerica 11: 55–75. Davletshin, Albert. n.d. “La lengua de los así llamados teotihuacanos e interpretaciones protonahuas para sus glosas en las inscripciones jeroglíficas mayas.” Unpublished manuscript. Fowler, Catherine S. 1983. “Lexical clues to Uto-Aztecan prehistory.” International Journal of American Linguistics 49: 224–257. Fowler, William R., Jr. 1989. The cultural evolution of ancient Nahua civilizations: The PipilNicarao of Central America. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press. Hale, Kenneth L. 1959. “Internal diversity of Uto-Aztecan I.” International Journal of American Linguistics 24: 101–107. Hill, Jane H. 2001. “Proto-Uto-Aztecan: A community of cultivators in Central Mexico?” American Anthropologist 193: 913–934. ———. 2012. “Proto-Uto-Aztecan as a Mesoamerican language.” Ancient Mesoamerica 23: 57–68. Holman, Eric W., Cecil H. Brown, Søren Wichmann, André Müller, Viveka Villapullai, Harald Hammarström, Sebastian Sauppe, Hagen Jung, Dik Bakker, Pamela Brown, Oleg Belyaev, Matthias Urban, Robert Mailhammer, Johann Mattis-Liss, and Dmitry Egorov. 2011. “Automated dating of the world’s language families based on lexical similarity.” Current Anthropology 52: 841–875. Jacobsen, William H., Jr. 1983. “Typological and genetic notes on switch-reference systems in North American Indian languages.” In Switch-reference and universal grammar, edited by John Haiman and Pamela Munro, 151–184. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Just, Bryan R. 2007. “Ninth-century stelas of Machaquila and Seibal.” Unpublished paper. www.famsi.org/reports/01050/01050Just01.pdf.

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Justeson, John S., William M. Norman, Lyle Campbell, and Terrence Kaufman. 1985. The foreign impact on Lowland Mayan language and script. Middle American Research Institute Publication 53. New Orleans: Tulane University. Kaufman, Terrence. 1976. “Archaeological and linguistic correlations in Mayaland and associated areas of Mesoamerica.” World Archaeology 8: 101–118. ———. 1990. “Early Otomanguean homelands and cultures: Some premature hypotheses.” University of Pittsburgh Working Papers in Linguistics 1: 91–136. ———. 2001. “The history of the Nawa language group from earliest times to the sixteenth century: Some initial results.” Unpublished paper. http://www.albany.edu/anthro/ maldp/Nawa.pdf. Kaufman, Terrence, and John Justeson. 2003. “A preliminary Mayan etymological dictionary.” Unpublished paper. http://www.famsi.org/reports/01051/pmed.pdf. ———. 2007. “The history of the word for cacao in ancient Mesoamerica.” Ancient Mesoamerica 18: 193–237. Macri, Martha. 2005. “Nahua loan words from the Early Classic period: Words for cacao preparation on a Río Azul ceramic vessel.” Ancient Mesoamerica 16: 321–326. Macri, Martha, and Mathew G. Looper. 2003. “Nahua in ancient Mesoamerica: Evidence from Maya inscriptions.” Ancient Mesoamerica 14: 285–297. Merrill, William L. 2013. “The genetic unity of Southern Uto-Aztecan.” Language Dynamics and Change 3: 68–104. Rensch, Calvin R. 1976. Comparative Otomanguean Phonology. Language Science Monographs, vol. 14. Bloomington: Indiana University. Sharp, Ashley E. 2014. “A reexamination of the birds in the Central Mexican codices.” Ancient Mesoamerica 25: 317–336. Speller, Camilla F., Brian M. Kemp, Scott D. Wyatt, Cara Monroe, William D. Lipe, Ursula M. Arndt, and Dongya Y. Yang. 2010. “Ancient mitochondrial DNA analysis reveals complexity of indigenous North American turkey domestication.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 107: 2807–2812. Stark, Barbara L., and John K. Chance. 2008. “Diachronic and multidisciplinary perspectives on Mesoamerican ethnicity.” In Ethnic identity in Nahua Mesoamerica: The view from archaeology, art history, ethnohistory, and contemporary ethnography, edited by Frances F. Berdan, John K. Chance, Alan R. Sandstrom, Barbara L. Stark, James M. Taggart, and Emily Umberger, 1–37. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press. Stuart, David. 2011. “Some working notes on the text of Tikal Stela 31.” Unpublished paper. http://www.mesoweb.com/stuart/notes/Tikal.pdf. Stubbs, Brian Darrel. 2011. Uto-Aztecan: A comparative vocabulary. Flower Mound, TX: Shumway Family History Services and Rocky Mountain Books and Productions. Suárez, Jorge A. 1985. “Loan etymologies in historical method.” International Journal of American Linguistics 51(4): 574–576. Taube, Karl. 2000. The writing system of ancient Teotihuacan. Ancient America I. Washington, D.C.: Center for Ancient American Studies. Thornton, Erin Kennedy, and Kitty F. Emery. 2017. “The uncertain origins of Mesoamerican turkey domestication.” Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory 24: 328–351. Whittaker, Gordon. 2012. “The names of Teotihuacan.” Mexicon 34(3): 55–58.

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Wichmann, Søren. 1995. The relationship among the Mixe-Zoquean languages of Mexico. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press. ———. 1998. “A conservative look at diffusion involving Mixe-Zoquean languages.” In Archaeology and language II: Correlating archaeological and linguistic hypotheses, edited by Roger Blench and Matthew Spriggs, 297–323. London: Routledge. ———. 2010. “Comment on Kaufman and Justeson, The history of the word for cacao in ancient Mesoamerica.” Ancient Mesoamerica 21: 437–441. ———. 2012. “The diachrony of numeral classifiers in Mesoamerica and beyond.” Unpublished paper in author’s possession.

3 Three Migration Case Studies from the Tula Region Dan M. Healan and Robert H. Cobean

References to migration in the ethnohistorical record have long been a topic of discussion among Mesoamerican scholars, recently provoking widespread skepticism in light of the frequency of these accounts and the repetition of specific themes and events involved. Many Mesoamerican archaeologists share this skepticism, reflecting a prevalent trend in archaeology in general (Anthony 1990) but perhaps particularly prevalent among Mesoamericanists, given the often naive interpretation of the archaeological record from a migrationist perspective in past literature. As with most reactionary causes, however, the anti-migrationist perspective has been overly extreme and has produced reaction in the form of a more reasoned reconsideration of migration as represented by the chapters in this volume. Our chapter is based on survey and excavation conducted over the past several decades in the Tula region of southern Hidalgo that revealed that the region has a long and complex history of pre-Hispanic settlement that includes at least three clear instances of migration. Each instance has a number of distinct characteristics but also shares numerous features. Each is thus a useful case study that sheds light on the migration process and its variability and provides important insights into and perspectives on the archaeological signatures of what has been called site-unit intrusion. Background

The Tula region is a partially enclosed system of alluvial plains, uplands, and hilly terrain located in southern Hidalgo immediately north of the Basin of Mexico (hereafter referred to as the basin) (figure 3.1). It is perhaps

Three Migration Case Studies from the Tula Region · 67

Figure 3.1. The Tula region and its location in Central Mexico, showing the location of Teotihuacan (A). Map by Robert Cobean.

best known as the location of the Early Postclassic city of Tula, where research conducted over the past several decades has revealed a settlement that at its height covered an area of about 18 square kilometers (L. Gamboa Cabezas, personal communication 2015). This settlement included densely configured residential structures and other urban architecture whose inherently nondurable nature left few obvious surface traces. Our main concern, however, is not with Tula itself but with the surrounding region, which was the focus of intensive, multistage settlement pattern survey beginning with preliminary “spot” survey (Mastache and Crespo 1974, 1982) in all directions from the ancient city to obtain “a

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Table 3.1. Chronological table for Tula, the Tula region, and Teotihuacan Period

Calendar Date (CE and BCE)

Teotihuacana

Tula

Protohistoric

1500

Late

1400

Postclassic

1300

Palacio

1200

Fuego

Early

1100

Late Tollan

Postclassic

1000

Early Tollan

900

Terminal Corral

800

Corral

Epiclassic

Tesoro

700

Coyotlatelco

600

Metepec

500 Classic

400

Late Xolalpan Early Xolalpan

300

Late Tlamimilolpa

200

Early Tlamimilolpa

100

Miccaotli Late Tzacualli

0

Early Tzacualli

Late

100

Patlachique

Formative

200

(Tezoyuca)

Prado La Mesa Chingú

Late Cuanalan a

Carballo (2011, Figure 2.2).

general panorama of the pre-Hispanic population in the area (Mastache et al. 2002, 10).” This was followed by full-coverage survey of an area of approximately 1,000 square kilometers, encompassing the partially enclosed alluvial plains and adjacent hilly calcareous zone east of Tula (figure 3.1). Preliminary survey revealed that the bulk of pre-Hispanic settlement in the region was concentrated (Mastache 1996; Mastache et al. 2002). Additional survey was concerned with modern and colonial land-use patterns in this area with a particular focus on irrigation systems (Mastache 1976, 1996; Mastache and Crespo 1974).

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Surface survey revealed a long and complex history of settlement in the region that spanned the Formative through Late Postclassic periods (table 3.1). Other than several unsystematic samples of Early–Middle Formative pottery recovered from construction sites in modern Tula de Allende (L. Gamboa Cabezas, personal communication 2008; Mastache and Crespo 1982, 13–17), the earliest well-defined evidence of settlement appears in the Late Formative Tepeji phase, although this does not appear to have been substantial (Healan 2012, 72).1 This changed significantly in the subsequent Classic period, when the first of the three migrations occurred. Case Study 1: Teotihuacan Colonization

During the Classic period, the Tula region experienced its first substantial occupation. Numerous sites appeared in the alluvial plain and adjacent hilly terrain in the eastern portion of the survey area (figure 3.2). These include fourteen nucleated sites, the largest of which, Chingú, covers an area of over 2.5 square kilometers. Associated ceramics are diagnostic Tlamimilolpa, Xolalpan, and Metepec phase ceramics of Classic period Teotihuacan, which for the Tula region were lumped into a single Chingú phase (table 3.1). The vast majority of Chingú phase sites were apparently settled during the Tlamimilolpa phase, suggesting a singular and coordinated settlement effort. The variability in size and complexity of Chingú phase sites suggests a possible four-tiered settlement hierarchy, at the top of which is Chingú, situated at the physical center of the settlement system (figure 3.2). The site contains approximately 475 visible mounds, some of which were rectangular in form and whose orientation approximates the 15°30’ east of north orientation of Teotihuacan (Díaz 1980, Fig. 3). These include two rectangular enclosures, the largest of which (“La Campana”) is comparable in form to Teotihuacan’s Ciudadela although it is smaller. This enclosure includes a prominent interior mound that is comparable to the Ciudadela’s Feathered Serpent Pyramid. Numerous surface fragments of rectangular tabular stone suggest the distinctive talud-tablero facade characteristic of Teotihuacan monumental architecture. This was confirmed by recent excavation of an elite residence near La Campana (Getino Granados 2011). Structures appear to have been arranged along north-south and east-west axes that intersect in front of La Campana, as do the north-south and eastwest avenues in front of the Ciudadela at Teotihuacan.2

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Figure 3.2. Classic period (Chingú phase) settlements. Map by Robert Cobean.

The second level of the Chingú phase settlement hierarchy includes three sites, each about 80 hectares in size, located in the northeast portion of the alluvial plain. The largest of these sites exhibits evidence of taludtablero architecture and a ciudadela-like enclosure. The third level includes ten smaller nucleated sites about 10–15 hectares in size, some of which contain monumental architecture. All but one are situated in the southern periphery of the survey area and include two sites with a strong Oaxacan affiliation, as described below. The fourth level encompasses approximately 200 dispersed surface material sites; that is, surface scatters that probably represent isolated homesteads and hamlets, temporary camps, and the like. There is little evidence for any significant Chingú phase occupation at the site of Tula itself, although all three level two sites are located immediately

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to the north. Some Tlamimilolpa phase ceramics were recovered from survey inside the ancient city (Mastache and Crespo 1982, 18, 20; Mastache et al. 2002, Fig. 4.4). There seems to be little doubt that Chingú phase settlement was under the control of Teotihuacan, located less than 70 kilometers away (A in figure 3.1). Considering the considerable volume of lime used in construction at Teotihuacan (Barba and Frunz 1999), exploitation of the extensive calcareous deposits south of Chingú could have been a major focus of the Chingú phase settlement in the region. In fact, recent analysis of lime plaster from a Teotihuacan apartment compound identified the calcareous deposits south of Chingú as its source (Barba et al. 2009). Likewise, the agriculturally productive alluvial plain may also have been an important resource, particularly since a number of Chingú phase sites, including Chingú itself, are situated along two irrigation canals that are at least as old as the colonial period (Mastache 1976; Mastache and Crespo 1974; Mastache et al. 2002, Fig. 4.2). It is therefore reasonable to assume that a major reason for the Chingú phase settlement was procurement of lime and agricultural resources, presumably for Teotihuacan. Numerous sites with Teotihuacan ceramics also occur in the Valle del Mezquital along Tula’s northeastern flank (López Aguilar 1994; López Aguilar et al. 1998, 30–32; Fournier García 2007, 93–96) and are likewise interpreted as outright colonization by Teotihuacan, possibly to obtain stone and forest products (Polgar 1998, 44–45). This region includes the Pachuca obsidian source area, which various authors have suggested was under Teotihuacan’s control. López Aguilar and colleagues (1998) suggest that these sites were an extension of the Chingú phase polity, a reasonable assumption given its proximity and intermediate position. These sites are confined to the southern portion of the Valle del Mezquital and thus may represent the limits of rainfall agriculture in the region, but other settlements to the north may have restricted further Teotihuacan expansion (López Aguilar et al. 1998, 29–31). These settlements are associated with ceramics of the Xajay tradition, characteristic of sites in the eastern Bajío (figure 3.1) that span the Classic and Epiclassic periods (Nalda 1975, 1991). Just as striking as the sheer number of Chingú phase sites in the Tula region is their appearance in an area with apparently little previous settlement.3 This is the process of colonization in its most literal sense, involving the orchestrated movement of large numbers of people into an area where, in this case, there were apparently relatively few people. We assume that Chingú phase settlers were from Teotihuacan itself and/or nearby regions

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under its control, such as the neighboring Zumpango or Temascalapa regions (Gorenflo and Sanders 2007; Parsons 2008). Case Study 2: The Oaxaca Connection

A number of Chingú phase sites are reported to contain Zapotec ceramics from Oaxaca and Teotihuacan ceramics, including Chingú where they constitute approximately 7 percent of decorated ceramics (Díaz 1981, 109). Some of the Teotihuacan-related sites in the Valle del Mezquital likewise contained small quantities of Zapotec ceramics (Lopez et al. 1998). Of particular interest are two level three Chingú phase sites, Acoculco and El Tesoro (figure 3.2), where as much as 50–60 percent of identifiable surface ceramics were identified as Zapotec (Cook de Leonard et al. 1956; Crespo Oviedo and Mastache 1981, 100). At least one Zapotec-style tomb has been identified and excavated at El Tesoro (Hernández Reyes 1994), a site estimated to cover approximately 3.1 square kilometers (Gamboa Cabezas 2011). Identifiable Zapotec ceramics are diagnostic Monte Alban II and IIIa from the Valley of Oaxaca, although at least some appear to have been locally made (Crespo Oviedo and Mastache 1981, 102). A Zapotec enclave is known for Teotihuacan itself, where survey and excavation at Tlailotlacan, often referred to as the “Oaxaca barrio,” encountered a group of apartment compounds associated with a predominately Zapotec ceramic assemblage, Zapotec calendrical inscriptions, and a Zapotec-style tomb. Zapotec ceramics and in some cases Zapotec-style tombs have also been encountered at several other sites in Central Mexico (Smith and Lind 2005; Spence 2005), which Spence characterized as a “Zapotec diaspora.” These authors suggest that this involved enclaves of “strategically placed” Zapotec merchants (Smith and Lind 2005, 175). We agree that evidence from Teotihuacan and other sites in Central Mexico showing significant quantities of Zapotec ceramics, tombs, or similar material evidence represents Zapotec enclaves, including merchants whose activity could account for low frequencies of Zapotec ceramics at other smaller in the Tula region. However, the predominance of Zapotecstyle ceramics at Acoculco and El Tesoro suggest that instead of enclaves embedded in Teotihuacano communities, these were communities populated principally by Zapotecs. In fact, other investigations at El Tesoro suggest an even more complex situation involving a fusion of Zapotec and Teotihuacan populations. This was first suggested by the Zapotec-style tomb mentioned above and

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another non-tomb burial at the site (Gamboa Cabezas 2011), both of which contained a mixture of Teotihuacan-style and Zapotec-style ceramics. In addition, recent systematic survey (Holt Mehta 2018) revealed virtually no spatial segregation of Teotihuacan-style and Zapotec-style ceramics on the site surface. Instead, Holt Mehta reports a mixed spatial distribution suggesting their co-occurrence in domestic contexts. This co-occurrence also extended into the functional realm, in that utilitarian wares, fine wares, and ceramic ritual objects included representatives from both ceramic traditions. Based on these largely unanticipated findings, Holt Mehta suggested that El Tesoro represents not a community populated largely by ethnic Zapotecs but rather “a multi-ethnic community of people with affiliations to both Teotihuacan and the Valley of Oaxaca” who “integrated Zapotec and Teotihuacan material culture and, by extension, cultural practices” (Holt Mehta 2018). In retrospect, we suggest that what Spence has termed the Zapotec Diaspora in Central Mexico probably encompasses several different processes, some of which did not necessarily involve actual migration. The latter would include sites with small numbers of Zapotec ceramics that most likely represent items locals acquired through trade. However, sites containing large quantities of ceramics and other, more complex manifestations of Zapotec material culture make a strong case for actual Zapotec enclaves, although relatively small numbers of nonlocal individuals may have been involved. The Oaxaca barrios at El Tesoro and Teotihuacan are notable exceptions; each site appears to have involved a rather large number of nonlocal individuals. Moreover, El Tesoro and perhaps Acoculco are the only sites to date whose inhabitants were predominately nonlocal. If Holt Mehta is correct in her characterization of El Tesoro as a community of peoples of mixed Teotihuacan-Zapotec ethnicity, then its population was entirely nonlocal. If the founding population was of this same mixed ethnicity, its most likely place of origin would have been Teotihuacan, presumably the Oaxaca barrio. We do not rule out the possibility that this distinctive population was the product of spontaneous mixing of a founding population containing both Teotihuacan and Zapotec components, although this seems less likely. Finally, what were these nonlocal peoples, multiethnic or otherwise, doing in southern Hidalgo? Even if Smith and Lind are correct in general terms, it seems unlikely that El Tesoro was a whole community of merchants and their families. William Sanders (personal communication 1976, cited in Crespo Oviedo and Mastache 1981, 103) suggests that at least some of these individuals were specialists in lime production, a craft that

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in Oaxaca goes back to the Early Formative period (Flannery and Marcus 1994). This might also explain the proximity of El Tesoro and Acoculco to both the calcareous deposits and the entrance to the Basin of Mexico. Perhaps wood for the fires needed for slaking lime was one of the major “forest products” whose exploitation was suggested to have been a major activity at Teotihuacan-related sites in the Valle del Mezquital. Case Study 3: The Coyotlatelco Intrusion

The transition from the Classic to the Epiclassic period in Central Mexico is marked by two events: the demise of Teotihuacan by the end of the Metepec phase and the appearance of a distinctive ceramic complex known as Coyotlatelco throughout much of Central Mexico.4 The end of Metepec phase Teotihuacan was initially dated to around 750 CE until at least two researchers (Rattray 1996; Cowgill 1996) proposed pushing this date back at least a century (table 3.1). While evidence of burning and other destruction suggests Teotihuacan met a sudden, rather violent end (Millon 1996), the city may already have been in a state of decline by the Xolalpan phase (Rattray 1996, 216; Manzanilla in López Aguilar et al. 2006). Recent evidence (Manzanilla 2003, 94; Rattray 1996, 208) suggests that at least some burning occurred at the end of the Xolalpan phase. Despite Teotihuacan’s demise, there was occupation there during the Epiclassic period, which, like many other Epiclassic sites in the basin, is associated with the appearance of Coyotlatelco ceramics, which Tozzer (1921) first identified in excavations near Atzcapotzalco in the western portion of the basin. Rattray (1966) provided the first definitive study of Coyotlatelco ceramics, and more recent comprehensive studies include Cobean (1990), Nichols and McCullough (1986), and Solar Valverde (2006) (see also chapter 4, this volume). Its most salient characteristics include red-painted geometric and other designs applied to the interior and/or exteriors of natural or cream-slipped hemispherical and flat-bottom bowls. The Epiclassic dating of Coyotlatelco was based initially on its occurrence in post-Metepec contexts at Teotihuacan (e.g., Armillas 1950, 56; Séjourné 1956, 18) and in stratigraphically early contexts at Tula (Acosta 1945, 53–56). Coyotlatelco ceramics appear to span the entire Epiclassic period, which, as noted above, is now thought to begin by at least 650 CE. More recently, twelve radiocarbon dates obtained from unmixed Coyotlatelcoassociated contexts in the southern basin (Parsons et al. 1996) yielded intercepts ranging from 610 to 840 CE, although most of these (7) date to

Three Migration Case Studies from the Tula Region · 75

Figure 3.3. Calibrated radiocarbon dates (2-sigma ranges) discussed in text. Asterisks mark intercepts. Solid bars represent 1-sigma ranges. Calibrations were performed using CALIB-6 software (Stuiver and Reimer 1993).

between 610 and 670 CE (figure 3.3). These dates indicate that the appearance of Coyotlatelco in the basin is consistent with the revised dating of the demise of Teotihuacan and that its appearance may in fact predate that demise. Epiclassic settlement in the Tula region is likewise associated with the demise of Teotihuacan and the appearance of Coyotlatelco ceramics, specifically the appearance of new sites associated with Coyotlatelco ceramics. The demise of Teotihuacan is seen in the abandonment of all Chingú phase nucleated settlements by the end of the Metepec phase (see below), although the relatively small number of Chingú phase sites with Xolalpan and Metepec ceramics indicates that site abandonment was already happening by the end of the Tlamimilolpa phase, as may also have been the case at Teotihuacan.5 The Teotihuacan-associated sites in the Valle del Mezquital were also abandoned during this time (Cervantes and Torres 1991; Fournier García 2007, 96; Polgar 1998, 45–48). Like the Classic period Chingú phase, Epiclassic period settlement in the Tula region included a number of nucleated settlements and several hundred dispersed material sites, all associated with Coyotlatelco ceramics. One of the most striking features of the Epiclassic settlement is its discontinuity with respect to the preceding Chingú phase: neither Chingú itself nor any of the level two or level three Chingú phase sites contained appreciable amounts of Coyotlatelco ceramics, while none of the nucleated sites that contain Coyotlatelco ceramics had any appreciable amounts of Chingú phase ceramics. This largely mutually exclusive relationship has two obvious implications: that most of the Chingú phase settlements were

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abandoned by the end of the Metepec phase if not earlier and that the Epiclassic settlement, like that of the Chingú phase, was wholly new. The Epiclassic settlement’s association with an equally new ceramic complex likewise suggests the arrival of new populations. Epiclassic period settlement includes ten nucleated sites of varying size, including the initial settlement of Tula (A in figure 3.4) that at its maximum covered an area estimated to be 4–6 square kilometers in size. This first settlement surrounded a large monumental center known as Tula Chico (Mastache et al. 2002, 72).6 Most of these ten sites exhibit plazas and/or monumental structures that differ in size and complexity. For reasons explained below, these sites do not appear to have been components of a single, integrated settlement system and instead exhibit a developmental trajectory wholly different from that of the Chingú phase, one involving possibly staggered rather than simultaneous initial settlement followed by growth and consolidation rather than population decline and progressive abandonment. Another notable difference, seen in figure 3.4, is that the Epiclassic nucleated settlements are all situated on hilltops or elevated terrain along the periphery of the alluvial plain and adjoining low areas, thus avoiding the very areas that the Chingú phase settlement occupied. This raises the tantalizing possibility that Chingú phase settlements were still occupied when these settlements first appeared, a possibility given additional support by other evidence described below. In addition to Tula Chico, which has been the focus of extensive investigation in recent decades, two other Epiclassic nucleated sites have had systematic exploration that included mapping and excavation. These include La Mesa proper (B in figure 3.4), which covered approximately 1 square kilometer of a high (160-meter) hilltop and had three distinct mound/plaza complexes plazas surrounded by residential terraces that contained both rectangular and circular stone structures. Both of these structure types contained numerous subfloor burials (Mastache and Cobean 1989, 1990). The other site is Cerro Magoni (C in figure 3.4), another large hilltop site that contained two monumental centers surrounded by terraces, one of which has recently been systematically explored by excavation (Anderson 2018). Of particular interest was the recovery of “relatively abundant” amounts of Xajay ceramics (Anderson 2018), a type virtually absent at other sites in the Tula region but characteristic of sites in the northeastern Bajío (figure 3.1) and along the northern periphery of the Teotihuacan settlement system in the Valle del Mezquital.

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Figure 3.4. Epiclassic Period (La Mesa, Prado, Corral phase) settlements showing the location of Tula (A), La Mesa (B), and Cerro Magoni (C). Map by Robert Cobean.

Based on systematic study of Coyotlatelco ceramics recovered from surface survey in general and from excavations at La Mesa and Tula Chico, Cobean and Mastache (1989) divided the Epiclassic period in the Tula region into four phases (table 3.1), of which the latest three (Prado, Corral, Terminal Corral) are confined to Epiclassic Tula and surrounding dispersed material sites under its control. The earliest (La Mesa) phase includes all ten nucleated settlements except perhaps Tula Chico (see note 8), based on Coyotlatelco ceramics whose painted motifs were collectively perceived as simpler in form and execution than those of the succeeding phases and were interpreted as developmentally and temporally earlier (Cobean et al. 1981, 193; Mastache and Cobean 1989, 56). An earlier dating for these sites

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is also suggested by their complementary spatial distribution vis-à-vis the Chingú phase settlement noted above, indicating possible temporal overlap that would place La Mesa phase’s beginnings in the Metepec phase or possibly earlier. Radiocarbon dates from La Mesa, Tula Chico, and Cerro Magoni (figure 3.3) show a remarkably similar range that, like those from the southern basin, span a roughly 200-year period that possibly began before the end of the sixth century CE and thus provide additional support to an early dating that overlaps with the Chingú phase occupation. The nearly identical pattern of distribution for all three sites and those from the southern basin would appear to refute Mastache and Cobean’s (1989) later dating for the settlement of Tula Chico and would instead assign it to the La Mesa phase. However, Tula Chico continued to be occupied after the other La Mesa phase sites were abandoned, becoming the center of a regional state (Anderson et al. 2016). Finally, additional support for an early La Mesa phase date comes from recent systematic analysis of excavated ceramics from the La Mesa site (Martínez Landa 2009). Five so-called transitional ceramic types were identified in this assemblage that exhibited characteristics of both Teotihuacan and Coyotlatelco ceramics. These five types, collectively accounting for approximately 6 percent of the collection, combine characteristic Teotihuacan vessel forms and an equally characteristically Teotihuacan surface finish commonly called “stick polish” and a variety of red-painted design motifs like those of Coyotlatelco ceramics. Similar vessels have been identified at other Epiclassic sites, particularly in the Bajío region (see chapter 4, this volume), which are commonly believed to represent a “fusion” or “syncretism” of the Teotihuacan and some other, “foreign” ceramic tradition (e.g., Gaxiola González 2006, 44; Sugiura 2006, 147), although the specifics of how such a fusion would take place is unclear. We agree with Martínez Landa that these ceramics represent extensive experimentation with old forms and new designs, perhaps a rejection of the codified forms and designs associated with the Teotihuacan state. This process seems less likely to represent the efforts of Teotihuacan potters or their descendants than potters of other traditions who were familiar with Teotihuacan ceramics. Thus, we suggest that these types are more appropriately described as a hybrid or fusion than as transitional.7 Mastache and Cobean (1990) note that Coyotlatelco ceramics from the La Mesa phase sites exhibit notable intrasite variability in form and decoration, including unique types that constitute a significant proportion of

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the ceramics at each site. Of particular interest in this regard are the Xajay ceramics at Magoni that are not present among surface or excavated ceramics from any of the other La Mesa phase sites. There are also notable differences in site orientation and layout, architectural characteristics, and lithic assemblages. With regard to the latter, Rees (1990) found notable intersite differences in lithic raw material indicative not only of differences in local resources but also, more importantly, the absence of intersite distribution. For example, Cerro Magoni contains high-quality rhyolite deposits and associated quarries and workshops, yet this material is virtually absent at the other La Mesa phase sites (Rees 1990). In light of the above evidence, we believe the La Mesa phase represents the arrival of new peoples in the Tula region sometime in the late sixth century when Metepec phase Teotihuacan and its Chingú phase manifestation were in decline. This appears to have involved a wholly different process of migration than what brought Teotihuacanos into the Tula region, however. Instead of representing an integrated, hierarchical settlement system introduced by a single, coordinated migration event, we believe that La Mesa phase settlement is a composite of multiple but independent migrations that did not necessarily involve related peoples. We suggest that the La Mesa phase nucleated settlements are a series of largely independent polities, each of which may have included dispersed material sites in the adjacent low areas as Chingú phase settlement declined. This is strikingly similar to the pattern of hilltop centers and surrounding settlements on the periphery of the Teotihuacan Valley during the Terminal Formative Tezoyuca phase (Sanders et al. 1979, 104–105). The interpretations above have received substantial support from recent oxygen isotope analysis of teeth and bone from ten burials at La Mesa that indicated that “most or all of the ten individuals . . . had moved to the area from elsewhere” (Spence et al. n.d., 4), involving possibly two different areas. Moreover, the fact that these burials came from different parts of the site’s occupation span indicates that “people moved into La Mesa throughout its existence.” By the end of the La Mesa phase most of the nucleated settlements were undergoing abandonment while Tula Chico not only continued but grew to become the center of a regional state through consolidation of the fractious La Mesa phase political landscape (Anderson et al. 2016). Prado, Corral, and Terminal Corral phase Coyotlatelco ceramics are quite similar to those of the Basin of Mexico, but the Prado phase assemblage also includes a new ceramic complex associated almost exclusively with Tula Chico that, like

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Xajay, appears to have originated in the eastern Bajío (see chapter 4, this volume).8 Thus, it appears that peoples continued to migrate into the Tula region after the La Mesa phase. Discussion

Some years ago, Willey and colleagues (1956) described two situations involving culture contact and their archaeological manifestations, one involving the presence of nonlocal objects as a result of trade or other forms of secondary diffusion and minimal population movement, termed traitunit intrusion, and the other involving movement of populations or migration in its strictest sense, termed site-unit intrusion. These terms appear to have enjoyed only limited use over the past sixty years, perhaps because the ability to distinguish the two in the archaeological record was not fully discussed. Even Rouse’s (1958) proposed criteria for identifying site-unit intrusions did not directly address specific archaeological signatures. Until recently, most situations in which migration or site-unit intrusion has been proposed were based chiefly on artifact and other cultural evidence. This is changing thanks to bone isotope analysis, DNA analysis, and other recent osteological analyses that can identify probable migrant individuals with a high degree of certainty. It seems unlikely, however, that future studies of migration will come to depend mostly on biological evidence, given that in most archaeological situations the overwhelming majority of remains are cultural. Thus, the identification of site-unit intrusions will continue to rely heavily on cultural evidence. The case studies presented in this chapter provide a valuable perspective on the process of migration and its archaeological signatures. All three exhibit the following characteristics: A cultural assemblage appears that exhibits discontinuity with the previous assemblage. The assemblage is too large and diverse to attribute to emulation or trait-unit intrusion. The assemblage exhibits a high degree of similarity to a material complex in another area that is known or believed to have originated there. Shared similarities are numerous and diverse and involve levels of complexity unlikely to occur represent independent invention. The assemblage is associated with new settlements.

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We do not suggest that these represent universal criteria for identifying all instances of migration in the archaeological record because these criteria involve numerous situations with distinctly different agents and processes. We do believe, however, that these shared characteristics are what make these three cases textbook examples of site-unit intrusion. These three cases have other features in common, including the likelihood that they all involved migration over relatively short distances. This is certainly the case for the Chingú settlers and probably the El Tesoro settlers and the La Mesa phase populations. This is in fact the most common type of migration. It is much more common than long-distance migration for various reasons, most obviously what Anthony calls “the frictional effect of distance” (1990, 901). Equally important, knowledge of potential destinations and their attractions is much more likely to involve areas that are nearby than those that are distant. This would certainly appear to be the case for the Chingú phase settlements, including El Tesoro, where lime and perhaps other specific material resources the Teotihuacan state needed were apparently known to exist in the Tula region. Short-distance migration is also conducive to return migration, likewise a common phenomenon (Anthony 1990, 904) that would facilitate the back flow of goods and information and people. This may well have been a factor in the case of the La Mesa phase settlements, where knowledge of the apparent success of the initial settlements may have stimulated subsequent migrations from the homeland or lands. Notable differences also exist among these three case studies in terms of the specific agents and processes of migration that each involves. The Chingú phase settlements represent an apparently simultaneous, orchestrated colonization involving a large and homogeneous founding population, and as such would embody what Anthony (1990, 903) referred to as a migration stream involving a well-defined destination and an equally well-defined route from a highly specific point of origin. El Tesoro is technically part of the Chingú phase settlement system, although it may not have been settled at the same time. Its founding population would have probably also resulted from a migration stream pattern from either Teotihuacan or Oaxaca, although we agree with Holt Mehta that these people are far more likely to have come from Teotihuacan. In contrast, the La Mesa phase settlements appear to be a composite of multiple, uncoordinated migrations possibly over a period of time, each involving relatively small, heterogeneous founding populations suggestive of multiple points of origin. Where in fact did the La Mesa phase populations originate? We no

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longer hold to our previously expressed view (Mastache et al. 2002) that they originated in the Chalchihuites region of Northwest Mexico, which would have involved long-distance migration. In retrospect, their point of origin seems likely to have been nearby, given the likelihood of multiple migration events that suggest ease of movement and positive feedback from returning migrants. In chapter 4 of this volume, Hernández and Healan provide evidence that Coyotlatelco ceramics are derived from ceramic traditions in the eastern and southern portion of the El Bajío, a region encompassing 536,000 square kilometers that could have hosted migrations into Central Mexico from numerous points. Certainly the documentation of no fewer than three instances of migration within a single region would suggest it was a common event in preHispanic Mesoamerica, perhaps far more than was previously imagined. In fact, we note two other possible cases of migration in the Tula region, although one of these, the appearance of Prado phase ceramics at Tula Chico, might best be considered part of the multiple Coyotlatelco-related migrations that began in the La Mesa phase. The other involves the limited appearance of Aztec II ceramics at Tula Grande, Tollan phase Tula’s monumental center, during the subsequent Fuego phase (see Healan 2012, 95–97 for a more detailed discussion). Finally, we note several contributions these case studies have made to our understanding of other problem areas in Mesoamerican prehistory. For one, the overall decline in number of Chingú phase sites with post–Tlamimilolpa phase ceramics supports the growing consensus that Teotihuacan was undergoing decline at that time. The La Mesa phase radiocarbon dates and the complementary spatial distribution of Chingú and La Mesa phase sites lends support to the premise that Coyotlatelco first appeared in Central Mexico before the demise of Teotihuacan. The heterogeneous nature of La Mesa phase assemblages supports previous observations that Coyotlatelco ceramics are highly heterogeneous as a group. Our suggestion that La Mesa phase sites had multiple origins provides some insights into why this is so. Finally, the seemingly multiethnic population of El Tesoro and its possible connection with lime production provides some additional perspective on the Zapotec Diaspora with respect to the origins, ethnic composition, and activities of its participants.

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Notes 1. Only four Tepeji phase sites were encountered, three of which are very small settlements. The other (La Loma) covers ca. 15 hectares of a mesa at the south end of the survey area and contains monumental architecture. If La Loma were a regional center, its sustaining area must have included more sites that are perhaps buried under alluvium or some of the Classic period settlements. Alternatively, given its location at the entrance to the basin immediately to the south, La Loma may have functioned as a gateway community (Hirth 1978) whose sustaining area lay to the south. 2. Notable differences between the two sites include the absence of counterparts of Teotihuacan’s Sun and Moon pyramids at Chingú, which may underscore the fact that they were built and were perhaps more important before Teotihuacan became the center of a macroregional empire. Conversely, a second Ciudadelalike compound immediately east of La Campana has no obvious counterpart at Teotihuacan. 3. Mastache et al. (2002, 52) note at least three sites with a predominately non–Chingú phase ceramic assemblage that may represent a local population in the area. 4. “Demise” is a suitably ambiguous term for an equally ambiguous process that does not distinguish between decline and abandonment or between local abandonment and global abandonment. Even the best probable indicator of a city’s political end, the destruction and/or abandonment of its political/religious heart, would not necessarily have coincided with abandonment of the city as a whole. 5. Elsewhere we have suggested (Anderson et al. 2016) that the breakdown of Teotihuacan’s managerial infrastructure would have negatively impacted the operation of irrigation systems in the Tula region, leading to an inability to continue supporting the Chingú phase population without fullscale irrigation. 6. Cerro Ahumada (Parsons 2008, 174–184), an Epiclassic hilltop site ca. 25 kilometers to the south, may also be part of this settlement complex. 7. Mastache et al. (2002, 260) encountered similar ceramics likewise termed “transitional” in a number of dispersed material sites in the northeastern extreme of the alluvial plain, although it is not certain whether these are in fact the same types. 8. One of us (DMH) prefers to consider Prado and Corral as early and late subphases, respectively, of a single (Corral) phase since the principal Coyotlatelco types occur throughout both, and even in levels where Prado ceramics reach their peak, the predominant ceramic types are Coyotlatelco.

References Acosta, Jorge. 1945. “La cuarta y quinta temporada de exploraciones arqueológicas en Tula, Hgo.” Revista Mexicana de Estudios Antropológicos 7: 23–64. Anderson, J. Heath. 2018. “Obsidian consumption in the Tula region after Teotihuacan’s decline.” In City, craft, and residence in Mesoamerica: Research papers presented in honor of Dan M. Healan, edited by R. Faulseit, N. Xiuhtecutli, and H. Holt Mehta, 113–124. New Orleans: Middle American Research Institute, Tulane University.

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Anderson, J. Heath, Dan M. Healan, and Robert H. Cobean. 2016. “Collapse, regeneration, and the origins of Tula and the Toltec state.” In Beyond Collapse: Archaeological Perspectives on Resilience, Revitalization, and Transformation in Complex Societies, edited by R. K. Faulseit, 431–438. Carbondale, IL: Center for Archaeological Investigations. Anthony, David W. 1990. “Migration in archaeology: The baby and the bathwater.” American Anthropologist 92: 894–914. Armillas, Pedro. 1950. “Teotihuacan, Tula y los toltecas.” RUNA 3: 37–70. Buenos Aires. Barba, L., J. Blancas, L. R. Manzanilla, A. Ortiz, D. Barca, G. M. Crisci, and D. Miriello. 2009. “Provenance of the limestone used in Teotihuacan, Mexico: A methodological approach.” Archaeometry 51: 525–545. Barba, L. A., and J. L. Cordova Frunz. 1999. “Estudios energéticos de la producción de cal en tiempos Teotihuacanos y sus implicaciones.” Latin American Antiquity 10(2): 168–179. Cervantes Rosado, J., and A. Torres. 1991. “Consideraciones sobre el desarrollo Coyotlatelco en el centro-norte del Altiplano Central.” Cuicuilco 27: 25–34. Cobean, Robert H. 1982. “Investigaciones recientes en Tula Chico, Hidalgo.” In Estudios sobre la Antigua Ciudad de Tula, edited by Alba Guadalupe Mastache, 37–122. Colección Científica no. 121. México, DF: Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia. ———. 1990. La cerámica de Tula, Hidalgo, México. Colección Científica, Estudios Sobre Tula 2. México, DF: Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia. Cobean, Robert H., and A. Guadalupe Mastache. 1989. “The Late Classic and Early Postclassic chronology of the Tula region.” In Tula of the Toltecs, edited by Dan M. Healan, 34–46. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press. Cobean, Robert H., A. Guadalupe Mastache, Ana María Crespo, and Clara L. Díaz. 1981. “La cronología de la región de Tula.” In Interacción cultural en México Central, edited by Evelyn C. Rattray, Jaime Litvak K., and C. Díaz O., 187–215. México, DF: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México. Cook de Leonard, C., J. Leonard de Orellana, and A. Soto Soria. 1956. “La pirámide de El Tesoro de Tepeji del Rio, Estado de Hidalgo.” Revista Mexicana de Estudios Antropológicos 14: 117–120. Cowgill, George L. 1996. “Discussion.” Ancient Mesoamerica 7: 325–331. Crespo Oviedo, A. M., and A. G. Mastache. 1981. “La presencia en el área de Tula, Hgo. de grupos relacionados con el Barrio de Oaxaca en Teotihuacán.” In Interacción Cultural en México Central, edited by Evelyn C. Rattray, Jaime Litvak K., and C. Díaz O., 99–106. México, DF: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México. Díaz, Clara. 1980. Chingú: Un sitio Clásico del área de Tula, Hidalgo. Colección Científica no. 90. México, DF: Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia. ———. 1981. “Chingú y la expansión Teotihuacana.” In Interacción Cultural en México Central, edited by E. Rattray, J. Litvak King, and C. L. Díaz Oyarzábal, 107–112. México, DF: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México. Flannery, Kent V. and Joyce Marcus. 1994. Early formative pottery of the Valley of Oaxaca. Memoir of the Museum of Anthropology. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan. Fournier García, Patricia. 2007. Los Hñahñu del Valle del Mezquital: Maguey, pulque y alfarería. México, DF: Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia. Gamboa Cabezas, L., and L. M. Roldan Olmos. 2011. “La presencia Oaxaqueña al suroeste

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del estado de Hidalgo, en sitios de influencia Teotihuacana.” Paper presented at the second Simposium de Arqueología en el Estado de Hidalgo, Hidalgo. Gaxiola González, Margarita. 2006. “Tradición y estilo en el estudio de la variabilidad cerámica del Epiclásico en el centro de México.” In El fenómeno Coyotlatelco en el centro de México: tiempo, espacio y significado, edited by Laura Solar Valverde, 31–54. México, DF: Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia. Getino Granados, F. 2011. “Informe preliminar, proyecto salvamento arqueológica en la refinería Bicentario.” México, DF: Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia, Dirección de Salvamento Arqueológico. Gorenflo, Lawrence J., and William T. Sanders. 2007. Archaeological settlement pattern data from the Cuautitlan, Temascalapa, and Teotihuacan regions, Mexico. Occasional Papers in Anthropology. University Park: Pennsylvania State University. Healan, Dan M. 2012. “The archaeology of Tula, Hidalgo, Mexico.” Journal of Archaeological Research 20: 53–115. Hernández Reyes, C. 1994. “Rescate de una tumba zapoteca en Tepeji del Río.” In Simposium sobre arqueología en el estado de Hidalgo, trabajos recientes, edited by E. Fernández, 125–142. México, DF: Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia. Hirth, Kenneth G. 1978. “Interregional trade and the formation of prehistoric gateway communities.” American Antiquity 43: 35–45. Holt Mehta, H. 2018. “More than an enclave? Ethnic identity and cultural affiliations at El Tesoro, a Classic period Zapotec site in the Tula area.” In City, craft, and residence in Mesoamerica: Research papers presented in honor of Dan M. Healan, edited by R. Faulseit, N. Xiuhtecutli, and H. Holt Mehta, 125–134. New Orleans: Middle American Research Institute, Tulane University. López Aguilar, Fernando. 1994. “Historia prehispánica del Valle del Mezquital.” In Simposium Sobre arqueología en el estado de Hidalgo, trabajos recientes, edited by E. Fernández, 113–123. México, DF: Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia. López Aguilar, F., L. Solar, and R. Vilanova. 1998. “El Valle del Mezquital, encrucijadas en la historia de los asentamientos humanos en un espacio discontinuo.” Arqueología 20: 21–40. López Pérez, Claudia, Nicolas Careta, and Linda Manzanilla Naim. 2006. “Atributos morfológicos y estilísticos de la cerámica Coyotlatelco en el centro ceremonial de Teotihuacan.” In El fenómeno Coyotlatelco en el centro de México: Tiempo, espacio y significado, edited by Laura Solar Valverde, 215–230. México, DF: Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia. Manzanilla, Linda. 2003. “The abandonment of Teotihuacan.” In The archaeology of settlement abandonment in Middle America, edited by T. Inomata, and R. Webb, 91–101. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press. Martínez Landa, Blanca Estela. 2009. “La cerámica arqueológica de La Mesa, Hidalgo.” MA thesis, Escuela Nacional de Antropología e Historia, Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia. Mastache, A. Guadalupe. 1976. “Sistemas de riego en el área de Tula, Hgo.” In Proyecto Tula segunda parte, edited by E. Matos Moctezuma, 49–70. Colección Científica 33. México, DF: Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia. ———. 1996. “El estado Tolteca: Una investigación sobre su proceso de desarrollo y es-

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tructura social, económica y política.” PhD diss., Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México. Mastache, A. Guadalupe, and Robert H. Cobean. 1989. “The Coyotlatelco culture and the origins of the Toltec state.” In Mesoamerica after the decline of Teotihuacan A.D. 700–900, edited by Richard A. Diehl and Janet Catherine Berlo, 49–67. Washington, D.C.: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection. ———. 1990. “La cultura Coyotlatelco en el área de Tula.” In Las industrias líticas Coyotlatelco en el area de Tula, edited by A. G. Mastache, R. H. Cobean, C. Rees, and D. Jackson, 9–22. Colección Científica no. 221. México, DF: Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia. Mastache, A. Guadalupe, and Ana María Crespo. 1974. “La ocupación prehispánica de Tula, Hgo.” In Proyecto Tula, primera parte, edited by E. Matos Moctezuma, 71–103. Colección Científica no. 15. México, DF: Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia. ———. 1982. “Análisis sobre la traza general de Tula, Hgo.” In Estudios Sobre la Antigua Ciudad de Tula, 11–38. Colección Científica no. 121. México, DF: Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia. Mastache, A. Guadalupe, Robert H. Cobean, and Dan M. Healan. 2002. Ancient Tollan: Tula and the Toltec heartland. Boulder: University Press of Colorado. Mastache, A. Guadalupe, Dan M. Healan, and Robert H. Cobean. 2009. “Four hundred years of settlement and cultural continuity in Epiclassic and Early Postclassic Tula.” In The art of urbanism, edited by W. L. Fash and L. López Luján, 290–329. Washington, D.C.: Dumbarton Oaks. Millon, Rene. 1996. “The last years of Teotihuacan.” In The collapse of ancient states and civilizations, edited by N. Yoffee and G. Cowgill, 102–164. Tucson: University of Arizona Press. Nalda, Enrique. 1975. “UA San Juan del Río: trabajos arqueológicos preliminaries.” Tesis, Escuela Nacional de Antropología e Historia. ———. 1991. “Secuencia cerámica del sur de Querétaro.” In Querétaro Prehispánico, edited by Ana María Crespo and Rosa Brambila, 31–57. Colección Científica no. 238. México, DF: Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia. Nichols, D. L., and J. McCullough. 1986. “Excavations at Xometla.” In The Teotihuacan Valley Project final report, vol. 4, edited by W. T. Sanders, 53–94. Occasional Papers in Anthropology. University Park: Department of Anthropology, Pennsylvania State University. Parsons, Jeffrey R. 2008. Prehispanic settlement patterns in the northwestern Valley of Mexico: The Zumpango region. Memoirs no. 45. Ann Arbor: Museum of Anthropology, University of Michigan. Parsons, Jeffrey R., Elizabeth Brumfiel, and Mary Hodge. 1996. “Developmental implications of earlier dates for early Aztec in the Basin of Mexico.” Ancient Mesoamerica 7: 217–30. Polgar Salcedo, M. 1998. “La perifería en la continuidad y el colapso.” Arqueología 20: 41–52. Rattray, Evelyn C. 1966. “An archaeological and stylistic study of Coyotlatelco pottery.” Mesoamerican Notes 7–8: 87–211. Rattray, Evelyn C. 1996. “Regional perspective on the Epiclassic period in Central Mexico.”

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In Arqueología Mexicana: Homenaje a William T. Sanders, edited by A. G. Mastache, J. R. Parsons, R. S. Santley, and M. C. Serra Puche, 213–231. México, DF: Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia. Rees, Charles. 1990. “Estudio sobre la cantera—taller del sitio Magoni.” In Las industrias líticas Coyotlatelco en el área de Tula, edited by A. Guadalupe Mastache, Robert H. Cobean, Charles Rees, and E. Jackson, 23–143. México, DF: Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia. Rouse, Irving. 1958. “The inference of migrations from archaeological evidence.” In Migrations in new world culture history, edited by R. Thompson, 64–68. Tucson: University of Arizona Press. Sanders, William T., Jeffrey R. Parsons, and Richard S. Santley. 1979. The Basin of Mexico: Ecological processes in the evolution of a civilization. New York: Academic Press. Séjourné, Laurette. 1956. “Informe sobre el material exhumado en Ahuizotla, Azcapotzalco.” Revista Mexicana de Estudios Antropológicos 15: 33–35. Smith, Michael, and Michael Lind. 2005. “Xoo Phase ceramics from Oaxaca found at Calixtlahuaca in Central Mexico.” Ancient Mesoamerica 16: 169–177. Solar Valverde, Laura, ed. 2006. El fenómeno Coyotlatelco en el Centro de México: Tiempo, espacio y significado. México, DF: Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia. Spence, Michael W. 2005. “A Zapotec diaspora network in Classic-period Central Mexico.” In The archaeology of colonial encounters, edited by Gil Stein, 173–206. Santa Fe: School of American Research. Spence, M., C. D. White, R. H. Cobean, A. G. Mastache, and F. J. Longstaffe. n.d. The residential history of the La Mesa people: The oxygen-isotope evidence. Unpublished paper in authors’ possession. Stuiver, Minzie, and Paula J. Reimer. 1993. “Extended 14C data base and revised CALIB 3.0 14C age calibration program.” Radiocarbon 35: 215–230. Sugiura Yamamoto, Yoko. 2006. “¿Cambio gradual o discontinuidad en la cerámica?: Discusión acerca del paso del Clásico al Epiclásico, visto desde el Valle de Toluca.” In El fenómeno Coyotlatelco en el centro de México: Tiempo, espacio, y significado, edited by Laura Solar Valverde, 127–162. México, DF: Coordinación Nacional de Arqueología, Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia. Tozzer, Alfred M. 1921. Excavations of a site at Santiago Ahuitzotla, D.F., Mexico. Bulletin 74. Washington, D.C.: Bureau of American Ethnology. Willey, Gordon R., Charles Di Peso, William A. Ritchie, Irving Rouse, John H. Rowe, and Donald W. Lathrap 1956. “An archaeological classification of culture contact situations.” Memoirs of the Society for American Archaeology 11: 1–30.

4 Migration and the Coyotlatelco Ceramic Tradition Evidence from El Bajío Christine Hernández and Dan M. Healan

In spite of considerable archaeological investigation conducted throughout the region during the past several decades, West Mexico and its role in Mesoamerican culture processes remain ambiguous for many scholars. This apparent identity crisis is, to a considerable extent, the product of regional bias in Kirchhoff ’s (1943) seminal codification of things Mesoamerican, but other factors have also contributed. One is that the literature depicts two different West Mexicos, each with a different set of boundaries. At its narrowest, West Mexico is limited to the modern states of Colima, Nayarit, Jalisco, and western Michoacán, while at its broadest the region also includes the rest of Michoacán and the El Bajío region of southern Guanajuato, Querétaro, and Mexico state. In this chapter, we use the broader definition but make a conceptual distinction between Far West Mexico, the area delineated by the narrower definition, and Near West Mexico, which encompasses the remaining area. Near West Mexico, which our chapter is specifically concerned with, is of particular interest, given evidence of systematic interaction with Central Mexico throughout much of prehistory that probably included migration between the two regions. Our chapter considers possible episodes of migration that would have taken place during the Classic and Epiclassic periods (table 4.1), although its focus is on possible migration during the latter period and its role in the origin and diffusion of the Coyotlatelco ceramic tradition. Coyotlatelco is a widespread ceramic tradition in Epiclassic Central Mexico. Its Epiclassic dating was initially based on its occurrence in

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Table 4.1. Chronological table of the U-Z source area, Teotihuacan, and the Tula region Period

Calendar Date (CE and BCE)

Protohistoric

1500

Late

1400

Postclassic

1300

UcareoZinapécuaro

Teotihuacana Tesoro

Late Lerma

Palacio

1200 Early

1100

Postclassic

1000

Fuego Late Tollan

Early Lerma

Early Tollan

900 Epiclassic

800 700 600 500

Classic

Terminal Corral Late Perales

Early Perales

Choromuco

200 100

100

Formative

200

Coyotlatelco Metepec

Prado La Mesa Chingú

Late Tlamimilolpa Early Tlamimilolpa

Mixtlan

0 Late

Corral

Late Xolalpan Early Xolalpan

400 300

Tulab

Miccaotli Late Tzacualli Early Tzacualli

Chupícuaro

Patlachique (Tezoyuca) Late Cuanalan

Note: Portions of the Teotihuacan chronology have been omitted. a Carballo (2011, fig. 2.2). b Chapter 3, this volume.

post-Metepec contexts at Teotihuacan (e.g., Armillas 1950, 56; Séjourné 1956, 18) and in stratigraphically early contexts at Tula (Acosta 1945, 53– 56). Various authors (Cobean 1990; Martínez Landa 2009; Nichols and McCullough 1986; Rattray 1966; Solar Valverde 2006; Vargas 1975) have documented its chief defining characteristics, which include red-painted

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designs on plain brown or cream-slipped hemispherical tripod bowls and a diverse range of other vessel forms. The best-known designs are composed of intricate geometric motifs but also include simpler and more complex motifs in a variety of layouts and sizes. Ceramic complexes in which painted Coyotlatelco types, either red-on-brown/buff or red on white/cream slip, constitute the majority of decorated types often included negative polychromes, monochromes decorated with incised/engraved or stamped decoration, ritual ceramics (censers and braziers), red slipped types, imports, and utilitarian types (see for example, Cobean 1990, 44–45; Rattray 1966, 111–112). The appearance of Coyotlatelco painted ceramics at sites in Central Mexico and the timing and nature of their presence continues to be a matter of ongoing debate, often characterized as a debate between those who favor a local origin and those who argue for a nonlocal origin (Healan 2012, 80–81). Proponents of a nonlocal origin (e.g., Braniff Cornejo 1972; Jiménez Moreno 1959; Mastache and Cobean 1989, 65; Mastache and Cobean 1990, 22; Rattray 1966) trace Coyotlatelco to one or more red-on-buff ceramic traditions that were previously identified in areas to the north and west as far away as Zacatecas and Jalisco. Those who support a local origin (e.g., Dumond and Muller 1972, 1214; Sanders 2006, 190) maintain that Coyotlatelco ceramics derive from the red-on-brown/buff ceramics known for Teotihuacan or from earlier traditions identified in the Basin of Mexico. A middle ground of sorts is emerging, as several researchers (e.g., Beekman and Christensen 2003; Fournier Garcia 2006, 438–439; Gaxiola González 2006; López Pérez et al. 2006; Manzanilla 2005, 269; Sugiura 2006) have argued that Coyotlatelco is a “fusion” or “hybridization” of the preexisting Teotihuacan ceramic tradition with a nonlocal one, although there is no consensus about the origin of the nonlocal component. In this chapter we will argue that the roots of the Coyotlatelco painted ceramic style lie in the eastern portion of the El Bajío region of Near West Mexico (figure 4.1). An El Bajío origin has been suggested before, given its proximity and the presence of red-on-brown/buff pottery in ceramic complexes that date to as early as the Late Formative period and become increasingly popular during the Classic period (Cobean 1990, 501; Hernández 2000, 217–218, 233–237, Fig. 25; Mastache and Cobean 1989, 54; Mastache et a1. 2002). Moreover, many Coyotlatelco sites in Central Mexico exhibit a lithic assemblage dominated by obsidian from the Ucareo-Zinapécuaro Michoacán obsidian source area (hereafter the U-Z source area) located in the eastern El Bajío in northeastern Michoacán (Healan 1997, table 1). Our

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Figure 4.1. Map of Central and Near West Mexico including sites discussed in the text (adapted from Raisz 1959).

position is based on data from survey and excavation we conducted in that source area in conjunction with comparative ceramic data from sites in the eastern El Bajío, Teotihuacan, and the Tula region sites of La Mesa and Tula Chico described by Healan and Cobean in chapter 3 of this volume. Background

The U-Z obsidian source area is located in northeastern Michoacán along the eastern flank of the Lake Cuitzeo Basin (figure 4.1) and consists primarily of two distinct but chemically similar sources. The Zinapécuaro obsidian source is located in the Cuitzeo Basin itself, while the Ucareo source is located some 10 kilometers farther east in an upland valley that is part of an ancient caldera. Obsidian artifact sourcing studies conducted over the past twenty-five years indicate that most of the obsidian from the U-Z source area that has been identified elsewhere in Mesoamerica is specifically from the Ucareo source (Healan 1997, figure 1, table 1). This agrees

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with archaeological evidence described below that indicates Ucareo was a much more heavily exploited source than was Zinapécuaro. During the 1990’s Healan (1997) conducted an investigation of pre-Hispanic settlement and obsidian exploitation in the U-Z source area. This involved systematic survey covering approximately 85 square kilometers, during which more than 1,000 quarry sites, 10 major habitation sites and numerous smaller sites were located, followed by exploratory excavation of 30 selected sites. More than 100,000 pottery sherds were recovered, and systematic study (Hernández 2000) of some 3,300 sherds from stratigraphically controlled excavations has produced a continuous ceramic sequence from the Late Formative through Late Postclassic periods (table 4.1). The sequence is now anchored in time by twenty-three radiocarbon dates from strategically selected contexts that span the entire 2,000-year sequence. The U-Z source area exhibits a long history of red-on-brown-style pottery, beginning with the Chupícuaro phase (table 4.1), the earliest documented occupation in the source area, which is Late Formative in date and involves three sites in the Lake Cuitzeo Basin. The ceramic assemblage is the well-known Chupícuaro complex initially defined for a large mortuary assemblage at the type site located only 25 kilometers to the northeast. Our Chupícuaro ceramics were recovered from deeply stratified domestic middens and superposed residential structures, but constitute the same complex of elaborate monochromes and painted ceramics and figurines, plus utilitarian vessels. Chupícuaro painted ceramic assemblages constitute bichromes and polychromes utilizing red and/or black painted geometric designs on unslipped or red and/or cream-slipped vessels. Of particular interest are the red-on-brown and red-on-cream slipped vessel types (plate 1a–e). The U-Z source area lies near the western limits of the Chupícuaro heartland centered in the middle Lerma River Valley immediately to the north and east (figures 4.1, 4.2). Chupícuaro ceramics or those made in the Chupícuaro style have been found in many Late Formative sites in Central Mexico and have been variously interpreted as representing trade, local emulation of foreign styles, or the actual migration of Chupícuaro peoples, although Darras (2006) has noted that the available archaeological evidence is inadequate to determine the most likely mechanism. Taken together, the distribution of sites with Chupícuaro-related materials forms a generally continuous configuration that extends eastward from the Lake Cuitzeo Basin northward into El Bajío and then southward into the Basin of Mexico (figure 4.2).

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Figure 4.2. Spatial distribution of sites in Central Mexico where Chupícuaro ceramics have been identified (adapted from Darras 2006).

During the succeeding Early Classic Mixtlan phase, settlement is likewise confined to the Lake Cuitzeo Basin. Mixtlan phase ceramics show clear ceramic continuity with those of the Chupícuaro phase. Red-onbrown bichromes persist but are dwarfed in number by bichrome and polychrome painted vessels using combinations of red, black, and white paints and slips (e.g., plate 1 f–h). Mixtlan bichromes and polychromes are identical to those Braniff Cornejo (1999) described for the Morales complex at sites in central Guanajuato. Of particular interest is the inclusion of nonlocal negative polychromes (Tres Palos and Agropecuaria) that connect the Mixtlan ceramic complex to the Loma Alta I complex in the Zacapu Basin to the west (Carot 1990, 1992, 81–98) and to the Morales complex of central Guanajauto to the north (Braniff Cornejo 1999), suggesting close interaction among societies over a large swath of the central and eastern El Bajío and northern Michoacán regions. Interestingly, some of the decorative elements Mixtlan, Loma Alta, and Morales ceramics share are also a prominent component of Tezoyuca (Sanders et al. 1979, 104–105), a distinctive ceramic complex associated with an equally distinctive system of “hilltop centers” that appear in the southern flank of the Teotihuacan Valley Basin of Mexico prior to Teotihuacan’s Middle Classic apogee (table 4.1). Shared elements include the use of thick white paint on red-painted or red-slipped zones, various forms of plastic decoration, and highly specific designs including horizontal panels containing quite similar zoomorphic motifs (Hernández 2000, 193–197).1

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While Sanders and colleagues (1979, table 5.1) dated Tezoyuca to approximately 300–250 BCE, more recently Cowgill (1997) and Carballo (2011) have dated it to approximately 150 BCE (table 4.1). Even with this revised dating, however, Tezoyuca predates the Mixtlan and Loma Alta complexes as currently dated, which would make its painted ceramics potential precursors for the decorative modes involving white paint on red slip and the negative designs characteristic of the subsequent Tzacualli phase at Teotihuacan and the contemporaneous Mixtlan and Loma Alta 1 phases in Near West Mexico. This suggests that interaction involving exchange of ceramics between Near West and Central Mexico that was seen in the preceding Chupícuaro phase came to include shared modes of ceramic production that prompted increasing similarity among assemblages of red-painted ceramics produced and exchanged between sites in the two regions that intensified during the subsequent Classic and Epiclassic periods. During the Middle Classic Choromuco phase, two distinct ceramic complexes designated Atzimba and Ramon appear in the U-Z source area, distinct both in content and spatial distribution. The Atzimba complex exhibits notable continuity with the preceding Mixtlan complex while at the same time exhibiting various innovations that included intricate geometric designs executed in both red-painted and resist decoration (plate 2a–c) and new vessel forms that link Atzimba to complexes to the north and west. Other diagnostic decorative modes, including red banding and negative geometric designs over red-painted zones, are shared with ceramic complexes in the eastern El Bajío and with the west. Thus, the macroregional unity seen in the preceding Mixtlan phase persisted into the Middle Classic in the U-Z source area. This continued sharing of ceramic elements and modes over a broad area, including parallel changes in contemporaneous assemblages, suggests a pattern of strong and regular interaction over both space and time. The Ramon complex is associated with the earliest documented settlement of the Ucareo Valley. Ramon ceramics are well-finished, light-brown vessels with large red-painted motifs on one or both surfaces, often with negative decoration, that are found mostly on flat-bottom outflaring tripod bowls with small, solid supports (plate 2d–f). The formal and decorative modes of the Ramon complex and its spatial distribution are distinct enough from those of Atzimba to suggest a wholly new development in the settlement history of the U-Z source area (Hernández 2018). Ramon ceramics are virtually identical to Loma Linda Red on Brown (Nalda 1991,

Migration and the Coyotlatelco Ceramic Tradition: Evidence from El Bajío · 95

47, 50, fig. 9) and cajetes al negativo (Enríquez Farias 2005, 38–40), both of which have been recovered from sites in the central river valleys of southern Querétaro, and to vessels from the vicinity of El Chico in southern Guanajuato (plate 1f–h). This suggests that the initial settlers of the Ucareo Valley originated from or had very close ties to the southeastern extreme of El Bajío and the earlier Chupícuaro heartland (Hernández 2016; see also figure 4.2). Both Atzimba and Ramon complex assemblages share many formal and decorative modes with red-on-brown and negative red-onbrown imports from Tlamimilolpa phase Teotihuacan found in southern Guanajuato, including the use of large-format designs (e.g., plate 2g) that are part of a larger inventory of imported luxury types (including Thin Orange, Tres Palos negative polychromes, and polychrome overlay)2 that co-occur with Ramon and Atzimba ceramics. During the subsequent Middle to Late Classic Perales phase, the Cuitzeo Basin and the Ucareo Valley exhibit a common ceramic tradition presumably indicating their political and cultural unification. Settlement peaked in the Ucareo Valley during the Perales phase. This included the appearance of a large regional center (Las Lomas) that was heavily involved in the exploitation of the obsidian at Ucareo. During this time period, Ucareo obsidian began to be widely distributed in Central Mexico and other parts of Mesoamerica. The most diagnostic ceramic of the Perales complex is Cantinas Red-Orange, which consists of wide, outcurving and outflaring buff-colored tripod bowls, tripod jars, and large basins decorated with red-orange painted geometric designs (plate 3a; see also plate 4e–f). Monochrome groups make up the majority of the remaining wares in this complex. Cantinas and related red-on-brown outflaring tripod bowls are widespread in El Bajío at this time and, we believe, play a key role in the origins of Coyotlatelco, as discussed below (Hernández 2000, 221–237). After around 600 CE, notable changes took place during the Perales that necessitate the definition of a subphase designated Late Perales. During that time, Cantinas ceramics declined in favor of two new red-painted types. One of these, Rosalinda Red on Brown Incised, is a delicately fashioned outflaring, basal Z-angle tripod bowl (or sometimes a hemispherical bowl) whose exterior walls contain red-painted zones over which a horizontal panel is incised or engraved then filled with large geometric motifs (plate 3b). The second type, Campo Red on Brown, is an outcurving tripod bowl with a similar red-painted zone on the interior rim and body, an exterior

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rim band, and some combination of painting and/or incision on the interior base (plate 3c; see also plate 6d–f). A third diagnostic Late Perales type is Garita Brown-Black, an incised or engraved monochrome bowl (plate 3d). Garita ceramics exhibit many of the same motifs and elements common to red-on-brown ceramics, including rectilinear panels, hatched and line-filled triangles, and spirals, zigzag and wavy lines, ovals and circles, concentric triangles, scrolls, and S-shapes (Hernández 2000, 1067–1075). During the Epiclassic–Early Postclassic Lerma phase (700–1100/1200 CE), we find an eclectic mix of decorated types and utilitarian wares. An engraved monochrome tripod bowl called Buenavista Orange is diagnostic of this complex. Of particular interest to our discussion is Encarnación Red Zone, which features red painting—often large, simple geometric designs—on supported bowls with a thick cream-colored slip (plate 3e; see also plate 6i–k). Corral/Prado Phase Tula and the Eastern El Bajío Ceramic Tradition

In the preceding section we briefly summarized the pre-Hispanic ceramic sequence for the U-Z source area prior to the Postclassic period, noting it is part of an enduring, dynamic, and widely shared ceramic tradition that is present in much of the southern and eastern El Bajío. Of particular interest is the prevalence of red-painted bichrome and negative polychrome ceramics from the earliest time period. The proliferation of these ceramics in the second half of the Classic period makes the eastern El Bajío a likely source of the Coyotlatelco tradition. An even more persuasive case can be made through systematic comparison of eastern El Bajío ceramics with Coyotlatelco ceramics from the Tula region, the former based on specimens previously published or made available for study to Hernández by the Centro Regional Querétaro and the Museo Municipal de Acámbaro, Guanajuato, and the latter based on material from both La Mesa and Tula Chico (see chapter 3, this volume) and specimens on display at the Museo Jorge Acosta in Tula. Excavation by Mastache and Cobean at Tula Chico and La Mesa, which Healan and Cobean described in chapter 3 of this volume, provide some of the most securely documented and dated information on Coyotlatelco occupation in Central Mexico. Although the occupation of La Mesa was initially thought to have begun earlier than that of Tula Chico, subsequent

Migration and the Coyotlatelco Ceramic Tradition: Evidence from El Bajío · 97

radiocarbon dating indicates that the two were contemporaneous (Healan 2012, Fig. 5). The bulk of the Coyotlatelco occupation of Tula Chico occurs during the Corral phase, but the earliest excavated levels included a distinctive co-occurring ceramic complex whose presence was used to define an earlier (Prado) phase (table 4.1).3 Published radiocarbon dates place the Coyotlatelco occupations at both La Mesa and Tula Chico in the 600–775 CE range (Healan 2012, Fig. 5). Plate 4 compares whole Prado and Corral phase vessels from Tula (a–c) with Cantinas and Cantinas-related vessels from the eastern El Bajío (d–f). All are strikingly similar in form and have elaborate red-painted interiors paired with a plain or simply banded exterior. Most striking is the common use of horizontal bands and lines to create panels filled with intricate geometric designs that include spirals, volutes, scrolls, vertical and horizontal wavy lines, and both free-standing and empaneled multiple lines within panels. The Middle to Late Classic dating of the Perales phase would place Cantinas Red-Orange in the southern El Bajío just before the appearance of Coyotlatelco ceramics in Central Mexico, an appropriate temporal position for a possible predecessor. As seen in plate 5, Coyotlatelco and Cantinas ceramics have a number of motifs in common, including some that have a particularly long history in El Bajío. At least two other ceramic types from the U-Z source area strongly resemble Coyotlatelco red-painted ceramics from La Mesa. These include Campo Red on Brown, a diagnostic Late Perales phase open-tripod bowl decorated with broad red-painted zones on the vessel interior and a broad band on the exterior rim and upper body (plate 6d–f, see also plate 3c). At La Mesa, Martínez Landa (2009) identified a potential variety of Coyotlatelco Red on Brown with a very similar decorative motif on hemispherical bowls (plate 6a–c). Although somewhat later in time (Early Lerma phase), Encarnación Red Zone from the U-Z source area (plate 6i–k) exhibits large red-painted motifs on a distinctive thick cream slip, both characteristic of some Coyotlatelco from La Mesa (plate 6g–i). Large red-painted designs characteristic of Ramon Red on Brown ceramics of the preceding Choromuco phase also appear to be characteristic of various Coyotlatelco ceramics from the Tula region (compare plate 7a–c and d–f; see also plate 2d–f). Despite the striking similarities in the use of large-format motifs, radiocarbon dating has confirmed Ramon’s Early to Middle Classic placement. Thus, Choromuco and Coyotlatelco ceramics with large-format motifs appear to be too widely separated in time to

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represent direct diffusion. Nevertheless, this is yet another shared stylistic element that was present in the southeastern El Bajío well before the appearance of Coyotlatelco in Central Mexico. Finally, plate 8a–c compares Guadalupe Red on Brown Incised, a diagnostic Prado phase type from Tula, and Rosalinda Red on Brown Incised, a Late Classic Late Perales phase type from the U-Z source area. Both are tripod bowls with basal Z-angles and red-painted bands overlaid with incised/engraved panels containing geometric designs that often involve similar motifs. A notable difference is that on Guadalupe bowls, the red-painted zone is confined to the basal portion of the vessel, while on Rosalinda vessels it occurs over most of the side. Both of these formats appear on earlier (Xolalpan phase) ceramics from Teotihuacan (plate 8d, e). In fact, both Guadalupe and Rosalinda vessels and other ceramics with incised designs on red-painted zones from Late Classic sites in El Bajío, including San Miguel Rojo Esgrafiado (Braniff Cornejo 1999, 72, figures 41–42, lámina 9) and Rojo Inciso Postcocción Xajay (Nalda 1991, 53, figure 11), may have been inspired by or intentionally fashioned in the likeness of Tlamimilolpa and Xolalpan phase red-on-brown incised and engraved ceramics from Teotihuacan. Conclusions

Up to this point our focus has been on the southern and southeastern El Bajío of Near West Mexico, a 536,000-square-kilometer corridor of plains, river valleys, and lake basins that link Central Mexico to Northern and Far West Mexico. Far from being simply a route of communication, this corridor is an integrated culture area in its own right that played a significant role in the developmental trajectory of Central Mexico. We believe that its integrated character and its influential role were shaped by the movement both east and west of people, goods, and innovations at various levels with sometimes profound effects at key points in time. Plate 9 illustrates this via the shared traditions of red-on-brown painted ceramics in Central and Near West Mexico (table 4.2 provides information and sources for the ceramic types illustrated in plate 9). How such striking similarities across space and time could be achieved can be understood as the product of multiple modes of interaction. From a ceramic perspective, the culture history of the southeastern El Bajío and northeastern Michoacán is defined by an enduring, dynamic, and widely shared tradition in which red-painted decoration and intricate

Table 4.2. Identification of vessels in Plate 9 Code in Plate 9

Type/Group

Source

a

Chupícuaro Red on Brown

Hernández 2000, 500–504

b

Chupícuaro Red on Brown

MEM

c

Chupícuaro Red on Brown

Hernández 2000, 500–504

d

Chupícuaro Red on Brown

After Porter 1956, fig. 10w

e

Chupícuaro Red on Brown

After Porter 1956, fig. 11c

f

Ramon Negative Red on Brown

Hernández 2000, 988–995

g

Ramon Red on Brown

Hernández 2000, fig. 73b

h

Ramon Red on Brown

MMA

i

Ramon Red on Brown

MMA

j

MMA

o

Tlamimilolpa Rojo Sobre Café Natural Inciso Tlamimilolpa Rojo Sobre Café Natural Tlamimilolpa Rojo Sobre Café Natural con Negativo Late Xolalpan Painted, Rojo Sobre Café con Incisión Late Xolalpan Painted, Rojo Sobre Café con Incisión Cantinas Red—Orange

p

Cantinas Red—Orange

q

San Miguel Rojo Sobre Café

r

San Miguel Rojo Sobre Café

s

Rojo Inciso Postcoccion Xajay

t

After Rattray 2001, fig. 185j

w

Metepec Copa Ware, Rojo Sobre Café Natural Metepec Painted Rojo Sobre Café Natural Metepec Painted Rojo Sobre Café Natural Coyotlatelco Rojo Sobre Café

x

Rosalinda Red on Brown Incised

Hernández 2000, fig. 101b

k 1 m n

u v

López Pérez 2009, 176 López Pérez 2009, 162 After Rattray 2001, fig. 161 López Méndez 2009, 140 Hernández 2000, 1012–1020 Brambila Paz and Crespo 2005, fig. 3 Brambila Paz and Crespo 2005, fig. 4 Brambila Paz and Crespo 2005, fig. 4 CRQ

After Rattray 2001, fig. 186a After Rattray 2001, fig. 186j After Martínez Landa 2009

(continued)

100 · Christine Hernández and Dan M. Healan

Table 4.2—Continued

Code in Plate 9

Type/Group

Source

y

Rojo Esgrafiado

z

Rojo Esgrafiado

a'

Ana María Rojo Sobre Café

Braniff Cornejo 1999, lámina 9, 8 Braniff Cornejo 1999, lámina 9, 115 CRQ

b'

Ana María Rojo Sobre Café

MJA

c'

Guadalupe Rojo Sobre Café

PATC

d'

Coyotlatelco Rojo Sobre Café

After Acosta 1945, fig. 33

e'

Coyotlatelco Rojo Sobre Café

After Cobean 1990, fig. 59D

f'

Coyotlatelco “Gran Formato”

After Paredes 2005, fig. 9

g'

Coyotlatelco Rojo Sobre Café

After Séjourné 1966, fig. 182

h'

Coyotlatelco Rojo Sobre Café

After Séjourné 1966, fig. 179

i'

Coyotlatelco Rojo Sobre Café

After Séjourné 1966, fig. 184

j'

Encarnacion Red Zone

Hernández 2000, 1120–1127

k'

Encarnacion Red Zone

Hernández 2000, 1128–1132

l'

Encarnacion Red Zone

After Snarskis 1985, fig. 78

Note: The abbreviations for the museum collections are also used in the color plates. CRQ = Centro Regional Querétaro. MEM = Museo del Estado Michoacán. MJA = Museo Jorge Acosta. MMA = Museo Municipal de Acámbaro. PALM = Proyecto Arqueológico La Mesa. PATC = Proyecto Arqueológico Tula Chico. PUZ = Proyecto Ucareo-Zinapécuaro.

geometric designs play a central role in ceramic decorative canons beginning in the Late Formative period (plate 9a–e). While this could reflect a common cultural base that the later inhabitants of the region all descended from, it could also be the result of intermarriage and other modes of systematic migration and back migration involving individuals or families. This would move potters and pottery traditions among groups, fostering the seemingly parallel development of ceramic assemblages that is seen in various parts of the southeastern El Bajío over time. Concurrently, other developments, most notably the presence of Late Formative Chupícuaro or Chupícuaro-like ceramics at sites in Central

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Mexico (figure 4.2), appear to represent a different process, one that at any one site seems to involve small numbers of exotic items that enhance rather than replace the local assemblage. We suggest that what Darras (2006) characterized as an “inadequate” database regarding the Chupícuaro presence in Central Mexico probably accurately reflects the acquisition and/ or emulation of exotic objects on a small scale for the purposes of status differentiation. The similarities between Tezoyuca ceramics and certain painted types in the Loma Alta, Morales, and Mixtlan complexes in El Bajío alluded to above seem to represent a pattern of interaction that is different from that posited for Chupícuaro ceramics (Hernández 2000, 300–310). If its current (ca. 100 BCE) dating is correct, then Tezoyuca would appear to be a precursor of ceramic styles that come into vogue at a later (Early Classic) time in El Bajío and areas farther west. Given the degree of similarity involved, however, we do not rule out the possibility that Tezoyuca may be even later in time. However, at least two developments appear to represent large-scale migration. Both appear to have emanated from essentially the same geographical area but at different times and in opposite directions. The first is the settlement of the Ucareo Valley during the Middle Classic period by people who made and used Ramon Red on Brown ceramics. Ramon sites are distinct from the contemporaneous Atzimba complex sites in the neighboring Cuitzeo Basin and exhibit the ceramic traits of sites in southern Querétaro (plate 9f–i). The coexistence of what is almost certainly two distinct (Ramon, Atzimba) patterns of decorated ceramic usage within a few kilometers of one another is anomalous but short lived. A single cultural tradition arose during the Late Classic Perales phase that integrates both areas during what was also a time of major exploitation of the Ucareo obsidian source. The other instance of what we believe was large-scale migration is the appearance of Coyotlatelco-affiliated settlements in the Tula region during Late Classic/Epiclassic times, as Healan and Cobean described in chapter 3. Much of the preceding discussion of red-on-brown ceramics was devoted to establishing the eastern El Bajío as the most likely point of origin of Coyotlatelco settlements in the Tula region. While Beekman (2015) and Beekman and Christensen (2011) have previously suggested that migration involving the movement of peoples from El Bajío into the Tula region based largely on linguistic, ethnohistoric, and osteological evidence, the argument we make here is based on ceramic evidence. Of particular importance

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in this regard is the recent recovery of diagnostic Prado and Corral ceramic types, including Ana María Red on Brown (plate 4a, e) from two burials at Barrio de la Cruz (Saint-Charles Zetina and Enríquez Farias 2006, 310–317), a site in the city of San Juan del Río in southeastern Querétaro some 70 kilometers northwest of Tula (figure 4.1). In fact, however, Nalda (1991, 50) identified these very same ceramics in his excavation and survey collections from southeastern Querétaro as Rojo Sobre Bayo El Mogote, which he described as a red-on-brown bichrome most often encountered as an outflaring tripod vessel with solid or hollow conical supports.4 The presence of Prado ceramics at sites in the eastern El Bajío in such close proximity to Tula suggests that the Coyotlatelco settlement at Tula Chico and the larger Tula region involved short-distance or intraregional migration on the order of 100–200 kilometers. Such migrations would have been made by people who were probably already familiar with the Tula region and who may even have had kinship or other ties to the existing population. These migrants likely followed a route into Central Mexico that is demarcated by the distribution of sites with Chupícuaro ceramics in the Late Formative (figure 4.2). Indeed, Barrio de la Cruz exhibited an earlier Chupícuaro occupation and diagnostic Ramon and Cantinas Red-Orange ceramics (Nalda 1991; Saint-Charles Zetina and Argüelles Gamboa 1991). It is clear that this corner of southeastern Querétaro was a key region of contact between the southern El Bajío, southern Hidalgo, and the northern Basin of Mexico for at least a millennium before the Epiclassic period. Although assigned to a single (La Mesa) phase, the various Coyotlatelco hilltop sites in the Tula region exhibit notable differences in ceramic form and decoration, including unique types that constitute at least 20 percent of the assemblage at each site (chapter 3, this volume). Differences are also seen in site layout, architectural characteristics, and lithic assemblages (Mastache et al. 2002, 69; Rees 1990). Mastache and Cobean (1990) interpret La Mesa phase settlement as a series of largely independent polities rather than a single integrated system, a pattern reminiscent of the Tezoyuca phase hilltop settlements in the Teotihuacan Valley we alluded to above. Such heterogeneity suggests multiple origins involving individual migrations, possibly from different areas (chapter 3, this volume). It is tempting to see the Tula region as the jumping-off point for the movement of Coyotlatelco-using peoples into the Basin of Mexico. However, the earliest radiocarbon dates obtained for Coyotlatelco occupations in the southern Basin of Mexico are at least as early as those for the Tula region (figure 3.4, this volume) suggesting that other routes existed, including

Migration and the Coyotlatelco Ceramic Tradition: Evidence from El Bajío · 103

in the northern Toluca Valley, which contains numerous Coyotlatelco sites (Parsons and Sugiura 2012; Sugiura 1996, 2006). We are reluctant to interpret the subsequent incorporation of Coyotlatelco populations into Central Mexico as the result of large-scale population replacement. Taking a cue from the Tula region, we suggest that the initial Coyotlatelco settlements in the Basin of Mexico involved small groups that coexisted with existing local populations, a view that would support the “fusion” or “hybridization” model for Coyotlatelco we alluded to in our opening comments. The red-on-brown decorative mode exists in the ceramic assemblages at Teotihuacan almost entirely throughout the sequence, from Tzacualli through Metepec (Rattray 2001; see also plate 9j–n and t–v), only to take on new and revived expression in the subsequent Coyotlatelco (Oxtoticpac and Xometla) phases (e.g., plate 9g–i). Painted Coyotlatelco ceramics exhibit several characteristics that arguably can be derived from the preexisting Teotihuacan ceramic assemblage, most notably the geometric designs in both painted and incised/engraved media that occur on Tlamimilolpa, Xolalpan, and Prado phase vessels (e.g., plate 8a, b, d, e). Some authors have suggested that the rolled rim characteristic of Guadalupe Red on Brown (plate 8a, b) and other Prado phase types was inspired by Teotihuacan vessels. It may be that these and perhaps other elements were conscious attempts to emulate features of the Teotihuacan style but by the hands of artisans in the eastern El Bajío rather than those in the Basin of Mexico (Hernández 2018). Finally, we must be clear that we do not envision the U-Z source area as the epicenter of these hypothesized migrations. It is but a small part, albeit a well-documented one, of a much larger region with a shared ceramic tradition that anticipates much of what is seen in Coyotlatelco. At the same time, we emphasize that the appearance of U-Z obsidian so closely parallels the appearance of Coyotlatelco ceramics in various parts of Central Mexico that the two form part of a single, intrusive complex that reinforces our belief that certain key aspects of Epiclassic Central Mexico material culture originated in El Bajío. Acknowledgments

The analysis of the U-Z Project ceramics from 1993 to 1995 was supported by a National Science Foundation Dissertation Improvement Grant #DBS9215542. Many thanks to Dr. Robert Cobean; Dr. Juan Carlos Saint-Charles Zetina of the Centro Regional de Querétaro INAH; Ángeles Cruz Álvarez,

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director of the Acámbaro Museum; Dra. Blanca Martínez Land;, and Dr. Helen Pollard for their time, energy, and willingness to visit and study comparative ceramic collections and for the fruitful discussions that were essential to the development of the ideas presented in this chapter. Notes 1. A white-on-red slip potsherd recovered from Tezoyuca and illustrated by Sanders et al. (1979, 447) shows four-legged zoomorphs with diamond-shaped bodies filled with dots. Similar zoomorphic elements, mostly avian or serpent-like, do occur on Mixtlanphase bichromes. Another, particularly notable link exists with Agropecuaria bichrome and negative polychrome ceramics that Carot (1990b, fig. 3) described and illustrated for the Loma Alta 1 complex at the type site in the Zacapu basin in northern Michoacán. 2. The “polychrome overlay” imports referred to here are a ceramic type that Hernández (2000, 858–867) described and named as Tirzo Polychrome Overlay. The decorative mode of “overlay” was described in detail by Molina Montes et al. (1974) and should not be confused with ceramic vessels known to be produced and decorated at Teotihuacan with painted stucco (Rattray 2001, 231, 261–262). The recent identification of several overlay vessels recovered from a funerary context at Teotihuacan strengthens the argument for a significant luxury pottery exchange network that linked Near West Mexico to the Early Classic polity (Gómez Chávez 2002). 3. Coyotlatelco ceramics occur in both Prado and Corral phases, and in fact predominate even in Prado phase levels at Tula Chico, leading Healan (2012, 78) to suggest the two may be more appropriately considered early and late subphases of a single Corral phase rather than full-fledged, separate phases. The temporal priority of Prado phase contexts has also been confirmed in more recent exploratory excavations at Tula Chico (Healan 2012). 4. Nalda (1991, 53, fig. 55) also identified incised brown monochrome tripod ceramics that he labeled as “Teotihuacanoide” because of their forms (cylindrical tripod vases with slightly outflaring rims and annular supports) and decorative motifs and their mode of execution, which strongly resembled recognized diagnostic aspects of Teotihuacan ceramics. However, their paste and decorative technology appear local, hence he did not interpret them as imports but rather as either the product of Teotihuacan influence on local production or of displaced potters from the Basin of Mexico. In his chronological study (1991, 41), Nalda found that his multidimensional scaling analysis grouped the “Teotihuacanoide” ceramics with Rojo Sobre Bayo El Mogote, which we noted is identical to Prado phase Ana María Red on Brown. Nalda’s (1991, fig. 12) illustrations strongly suggest that at least some of these “Teotihuacanoide” ceramics are likely to be Clara Luz Black Incised, another Prado phase type (Cobean 1990, 104–118).

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References Acosta, Jorge. 1945. “La cuarta y quinta temporada de exploraciones arqueológicas en Tula, Hgo.” Revista Mexicana de Estudios Antropológicos 7: 23–64. Armillas, Pedro. 1950. “Teotihuacan, Tula y los toltecas: Las culturas post-arcaicas y preaztecas del centro de México: excavaciones y estudios, 1922–1950.” RUNA 3: 37–70. Beekman, Christopher S. 2015. “Causes and consequences of migration in Epiclassic northern Mesoamerica.” In Migration and disruptions: Toward a unified theory of ancient and contemporary migrations, edited by Brenda Baker and Takeyuki Tsuda, 73–96. Gainesville: University Press of Florida. Beekman, Christopher, and Alexander F. Christensen. 2003. “Controlling for doubt and uncertainty through multiple lines of evidence: a new look at the Mesoamerican Nahua migrations.” Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory 10: 111–164. Brambila Paz, Rosa, and Ana Maria Crespo. 2005. “Desplazamientos de poblaciones y creación de territories en El Bajío.” In Reacomodos demográficos del Clásico al Posclásico en el centro de México, edited by Linda Manzanilla, 155–174. México, DF: Instituto de Investigaciones Antropológicas, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México. Braniff Cornejo, Beatriz. 1972. “Secuencias arqueológicas en Guanajuato y la Cuenca de México: Intento de correlación.” In Teotihuacan: Onceava mesa redonda, 273–323. México, DF: Sociedad Mexicana de Antropología. ———. 1999. Morales, Guanajuato y la tradición tolteca. México, DF: Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia. Carballo, David M. 2011. Obsidian and the Teotihuacan state. Memoirs in Latin American Archaeology no. 21. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh. Carot, Patricia. 1990. “La originalidad de Loma Alta, sitio Protoclásico de la ciénaga de Zacapu.” In La Época Clásica: Nuevos hallazgos, nuevas ideas, edited by Amalia Cardos de Méndez, 293–306. México, DF: Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia. ———. 1992. “La Cerámica Protoclásica del Sitio de Loma Alta, Municipio de Zacapu, Michoacán: Nuevos datos.” In Origen y desarrollo en el occidente de México, edited by Brigitte Boehm de Lameiras and Phil Weigand, 69–101. Zamora: El Colegio de Michoacán. ———. 2001. Le site de Loma Alta, Lac de Zacapú, Michoacán, Mexique. Oxford: Archaeopress. Cobean, Robert. 1990. La Cerámica de Tula, Hidalgo, México. Colección Científica, Estudios sobre Tula 2. México, DF: Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia. Cowgill, George L. 1997. “State and society at Teotihuacan.” Annual Review of Anthropology 26: 126–161. Darras, Veronique. 2006. “Las relaciones entre Chupícuaro y el centro de México durante el preclásico reciente. Una crítica de las interpretaciones arqueológicas.” Journal de la Société des Américanistes 92(1–2): 69–110. Dumond, Don E., and Florencia Muller. 1972. “Classic to Postclassic in Highland Central Mexico.” Science 175: 1208–1215. Enríquez Farias, Roxana. 2005. “El Rosario, un sitio en el valle de San Juan del Río, Querétaro, relacionado con Teotihuacan: Elementos para su estudio e interpretación.” PhD diss., Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia.

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Fournier Garcia, Patricia. 2006. “Lo Coyotlatelco: La construcción de narrativas arqueológicas acerca del Epiclásico.” In El fenómeno Coyotlatelco en el centro de México: Tiempo, espacio y significado, edited by Laura Solar Valverde, 431–441. México, DF: Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia. Gaxiola González, Margarita. 2006. “Tradición y estilo en el estudio de la variabilidad cerámica del Epiclásico en el centro de México.” In El fenómeno Coyotlatelco en el centro de México: Tiempo, espacio y significado, edited by Laura Solar Valverde, 31–54. México, DF: Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia. Gómez Chávez, Sergio. 2002. “Presencia del occidente de México en Teotihuacan. Aproximaciones a la política exterior del estado teotihuacano.” In Ideología y política a través de materiales, imágenes, y símbolos: memoria de la Primera Mesa Redonda de Teotihuacan, edited by María Elena Ruíz Gallut, 563–625. México, DF: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México. Healan, Dan M. 1997. “Pre-Hispanic quarrying in the Ucareo and Zinapécuaro obsidian source area.” Ancient Mesoamerica 8(1): 77–101. ———. 2012. “The archaeology of Tula, Hidalgo, Mexico.” Journal of Archaeological Research 20: 53–115. Hernández, Christine. 2000. “A history of Prehispanic ceramics, settlement, and frontier development in the Ucareo-Zinapécuaro obsidian source area, Michoacán, Mexico.” PhD diss., Tulane University. ———. 2016. “Ceramic evidence of Teotihuacan contact linking the Basin of Mexico, the El Bajío, and southern Hidalgo.” In Cultural dynamics and production activities in ancient western Mexico: Papers from a symposium held in the Center for Archaeological Research, El Colegio De Michoacán, 18–19 September 2014, edited by Eduardo Williams and Blanca Maldonado, 215–238. Oxford: Archaeopress Publishing. ———. 2018. “Settling the Ucareo Valley: Early Classic relationships between northeastern Michoacán, Mexico and the eastern El Bajío.” In City, craft, and residence in Mesoamerica: Papers in honor of Dan Healan, edited by Ronald Faulseit, Nezhualcoyotl Xiuhtecutli, and Haley Holt Mehta, 197–218. New Orleans: The Middle American Research Institute, Tulane University. Jiménez Moreno, Wigberto. 1959. “Síntesis de la historia pretolteca de Mesoamérica.” Esplendor del México Antiguo 2: 1019–1108. Kirchhoff, Paul. 1943. “Mesoamérica: Sus límites geográficos, composición étnica y caracteres culturales.” Actas Americana 1: 92–107. López Pérez, Claudia María. 2009. “Cerámica.” In Teotihuacan: Ciudad de los dioses, edited by Felipe Solís Olguín, 131–191. México, DF: Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia. López Pérez, Claudia, N. Careta, and L. Manzanilla Naim. 2006. “Atributos morfológicos y estilísticos de la cerámica Coyotlatelco en el centro ceremonial de Teotihuacan.” In El fenómeno Coyotlatelco en el centro de México: Tiempo, espacio y significado, edited by Laura Solar Valverde, 215–230. México, DF: Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia. Manzanilla, Linda, ed. 2005. Reacomodos demográficos del Clásico al Posclásico en el centro de México. México, DF: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México. Martínez Landa, Blanca Estela. 2009. “La cerámica arqueológica de La Mesa, Hidalgo.”

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MA thesis, Escuela Nacional de Antropología, Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia. Mastache, Alba Guadalupe, and Robert H. Cobean. 1989. “The Coyotlatelco culture and the origins of the Toltec state.” In Mesoamerica after the decline of Teotihuacan A.D. 700–900, edited by Richard A. Diehl and Janet Catherine Berlo, 49–67. Washington, D.C.: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection. ———. 1990. “La cultura Coyotlatelco en el área de Tula.” In Las industrias Coyotlatelco en el área de Tula, edited by A. G. Mastache, R. H. Cobean, C. Rees, and D. Jackson, 9–22. Colección Científica No. 221. México, DF: Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia. Mastache, Alba Guadalupe, Robert H. Cobean, and Dan M. Healan. 2002. Ancient Tollan: Tula and the Toltec heartland. Boulder: University Press of Colorado. Nalda, Enrique. 1991. “Secuencia cerámica del sur de Querétaro.” In Querétaro Prehispánico, edited by Ana María Crespo and Rosa Brambila, 31–56. Colección Científica 238. México, DF: Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia. Nichols, Deborah, and John McCullough. 1986. “Excavations at Xometla (TT21).” In The Teotihuacán Valley Project final report. Vol. 4, Toltec period occupation of the valley, edited by William T. Sanders, 53–194. Occasional Papers in Anthropology no. 13. University Park: Pennsylvania State University. Paredes Gudiño, B. L. 2005. “Análisis de flujos migratorios y composición multiétnica de la población de Tula, Hgo.” In Reacomodos demográficos del Clásico al Posclásico en el centro de México, edited by Linda Manzanilla, 203–225. México, DF: Instituto de Investigaciones Antropológicas, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México. Parsons, Jeffrey R., and Yoko Sugiura Yamamoto. 2012. “Teotihuacan and the Epiclassic in Central Mexico.” In The Oxford handbook of Mesoamerican archaeology, edited by Deborah L. Nichols and Christopher A. Pool, 309–323. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Porter, Muriel Noe. 1956. Excavations at Chupícuaro, Guanajuato, Mexico. Transactions of the American Philosophical Society vol. 46, pt. 5. Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society. Raisz, Erwin. 1959. Landforms of Mexico. A 1:1,000,000 scale map prepared for the Geography Branch of the Office of Naval Research. Cambridge: E. Raisz. Rattray, Evelyn Childs. 1966. “An archeological and stylistic study of Coyotlatelco pottery.” Mesoamerican Notes 7–8: 87–211. ———. 2001. Teotihuacan: Ceramics, chronology, and cultural trends. México, DF: Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia. Rees, Charles. 1990. “Estudio sobre la cantera–taller del sitio Magoni.” In Las industrias líticas Coyotlatelco en el área de Tula, edited by Guadalupe A. Mastache, Robert H. Cobean, C. Rees, and E. Jackson, 23–143. México, DF: Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia. Saint-Charles Zetina, Juan Carlos, and Miguel Argüelles Gamboa. 1991. “Cerro de la Cruz. Persistencia de un centro ceremonial.” In Querétaro prehispánico, edited by Ana María Crespo and Rosa Brambila, 57–98. Colección Científica 238. México, DF: Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia. Saint-Charles Zetina, Juan Carlos, and Roxana Enrique Farias. 2006. “Cerámica del Epiclásico en el sur de Querétaro.” In El fenómeno Coyotlatelco en el centro de México:

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Tiempo, espacio, y significado, edited by Laura Solar Valverde, 309–326. Coordinación Nacional de Arqueología, Mexico. México, DF: Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia. Sanders, William. 2006. “Late Xolalpan-Metepec/Oxtotipac-Coyotlatelco; Ethnic succession or changing patterns of political economy: A reevaluation.” In El fenómeno Coyotlatelco en el centro de México: Tiempo, espacio, y significado, edited by Laura Solar Valverde, 183–200. México, DF: Coordinación Nacional de Arqueología, Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia. Sanders, William T., Jeffrey R. Parsons, and Richard S. Santley. 1979. The Basin of Mexico: Ecological Processes in the Evolution of a Civilization. New York: Academic Press. Séjourné, Laurette. 1956. Burning Water: Thought and Religion in Ancient Mexico. London: Thames and Hudson. Solar Valverde, Laura. 2006. “El fenómeno Coyotlatelco en el centro de México: Consideraciones en torno a un debate académico.” In El fenómeno Coyotlatelco en el centro de México: tiempo, espacio, y significado, edited by Laura Solar Valverde, 1–30. Coordinación Nacional de Arqueología, Mexico. México, DF: Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia. Snarskis, Michael. 1985. “Appendix III: Ceramic Analysis.” In Acámbaro: Frontier Settlement on the Tarascan-Aztec Border, edited by Shirley Gorenstein. Vanderbilt University Publications in Anthropology no. 32. Nashville: Vanderbilt University. Sugiura Yamamoto, Yoko. 1996. “El Epiclásico y el Problema del Coyotlatelco Vistos desde el Valle de Toluca.” In Arqueología Mesoamericana: Homenaje a William T. Sanders Vol. I, edited by Alba Guadalupe Mastache, Jeffrey R. Parsons, Robert S. Santley, and Mari Carmen Serra Puche, 233–256. México, DF: Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia. ———. 2006. “¿Cambio gradual o discontinuidad en la cerámica?: Discusión acerca del paso del Clásico al Epiclásico, visto desde el Valle de Toluca.” In El fenómeno Coyotlatelco en el centro de México: tiempo, espacio, y significado, edited by Laura Solar Valverde, 127–162. México, DF: Coordinación Nacional de Arqueología, Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia. Vargas P., Ernesto. 1975. “La Cerámica.” In Teotenango: El Antiguo Lugar de la Muralla, edited by Roman Piña Chan, 189–267. México, DF: Dirección de Turismo.

5 El Grillo The Reestablishment of Community and Identity in Far Western Mexico Christopher S. Beekman

I have previously supported a theoretical and methodological approach to migration that emphasizes comparing data that originate in different disciplines in order to bracket a proposed period of migration. The material culture evidence then becomes susceptible to analysis as the medium by which migrants and prior populations expressed new relationships to one another and to their altered social environment. Material culture may be used to express or suppress difference, depending on other variables such as the size, structure, and prior contacts of the migrant community. It is at this point that the unique contributions of archaeology to broader theoretical analysis become apparent. The possible research questions include What are the social consequences of migration for both migrants and the receiving population? What degree of separation is maintained between them? Do the migrants form a single or multiple social units? How is social identity maintained or lost among migrant groups? What are the long-term impacts of social integration of migrants as opposed to the impact when they maintain separate internal economies and social networks? While migration research is already vast, investigators of modern migration are rarely in a position to see the longer-term impacts that form the touchstone of archaeology. The dislocations of people during the last 1,000 years of pre-Columbian Mesoamerican history provide many opportunities to address issues of importance for Mesoamerican social and cultural dynamics and theoretical questions about migration (see chapter 1, this volume). In previous publications, Alec Christensen and I (Beekman 1996a, 2010, 2015; Beekman and

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Christensen 2003, 2011) have gradually sharpened an argument that intensifying drought along the northern fringe of Mesoamerica encouraged first political intensification and ultimately abandonment by the end of the Epiclassic. Migrations of sedentary farmers southward into areas of greater climatic stability triggered a variety of local responses and better-known migrations into Central Mexico by more flexible social groups followed centuries later. Following our initial synthetic treatment, we offered a detailed analysis of evidence from one location in this broader migratory process—the Mezquital Valley of Hidalgo (Beekman and Christensen 2011). In particular, we emphasized the role material culture played as a medium of expression between ethnolinguistic groups as they met and eventually reached an accommodation under the emerging material culture complex known as Coyotlatelco. This chapter seeks to extend this analysis to another area impacted directly by the demographic shifts of the period because of its proximity to the volatile northern Mesoamerican frontier: the Tequila valleys of central Jalisco. While a characteristic of the Mezquital analysis was an overabundance of data at many scales, this will not be the case in Jalisco. Archaeological research in western Mexico is underdeveloped compared to other areas of Mesoamerica and much remains to be done in every field of relevance to this study. Nonetheless, the available evidence suggests some answers to critical questions about the nature of migration into this area, particularly some differences from what happened in the Mezquital. In this chapter, I seek to know more about the size and structure of the migrating groups in order to understand the conditions under which they became established in central Jalisco. One potentially enlightening area for research is migrants’ reestablishment of community (Shami 1993). Migrants, even numerically large groups, do not necessarily bring the knowledge or skills necessary to rebuild the cultural institutions they had in their place of origin. Small groups, or those that represent limited sectors of society, will have a more difficult time in reestablishing the complex range of social activities that turn “people” into a “community.” To ensure what Portes and Manning (1986) call “institutional completeness,” migrant communities must include members who reproduce an array of social practices. This may refer to priestly specialists who know how to carry out the full suite of religious rituals, specialists in preparing food in accordance with cultural beliefs, and producers of material goods that play a role in any of these practices. These skills may be associated with class, gender, or other categories that contribute to the richness of any social group. The mere presence of these people and skills does not result in their continuity

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of course, and migrants must choose the cultural practices they wish to continue. One past publication (Beekman and Christensen 2011) placed the greatest emphasis on this element of agency, whereas this chapter (like a companion piece—Beekman n.d.) concerns itself more with the preservation of social institutions. Geography and Regional History: The Broad Strokes

Topography and rivers play important roles in establishing the migration routes this chapter discusses. The neovolcanic axis is the chain of mountains running west to east that crosses Central Mexico from the Pacific to Caribbean coasts. The Río Lerma-Santiago forms the northern edge of much of this mountain range, originating in the Valley of Toluca in Central Mexico and winding its way westward along the border between Michoacán and Guanajuato (plate 10). This river, known as the Chiconauatengo (Nahuatl chiucnahui [nine] plus tenco [lip, mouth, rim]) at the time of the conquest (Barlow 1944), enters Lake Chapala at the border with Jalisco and follows a deep barranca along the northern edge of the Tequila valleys, the focus of this chapter. From this point it is known today as the Río Grande de Santiago and descends westward toward the coast. The Sierra Madre Occidental crosses the Río Grande at this point, bringing tributaries such as the Río Juchipila, the Río Bolaños, and others south into the barranca. Thus, three major thoroughfares lead into the Tequila valleys. The first is topographically more open and follows the Río Lerma and the open valleys of the Bajío westward into the Los Altos region and from there across the barranca into central Jalisco. The second consists of various canyons running north to south that channel movement southward into the barranca and central Jalisco. The third consists of the coastal plain. This is the easiest route that links western Mexico with points north and south. Since the 1980s, paleoclimatologists have been collecting cores from lakes across the neovolcanic axis. Analyses of the pollen, diatom, ostracod, titanium, and other records recovered from lakes in the western and central highlands of Mexico present evidence for regional drought (numerous references summarized in Metcalfe and Davies 2007 and Metcalfe et al. 2015; see Mayewski et al. 2004 for its association with the Medieval Climate Anomaly). After a wet period in the Late Formative, desiccation reached its peak in the eighth century CE and continued into the Early Postclassic. Recently, investigators have collected more refined sequences from laminated sediments from the Laguna Santa María del Oro in southern Nayarit, the

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Laguna Juanacatlán in western Jalisco, Lake Minucúa in Oaxaca (Goman et al. 2018; Metcalfe et al. 2010; Rodríguez-Ramírez et al. 2015; VázquezCastro et al. 2008), a sequence of bald-cypress-tree rings from Hidalgo (Stahle et al. 2011), and a speleothem rainfall record from Guerrero (Bernal et al. 2011). These more fine-grained datasets support the existing model of long-term drought in the Epiclassic and Early Postclassic while promising a more dynamic understanding of it. Drought would have effectively pulled the boundary for rainfall maize agriculture westward and southward, as Armillas (1964, 1969) posited long ago and as is visible in shifting settlement locations (Braniff 1974). Communities along the northern Mesoamerican fringe initially expanded and intensified political activity just before the Epiclassic period (e.g., Cárdenas García 1999; Jiménez Betts 2007). By the Early Postclassic however, a broad swathe of the frontier had been depopulated (Filini and Cárdenas García 2007) and/or the population had adopted mobility strategies that made them harder to identify and date. This shift triggered other changes. As population pushed outward from North-Central Mexico, trade networks were similarly displaced to the Pacific coast (Ramírez Urrea et al. 2005), where during the Early Postclassic they are known as the Aztatlán complex of coastal centers (e.g., Mathiowetz 2011; Meighan 1999). I will focus on migrations in the far western states by first discussing the evidence from linguistics, ethnohistory, and biological anthropology. Linguistics

The linguistic landscape of far western Mexico at the time of the Spanish conquest has received limited study. Although the area is usually portrayed as linguistically fragmented at the time of contact, this tends to be overstated due to the plethora of names assigned to indigenous groups in the region in the early years of the colonial period. Santoscoy’s (1902a, b, c) analysis of Colmenero’s 1648–1649 Visita General established that while some names, such as Cora, referred to language, others referred to community- or polity-scale identities that could obscure multiple languages in a single town or could imply linguistic distinctions where they did not exist. For example, in the Coca-speaking polity based at Tonalá, the secondary town of Tlajomulco was reported as speaking Tlaxomulteca. However, Santoscoy (1902a, 314) showed that Tlaxomulteca was actually the same as Coca and that the group’s expressed identity thus emphasized community membership over shared language (see also the examples from Santoscoy

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1902c, 329). This is not unlike the situation in contact period Central Mexico, where altepetl, or polity identities, tended to be more important than the languages or ethnic groups they united (chapter 6, this volume). Other points of confusion occur in the early sources when multiple names (perhaps originating in different languages) were used to refer to the same tongue. Santoscoy (1902a, 313–314) explained the anomalous replacement of Caxcanes by Tochos in the same towns in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries as the widespread adoption of the pejorative Tocho after the Caxcanes’ unsuccessful uprising in 1540 (Dávila Garibi 1940). Scholars working in the area today (e.g., Yáñez Rosales 2001) generally recognize these caveats to linguistic fragmentation, but the characterization of the region as “linguistically highly diverse” continues. In truth, sixteenth- to seventeenth-century documentation and later ethnography establish the widespread presence of Southern Uto-Aztecan (SUA) languages in far western Mexico (see chapter 2, this volume), accounting for all classifiable languages except Purhépecha (plate 11) (Barragán Trejo and Yáñez Rosales 2001; Gerhard 1993; Valiñas 1994; Yáñez Rosales 2001). Given this consistent affiliation, western Mexico appears to have been no more diverse for its size than the Guatemalan highlands, where a diverse collection of languages from the Maya family and intrusives such as Pipil existed, or perhaps southern Mexico, where a single name such as Mixtec glosses over what are effectively several dozen languages. Southern Uto-Aztecan (Shaul 2014) is primarily represented by Tepiman and Cáhita languages along the Sierra Madre to the north, Corachol languages (Cora and Huichol) in Nayarit and Jalisco to the southwest, and Nahuan to the southeast. The Cora, or Nayarí, are located in northern Nayarit, while the Huichol, or Wixáritari, are generally located to the south and east of the Nayarí. These groups are sometimes referred to jointly as the Nayarita, as is the mountainous region where they are found. Several languages generally affiliated with SUA existed closer to the coast, but identifying them has relied more on the careful analysis of historical statements than on linguistic data. Totorame speakers occupied the northern coast of Nayarit and southern Sinaloa. Tecual/Tecualme/Tecualteco communities formed an arc from Ixcuintla near the coast to Ahuacatlan and perhaps as far south as Cacama, Jalisco (Santoscoy 1902a, 332; 1902b, 310). Coano towns formed two clusters in southern Nayarit and the Nayarit-Jalisco border (Anguiano 1992, maps 8 and 9; Santoscoy 1902b, 310). The Tecoxquines occupied communities from Oztotipac in Jalisco to Compostela (Anguiano 1992, 8, 9; Santoscoy 1902b, 311; 1902c, 332). Based on their names and on

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overlaps in their distributions, Santoscoy (1902c, 332) proposed that the Tecoxquines, Tecuales, and the Tecuexes all referred to the same language and that they were the same as the Wixáritari (see also Gerhard 1993, 40). Earlier documents suggest instead that these were distinct languages. A 1525 census covering southern Nayarit recorded the polities of Tetitlan, Tlagualachitipan, and Aguacatlan and their subject towns (Anónimo 1937 analyzed in Anguiano 1992; Kelly 1945). Their communities were occupied by Otomí and/or Naguatlatos, often as multiethnic towns with their own political leaders. “Naguatlato” is commonly interpreted to mean a Nahua speaker or interpreter, although given the closely related languages in this region, this term may have been used more broadly. For example, the towns of Aguacatlan and Xala are specifically listed as mostly Naguatlatos in 1525 but they are listed as Tecualteco and Tecualme in the 1648–1649 Visita general (Santoscoy 1902a, 332; 1902b, 310). Spaniards most likely used the term Otomí to indicate “not-Nahua” instead of referring to an Otomanguean language (Yáñez Rosales 2001). The term was used most frequently in southwestern Jalisco, where Naguatlatos were rare. Three ethnolinguistic groups with intriguing associations were located in the east—from south to north, they are the Coca, Tecuexe, and Caxcan. The Coca language was spoken across communities from the Chapala and Sayula Basins in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries (Baus de Czitrom 1982) and has been related to Cáhita languages found today in Sinaloa and Sonora to the northwest (Dávila Garibi 1942, 1943). Tecuexe was spoken along the north edge of Coca territory, stretching from the Los Altos region of eastern Jalisco to the Nayarit-Jalisco border in the west (Baus de Czitrom 1982). The Tecuexe stated that their language differed from the Coca (Santoscoy 1902a, 314), but the linguistic affiliation remains unclear. At the time of the Spanish conquest, the Tecuexe were under pressure from Caxcan speakers, who occupied the lands in northern Jalisco and Zacatecas. Caxcan is considered to be a close variant of central Nahuatl (Barragán Trejo and Yáñez Rosales 2001; Dávila Garibi 1940, 1950; Moctezuma Zamarrón 2001, 381–382; Valiñas 1994; see Canger 1988) and may have been the language that is partially preserved in the Arte of Cortés y Zedeño in 1765 (in Yáñez Rosales 1998). Finally, the Tepecanos, or Xumatcam, divided the Corachol speakers to the west from the Caxcanes to the east. They formed a wedge of just a handful of communities that are linguistically related to Tepehuan, a Tepiman language found primarily in Durango (León 1902; Mason 1916).

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It is important to note that other late intrusions have contributed to the difficulty of reconstructing pre-Columbian patterns. The Purhépecha language of Michoacán was present in multiple communities in south-central Jalisco but has usually been considered intrusive and is associated with Tarascan military forays into that area in the fifteenth century (Santoscoy 1902a, 319) and again with later Tarascan troops who accompanied Cristobal de Olid when he came to conquer Colima in the 1520s (Santoscoy 1902a, 315). Tlaxcaltecan and Texcocan troops brought Central Mexican Nahuatl to the western state in 1541 and especially in 1591 (Altman 2010; Alva de Ixtlilxochitl [1608] 1891, 13th Relación, 444; Rivera Villanueva and Berumen Félix 2011a, b; Santoscoy 1902c, 333–334). Beyond this, beginning around 1550, the Spanish friars formally instituted the teaching of Catholic doctrine using Nahuatl, a language that was already widely understood across the entire region (Santoscoy 1902a, 317, 323; Yáñez Rosales 1994, 2008). Thus, representatives of colonialism introduced and spread Central Mexican Nahuatl but as a successful overlay atop a prior substrate of related languages. To summarize, Southern Uto-Aztecan languages were widespread and languages with some sort of SUA affiliation were found in the Tequila and Atemajac Valleys of central Jalisco in the sixteenth century. Southern Jalisco and Colima remain very poorly understood, although languages related to Nahuatl are reported all the way down the coasts of Michoacán and Guerrero (Guerrero and del Castillo 1948; Weitlaner 1948). A number of languages are still unidentified. The discontinuous distribution of several related languages (e.g., Tepecano in relation to Tepehuan) suggests that movement and/or isolation had taken place in recent millennia. Even so, there is some reason to be cautious. The historical records I discuss below report multiple examples of language change as migrants assimilated into local populations. This suppression of language suggests that some migrants may have sought to play down their cultural differences as they were outnumbered or otherwise disadvantaged in their new milieu. Migration Annals and Traditional Oral Histories Y hasta hoy no se sabe por cosa cierta a donde es la provincia de Aztatlán, ni ninguno de nuestros españoles la ha visto; solo se tiene noticia de ella y se sabe que cae hacia el Septentrión, y ahí, como digo, se apareció el demonio la primera vez a dos indios principales, llamados el uno Tecpatzin y el otro Huitziton, y les mandó que saliesen de aquella tierra estéril y desabrida, y ellos, obedeciendo, salieron en busca de nuevas

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tierras el año de 1113, y habiendo caminado un año, hicieron alto en un lugar que nombraron Hueyculhuacan. (And up until today no one knows for certain where the province of Aztatlán lies, nor have any of us Spaniards seen it; we have only heard of it and know that it lies toward the north, and there, it is said, the demon appeared for the first time to two important Indians, one of them called Tecpatzin and the other Huitziton, and he commanded that they leave that sterile and barren land, and they, obeying, left in search of new lands in the year 1113, and having walked one year, they stopped in a place that they named Hueyculhuacan.) (Tello [1653] 1891, 14)

As in Central Mexico, traditions in the western states tell of the migration of peoples out of the north that show varying degrees of correspondence with the distribution of the ethnic/linguistic groups I have reviewed. Our sources include a traditional narrative recorded in the sixteenth century and surviving oral traditions that that written record may have been partially based on. Fray Antonio Tello’s mammoth Crónica Miscelanea of (1653) drew on numerous sources to compile the history of Jalisco and Nayarit. The relevant source for my purpose is the testament of don Francisco Pantecatl, ruler of the polity based at Tzapotzingo, Nayarit (Tello [1653] 1891, 148, 257, 361). Pantecatl wrote and maintained an account of the conquest and its aftermath until the 1560s (Yáñez Rosales 2010) and included a migration narrative. Tello drew upon Pantecatl’s account, but he seems to have touched it up. Tello presented an introduction that he evidently borrowed from Torquemada’s Monarquia Indiana ([1615] 1723, Libro Segundo, 78– 79)1 and that is partly represented in the quote above—the devil guided the Mexicanos out of Aztatlán to Hueyculhuacan before taking the name of Huitzilopuchtli. The group divided themselves into the Mexicanos, Tlacochcalcos, Chalmecas, and Chalpicos.2 Upon their arrival in Chicomoztoc, they split up and thus Tello presents two itineraries, describing a few additional events that happened along the way. The itinerary the Tlacochcalcos, Chalmecas, and Chalpicos followed descended from Sinaloa to Nayarit via the coastal plain, then turned inland toward the lakes region of central Jalisco. While the path passes through numerous communities known in the historical sources, we do not always know their linguistic associations. A comparison of the toponyms on the itinerary with their linguistic association in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries (Baus de Czitrom 1982; Santoscoy 1902a, b, c) (plate 12) identifies the specifically Tecual towns of Jala and Ahuacatlan; the Coano and

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Tecuexe town of Xuchitepec; the Tecuexe town of Tequila; the Tecuexe and Coca towns of Atemajac, Ocotlan, and Tonalá; and the Coca towns of Cuiseo, Mezcala, Chapala, and Jocotepec. The Coca may predominate, but Tecuexe and possibly related tongues are strongly implicated. The narrative in Tello specifically added that the migrants lost their “Mexicano” language after putting their own names on the rivers, mountains, animals, and so forth in the region. The second narrative Tello discussed takes place entirely inland, in the canyons of the Sierra Madre Occidental. This itinerary follows the movement of the fourth group, the Mexicanos (plate 12). After leaving Chicomoztoc, this route passes through identifiable locales in Durango before listing the founding of towns at El Teul, Tuitlan, Juchipila, Tlaltenango, and Teocaltech, nearly all of which were major centers of the Caxcanes in the early sixteenth century (Tello [1653] 1891, chapter 2, 14–22).3 For example, El Teul was described as “encima de un peñol de pena tajada . . . y le torrearon y fortalecieron porque le querían tener para amparo de los sucesos de guerra, y edificaron un templo suntuoso, que fue el santuario general para ellos, donde sacrificaban todos los que prendían en ella” (atop a peak of sheer rock . . . and they built it up and fortified it because they wanted to have protection from attacks, and they built a magnificent temple, that was the general sanctuary for them, and they sacrificed all those that they captured in it) (Tello [1653] 1891, 19). The narrative continues to call these migrants “Mexicanos” but segues into more recent conquests by the Caxcanes into the Los Altos region of northeastern Jalisco. The previous inhabitants of the Teocaltiche Valley (named as the Zacatecos, Huachichiles, and Tequexes) “retiraron a las serranías de Tepec, Xora, y Ahuacatitlán, que ahora se llama San Pedro de Analco” (fled to the mountains of Tepec, Xora, and Ahuacatitlan, which is now known as San Pedro de Analco) (plate 12). Tepocanteco refugees from the Juchipila and Bolaños canyons fled to San Cristobal de la Barranca in the Río Grande de Santiago (Tello [1653] 1891, 19). After the Mexicanos were blocked in by their enemies, they conquered eastward along the Río Lerma into Michoacán. Some stayed there and lost their Mexicano language, but the others met up with the migrants from the coastal narrative and pushed onward to Central Mexico. Tello treats this story as a prologue to the better-known Central Mexican tradition and clearly assumes that the Mexicanos were the Mexica. Given the disjunction from the coastal narrative, this inland narrative may have been a separate tradition that Tello (or Pantecatl) grafted onto the overall story. The Caxcan narrative preserved in text relates to oral histories among

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the ethnographic Nayarí, Wixáritari, and Xumatcam. Special singers recounted this story among apparently all three groups (Diguet 1899, 573– 575) in much the same way that the Central Mexican migration narratives were likely transmitted before they were committed to paper. According to Diguet’s version from the Wixáritari from over a century ago, Majakuagy (Wixáritari; “deer-tail”) came from the area of San Luis Potosí to instruct the people in their religious duties and to preach against cannibalism. He made enemies and converts and sought to found an empire where they might live in peace. The people followed him west for five years. Unfortunately, the many place-names given as part of the chant can no longer be identified. Majakuagy and his followers arrived in the mountains and forced the prior inhabitants into submission, thus gaining control of a vast territory. Others were allowed to move into Majakuagy’s territory as long as they adopted his religion (Diguet 1899, 590). He established a set of religious precepts and deities based on himself as Ta-Totzi (Our GreatGrandfather), Fire (Ta-tehuari; Our Grandfather), and Sun (Ta-Hsiao; Our Father), all important figures in Nayarita religion today (Diguet 1899, 575–578). After Majakuagy’s death, his mummified remains were kept in a cave and civil war broke out among the Wixáritari, Nayarí, and Xumatcam as each sought the mantle of supreme authority. But an invasion of Nahuatl speakers into the region caused great disruption, as they conquered the Nayarí city of Teul; established a teocalli, or temple; and carried out human sacrifices there. Diguet noted the similarities between these stories and Tello’s inland narrative, and there may also be a relationship to a Wixáritari myth Weigand (1975) recounted. The story, which is embedded in a longer oral narrative that Weigand does not describe, describes their conflict with an “evil priest . . . [who] lived with his eagles and jaguars on a great rock surrounded by walls and covered with buildings.” The site could be any one of several Caxcan redoubts such as El Teul, while the reference to eagles and jaguars convincingly suggests the military orders known from Central Mexico, illustrating the Caxcanes’ strong ties with the east. The inland narrative from the sixteenth century and the oral narrative from the 1890s would appear to tell the same story of Nahua migrants from North-Central Mexico pushing the prior inhabitants into the mountains of the Nayarita. This may correspond to the demographic push out of North-Central Mexico in association with the centuries-long drought. This is an admittedly long period of time for an oral tradition to have survived, and we could compress this time frame by positing that the earlier movement in which Majakuagy led the Wixáritari and the Nayarí westward from

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the same region might be the basis for the historical narrative. That would move the Caxcan conquests and migration to somewhere perhaps in the Postclassic. As discussed below, the archaeological evidence tends to support the former proposal. Fikes cautions that Diguet’s account has not been verified by other scholars (Fikes 1985, 31–32) but also notes that Diguet’s informant, Huacűri Matűni, was renowned as a knowledgeable singer who became a powerful ancestor after his death (Fikes 1985, 270–271). The existence of the narrative Diguet recounted is also supported by ethnographic and ethnohistoric data. For example, Ortega ([1754] 1887, 15–16) also recounted stories from the eighteenth century of how an invasion of “Mexicanos” displaced the Nayarí into the canyons and hilltops of the mountainous areas of Nayarit. The Nayarí also told the Norwegian explorer Lumholtz (1902, I, 513) that they had come from the east, adding that they had spoken a different language at their place of origin. Lumholtz noted the Wixáritari belief that they first came from the south, passing under the earth until they arose in the desert country of San Luis Potosí, from which they moved westward (Lumholtz 1902, II, 23). A Xumatcam elder told Hrdlička (1903, 409–410) that they had long ago separated from their bárbaro relatives to the north, perhaps a reference to their linguistic ties to the Tepehuan. Movement was a clearly broadly referenced concept across these various native accounts. The linguistic, ethnohistoric, and ethnographic sources record multiple migrations. Pantecatl’s narrative from the early 1500s referred to people who followed the coastal plain that linked Sinaloa to Colima. According to Pantecatl, their journey included a foray inland to the Tequila valleys and the Sayula and Chapala Basins. This narrative potentially links Cáhitan speakers from the coast of Sinaloa to the Coca and perhaps to Tecuexe speakers of central Jalisco. Although this narrative is linguistically unclear, it corresponds well with the archaeologically defined Aztatlán communities such as Amapa and Guasave (Ekholm 1942; Meighan 1976). Tello’s second migration narrative refers to substantial numbers of Nahua speakers who followed the inner edge of the Sierra Madre at a later date. They were likely in motion at the time of the Spanish conquest, when Caxcanes were pushing the Tecuexes out of Teocaltiche (Weigand 1996; Weigand and García de Weigand 1996). The oral histories also refer to this migration of Nahua speakers and their demographic impact from the other side of the conflict. They allude to a still earlier movement of Corachol speakers that Majakuagy led into the mountains of Nayarit and Jalisco. None of these accounts claims that previous populations were totally replaced. The

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Pantecatl account states that the travelers adopted local languages; these may have been small groups. The Caxcan and Corachol accounts both state that the prior inhabitants were not always pushed out but were allowed to stay if they submitted to the tributary or religious demands of their new neighbors. Biological Anthropology

Biological data from western Mexico are limited. Archaeologically recovered skeletal remains have been analyzed as part of comparisons to highland Central Mexico (Beekman and Christensen 2003, 127–133; Gómez Valdés et al. 2008) but as relatively empirical tests without the benefit of archaeological contextualization. DNA analyses of living populations have sought to broadly relate the American Southwest with Mesoamerica and have found that the Wixáritari linked both regions (Merrill et al. 2009; Rangel-Villalobos et al. 2008; Snow et al. 2010, fig. 2, 2011, 3131) or possessed specifically southwestern sub-haplotypes (Kemp et al. 2010). One study of Y chromosomes (Páez-Riberos et al. 2006, 222–225, fig. 2) found that the Wixáritari included unidentified Y haplotypes that had earlier (unspecified) and later (Rarámuri-Zuñi-Purhépecha) affiliations. Some historians claim that this supports a Wixáritari origin in the central deserts of San Luis Potosí (Grady and Furst 2011), but the original studies they cite say nothing about geographic origins. One relevant bioarchaeological study is that of the skeletal remains from the Sayula (600–1100 CE) and Amacueca (1100 CE–Contact) phases in the Sayula Basin (Acosta Nieva and Uruñuela Ladrón de Guevara 2005; Uruñuela Ladrón de Guevara 1994). The analysis could not incorporate the earlier Verdia phase remains due to sample sizes, so the transition to the Sayula phase could not be assessed. However, there was a notable change from comparatively robust individuals from the Sayula phase to more gracile skeletal morphology in the succeeding Amacueca phase. Even among the burials in the same site, the differences were notable and manifested in stature and in cranial and subcranial measures of robusticity. The Amacueca phase sites with burials lie strictly within the area defined as Cocaspeaking in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and their locations correspond well to specific Coca communities and to towns Tello mentioned as part of the coastal and lakes region migration itinerary. Although this is the sole contribution that bioarchaeological studies have made so far to

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this question, it does suggest a possible temporal anchor for the Pantecatl narrative. Archaeology

I will focus my discussion of archaeological evidence on central Jalisco, which is largely defined by large valleys and lake basins. The Tequila valleys circle the Tequila Volcano and are subdivided into a broad agave landscape in the north, the Laguna Magdalena Basin in the west, and the AhualulcoTeuchitlán-Tala valley in the south. Temperatures increase and precipitation decreases as one goes from south to north, making the northern valley more vulnerable to climatic variation. This is reflected in today’s industrial agricultural economy: irrigated sugar cane is widely grown in the southern valley and agave cultivation dominates in the north. Of equal importance for my discussion is the Atemajac Valley in eastern Jalisco. Its similar semiarid climate has been obscured in historic times by the growth of Guadalajara, which has replaced most agriculture with urban sprawl. We owe our first true sequence for central Jalisco to the work of Javier Galván Villegas (1982, 1983, 2005), who made strategic use of salvage excavations to assemble a sequence of change across his Tabachines, El Grillo, and Atemajac complexes. Each exists in recognizable form today, albeit with modifications (table 5.1). El Grillo and Atemajac each marked major transitions in material culture that Galván associated with population changes. In brief, Tabachines was defined by shaft tombs and circular guachimontón temples (Galván Villegas 1976, 1982, 1983, 1991) and El Grillo by new rectangular public architecture and box tombs (Galván Villegas 1976, 1984, 1992, 1993). The Early Postclassic Atemajac I phase is a notable elaboration of the earlier El Grillo ceramics and architecture. People participated in the coastal Aztatlán complex, as is evidenced by the presence of variants of Mixteca-Puebla iconography in ceramics and sculpture (Pohl 2012). The Atemajac complex Galván (1979, 1983, 2007) originally defined included rustic residential structures clustered in defensible locations. This complex now forms the Late Postclassic Atemajac II phase, although some of its hallmark ceramic types begin earlier in Atemajac I (see Nance et al. 2013). Atemajac I phase public architecture represents an internal development of the rectangular complexes of the Epiclassic. The Tequila II–IV phases (300 BCE–450/500 CE) build on Galván’s Tabachines phase and are associated with the Teuchitlán culture (Weigand

Table 5.1. Chronological table for regions discussed in the text

Calendar Date (CE and BCE)

Galván Villegas 1991, 2005 (also in Aronson 1993; Beekman and Galván Villegas 2001)

Beekman (in press a)

Sayula Basin (García Zaldúa 2016; Valdez et al. 2005)

1600

Tonalá

Atemajac II

Late Amacueca

1500 1400

Atemajac I

1300 1200

Early Amacueca Atemajac

1100

Sayula II

1000 900

Hiatus

El Grillo

800

Sayula I

700 600

El Grillo

500

Tequila IV

Verdia II

400 300 200

Tabachines

Verdia I Tequila III

100

Late Usmajac

0 100

  Tequila II

200 300 400 500 600 700 800

 

Early Usmajac Tequila I Atotonilco

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1985). The major center of Los Guachimontones and smaller sites elsewhere in the valleys dominated a population that numbered somewhere in the tens of thousands and occasionally interred high-status dead in shaft and chamber tombs beneath public architecture. Ceremonial centers included circular temple groups, ball courts, and residences for commoners and the elite. High-status goods that served as important vehicles for iconography included elaborately decorated red-on-cream ceramics, greenstone and shell ornaments (López Mestas 2011), and hollow figures depicting people of varying status (Beekman and Pickering 2016) and deities such as the Old Fire God (Beekman 2019). Although the region may have been undergoing a period of decentralization after 200 CE, sites and architecture continued to be built (Beekman 2007). The latest radiocarbon dates (summarized here as 1-sigma ranges) date activity at Circle 8 at Los Guachimontones to 220–400 CE (complete data in Beekman and Weigand 2008, figure 10), the construction of Circle A at Huitzilapa to sometime after 230–390 CE (Ramos de la Vega and López Mestas 1996), and activity at circular Group 14 at Llano Grande to 200–300 CE (Beekman 2002). The final Tequila IV phase was defined by the late burials at Tabachines (Beekman and Weigand 2008) but is poorly represented at living settlements due to the absence of the diagnostic Arroyo Seco ware. I proposed an end date of 450/500 CE to leave room for this late material, but some archaeologists (e.g., Jiménez Betts 2017) consider that to be too late. If we were to push the transition date earlier, the changes described below for the following El Grillo phase would be further accentuated. As it is, a peculiarity of the El Grillo phase is the way it appears to be fully formed from the beginning; the implication is that “complete institutions” or communities were establishing themselves in central Jalisco at this time. El Grillo Phase, ca. 450/500 CE The first radiocarbon dates for the El Grillo phase begin in 425–545 CE with burials at La Higuerita (López Mestas C. and Montejano Esquivias 2009, cuadro 1),4 leaving little space between the Teuchitlán culture and the fully established El Grillo complex that follows. Settlement became more dispersed in the northern valleys and the La Venta Corridor (Beekman 1996b; Heredia Espinoza 2008, 2015, 2017) and shifted southward in the Magdalena Lake Basin in concert with a three-meter drop in lake level (Anderson et al. 2013). The settlement and lake evidence are consistent with the regional-scale evidence for drought that forced agrarian settlement southward.

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Figure 5.1. Map of central Jalisco, showing El Grillo phase centers in relation to the older Teuchitlán culture settlement core.

The El Grillo phase is distinguished by other changes in the Tequila phase settlement pattern. The primate center of Los Guachimontones was nearly abandoned in favor of new and evenly spaced major settlements (figure 5.1). The major El Grillo ceremonial centers were Ixtépete (figure 5.2) (Castro Leal and Ochoa 1975; Galván Villegas 1975), Coyula (Montejano Esquivias 2007), and the eponymous El Grillo (figure 5.3) in the Atemajac Valley (Galván Villegas 1992). Oconahua (Cach Avendaño 2008a; Smith Márquez 2008), Santa Cruz de Bárcenas (Weigand 1990), and La Higuerita (López Mestas and Montejano Esquivias 2003; Montejano Esquivias 2007) formed an arc around the Tequila phase settlement concentration in the southern Tequila valleys. No chronological distinction among these El Grillo centers has been identified as yet.5 Figures 5.2 and 5.3 depict two of the new centers—Ixtépete and El Grillo. Both are sprawling, but in common with the rest of the new El Grillo ceremonial centers, they each have a singular locus of public architecture. At Ixtépete, it is the large platform E-1, while at El Grillo it is Structures 4, 5, and 6, which were located atop a single platform and formed what has been called a U-shaped structure. La Higuerita has a large platform, and Santa Cruz de Bárcenas has a U-shaped structure. Oconahua centers on a U-shaped arrangement 125 meters long by 120 meters wide (Cach

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Figure 5.2. Reconstruction of the site of Ixtépete, located on the western edge of modern Guadalajara. Image courtesy of Elizabeth Rangel and Diego Toscano (see Rangel and Toscano n.d.).

Avendaño 2008a, fig. 4) that has been called a tecpan, referring to the Postclassic Central Mexican palace form (Weigand 1979). The new public buildings include new construction techniques such as the use of adobe bricks (visible in figure 5.4), while the cited structures at Ixtépete, El Grillo, and Coyula have tall talud-tablero, or “batter and panel,” facades found at other Epiclassic centers such as Xochicalco. Stone sculpture was nonexistent at most centers just as it was in earlier periods, and the sculptures illustrated from Oconahua (Cach Avendaño 2008a, fig. 5) may date from the following Postclassic occupation. The new ceremonial centers were spaced across the bottomlands of the Tequila and Atemajac Valleys. Site locations in the Tequila valleys mostly avoid the old centers of population from the Tequila phase, and one could speculate that they even overlapped chronologically with the Teuchitlán culture (Beekman 1996b, 959–960). The site of Navajas formerly preserved an El Grillo phase enclosed patio that was appended to an earlier circular group, but their contemporaneity could not be established before the enclosed patio was destroyed by the property owner in 2004. If contemporaneity between old and new complexes is demonstrated, it would mean that older authorities were incapable of preventing the new centers from being founded on prime agricultural lands.

Figure 5.3. Map of El Grillo, on the northern edge of the highway through northern Guadalajara. Image courtesy of Elizabeth Rangel and Diego Toscano (see Rangel and Toscano n.d.).

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A second tier of ceremonial centers is represented by small platforms, such as these located in the La Venta Corridor that links the Tequila and Atemajac Valleys (figure 5.4) (Beekman 1996b, 170–176). Each platform was surmounted by three or more structures. Platforms of this size and arrangement have since been recognized in the northern Tequila valleys (Heredia Espinoza 2017). These small groups are considered to have been residential and are more vernacular versions of the U-shaped public architecture found at some of the larger centers. Public architecture would have played a significant role in reestablishing community for migrants by reproducing social and sacred spaces from their previous homes. Public architecture in both the Teuchitlán and El Grillo sites emulated the common Mesoamerican cosmological model (Aramoni Burguete 2004; Beekman 2003), but the architects chose to represent those features in very different ways. The earlier circular groups had a central circular altar with a standing pole in the middle, placing a striking emphasis on the concept of a center point while simultaneously indexing the heavens and the central sacred mountain (Beekman 2003). The underworld could be referenced by the presence of burials beneath the circles (e.g., Cach Avendaño 2008b) and by appended ball courts, which were frequently associated with the watery Mesoamerican underworld (Beekman 2016; Beekman and Heredia Espinoza 2017). The El Grillo buildings are largely based on the core unit of an enclosed (sometimes erroneously called “sunken”) patio. Additional rooms and pyramids could be built atop the enclosure in various combinations, including one form with a pyramid at one end, creating what I referred to earlier as a U-shaped structure. The enclosed patios with pyramids at one end are a representation of the Mesoamerican cosmological model in a way that is quite different from that in the Teuchitlán circles. First, its rectangular form makes a more obvious reference to the four cardinal directions. The pyramid also indexed the sacred mountain, while the enclosed patio would collect water during the rainy season and embody the watery underworld in a seasonally dynamic way. Ballcourt architecture ceased to appear in the El Grillo phase, a major lacunae in the architectural repertoire that suggests a different perception of ceremonial activities. Finally, the earlier Teuchitlán circular temple groups explicitly associated different structures with different lineages (Beekman 2008), and while lineage membership may have still granted access to economic or symbolic capital, no such composite aspect has been recognized for El Grillo public buildings.

a.

c.

Figure 5.4. Secondary El Grillo phase sites from the La Venta Corridor between the Atemajac and Tequila Valleys. A) Site plan, PP.63; B) Site plan, PP.6; C) Section of the platform at PP.63, facilitated by a tractor cut showing adobe brick construction of platform, stairs, and structures. From Beekman 1996b, Figures 4.10, 4.11, 4.12.

b.

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Galván’s excavations of the Tabachines cemeteries across the highway from El Grillo succinctly documented the differences between earlier and later mortuary practices (Galván Villegas 1976, 1984; Schöndube Baumbach and Galván Villegas 1978). The two cemeteries include twenty-one shaft tombs from what are now called Tequila II–IV and twenty-seven box tombs with El Grillo phase ceramics. The shaft tombs were typical of rural cemeteries of their time: the shafts led to one or more chambers and one or more extended interments were buried in them. Some tombs were reused for later interments. The El Grillo phase box tombs were meant for a single seated and flexed bundle burial. While offerings in the earlier shaft tombs were largely ceramics and hollow figures with signs of prior use, the narrow range of vessels from the box tombs were made specifically for burial (Aronson 1993, 1996). Some of the miniature vessels from the tombs are so poorly made that they could endure only limited handling (Aronson 1993, 274, fig. 5.80). Imported materials such as jade and turquoise appeared with the burials at La Higuerita (López Mestas and Montejano Esquivias 2003) and signaled that those interred in public architecture had considerably greater access to wealth than those in the rural cemetery. The cluster of burials at La Higuerita suggested veneration of lineage ancestors to the excavators, but the presence of only one individual per box tomb suggests a different relationship with the ancestors than that found in the reused shaft tombs. The El Grillo complex of ceramics has been identified as extending from eastern (López Mestas et al. 1994) through central Jalisco, where it has been described based on burial (Aronson 1993, 1996; Galván Villegas 1976, 2005; Gómez Gastélum 1996; López Mestas and Montejano Esquivias 2003; Schöndube Baumbach 1983; Schöndube Baumbach and Galván Villegas 1978) and living contexts (Castro Leal and Ochoa 1975; Montejano Esquivias 2007; Smith Márquez 2008). Novel decorative techniques include engraved, incised, and pseudo-cloisonné decoration, styles that were almost completely unknown in central Jalisco previously. Many new vessel forms point to changes in food and drink consumption. Ceramic molcajetes (Nahuatl; sauce bowls) for grating dried chilis or other foods made their first appearance as ring-based bowls. Earlier bowl forms and semi-hemispheric jars dropped out. Bowls were supplemented in the El Grillo phase by bateas (trays) that were possibly used for serving or preparing food. Ring-based cups and globular jars with very restricted necks appear in this phase, while miniature versions of these two forms are paired into copa-olla

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groups found in tombs (see Holien 1977). Some kind of ritualized drinking is implied. Visual culture took an entirely different direction in El Grillo times. The earlier quadripartite design layouts within vessels (like the circular architecture, a reference to the Mesoamerican universe) largely disappeared in favor of horizontal decorative bands on vessel exteriors. Designs that were previously unknown or of very limited use in Jalisco, such as abstract spirals, crosses, step frets, and winged motifs, became highly standardized in their appearance and position on vessel surfaces (see Aronson 1993, figs. 5.72–5.75). Anthropomorphic imagery could occur as solid flat figurines or as abstract modeled faces on the rim of the miniature ollas, which are occasionally painted with arms to suggest that the vessel mimics the human body. Neither bears much similarity to earlier modes of anthropomorphic representation. The most elaborate representations appear on pseudo-cloisonné vessels and show a stark break with prior traditions. The iconography that decorates the cloisonné jars and cups shows no formal similarity to the threedimensional Tequila phase ceramic figures and the content also differs. The Old Fire God who appeared in the Tequila phases ceased to be represented, while the new figures with elaborate feather headdresses are not easy to identify. Hers (2013) has recently published some very iconographically detailed vessels and offered an analysis. She identifies—rightly, I think— one especially provocative figure as what Central Mexican Nahua speakers referred to as teomamaque, or god-bearers, religious officials who carried deities or their representations on their backs, especially as part of divinely directed migrations (plate 13a). On this vessel, four teomama are depicted as the centerpiece of four repeating scenes arranged around the exterior of the vessel (Hers 2013, figs. 20–23). Each scene includes an anthropomorphic figure with a projecting face, headdress, collar, and skirt (plate 13b). On his back is a small figure with an impressive headdress interacting with a medium-sized figure who resembles the primary figure in his long nose and lips. In front of the central figure floats a bird and a larger animal that may also be a bird. One of the repeating scenes replaces the small bird with a speech scroll extending from the mouth of the central figure. Not all aspects of the scene are clear, but Hers’s identification of the central personage in all four scenes as a god-bearer is convincing. God-bearers apparently only began to occur in Mesoamerican art in the Epiclassic period. Von Winning (1983) reports examples on pottery from Veracruz and the

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Lápida del Palacio from Xochicalco. He also notes that god-bearers occur at Teotihuacan, but in the Metepec phase of decline that falls within the Epiclassic by more recent dating. For our purposes, the pseudo-cloisonné vessel is most important for placing god-bearers, most commonly associated with divinely directed migration, in the El Grillo phase. The data reported from excavations to date indicate a widespread uniformity in foodways, ritual drinking, burial format, and other characteristics described here. The preference for rectangular platforms or enclosed patios for public architecture may suggest some diversity among the proposed migrants, but each center had a single public space that served the entire community. This is quite different from the Epiclassic Mezquital region, where the initial migrants constructed settlements with multiple centers that served seemingly different populations. In addition, there is no evidence in Jalisco for the community-specific ceramic complexes Mastache and Cobean (1989) noted in the Mezquital Valley and before the emergence of Coyotlatelco (and now noted in the Basin of Mexico—Crider 2011, 89– 170). Christensen and I (Beekman and Christensen 2011) proposed that the Mezquital pattern is indicative of a migration in which multiple groups of somewhat different origin were compelled to establish new communities together and each constructed their own locus of public buildings in their shared settlement. We argued that the eventual emergence of Coyotlatelco represents a resolution of prior conflicts among migrants and between migrants and local groups and the emergence of a community of shared practices. We do not have the chronological resolution in Jalisco to sketch out as detailed a scenario as we did in the Mezquital Valley. Even so, there is evidence for the rapid establishment of lifeways (and not simply new artifacts) at La Higuerita and Tabachines. The absolute dates from the ceremonial center of La Higuerita place the main platform at the beginning of the El Grillo phase. Excavations have uncovered the full El Grillo complex with the new interpretation of a sacred space, a box-tomb burial tradition, and ritual drinking and food practices evidenced by pseudo-cloisonné and other vessels (López Mestas and Montejano Esquivias 2009). Similar evidence comes from the box tombs at Tabachines, where obsidian hydration samples were taken and analyzed at the time of excavation in the 1970s. While these should be treated as relative rather than absolute dates because of the technical limitations at that time, the shaft tomb dates extended from 750 BCE–460 CE, while the date of the solitary box tomb was 520 CE (Galván Villegas 1991; García-Bárcena 1977). Even if these are treated

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as relative dates, this suggests a tight temporal transition between two very different mortuary programs. The early and widespread uniformity of the El Grillo materials therefore suggest a decisive shift to a new social identity. I interpret this as evidence for an organized migration and the founding of new enters. El Grillo’s origins lie within the region impacted by the climatic changes of the Epiclassic (Beekman 2015; Beekman and Christensen 2011). In an early article, I (Beekman 1996a) compared the El Grillo complex to neighboring sequences, identifying a series of links to Epiclassic phases that formed an arc that corresponded to the vulnerable northern fringe of Mesoamerica and that had particularly close links to the Bajío of Guanajuato. The enclosed patios and U-shaped architecture probably originated in the Classic period western Bajío tradition of elaborated enclosed patios (Cárdenas García 1999). From there, the migrants would have followed the wide valleys of the Bajío westward into the Los Altos region of eastern Jalisco, where the enclosed patios are found, as are at least some of the El Grillo complex ceramics (López Mestas et al. 1994; Ramos and Crespo 2005; Sanchez Correa and Baus de Czitrom 1979). Addressing the Links between Datasets

Linguistic, ethnohistoric, ethnographic, biological, and archaeological datasets contribute to the current discussion, but as elsewhere they do not agree on a single set of interpretations because each speaks to different forms of human action. The linguistic landscape suggests several episodes of language shift and isolation, but all of them lie within the confines of the SUA subfamily. The linguistic isolation that was likely involved when Nahuas moved into Central Mexico among Otomanguean speakers is therefore not as much of a consideration for migrations in the western states. This is likely to have affected how the migrants interacted with the preexisting populations and thus how they used material culture to express or not express difference. Some authors (Weigand 1978a, b) have proposed Corachol speakers as the likely descendants of the Teuchitlán culture, although they are located on its far periphery and not in the Tequila valleys. The linguistic data and ethnohistoric (and oral) accounts paint a picture in which these Corachol speakers (who claim to have moved themselves earlier on) were impacted by Nahua-speaking Caxcanes who were moving southwestward. Teuchitlán culture sites in northern Jalisco and Zacatecas were replaced by a new tradition that used enclosed rectangular patios around

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500 CE (C14 dates in Cabrero García and López Cruz 2002). Similar dates mark the beginnings of occupations at La Quemada, Las Ventanas, and El Teul (Mozzillo 1990; Nelson 1997; Perez and Jiménez Betts 2012; Solar Valverde and Padilla González 2013), all of which were Caxcan centers at the time of European contact. There is the distinct possibility that the oral traditions discussed earlier refer to this intrusion into the eastern Sierra Madre. The transformations of the El Grillo phase farther south are intriguing and have ramifications beyond an understanding of western Mexican prehistory. The major El Grillo phase settlements and similar ceramics in Los Altos (López Mestas et al. 1994; Sanchez Correa and Baus de Czitrom 1979) correspond to the distribution of Tecuexe speakers in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries (compare plate 11 and 5.1), but the 1,000-year time gap between archaeological data and language distribution is troubling. Much could have happened in the intervening period. The changes in physical type noted for the Amacueca phase of southern Jalisco (1100– 1600 CE) suggest movements at that time that may have included the Coca. These data also overlap with the toponyms that mark the Pantecatl itinerary, which passes through many coastal towns associated with the expansion of coastal trade in the Early Postclassic. The Pantecatl narrative would then suggest an Early Postclassic Cáhitan migration that links the coastal and lake basin centers that participated in the Aztatlán network (e.g., Lister 1949; Weigand 1979). It would therefore imply that although the earlier El Grillo complex may have a linguistic component, it nonetheless predates both oral and written migration narratives that have come down to us. The only narrative we might possess would be the iconographic representations associated with pseudo-cloisonné ceramics (plate 13) that depict god-bearers on divinely inspired treks and critical symbols from the Mexica migrations (figure 1.3). El Grillo and the Reestablishment of Community

The lifeways (as opposed to formal characteristics) associated with the El Grillo complex could potentially have emerged over time, either through internal dynamics that brought a dramatic end to the Teuchitlán culture or through the gradual accommodation of immigrants and previous populations. Our prior analysis (Beekman and Christensen 2011) of the Epiclassic Mezquital Valley provides an example of the latter. There the earliest sites attributed to migrants show site-specific variations in ceramics and multiple

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public plazas in centers that likely served heterogeneous populations of migrants. We argued that the well-known and amply distributed Coyotlatelco complex of the Epiclassic emerged as an accommodation between migrants and indigenous populations, masking prior differences, and to have been used by an explicitly multiethnic population. This integrating aspect of the Coyotlatelco complex is why its autochthonous or foreign origin has been so sharply debated: it incorporated evidence of both. The El Grillo centers differ from that model in two major ways. First, the complex appeared either soon after the collapse of the Teuchitlán culture or perhaps overlapping with it. The dates for Tequila and El Grillo complexes are close to one another, yet the earliest dated center at La Higuerita already shows the full package of new public architecture, mortuary drinking rituals, and patterns of preparing and serving food. Some may consider the abrupt change to be evidence of migration, but I see it as evidence for the rapid establishment of community after a migration. Whether the El Grillo communities brought these practices with them from their place of origin or altered them because of the necessities of moving to a new location, they show a great deal of similarity among themselves and little integration of prior concepts. The migrants showed little interest in incorporating prior cultural practices or beliefs into their own. More balanced relationships between migrants and local populations might have instead led to an avoidance of expressing difference and ultimately to the emergence of something new in terms of material culture, as it did in Hidalgo at a slightly later date. The second major difference in the El Grillo case relates closely to the first: entire communities migrated into the Tequila valleys of central Jalisco. Again, in our prior analysis of the Epiclassic Mezquital Valley (Beekman and Christensen 2011), we argued that although the number of migrants from the Bajío into the Mezquital was substantial, they displayed a scale of organization somewhere between the family and the community. Lineages and their dependents may have been the migrating unit, and they established their own public spaces separate from those of other migrants residing in the same physical community. This could not be more different from the El Grillo pattern in central Jalisco, where new communities were focused on a single public space. One could even take this further and point to the even spacing between major El Grillo centers across the agricultural bottomlands as suggesting still higher levels of decision making. Newly emerging polities in the Bajío in the fifth century may have been in a position to pursue political and military expansion westward into attractive lake basin environments like those of central Jalisco. Centrally directed

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colonization would have placed similarly sized centers into advantageous positions across the agricultural bottomlands. While this may have brought about the ultimate decline of the Teuchitlán culture, it was already undergoing a process of decentralization after about 200 CE (Beekman 2007, 2018). The El Grillo complex appears to have been a large-scale organized intrusion out of the western Bajío that followed the path of the Río Lerma into central Jalisco. The intrusive sites display greater uniformity and political content than in the Mezquital Valley. Instead of being climate change refugees, the migrants into central Jalisco were organized and were able to establish themselves in prime agricultural territory. Their dominant position allowed them to quickly establish new communities and define the new norms. Prior populations remained but rejected or avoided material displays associated with the failed Teuchitlán culture. We have only the barest hints that this migration may have been recorded in forms of visual culture used by people at the time, namely pseudo-cloisonné vessels (see also chapter 1, this volume). By the Early Postclassic, population had declined precipitously along the northern margins of western Mesoamerica and the descendants of the migrant communities in central Jalisco shifted their long-distance trade networks to the coast. Whether the Pantecatl coastal migration narrative was meant to merely symbolize the links between centers involved in the Aztatlán network or to record a true migration, the incorporation of towns from the Sayula Basin into the network apparently had biological consequences. Tello’s inland narrative coherently describes the Caxcan expansion through the canyons of southern Zacatecas and northern Jalisco, a narrative that is echoed in the oral history of native people even centuries later. The centers the Caxcanes supposedly founded show evidence of occupation since the sixth century and Tello’s inland narrative may refer to a much earlier period. The El Grillo complex was a central part of a wider landscape of mobility in the Mesoamerican Epiclassic. Acknowledgments

I wish to express my appreciation to Lorenza López and Verenice Heredia for discussions on some of these issues. I owe much to two archaeologists who are no longer with us: Javier Galván Villegas and Phil Weigand.

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Notes 1. In Torquemada’s version, the Mexicanos, Tlacochcalca, Chalmeca, and Calpilco were the four groups, or calpulli, that Tecpatzin and Huitziton led out of Aztlan (it is the Torquemada B narrative in Smith 1983, 159), and they form a distinct narrative from the one usually given in discussions of the central Mexican migrations. Torquemada’s account appears to be based on the Nahuatl version in the Anónimo Mexicano from the late sixteenth century (Crapo and Glass-Coffin 2005, chap.3, 21–22, 83n326). 2. No dates are given, but the Anónimo Mexicano account states that the group left Aztlan in the year 2 Rabbit, or 1194 CE. Tello’s account diverges from Torquemada after the migrants leave Chicomoztoc, at which point he describes each itinerary using specifically western Mexican locales. 3. Tuitlan is widely identified as the hilltop fortress of La Quemada in the Malpaso valley (Weigand and Garcia de Weigand 1996). There is a Tuitan farther south near Hostotipaquillo, Jalisco, but this is far off the itinerary Tello presents. 4. One earlier date at the bottom of the excavations at La Higuerita has a range of 242±68 CE after calibration and at 1 sigma (López Mestas C. and Montejano Esquivias 2009, cuadro 1). I set it aside here as making too great a jump to the succeeding dates in the same stratigraphic column. If it were included, an argument for overlap would be more secure. 5. A contemporary center from the Sayula Basin to the south is Cerritos Colorados (Guffroy 2005), which occupies a dominant position at the northern entrance to the valley.

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6 “Then They Pressed On” Indigenous Migration in the Nahuatl Annals of Chimalpahin Susan Schroeder

I therefore also authenticate and affirm the statements and accounts that the ancient ones set down. . . . What they have said, what they have set down in their writings, has all come to pass; all is the truth. It is not a lie; they did not just make it up; they did not just create false accounts of what the ancient ones set forth. Alvarado Tezozomoc (in Chimalpahin 1997, 1:62)

And this is according to and consistent with what is general and common knowledge among all who know matters pertaining to antiquities and past times. Chimalpahin (1997, 1:30–32)

This is the absolute truth. Chimalpahin (1998, 1:90)

The historicity of the centuries of Aztec or, more correctly, Mexica Tenochca settlement and peregrination leading to the founding of their capital, Mexico Tenochtitlan, in 1325 CE has been challenged by numerous scholars, although seldom by the authors of the original accounts. Typically, the migrations are regarded as myths largely constructed by the Mexica Tenochca to rationalize and glorify their reason for being. Myth is reasoned as having some basis in fact, but when coupled with ritual performance—that is, a hypothetical ceremonial event, as in the invention of Tenochtitlan as their homeland Aztlan—any issue of authenticity becomes irrelevant. Doris Heyden finds that “myths frequently relate true history,” while Elizabeth Hill Boone, treating pictorial manuscripts alone, sees the migrations as a full-circle rite of passage during which the Mexica are transformed (Heyden 1989, 1; Boone 1991).

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Yet the migration accounts about the ancient peoples of Nahua Mesoamerica were famously documented in pictorial and oral forms that were treasured and circulated among generations of native peoples into the seventeenth century. Postcontact Nahua authors, such as don Hernando Alvarado Tezozomoc (fl. 1598 CE) and don Domingo de San Antón Muñón Chimalpahin Quauhtlehuanitzin, aka Chimalpahin (b. 1579 CE), surely recognizing the fragility of the ancient graphic records and the legitimacy that would be bestowed when their contents were recorded in Spanish-like roman alphabetic script, took it upon themselves to chronicle the migrations as the essential starting point of an illustrious story about Mexica endurance and accomplishment. Copies of the precious manuscripts were painted and glossed, while other native authors transcribed them as either traditional Nahuatl-language annals or Spanish-language chronicles (Boone 1996, 2000a; 2000b, 162–196). Their sources were many, and for Alvarado Tezozomoc that included recollections of life before the fall of Mexico Tenochtitlan by his relatives and colleagues who were survivors of the Spanish conquest. The ancient manuscripts were initially in the charge of the individuals who collected the histories and they seemed to remain in the care of selected members of royal lineages, who added to them and then passed them to their descendants. Moreover, since the records were generated by different individuals in a great many polities over a long period, it was not untypical for the information to vary and discrepancies did occur. Each set of annals, though, has value in terms of its content and style. Sixteenth-century religious, such as the Franciscans fray Bernardino de Sahagún and fray Juan de Torquemada and the Dominican fray Diego Durán, also acknowledged the importance of the migrations as crucial to understanding Mexica history (see Durán 1994, 12–50; Sahagún 1961, 10:165–197; Torquemada [1615] 1975, 1:79–94). Elizabeth Hill Boone (1991) has carefully studied the migrations for all that might be gleaned from the pictorial manuscripts; Doris Heyden (1989) has studied them as an aspect of myth with pictorial and archaeological precedents in Teotihuacan; and Michael E. Smith has produced an ethnohistorical overview that brings together a solid collection of studies (but with little attention to the philology and Nahuatl language in the sources themselves) (Smith 1984). Chimalpahin’s writings have been little used to this point (see chapter 2, this volume). Yet they are a trove of information rich in the many histories of Mexica migration and those of other peoples. For this reason, his Nahuatl annals offer much insight into the indigenous perspective and purpose. His Nahuatl

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annals were largely taken from a great variety of pictorial works, as evidenced by his descriptions of many of their features, but he also made great use of oral histories and direct interviews of knowledgeable associates. Clearly, only a fraction of the information that once existed in the precontact era survived, but it is apparent that many peoples in other polities kept their own migration records and those for the Mexica. The Tira de Tepechpan from Tetzcoco is among the best known, but the nobleman don Gabriel de Ayala, also of Tetzcoco, wrote of the Mexica’s travels, bringing in new information (Chimalpahin 1997, 1:220–236; Diel 2008). On the other hand, the migration history for Cuauhtinchan is uniquely and abundantly detailed and includes pictorial images and a Nahuatl narrative about that altepetl’s origins. The altepetl in Nahua Mesoamerica was a complex entity of peoples with a chosen deity, a ruler (tlatoani), lords (teteuctin), a royal lineage and rulership (tlatocatlacamecayotl), and a territory (for Cuauhtinchan, see Kirchhoff et al. 1976; Liebsohn 2009). In addition, there is ample information about the beginnings of Chalco, which was the home region of the Nahua annalist Chimalpahin. The Chalca migrations are interspersed with those of the Mexica, following the years and shedding light on the processes of migration and their outcomes. First families, community, deities, rulers or lack of them, warfare, marking of time and place, and women are critical elements in what came to be an institutional component of altepetl formation in early Nahua Mesoamerica. The act of migration was threefold: (1) a point of origin from which to depart; (2) movement, sojourns, deracination, and more movement; and (3) arrival at a final destination with all the traditional negotiations and founding procedures. Nahua migration was an epitomizing event of altepetl entitlement (Fogelson 1989). In some instances, the order of arrival in Central Mexico, as with the Colhuaque of Colhuacan, afforded seniority and prestige and certainly access to prime resources. For the Mexica Tenochca, being last signified ubiquitous knowledge of having accomplished an exceedingly long and arduous migration and an ominous warning to all of anticipated just deserts. Migration Beginnings: Aztlan and Chicomoztoc huey altepetl ciudad Aztlan [The] great altepetl and city of Aztlan (Chimalpahin 1998, 1:180) oztotl. onca ca Motenehua chicomoztoc A cave is there, called Chicomoztoc (Chimalpahin 1997, 1:168)

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This multiplicity of peoples came to pridefully consider a place called Aztlan as their point of origin for an arduous and extensive undertaking that had to be experienced before they arrived at their destinations somewhere to the south of “Yancuic (New) Mexico,” as the Aztlan region came to be known (Chimalpahin 1997, 1:68). Alvarado Tezozomoc added that “there was a very great abode where there extended and are now ranged innumerable, countless altepetl where the common folk are, as is to be seen in many places in the various lands of the world” (Chimalpahin 1997, 1:66). The painted manuscripts portray the earliest inhabitants as autochthonous to Aztlan, a motherland for all (Boone 2000b, 163). Indeed, the written sources state that it was “the great province and island of the city of Aztlan” (Chimalpahin 1997, 1:27–29), and elsewhere Chimalpahin described Aztlan as a “huehuey altepetl,” a great state, a phrase that he also likens to the Aztec empire and Spain, Italy, and France (Chimalpahin 1997, 1:64, 72; Chimalpahin 1998, 1:80). But Aztlan was not perfect, and the various inhabitants periodically boarded their canoes and made their way across a body of water to a site called Chicomoztoc, where they conducted religious ceremonies to supplicate their deities. Eventually, many different groups at different times departed Aztlan for good and settled at Chicomoztoc, some staying for a considerable time before moving on. As extraordinary as Aztlan origins and subsequent migrations of these groups appear to have been, however, Chimalpahin noted that traveling from one place to another across a body of water was nothing new. There was a precedent. In fact, he contextualized the migration as a part of a grand, universal history. Working on his contemporary annals while living in Mexico City in 1608 CE, he recorded that “the universe was made” 6,361 years (before 1608) and that it had been 4,165 years since the deluge. Rome had been established 2,361 years earlier, Jesus Christ had been born 1,608 years earlier, and “the Jews and Pharisees put him on a cross” with it 1,576 years before he wrote his chronicle (Chimalpahin 2006, 117; see also Chimalpahin 1998, 1:62). Following both the Mesoamerican and Roman calendars, Chimalpahin noted that in One Tochtli (Rabbit), 50 CE, the ancient Chichimeca, the Teochichimeca, had left their home and traveled across a great and celestial sea in their canoes, disembarking somewhere to the north of Mexico City at a place called Teocolhuacan Aztlan (Chimalpahin 1998, 1:64, 306–308). He did not know if they left because of war or if it was God’s will (Chimalpahin 1998, 1:64; Chimalpahin 1997, 1:66). He was confident that they had come from another continent—Asia, Africa, or Europe

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(Chimalpahin 1998, 1:64–68)—and he was certain that the newcomers were not Jews, perhaps challenging fray Diego Durán’s assertion that they were one of the lost tribes of Israel (Durán 1994, 3–11). Chimalpahin reasoned that Vespasian destroyed Jerusalem in Eleven Calli (House), 73 CE, when the ancient Chichimeca had already been living in Aztlan for twenty-four years (Chimalpahin 1998, 1:312). He wrote that the new inhabitants had arrived nude and spoke one language, suggesting a primitiveness and lack of diversity. He did not mention any deity. It was not until Nine Tecpatl (Flint), 84 CE, that the first Chichimeca, now organized into groups (hualtlatlamanacaquiztimani) (Chimalpahin 1998, 1:314), began to leave Aztlan and travel across the water to Chicomoztoc. It is important to note that in the various annals Chimalpahin recorded, the different peoples who migrated had multiple names, some of which derived from toponyms where they stayed, some of which were descriptive of a particular deity or locale, and some of which were the names the group had taken for itself. There also appears to be a migration-specific vocabulary. For example, the prefix teo-, relating to divinity, is on occasion affixed to a place-name such as Teocolhuacan or to a general category of people like the Teochichimeca, who are referred to synonymously as “huehue Chichimeca,” ancient Chichimeca. The name “Teochichimeca” may indicate that a deity, or divine being, was being transported by a god-carrier as they moved along, but Chimalpahin’s usage is not consistent. At any rate, teoin this sense does not appear once the migration was completed and an altepetl established. “Chichimeca” in most instances, is a generic category, hinting at an unsettled, even rude, quality of life. The Chichimeca are portrayed graphically as barefoot people who wear hides and hunt with bows and arrows, suggesting a hardscrabble existence in rough terrain. Neither “Chichimeca” nor teo- tends to appear in the annals or chronicles apart from a migration account, except when the highest-ranking ruler in an altepetl, Amaquemecan Chalco, or Tetzcoco, for example, took Chichimeca as part of a lordly title (the Chichimecateuctli was the highest-ranked ruler in the altepetl of Itztlacoçauhcan Amaquemecan Chalco) (see Schroeder 1991). Being a Chichimeca lord came to be tantamount to having achieved a long migration and being a descendant of a full-fledged royal rulership lineage. Chichimeca came to be used on occasion in colonial mundane documents as well, most often to designate a distinct group of peoples in a given community. The Azteca Mexitin Teochichimeca Chicomoztoca Teocolhuacatepeca, as they called themselves, did not leave Aztlan for nearly 1,000 years

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(Chimalpahin 1997, 1:28, 182; Chimalpahin 1998, 1:180, 314). The year One Tecpatl, 1064 CE, heralds the beginning of their peregrination, one that was especially grueling and would take centuries to complete. But theirs was but one of many journeys of groups from the renowned Aztlan. Others would follow, among them the Chichimeca peoples from Amaquemecan Chalco, Chimalpahin’s provenance. The Mexitin, so named because they lived amid the clouds and fog of Aztlan, occupied a mountain slope, inhabiting its seven caves while at Chicomoztoc. They set out from Aztlan already divided into seven calpoltin (pl. of calpolli) that were named for their respective deities: the Yopica, the Tlacochcalca, the Huitznahuaca, the Cihuatecpaneca, the Chalmeca, the Tlacatecpaneca, and the Izquiteca (Chimalpahin 1997, 1:28, 76; Chimalpahin 1998, 1:86–88, 178–180). However, another source claims that there were only four calpoltin—those of Tlacatecco, Tlacochcalco, Calpilco, and Tolnahuac—and that Tetzahuitl Huitzilopochtli was their deity and Iztacmixcoatzin was their leader (Chimalpahin 1998, 1:178–180). Unlike most other Chichimeca, the centuries of living in Aztlan presumably had afforded the Mexitin the time and initiative to develop a degree of social differentiation. Selected individuals assumed positions as leaders, priests, and god-carriers. Each calpolli had its own particular deity but worshipped other gods as well. The vast majority of the Mexitin, some 10,000, including their wives and children, were considered macehualtin (commoners). The seven calpoltin had been traveling to Chicomoztoc to conduct ceremonies in honor of their primary god, Tetzauhteotl Yaotequihua, who gave commands to their priest, a man named Huitziltzin (Chimalpahin 1998, 1:86–88). Chimalpahin described Huitziltzin as their huey teopixqui tlamacazqui (great god-carrier and high priest) who was later given the name Huitzilopochtli, because, they said, he was left-handed (Chimalpahin 1998, 1:82). It was Huitzilopochtli who became legendary as the Mexica’s great god, and most annals have Huitzilopochtli as the supreme deity over the course of the three stages of migration. However, another set of annals claims that the Azteca Mexitin Chichimeca were already governed by a huey centlatoani (great ruler of all, or emperor), a term that more often was used to describe the exalted tlatoque of the imperial era (Schroeder 2016). According to this source, this great king was named Moteuczoma and ruled the Mexitin and all the other Chichimeca. When he was about to die he designated both of his two sons as rulers. The elder, whose name is not known, was to rule the Cuexteca and everyone else except the Mexitin. The younger son, Mexi

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Chalchiuhtlatonac, was to become the tlatoani of the Mexitin. The older son, naturally, was incensed and demanded to be installed as the Mexitin king (Chimalpahin 1998, 1:84; see also Chimalpahin 1997, 1:68). But Chalchiuhtlatonac stayed on as their tlatoani and then as god-carrier for a great long while and must have been among those who were celebrated during the early migrations, for his name and that of his father were later taken by one of the first huey tlatoque of Mexico Tenochtitlan, Moteuczoma Ilhuicamina Chalchiuhtlatonac (r. 1440–1469 CE). Certain rulers in Colhuacan were also so named. In Chimalpahin’s Spanish-language writings, he was identified as a “captain general and caudillo” (Chimalpahin 1997, 1:27–29). There is no further mention of the first Moteuczoma or the discord among the Mexitin. This was the first of several occasions, however, when the Mexica core splintered, leaving the most resolute to persevere. Any subsequent head man was described as quauhtlatoani (interim ruler) or iteyacanaliz (leader) and no one assumed the position of tlatoani for close to 200 years (from teyacanalizyotl; and see Chimalpahin 2006, 120; Chimalpahin 1997, 1:192). The annals furnish information about a problem for the Mexitin when they were in Aztlan, offering some explanation as to why they left a place where they had lived for more than a millennium. It seems that the Mexitin who lived along the bank of the river in Aztlan had experienced serious hardship under the Azteca Chicomoztoca. They had formerly been fishermen during the reign of their tlatoani, Moteuczoma, but the overlords had enslaved them and forced them to deliver all manner of creatures and produce from the river, including the feathers from local birds (Chimalpahin 1997, 1:73). Other fishermen in the area despised the Mexitin and oppressed them greatly. Feeling miserable, the Mexitin wept and prayed to their god to defend and help them. Finally, their deity responded prophetically, speaking to them through Huitziltzin, their priest, telling him that he had just gone to see a place that was good and suitable for them. It too had a grand body of water and everything that they would need. But, he warned, it was already populated with many different peoples and there was no place for them to settle. He added he did not want the Mexitin to be destroyed while they were at Aztlan and urged them to leave (Chimalpahin 1998, 1:94). For three days and three nights before they departed, a bird called out repeatedly, “The time has come. Let us go.” It was their god, Tetzauhteotl Yaotequihua, issuing the command and initiating a pattern of movement that drove the Mexitin and other Chichimeca onward (Chimalpahin 1998, 1:86–88). Their god lived among them and was considered a

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friend. He protected them and they worshipped no other god (Chimalpahin 1997, 1:66). It was their deity, not their king, who was giving the orders. Chicomoztoc Tzotzompa Quinehuayan served as a way station where different groups of migrating peoples began to consolidate as communities. The Nahuatl sociopolitical terminology used to describe the Chichimeca groups are calpolli, tlaxilacalli, and tlayacatl, confirming a common identity and possible lineage among certain individuals and families who had taken a name for themselves and shared the worship of a given deity (Chimalpahin 1997, 2:68). Each entity was the basis for their polity, the altepetl, which was typically established when a group arrived at its destination. But Chicomoztoc was also a formidable place, described as “very far away,” a “site of sacrifice, of demons, and of gods” (Kirchhoff et al. 1976, f. 16r, Ms. 51–53, p. 28; and Durán 1994, plate 1). The sources reveal a landscape of hills, cliffs, crags, and caves covered with cactus and maguey (Chimalpahin 1997, 1:70). It was a frightening place, too, for the caves were occupied by “bears, wolves, ocelots, snakes, and other wild creatures” (Chimalpahin 1998, 1:90; Chimalpahin 1997, 1:70), exactly the sort of place where Chichimeca might be staying. One set of annals states that “as soon as the Chichimeca entered Chicomoztoc they were possessed by the devil; they were [as if] possessed” (Chimalpahin 1998, 1:88). Paintings of the caves suggest that in addition to being a frightening place, it was overcrowded: men and women are clustered together in close spaces. This perhaps reinforces the notion of Chicomoztoc as a locale of sojourn only, a place for the Chichimeca to collect and ready themselves before setting forth (Durán 1994, Pl. 2; Tovar 1972, Pl. 1; and Kirchhoff et al. 1976, f. 16r, Ms. 51–53, p. 28). The Passage niman huallehuaque Then they departed (Chimalpahin 1997, 1:78)

Chimalpahin wrote that the multitude of peoples of New Spain came from Chicomoztoc (Chimalpahin 1998, 1:90). The Colhuaque and then the Tolteca were the first to set out, followed by what had to be a mélange of travelers who perhaps were both pushed out by the harsh conditions at Chicomoztoc and pulled away in the hope of a better life. The most information that exists is about the migrations of the Mexitin, of course. They departed in pairs, men and women with their children moving along through forests, over hills, and across canyons, traversing great distances (Chimalpahin 1998, 1:90–92). Their pace was slow, almost as if more time

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was needed to capitalize on their experiences as they negotiated with the many peoples they encountered and became familiar with the landscape. The annals often include toponyms to identify many of the places where they stopped, although they do not necessarily reveal information about geographic areas today. As Chichimeca, they wore animal skins for cloaks and sustained themselves by hunting. But they also paused long enough at certain sites to cultivate maize, chilis, tomatoes, and squash, sometimes leaving before they had the opportunity to harvest their crops (Chimalpahin 1997, 1:76, 186). It was said that they were happy nowhere and that they unfailingly adhered to the dictates of their god and priest (Chimalpahin 1998, 1:92). Doris Heyden has spoken of the Mexica as a “chosen people” (Heyden 1989, 3) and Elizabeth Boone has stated that their migration had a “sense of purpose” and that “their actions are special” (Boone 1991, 143). There is certainly an Old Testament quality to their migration history. Although Chimalpahin never quite made a direct association, he wrote of Abraham and the exodus of the Jews from Egypt, perhaps alluding to the wretched circumstances the Mexitin experienced in Aztlan and Chicomoztoc (Chimalpahin 1998, 1:58). There were also great travails as they traversed expanses of desolate territory, and there was a parting of celestial waters so that the seven calpoltin could proceed (Chimalpahin 1998, 1:92). Most important, however, the Mexitin’s destiny was a Promised Land. They were to “go, spread out . . . and conquer the peoples who dwell in the great world.” Huitzilopochtli prophesied: You [Mexica] will be kings, you will be noblemen; you will be lords of all the world. . . . Your subjects will be innumerable and without end. They will serve you and deliver tribute to you. And what they give you won’t be just any old thing. [There will be] a bounty of precious stones (chalchiuitl), gold (coztic teocuitlatl), quetzal feathers (quetzalli), emerald-green jade (quetzallitztli), coral (tapachtli), red crystal (tlapaltehuillotl), and fine clothing (tlaçotli tlaquentli). You will also have great quantities of slaves who will provide you with all that is necessary to live [and] with varieties of the feathers of the lovely cotinga (xiuhtototl), the roseate spoonbill (tlauhquechol), and the Mexican trogon (tzinitzca), and all manner of [other] precious feathers, along with varieties of colored cacao and cotton. (Chimalpahin 1998, 1:178–180; Chimalpahin 1997, 1:74; Sahagún 1963, 11:20–21)

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In other words, the Mexica would have limitless wealth. Chimalpahin and fellow Nahua Christian intellectuals knew the biblical story well and were likely confident that the two accounts were coincidental if not complementary. Most texts state that the Chichimeca Azteca went directly to Chicomoztoc, their traditional pilgrimage site (Chimalpahin 1997, 1:28; Chimalpahin 1998, 1:84, 314–318). But another important set of annals differs considerably, offering different dates, different names of their god and priest, and a different route. It is illustrative of an alternate interpretation of events and yet also helps explain them (Chimalpahin 1998, 1:178). Called simply Azteca, they first stopped at Teocolhuacan, which was nearby (or see Chimalpahin 1997, 1:182). It is doubtful that this was the Colhuacan of later fame in Central Mexico, but it is still suggestive of it, since the Colhuaque were the first to leave their Chichimeca homeland (Chimalpahin 1998, 1:72). The familiar version states that Colhuacan was established in Ten Tochtli, 670 CE, “in the midst of the water.” At any rate, Teocolhuacan was inhabited by eight altepeme (pl. of altepetl) of Teocolhuaque: the Huexotzinca, the Chalca Totolimpaneca (the second name taken from their deity, Totolin), the Xochimilca, the Cuitlahuaca, the Malinalca, the Chichimeca, the Tepanceca, and the Matlatzinca. All were said to be commoners and still Chichimeca (Chimalpahin 1998, 1:182; Chimalpahin 1997, 2:20; and Chimalpahin 1998, 1:72; Chimalpahin 2006, 117–118). This is a rare instance of migrating Chichimeca being associated with an altepetl and infers a degree of sociopolitical sophistication not expected at this early stage. However, implicitly, “altepetl” may have been appropriate, since seven of them did ultimately become permanent, well-known polities in Central Mexico. In this same account, the deity of the Azteca, Tetzahuitl Huitzilopochtli, gave the command to leave Aztlan, and their quauhtlatoani, Iztacmixcoatzin, led them on their journey. They were accompanied by Huitzilopochtli’s hueltiuhtli (older sister), Malinalxoch, who stayed with the group until they abandoned her shortly thereafter in Michhuacan (Michoacan). Hueltiuhtli is a Nahuatl term of great complexity, and in the migration stories older sisters play critical roles, as will be seen below. Even the powerful deity Tezcatlipoca had an “older sister” (Chimalpahin 1998, 1:216; Schroeder 2014, 107–131). The Chichimeca did not tarry long at Teocolhuacan, and all of the groups left together in One Tecpatl, 1064 CE. Four god-carriers (teomamaque), Cuauhcoatl, Apanecatl, Tezcacoacatl, and Chimalma, the last a woman,

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transported the precious bundle (yn intlapial yn intlaquimilol), their deity Huitzilopochtli (see chapter 6, this volume). Some annals show that within a year, a great tree broke as they approached it. Other annals show that the Azteca stopped at the tree, built an altar, placed their image of Huitzilopochtli upon it, and were about to dine when the enormous tree splintered. Azteca had reportedly planted it in Twelve Calli, 61 CE (Chimalpahin 1997, 1:72). At this point, Huitzilopochtli commanded that the Azteca and the other Chichimeca part ways and he changed the name of the Azteca to Mexitin (Chimalpahin 1998, 1:186). Accordingly, it was not until Twelve Acatl (Reed), 1075 CE, that they reached Chicomoztoc, although it should be noted that 1075 CE is more commonly known as the departure date from Chicomoztoc (Chimalpahin 1997, 1:74). Chimalpahin included this set of annals despite the contradictions; he always sought to furnish the fullest, most accurate information he could provide (Chimalpahin 1998, 1:90). As instructive as the migration accounts are, they are not doctrine. They are many and they differ as to dates, events, length of stays, locales, and peoples. In the pictorial manuscripts, the iconic footsteps are literally lost in time and place. For the Mexitin Chichimeca, the journey was especially long, and it was a time of increasing ethnic inwardness. One quite untypical set of alphabetic annals is deliberately illustrative of a focus on migration alone and fails to elaborate on the definitive circumstances that gave substance and meaning to the entire undertaking. For example, it says that the Mexitin more or less mechanically stopped at thirty-one different locations before reaching Chapoltepec in Eight Acatl, 1227 CE. They had been on the move for 163 years and would not reach their destination for another 46 years, in 1273. Their deity and his dictates are mentioned only once (Chimalpahin 1997, 2:18–30). Conspicuously absent from this processual migration is the extraordinarily valuable account about what transpired between Huitzilopochtli and his older sister, Malinalxoch, early in the course of the journey (Chimalpahin 1997, 1:76–80). Evidently, three related groups, the Michhuaque, the Mexitin, and the Malinalca, were heading east, toward where the sun rises and Tonallan. When they were in Michhuacan, the Mexitin left the Michhuaque as they were enjoying themselves in the water near Pátzcuaro (bazquallo), taking all their clothing and leaving them in a degrading circumstance. Huitzilopochtli also left behind Malinalxoch as she slept along with all her advisers (itahuan). He claimed that his older sister was evil and did all sorts of wicked deeds and that he no longer wanted to be associated with her. When Malinalxoch awoke, she wept, realizing that she had been abandoned (Chimalpahin 1997, 1:76–78,

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186–188). She and her Mexitin were in a territory that was already inhabited and they begged the Texcaltepeca to permit them to live on their mountain. They settled on Texcaltepetl in Malinalco, which had taken its name from Malinalxoch, their Mexica sorceress. Malinalxoch was pregnant with the child of the local tlatoani of Malinalco, Chimalquauhtli. Their child, Copil, and his mother subsequently plotted their revenge against Huitzilopochtli and his Mexitin (Chimalpahin 1997, 1:84–86). Malinalxoch was thus referred to as the mother (ynan) of the Malinalca. This was a classic example of an “older sister” (and her people) using her sexuality to secure a place to settle in a new territory. Years later, Copil, who became a powerful nahualli (sorcerer), challenged his uncle Huitzilopochtli, promising to kill him. The two fought and Huitzilopochtli prevailed, decapitating Copil and cutting out his heart. Huitzilopochtli’s god-carrier, following the god’s instructions, took the heart to a selected spot, a stone that reportedly had once been the red and black seat of Topiltzin Acxitl Quetzalcoatl, the legendary ruler of Tollan (Tula), who had passed through the area years before (Chimalpahin 1997, 1:88). From the stone, the god-carrier threw Copil’s heart into the water among the tules and reeds, an act of monumental consequence when it came to identifying the exact site of settlement for the Mexitin at the end of their migration in 1325 CE (Chimalpahin 1997, 1:88; Chimalpahin 1998, 1:160–162). The relevance of this event is such that in most ways it eclipses the entire migration history of the Mexitin, yet it is not mentioned in these same annals. Instead, these particular annals go on to tell how the Mexitin Chichimeca who moved on and stayed at their tenth stop, Coatepec, for twenty years before pressing on. They say nothing more about this locale, although Coatepec was also exceptionally important (Chimalpahin 1997, 1:80). Arguably, it was at Coatepec where Huitzilopochtli established an altepetl with a temple dedicated to him, a skull rack, and a ball court. He also had a full complement of advisers, his uncles, the Centzonhuitznahua. While at Coatepec, Huitzilopochtli had a dam built and the waters filled abundantly with fish, frogs, waterfowl, and the like. They were all seemingly comfortable there. Even so, when his advisers suggested that they stay permanently, Huitzilopochtli flew into a rage, grotesquely killing all the Centzonhuitznahua and eating their hearts. He then decapitated his mother, Coyolxauhcihuatl, a powerful woman in her own right and the older sister of his uncles, and ate her heart, too. He proceeded to destroy the dam and all the wildlife. Such carnage was unknown, and the Mexitin were justifiably terrified as they

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came to more fully understand the nature of their god. Then they bound their years and set off with Huitzilopochtli, their orthodoxy realized. It is not known if Coyolxauhcihuatl, as the hueltiuhtli, had helped facilitate their stay at Coatepec. The twelfth stop of the Mexitin Chichimeca was at infamous Tollan, where they incongruously spent only “a hurried year.” In these same annals, Tollan is of utter insignificance, although elsewhere it was known as the base of Acxitl Quetzalcoatl and the homeland of the great Tolteca state, a place and people that nearly all later altepetl in Central Mexico emulated (Chimalpahin 1998, 1:74; see also chapter 3, this volume). It is noteworthy that in the alphabetic annals about the Mexica, Tollan, at least in most interpretations, was of little consequence (e.g., Chimalpahin 2006, 125; Chimalpahin 1997, 1:84). In personal notes, Chimalpahin repeatedly wrote that Tollan disappeared or was destroyed (1051 CE) when Acxitl Quetzalcoatl departed for the east some years before the Mexitin departed Aztlan (1064 CE). Seven stops later, they were at Tzompanco, where they stayed for seventeen years. There is no mention that the local tlatoani, Tlahuizcalpotonqui teuctli, gave his daughter Tlaquilxochtzin to a Mexitin man and that from this union Huitzilihuitl the elder was born. Huitzilihuitl eventually was installed as their first tlatoani (r. 1227–1299 CE), who ruled the Mexitin when they were at Chapoltepec. While there, Huitzilihuitl the elder was captured by the Colhuaque along with his older sister and daughter, taken naked before their king, Coxcoxtli (r. 1281–1307 CE), and sentenced to death, an event that ended their first royal dynasty (Chimalpahin 1997, 2:68, 72). The role of Huitzilhuitl’s older sister is not described in this account. The Mexitin who survived were taken off in four directions (Chimalpahin 2006, 123). Nothing is said of all that had transpired between the Mexitin and the Colhuaque at Chapoltepec (Chimalpahin 1997, 1:84, 192–194; Chimalpahin 1998, 1:202). Instead, we learn that they “shot a very thick snake with arrows” and later “hastily shot an eagle”; inscribed the names of all of their children in stone; planted maguey along their way; acquired the atlatl, which they put to use during battles when necessary; and experienced a serious illness at one point—all the while keeping track of time as they carried out their fire ceremony rituals every fifty-two years. In Eight Acatl, 1227 CE, when the Mexitin settled at Chapoltepec, their thirty-second stop, they moved into a densely populated territory. The peoples of five polities joined forces to wage war against them and eventually succeeded in driving them away to live “among the sedges,” another

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form of humiliation since they had to fashion their clothing from the water plants. At the point when the Mexica had been at Chapoltepec for twenty years, the annals finally furnish a few scant details about what was happening to them. After another stop, they made their way to Colhuacan, where they remained for nineteen years. It is mentioned that they “begot children there” but says nothing about some Mexitin taking up permanent residence in Colhuacan and initiating their second royal dynastic lineage. Instead, it tells how they served the Colhuaque as mercenaries against the Xochimilca. Still, the Colhuaque gave them a heart made of whippoorwill feathers and excrement for their altar, humiliating them again. Finally, they fought the Mexitin and drove them out to live among the sedges again. The Mexitin made four more stops over more than eight years before they arrived at the island that they eventually named Mexico Tenochtitlan in Two Calli, 1273 CE. At this time, another branch of the Mexica broke off and established themselves as the Mexica Tlatelolca on the northern corner of the island at Xaltelolco (Tlatelolco). But the annals say nothing of the animosity between the two Mexica peoples. Elsewhere, the Mexica Tenochca described their former compatriots thusly: “Very perverse were those who then thus settled [there]. The Tlatelolca were evil, very bad-tempered. Their grandsons are now like that, they live like evil ones” (Chimalpahin 1997, 1:108). An alternative date for the separation is One Calli, 1337 CE (Chimalpahin 2006, 127; Chimalpahin 1998, 1:218). The Mexica Tenochca were led by their quauhtlatoani, Tenochtzin, who governed Mexico Tenochtitlan for forty-three years until his death in Six Tecpatl, 1316 CE, or possibly in One Acatl, 1363 CE, having ruled for sixty-four years (Chimalpahin 2006, 127). Under Tenochtzin, and for a long while afterward, the Mexica were subject to tlatoani Tezozomoctli the elder of Azcapotzalco (r. 1367–1426 CE). They paid tribute to him, delivering wooden containers of frogs and fish, and built his palace and brewed pulque for him. Although they had reached the end of their migration, Huitzilopochtli had yet to indicate the exact site for their altepetl. That did not occur until Two Calli, 1325 CE. It is noteworthy that seldom, if ever, do the other annals state that the Mexitin arrived at Mexico Tenochtitlan before 1325 (Chimalpahin 1997, 1:104; Chimalpahin 1998, 1:206; Chimalpahin 2006, 125). The migration accounts were purposefully drafted to bring history and heritage to the lives of the many peoples who came to populate Central Mexico. That they came from somewhere else was not in dispute. It was the journey that mattered and it was all about earned exceptionalism.

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The Arrivals: The Mexica and the Chalca yn inhuallaliz yn imecoliz their coming, their arrival (Chimalpahin 1997, 1:66)

Mexico Tenochtitlan Arriving in the vicinity of a destination did not mean that a Chichimeca people could simply settle down. Some did, of course, as when Chichimeca arrived in Ten Acatl, 995 CE, at Azcapotzalco, or when Huexotla was established upon the arrival of Tochinteuctli, his wife Miyahuatotocihuatzin, and a child, Opaintzin, in One Acatl, 1155 CE. Tochinteuctli then became tlatoani, and another child, Manahualtzin, was born (Chimalpahin 1998, 1:78, 100). Having a wife and children seemed to add legitimacy to the act of arriving and the creation of the altepetl. These Chichimeca, however, were relatively early arrivals in Central Mexico. Others, such as the Tlalhuicpaneca, who did not arrive until the middle years of the fourteenth century, found little vacant space and instead settled among six long-established altepetl (Chimalpahin 1998, 1:208, 220). Huitzilopochtli had promised the Mexica that there would be a portent to indicate exactly where they were to go. One set of annals stated that the Mexica arrived in Two Calli, 1273 CE, an auspicious fifty-two years before the traditional date of arrival, Two Calli, 1325 CE. Either way, the site was indeed in the midst of a large body of water, and they stopped at a place they called Temazcaltitlan, which was, according to Chimalpahin, “where there [now] is the church of [our] Lord St. Paul” (Chimalpahin 1997, 1:30). St. Paul’s, of course, is located in what came to be San Pablo Teopan in the southeastern quarter of their capital, Mexico Tenochtitlan. Once again, a woman played a role in determining where these Chichimeca came to settle. Her name was Quetzalmoyahuatzin, and she gave birth to a child the Mexica called Contzallan. The baby was named after a site of refuge for the Mexica who had stayed behind at Colhuacan and intermarried there. But the Mexica were despised still and their in-laws hid them at Contzallan (Chimalpahin 1997, 1:208). Other Mexica brought Quetzalmoyahuatzin to a place they named Temazcaltitlan and built a sweathouse where they bathed her and then bathed themselves. While at Temazcaltitlan, they came upon a stone and someone called to them. For that reason, they stayed there, even though they went to Atempan to fish and eat. Temazcaltitlan must have been considered one part of greater Tenochtitlan, for it was not until later, when they found the “stone cactus

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(where the cathedral now is [in Atzaqualco, in the northeastern quarter]) on top of which an eagle stood eating,” the sign they had been searching for, that they realized that their journey was over. It was the very spot where the nahualli Copil’s heart had landed (Chimalpahin 1997, 1:30, 89, 102; Chimalpahin 1998, 1:160). Thus, the “Mexica Azteca Teochichimeca arrived, reached, and assembled here in Mexico Tenochtitlan” (Chimalpahin 1997, 1:210). Huitzilopochtli had promised yehuatl totenyo yezçon (that will be our glory) (Chimalpahin 1998, 1:160; Chimalpahin 1997, 1:102). Chimalpahin added, “And their names were Azteca and also Mexitin. But their name is really said to [be] only Mexica. And later they arrived here [at Mexico Tenochtitlan], taking as their name Tenochca” (Chimalpahin 1997, 1:68). The Mexica Tenochca divided themselves into four groups in four districts—Moyotlan, Teopan, Atzaqualco, and Cuepopan—and they built a ball court and an altar (Chimalpahin 1997, 1:102). But to complete their mission the Mexica needed a full-fledged rulership, a royal dynastic lineage, and a tlatoani. They worried that they were “on others’ land, within others’ boundaries, within others’ walls” (Chimalpahin 1997, 1:112). They decided to go to Colhuacan to find the child of their fellow Mexica, Opochtli Iztahuatzin. He and his wife Atotoztli, the daughter of the king of Colhuacan, had a child, Acamapichtli the younger. The Mexica added, auh ca tomexicapiltzin. ca tochichimecapiltzin. ca yehuatl technequiz. yn quipiez. yn mexicayotl. yn tenochcayotl (For he is our Mexica Chichimeca child. He will want us, he will guard the Mexica Tenochca altepetl) (Chimalpahin 1997, 1:112). The Mexica could not have asked for a better pedigree, and Acamapichtli the younger was installed as tlatoani of Mexico Tenochtitlan in Seven Calli, 1369 CE, initiating their second royal dynasty and a distinguished line of kings and emperors (Chimalpahin 1998, 1:222–224). The Mexica had finally arrived. Chalco Chalco was located in the southernmost part of the lake-chinampa territories, toward the east. The region and its peoples benefited from the forests and rivers, the alluvial plains of the mountains, and a volcano, Popocatepetl (Schroeder 1991). It was a four-part confederated altepetl. Although Chimalpahin’s annals touch on all four constituencies, he focused on two in particular: Tenanco, the site of his ancestral people, and Amaquemecan, his home altepetl. Several sets of annals contain information about the migrations of the Chalca peoples and even an occasional reference to Aztlan or

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Chicomoztoc, but they appear to place greater emphasis on the final part of the journey and what transpired when they arrived at the locales where they would establish their altepetl. Of particular note is the fact that even in the early stages of their journeys, the Chalca polities had installed a king and granted him a rulerly title and thus had families and other members of a royal lineage in their traveling entourage. Royal titles are a signature feature of Chalca altepetl. As wives, daughters, and older sisters, women are critical partners in seeing the migrations through to the final stage. By all the evidence, Acxotlan was the first site established, and most if not all other Chalca peoples stopped there first before moving on to permanent locations (Chimalpahin 1998, 1:116). Acxotlan was situated next to the shore at Lake Chalco and also came to be known as Chalco Atenco. The people claimed to have taken the name “Chalco” from either the lake or a temple standing at its shore (Chimalpahin 1998, 1:116, 122). However, the earliest Chichimeca to reach the Chalca lake area had to contend with previous inhabitants, as did the Mexica. It is not certain if Chimalpahin’s people, the Tenanca, originated in Aztlan or Chicomoztoc. They did move around a bit. According to the earliest information, they arrived at Tizatepec in Eight Tochtli, 1162 CE. They were led by their founding tlatoani, Totoltecatl Tzompachtli the Tlailotlacteuctli (r. 1162–1187 or 1209–1238 CE), who was accompanied by his wife and their teuctlatoque (lordly rulers), who constituted the Tenanca royal lineage (Chimalpahin 1998, 1:106, 114, 188–190; Chimalpahin 1998, 2:270, 280). Toltecatl Tzompachtli was also the god-carrier, and he transported Nauhyoteuchtli Xipil, their deity. According to their annals, the Tenanca had already spent “one hundred eighteen years” at Teotenanco, where they had several confrontations with Topiltzin Acxitl Quetzalcoatl of Tollan. The temple they had built to worship their god was exquisitely adorned with all manner of gold and precious stones and feathers. Acxitl Quetzalcoatl was envious and he led his people in war against the Tenanca, attempting to conquer them and take possession of the deity. He never succeeded (Chimalpahin 1998, 1:106–108). In Ten Calli, 1229 CE, the Tenanca moved on to Cuitlateteloco, which seems to have been in or near Chalco. The Acxoteca were already established there. The two groups were closely associated, and the Tenanca stayed on, raising their families while there. At one point the Tenanca moved to Mizquic to establish the boundaries of their own polity and take over some chinampas, but they returned to Cuitlateteloco. During their stay at Cuitlateteloco, the Acxoteca built their palace, set up the market

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they had brought from Tula, and fashioned a jail from a wooden building (Chimalpahin 1998, 1:114, 122). In Nine Acatl, 1267 CE, the Tenanca established their own altepetl, Tenanco Tepopola Texocpalco, to the south of Chalco Atenco. It was the westernmost of the Chalco polities (Chimalpahin 1998, 1:198). Although Tenanco Tepopola was the base altepetl of the Tenanca, Chimalpahin gives it short shrift, as he did with Tepetlixpan Chimalhuacan. He was far more interested in the development of his home altepetl, Amaquemecan, of which his Tenanca ancestors came to be a part. Two years into their stay at Tenanco Tepopola, in Eleven Calli, 1269 CE, the founding royal lineage split and the breakaway group, which was already divided into two titled rulerships and dynasties, left. Both kings and their peoples moved on toward the east to be one part of what was to become the five-part altepetl of Amaquemecan. It is clear that Itztlacoçauhcan was the highest ranked of the five entities, and that Tzaqualtitlan Tenanco was second, at least for some years. Within Tzaqualtitlan Tenanco, Chimalpahin’s own Atlauhtlan Tenanco was subordinate to the senior ruler. That did not stop him from glorifying his homeland and his fellow Tenanca. However, when they arrived at their final destination, the Tzaqualtitlan Tenanca had to contend with the Itztlacoçauhque, who had reached Chalco Atenco in Nine Calli, 1241 CE, or possibly in Eleven Calli, 1269 CE (Chimalpahin 1998, 1:194; Chimalpahin 2006, 123). The Itztlacoçauhque were already living on the top of Mount Amaqueme, and the Tenanca kings challenged them there. Both groups shot arrows at each other until they determined that they were equals as Chichimeca and agreed to share the mountain. The altepetl of Amaquemecan was established at that time (Chimalpahin 1998, 1:198–200; Chimalpahin 2006, 123). In spite of himself, Chimalpahin has much to say about Itztlacoçauhcan and its tlatoque. Remarkably, they are one of two Chalca Chichimeca who are known to have been at Aztlan. They lived there for 1,110 years before departing in Six Tecpatl, 1160 CE (Chimalpahin 1998, 1:188; Chimalpahin 2006, 119, 123). They traveled for eighty-two years before reaching Chalco Atenco, led by their founding tlatoani, Ecatzinteuctli Tlaquitzcaliuhqui the Chichimecateuctli (r. 1160–1174 CE), who was accompanied by six advisers, one of whom was a god-carrier. Ecatzinteuctli was described as quauhtzonyotl xinachtli (trunk and seed) of the royal lineage (Chimalpahin 1998, 1:316–18). They traveled to Chicomoztoc, where Ecatzinteuctli died. His son, Huehueteuctli the Chichimecateuctli, succeeded him and then set out with his sons and others. They moved about slowly, following the dictates

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of Totolin, their god. The Acxoteca observed them carefully and questioned the Itztlacoçauhque about where they were going. The two peoples did not get along, and finally Totolin signaled that it was time to leave. Unfortunately, the place where they wanted to settle was occupied by the Olmeca Xicalanca, who were conducting ceremonies to their deity, Atl, on Chalchiuhmomozco Mountain, where the Itztlacoçauhque intended to stay (Chimalpahin 1998, 1:124, 136–142). This is the same mountain as the one called Amaqueme. They lit fires, deployed sorcerers, and shot arrows into the Olmeca Xicalanca’s temple, ultimately forcing them to flee. When the old tlatoani died, his younger son Atonaltzin succeeded to the throne and office of the Chichimecateuctli. Atonaltzin’s older brother, Tliltecatzin, was the Chichimecayaotequia and was apparently in charge of securing their territory from intruders. In Four Tochtli, 1262 CE, the Itztlacoçauhque named all their polities, set their boundaries, and formally took possession (ynic niman motlallique, they then settled down) (Chimalpahin 2006, 122; Chimalpahin 1998, 1:324). They constructed an altar and shelter for their god, Totolin, and followed his commands. Shortly thereafter, the Tzaqualtitlan Tenanca arrived at Amaquemecan. By Eleven Acatl, 1295 CE, the Itztlacoçauhque were dealing with more intruders. This time it was the Tequanipan people who also had made their way from Chicomoztoc after traveling for seventy-five years. Their leader and god-carrier, Tziuhtlacauhqui Yaopol the Tzompahuacateuctli, was accompanied by attendants and his daughter, who was not named but rather was described as “their older sister” (Chimalpahin 1998, 1:336). Their initial dealings were with Tliltecatzin the Chichimecayaotequi, who “took” the Tequanipan people’s older sister. They had a child together, Tziuhtecatl. Tliltecatzin also gave the Tequanipan people a great deal of land. Subsequently Tziuhtecatl was installed as the first tlatoani of what came to be called Tzompahuacan Tequanipan, their altepetl (Chimalpahin 1998, 1:336– 348). This is yet another example of an older sister being used as sexual enticement as a means of obtaining entrance into a region and securing a place for her people. Tequanipan was the third altepetl tlayacatl to become a part of Amaquemecan. In Seven Tecpatl, 1304 CE, the last group, the Panohuayan people, arrived. Divided into two entities already, they were led by their god-carrier and tlatoani. Nothing is said of a woman or of a child being born; indeed, hardly anything more is said about Panohuayan (Chimalpahin 1998, 1:351, 2:28). The peoples of Panohuayan were noteworthy for their market and their affiliation with Tollan, and it is the only tlayacatl of the original five that exists in present-day Amecameca. A fifth tlayacatl

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was established when the rulership at long-settled Itztlacoçauhcan was divided and Teohuacan Tlailotlacan was formed in Thirteen Tecpatl, 1336 CE (Chimalpahin 1998, 2:38). This tlatoani took the title of Teohuateuctli, which was associated with Tezcatlipoca at Tlacochcalco in Tlalmanalco. Amaquemecan was thus complete and, at least according to Chimalpahin, became the second-ranking altepetl in greater Chalco. Although Chimalpahin is generous in his annals with information about his immediate compatriots, it is apparent that the Tlacochcalca, also called the Tlalmanalca, were the dominant group in Chalco. The Tlacochcalca were not Chichimeca; they were tecpan tlaca (palace, or temple, people), because of their special relationship with their deity, Tezcatlipoca. In the annals, it was reported that they paid no tribute and that their god made certain there was always abundant rain for their crops (Chimalpahin 1998, 2:10–12). The Tlacochcalca, who had come from far away, set out again from Tlapallan Chicomoztoc Tzotzompa Quinehuayan Nonohualca, crossed a vast body of water, and began their trek across the land, reaching Xiuhpetlatlan in One Tecpatl, 1272 CE (Chimalpahin 1998, 2:22–30). They passed rapidly through many places before reaching Tollan three years later. At Tollan, they installed their (first) tlatoani, granting him the title Teohuateuctli. They remained for twenty-one years before setting out again with their god-carrier, their deity, and their deity’s gold banner. A woman was a part of their group. They reached Chapoltepec in One Tochtli, 1298 CE, and found the Mexica still there. By Six Acatl, 1303 CE, they were at Xallipitzahuacan, where they divided their rulership and their peoples. The son of the sitting tlatoani of Opochhuacan Tlacochcalco was installed as tlatoani and Tlatquicteuctli of Itzcahuacan Tlacochcalco. He was also a priest. They continued on their way, encountering some other peoples, engaging in warfare on occasion, and intermarrying. It is uncertain when they finally established their altepetl at Tlacochcalco. They had passed through Acxotlan and maintained a strong affiliation there until Acxotlan was incorporated into Tlalmanalco, which became the highest-ranked and northernmost altepetl in Chalco. In the course of their migrations, the Tlacochcalca initiated two royal lineages and rulerships, each with rulerly titles, and brought a cadre of priests and an entourage to serve their deity. Their devotion to Tezcatlipoca afforded the Tlacochcalca great advantage in their dealings with other altepetl once they had settled in their own altepetl. When they reached Chalco, some Chichimeca looked for signs or listened to their deities to determine where to establish their altepetl. Some

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had to contend with people who were already inhabiting the land; they used bows and arrows to deal with enemies or make friends. They put up temples and altars to propitiate their deities. Marking time, conducting fire ceremonies, and keeping records were soon a part of each community’s public trust. A collective identity had been fostered at Aztlan and refined over the course of the migration despite, or perhaps because of, the fact that groups splintered off. Deity and rulership lineage blended with their new territory, or home place, to foster an intense patriotism. For most Chalca, Tollan was a vital source of prestige, whether because of its markets or the extraordinary influence conferred by the patronage of the deity, Tezcatlipoca. Sons and occasionally daughters of founding tlatoque succeeded their fathers on the thrones, ensuring continuity of the altepetl even in the most difficult of times. And women were as important as ever. The Chalca women were beside their husbands over the long trek, and their daughters, as the “older sisters” of their people, helped their people gain entrance into a region. Their children ensured them a place. Temples (teopantli) and palaces (tecpan) were essential ritual architectural complements to the royal rulership and lasting evidence that they as Chalca were no longer Chichimeca. Conclusion

Chimalpahin’s annals provide abundant testimony about how important the migration histories were to the Nahuas who came to populate Central Mexico. These annals reflect the remarkable diversity and range of perspective of the various groups and the intricate relationship of event and longue durée to their understanding of the journey. While these accounts are commonly thought of as typical Mexica lore, it is obvious now that most if not all peoples painted and cherished the enduring stories of their origins. Almost all of the Nahuas discussed in Chimalpahin’s annals claimed Aztlan or Chicomoztoc as their natural homeland. The site was also where each ethnic community, whether calpolli or altepetl, was realized before each departure. Some groups had tlatoque already, while others moved from place to place without a lineage ruler for decades, even centuries. The role women played in the course of a migration was notable. They were the god-carriers, the deities (or at least as the mother or the sister of a god), the older sisters who served their people in a sexual capacity to help them enter or settle a new area, and the wives and daughters of rulers who brought legitimacy and permanence to each polity’s royal rulership. Chimalpahin

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furnished the names of both women and men, reiterating Nahua gender complementarity even during trying migration times. Deities were also intrinsic to each migration event and the Mexica, whose deity Huitzilopochtli staged their entire passage, accordingly appropriated their god’s style and purpose for themselves. No holograph migration manuscripts are extant, yet the secondary texts by sixteenth- and seventeenth-century authors furnish ample evidence about the number and variety of manuscripts that were produced over many years. To the Nahuas and even some religious, their veracity was without question. The migration histories had become codified as infallible in their imaginations and their lives were built on this Janus-like knowledge of accomplishment and propriety. Such was the case that in 1547 CE, Viceroy don Antonio de Mendoza (r. 1535–1550 CE) was called upon to adjudicate the legitimacy of Amaquemecan’s five tlayacatl. The Nahua judge Viceroy Mendoza appointed to conduct the investigation examined all the manuscripts of the tlayacatl and interviewed local people before rendering his decision. At issue was whether each altepetl had had an “arrival” (ahxiliztli hecoliztli), Spain’s court ostensibly acknowledging migration history as dogma (Chimalpahin 1998, 2:348). Without an arrival, the inexorable Chichimeca enterprise could not have been. References Alvarado Tezozomoc, don Hernando. (1598) 2001. Crónica mexicana. Edited by Gonzalo Díaz Mogoyo and Germán Vázquez Chamorro. Madrid: Dastin, Las Rozas. Boone, Elizabeth Hill. 1991. “Migration histories as ritual performance.” In To change place: Aztec ceremonial landscapes, edited by David Carrasco, 121–151. Boulder: University Press of Colorado. ———. 1996. “Manuscript painting in service of imperial ideology.” In Aztec imperial strategies, edited by Frances F. Berdan, Richard E. Blanton, Elizabeth Hill Boone, Mary G. Hodge, Michael E. Smith, and Emily Umberger, 181–206. Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection. ———. 2000a. “Bringing polity to place: Aztec and Mixtec foundation rituals.” In Códices y documentos sobre México, tercer simposio internacional, edited by Constanza Vega Sosa, 547–573. México, DF: Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia. ———. 2000b. Stories in red and black: Pictorial histories of the Aztecs and Mixtecs. Austin: University of Texas Press. Chimalpahin Quauhtlehuanitzin, don Domingo de San Antón Muñón. 1997. Codex Chimalpahin: Society and politics in Mexico Tenochtitlan, Tlatelolco, Texcoco, Culhuacan, and other Nahua altepetl in Central Mexico. 2 vols. Edited and translated by Arthur J. O. Anderson and Susan Schroeder. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press.

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———. 1998. Las ocho relaciones y El memorial de Colhuacan. 2 vols. Edited and translated by Rafael Tena. México, DF: Cien de México. ———. 2006. Annals of his time. Edited and translated by James Lockhart, Susan Schroeder, and Doris Namala. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Diel, Lori Boornazian. 2008. The Tira de Tepechpan: Negotiating place under Aztec and Spanish rule. Austin: University of Texas Press. Durán, fray Diego. 1994. The history of the Indies of New Spain. Edited and translated by Doris Heyden. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press. Fogelson, Raymond D. 1989. “The ethnohistory of events and nonevents.” Ethnohistory 32(2): 133–144. Heyden, Doris. 1989. The eagle, the cactus, the rock: The roots of Mexico-Tenochtitlan’s foundation myth and symbol. International Series 484. Oxford: British Archaeological Reports. Kirchhoff, Paul, Lina Odena Güemes, and Luis Reyes García, eds. Historia Tolteca Chichimeca. 1976. Translated by Paul Kirchhoff, Lina Odena Güemes, and Luis Reyes García. México, DF: Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia. Liebsohn, Dana. 2009. Script and glyph: Pre-Hispanic history, colonial bookmaking, and the Historia Tolteca-Chichimeca. Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection. Sahagún, fray Bernardino de. 1961. Florentine Codex: General history of the things of New Spain. Book 10: The People. Edited and translated by Charles E. Dibble and Arthur J. O. Anderson. Santa Fe: School of American Research and University of Utah. ———. 1963. Florentine Codex: General history of the things of New Spain. Book 11: Earthly Things. Edited and translated by Charles E. Dibble and Arthur J. O. Anderson. Santa Fe: School of American Research and University of Utah. Schroeder, Susan. 1991. Chimalpahin and the kingdoms of Chalco. Tucson: University of Arizona Press. ———. 2014. “Why women matter in history.” In Indigenous intellectuals: Knowledge, power, and colonial culture in Mexico and the Andes, edited by Gabriela Ramos and Yanna Yannakakis, 107–131. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. ———. 2016. Tlacaelel remembered: Mastermind of the Aztec empire. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press. Smith, Michael E. 1984. “The Aztlan migrations of the Nahuatl chronicles: Myth or history?” Ethnohistory 31(3): 153–186. Torquemada, fray Juan de. (1615) 1975. Monarquía indiana. Vol. 1. México, DF: Editorial Porrúa. Tovar, Juan de. 1972. Manuscrit Tovar: Origines et croyances des indiens du Mexique. Edited by Jacques Lafaye. Graz: Akademische Druck- u. Verlagsansalt.

II SOUTHERN MESOAMERICA

7 Classic Period Migration in the Maya Area A Morphometric Analysis B. Scott Aubry

Interregional interaction between Central Mexico and the Maya area has been a recurring theme since the beginning of research in the region, not only at Chichén Itzá but throughout the Maya area. The earliest evidence cited for these migrations came either from similarities in material remains (see the discussion of Charnay [1883] in Jones 1997) or from ethnohistoric accounts that were written centuries after the events had taken place (e.g., The Books of Chilam Balam; see chapter 9, this volume). Subsequent research uncovered an abundance of evidence of interaction, but the nature of that interaction is often fiercely debated. This volume includes numerous interdisciplinary approaches to identifying and inferring migration from archaeology, linguistics, ethnohistory, epigraphy, and art history, but this chapter takes a more direct approach by studying skeletons. For the most part, the variety of archaeological analyses cannot answer the questions about actual movement of peoples across the landscape because change in the material record does not necessarily correlate with the intrusion of new peoples. In addition, bioarchaeological analyses can say very little about the causes and motivations for migrations. By themselves, bioarchaeological results can at best only indicate whether or not people have migrated and to where. Only through the integration of various interdisciplinary approaches can questions of migration be fully addressed, and the number of recent similar volumes attest to this realization (e.g., Cucina 2015b; Willermet and Cucina 2018). Also unlike the majority of chapters in this volume, this chapter’s primary focus is southern Mesoamerica, and I therefore use period names typical of the Maya area (see table 1.1). I will refer to the Classic (Early, Late,

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Figure 7.1. Map of Mesoamerica with the sites that are included in this study.

Terminal) and Postclassic periods. This study includes material from before 500 CE and spans the Early Classic to the Early Postclassic periods. This encompasses the rise of the Classic period Maya through the demographic collapse in the southern lowlands and the rise of northern lowland sites such as Chichén Itzá. For Central Mexico, this period encompasses the peak of Teotihuacan’s rise through the emergence of Tula following Teotihuacan’s decline. The Early Classic material includes samples that coincide with the beginning of Copán’s dynastic rule in 426 CE (Price et al. 2010; Sharer 2003; Stuart 2004) and with the much-discussed “arrival” event in 378 CE recorded at Tikal and elsewhere (Estrada-Belli et al. 2009; Stuart 2000). This study includes material from twenty Maya sites and from three sites in Central Mexico (figure 7.1). Archaeological Debate

There has been much debate about the nature of interaction between Central Mexico and the Maya area. Stuart (2000) divides the debate over

Classic Period Migration in the Maya Area: A Morphometric Analysis · 175

Central Mexican influence into either externalist (i.e., Mexican diffusionist) or internalist (i.e., Maya isolationist) positions. The externalist perspective proposes that Central Mexican states played a dominant role in the various sociopolitical developments during the Classic and Postclassic periods with population intrusions into the Maya area (Bove and Medrano Busto 2003; Braswell 2003b; Brown 1977; Demarest 2003; Sabloff and Willey 1967; Sanders 1977; Schele and Freidel 1990; Smyth and Rogart 2004). Externalist views about the nature of the influence of Central Mexican states often involve the idea of migration. Some researchers have stressed the role of migration in economic and political control, in military domination (Tozzer 1930, 1957; Thompson 1970), and in the formation of Central Mexican enclaves (Manzanilla and Serrano 2003; Smyth and Rogart 2004; Willey 1974). According to Stuart (2000), the internalist perspective views Maya sociopolitical developments as entirely indigenous in origin and can largely be seen as a reaction to notions of Central Mexican dominance. More recently, scholars have been promoting views that this relationship was more complex and even reciprocal (Braswell 2003b, 2003a; Demarest 2003, 2004; Demarest and Foias 1993; Kristan-Graham and Kowalski 2007). However, unambiguously detecting population movements through material remains has been difficult. The best archaeological evidence of intrusions relevant to this study come from Tikal (Braswell 2003a; EstradaBelli et al. 2009; Foley 2017; Martin and Grube 2000; Sharer 2003; Stuart 2000), Chichén Itzá (chapter 9, this volume; Kowalski 2007; Kristan-Graham and Wren 2018; Kristan-Graham and Kowalski 2007; Volta et al. 2018; Wren et al. 2018), Kaminaljuyú (Braswell 2003a, 2003c; Sanders 1977), and the Escuintla region of Guatemala (Hellmuth 1978; chapter 11, this volume). At Tikal, the “arrival” event (la entrada) as depicted on Stela 31 at Tikal records the arrival of Siyaj K’ak’ on the same day as the death of the Tikal ruler Chaak Tok Ich’aak (Estrada-Belli et al. 2009; Stuart 2000). This event and the individual depicted in this event are recorded numerous times at Tikal (Estrada-Belli et al. 2009; Martin and Grube 2000; Stuart 2000) and at the nearby sites of La Sufricaya (Estrada-Belli et al. 2009; Foley 2017), El Perú (Stuart 2000), and Uaxactún (Stuart 2000). The decline of Teotihuacan in the sixth century marks the emergence of Tula and numerous other sites in the Valley of Mexico that had formerly been constrained by Teotihuacan dominance (McCafferty 2007; chapter 3, this volume). From 800 to 1000 CE, Tula and the nearby center of Cholula grew rapidly (Diehl 1989). Cholula is a large site in the east central highlands just outside the Valley of Mexico that was likely associated to some degree

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with the cultures of Tabasco and Veracruz (McCafferty 2007; chapter 8, this volume). It is possible that Cholula interacted with the Maya through the Gulf Coast or Cacaxtla. Cholula and Teotihuacan appear to have developed rapidly and simultaneously, but the design and layout of Cholula is dramatically different than that of Teotihuacan (Uruñuela et al. 2013). Although some building episodes at Cholula contained tableros, which are reminiscent of Teotihuacan, stepped pyramids and multiple staircases are common there, which Uruñuela and colleagues interpret as indicating a different political ideology. There has much debate over the connection between Tula and Chichén Itzá. The problem is compounded by the lack of good stratigraphic sequences at Chichén, although recent studies have attempted to resolve this issue at Chichén and surrounding sites (Bey and Ringle 2007; Johnson 2012; Lincoln 1986; Pérez de Heredia 2010; Pérez de Heredia and Biró 2018; Schmidt 1999). One major debate is over when ceramic complexes such as Cehpech and Sotuta were built; these sites are key to dating evidence of apparent foreign influence. This has perpetuated disagreements over whether Puuc-style architecture and what Volta and colleagues (2018) call “international” (i.e., Toltec) architecture represent discrete periods (Pérez de Heredia 2010; Pérez de Heredia and Biró 2018; Volta et al. 2018) or if these styles overlap (chapter 9, this volume; Johnson 2012). Previous Bioarchaeological Studies in the Region

As Beekman noted in the introduction, during the last two decades there has been an increase in the number of studies focused on migration in Mesoamerica. This is also true for bioarchaeological analyses (see Scherer 2017 for a recent review of this research). In the Maya area, most of this work consists of population-level studies focused on dental morphology (Aubry 2009; Cucina 2015a; Ragsdale 2015; Scherer 2007; Willermet et al. 2013; Wrobel 2003) or isotopic studies of specific individuals (Buikstra et al. 2004, Freiwald 2011; Miller 2015; Price et al. 2010, 2014; White et al. 2000; Wright 2005). Strontium and other isotope analyses are becoming increasingly common and recent studies include growing numbers of samples from individual sites (e.g., Price et al. 2010, 2015; Scherer and Wright 2015). However, isotopic studies are not able to detect “nonlocal” individuals beyond the first generation. Even a fully foreign population would appear “local” within a few decades. Isotopic studies also do not provide information on the demographic structure of the larger population.

Plate 1. Red-painted ceramics from the Chupícuaro (a–e) and Mixtlan (f–h) phases (PUZ): a and b) Chupícuaro Painted Red on Brown; c) Chupícuaro Painted Red on Cream Slip; d and e) Chupícuaro Black Polychrome on Cream Slip; f) Barto Polychrome bowl; g) Iramuco Polychrome; h) Iramuco Polychrome. See Table 4.2 for key to abbreviations.

Plate 2. Choromuco phase orange-painted and red-painted ceramics from the Atzimba (a–c) and Ramon (d–f) complexes: a and b) Choro Orange on Cream; c) Choro Negative Polychrome bowl (MMA); d–f) Ramon Negative Red on Brown; g) Teotihuacan import, Grupo Pintado Negativo, red on natural brown with resist decoration (MMA). See Table 4.2 for key to abbreviations.

Plate 3. Red-painted and/or incised/engraved ceramics from the Perales (a–c) and Lerma (d–e) phases (PUZ): a) Cantinas Red-Orange; b) Rosalinda Red on Brown Incised; c) Campo Red on Brown; d) Garita Black-Brown; e) Encarnación Red Zoned. See Table 4.2 for key to abbreviations.

Plate 4. Whole and partial red-painted vessels from Tula (a–c) and the eastern El Bajío (d–f): a) Ana Maria Red on Brown (MJA); b and c) Coyotlatelco Red on Brown (MJA); d) Ana Maria Red on Brown (CRQ); e and f) Cantinas Red-Orange (MRA, PUZ). See Table 4.2 for key to abbreviations.

Plate 5. Red-painted and incised motifs from Tula (a–e) and the eastern El Bajío (f–k): a–d, Coyotlatelco Red on Brown (PATC); d and e) Unnamed Prado phase incised monochrome (PATC); f–h) Cantinas Red-Orange (PUZ, MMA); i) San Bartolo Red on Brown (CRQ); j) Cantinas RedOrange (MMA); k) Garita Black-Brown (CRQ). See Table 4.2 for key to abbreviations.

Plate 6. Red-painted ceramics from the Tula Region (a–c, g, h) and the eastern El Bajío (d–f, i–k): a–c) Coyotlatelco Red on Brown (PALM); d–f) Campo Red on Brown (PUZ), g and h) Coyotlatelco Red on Brown (PALM); i–k) Encarnación Red Zoned (PUZ). See Table 4.2 for key to abbreviations.

Plate 7. Large-format red-painted ceramics from the Tula region and the eastern El Bajío: a and c) Coyotlatelco Red on Brown (PALM); b) Coyotlatelco “Gran Formato” (artwork by C. Hernandez based on Paredes Gudiño 2005, Fig. 8); d–f, Ramon Red on Brown (PUZ, MMA, MMA). See Table 4.2 for key to abbreviations.

Plate 8. Incised red-on-brown vessels from Prado phase Tula (a and b), the U-Z source area (c), and Teotihuacan (d and e): a and b) Guadalupe Red on Brown Incised (MJA, PATC); c) Rosalinda Red on Brown Incised (PUZ); d and e) Xolalpan phase red-on-brown incised tripod bowls from Teotihuacan (original artwork by C. Hernandez; adapted from López Pérez 2009, 131–191). See Table 4.2 for key to abbreviations.

Plate 9. Spatial and temporal distribution of painted red-on-brown ceramic types/groups including Coyotlatelco (ellipse) in Central and Near West Mexico (original artwork by the authors). See Table 4.2 for key to abbreviations.

Plate 10. Map of western Mexico showing natural features mentioned in the text. The wide band represents the vulnerable zone of transition for rainfall agriculture.

Plate 11. Map of western Mexico showing language groups discussed in the text.

Plate 12. Map of the two migration routes described in Tello (1653) 1891, which is based in turn on the 1565 Pantecatl Narrative.

a.

b. Plate 13. Pseudo-cloisonné jar attributed to Estanzuela, Jalisco, in the Tequila valleys. Photo: Jalisco. 24.1 × 23.0 cm. Brooklyn Museum, Ella C. Woodward Memorial Fund, 64.9. Creative Commons-BY. A) Complete jar ( facing page); B) Detail of central figure interpreted as godbearer.

Plate 14. Detail of eastern talud of Battle Mural, Cacaxtla, with 3 Deer at left and figure wearing quechquemitl at center. Photo: R. Alvarado, P. Peña, and G. Vázquez 2005. Archivo Fotográfico del Proyecto La pintura mural prehispánica en México, Instituto de Investigaciones Estéticas, UNAM.

a

b

c Plate 15. The Chan Tuun Itzam and Itzamna at Chichén Itzá. a) La Iglesia, West Facade, detail (photograph by the author); b) Las Monjas, Annex, East Facade, detail (photograph by the author); c) The Chan Tuun Itzam as represented at the Castillo (Seler 1923, vol. 4, Figure 754).

Plate 16. Location of Cihuatan, Santa María, and other Guazapa-sphere sites in El Salvador. Map by Lauren Kohut, Vanderbilt University Spatial Analysis Research Laboratory

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Recent strontium studies at Copán and Tikal have sought to identify the origin of specific individuals. Copán possesses evidence of Teotihuacan-style imagery and artifacts (e.g., green obsidian) (Fash and Fash 2000; Sharer 2003). The recent discovery of the tomb of Yax K’uk’ Mo’, Copán’s dynastic founder and a prominent figure on Altar Q (Fash and Fash 2000; Sharer 2003; Stuart 2004), allowed for a test of foreign origin. On Altar Q, Yax K’uk’ Mo’ can be seen wearing Teotihuacan-style warrior gear including goggles over his eyes and a War Serpent shield on his right arm (Fash 2001). The researchers who conducted strontium isotope analysis on the remains in the tomb found levels consistent with the southern lowlands and not with Teotihuacan (Buikstra et al. 2004; Price et al. 2010). At Tikal, the tomb of Siyaj K’ak’ was also found in recent years, but once again, strontium analysis revealed a strontium signature consistent with the Maya lowlands (Wright 2005). At Kaminaljuyú, the similarities between Mounds A and B and the Feathered Serpent Pyramid at Teotihuacan (Braswell 2003c) have been viewed as foreign domination of the Maya site (Schele and Miller 1986; Schele and Freidel 1990). Based on mortuary patterning and architectural similarities, Spence (1996) posited that the individuals in mounds A and B were probably Teotihuacan emissaries. However, subsequent isotopic analyses have demonstrated that this is likely not the case (Wright and Schwarcz 1998; White et al. 2000). Four of the individuals in the tomb, including the principal figure from Tomb A (skeleton 1), exhibit oxygen isotopic ratios significantly outside the range for Kaminaljuyú and only one individual falls in the range of Teotihuacan (skeleton 1, 3rd molar). The first molar, which forms early in childhood, revealed that this individual was likely from Kaminaljuyú but may have spent the later part of his childhood in Central Mexico before returning to the city (White et al. 2000). Studies using morphometric and nonmetric data require larger datasets and can detect the accumulation of nonlocal genetic variation, which can potentially accumulate over generations. However, prior studies have been insufficient to answer large-scale questions about how the Maya interacted with their neighbors in Central Mexico. Many of the relevant populationlevel biological studies include relatively few sites in the Maya area (e.g., Austin 1978; Miller 2015; Rhoads 2002; Scherer 2004, 2007; Scherer and Wright 2015; Wrobel and Graham 2015), although there are notable exceptions (see Cucina 2015a; Scherer 2004, 2007; and Wrobel 2003). In general, these studies have concluded that there was extensive migration in the Maya area (Aubry 2009; Scherer 2007; Wrobel 2003), but few analyses

178 · B. Scott Aubry

exist of interregional interaction between the Maya area and neighboring regions (see Ragsdale 2015, 2017; Ragsdale and Edgar 2015; Willermet et al. 2013). Unfortunately, existing biological studies cannot be combined because of the different types of data collected and the inconsistencies in the methods employed. This study focuses on morphometric variation in dentition, but unlike most previous studies, this research focuses on the dental dimensions at the cervix of the tooth instead of the overall maximum crown dimensions. It investigates the distribution of genetic variability within and among sites in the Maya area in order to detect which sites interacted most frequently with sites outside the area. Population Genetics and Statistical Analyses

With any study of biological affinity, a biological distance measure is derived to assess the degree of genetic relatedness of the populations (Relethford and Blangero 1990). The theoretical basis of genetic distance studies is that the distance between two groups should be small if their gene frequencies are similar (Harpending and Jenkins 1973, 179). In this study, a Mahalanobis distance statistic will provide a measure of biological distance in standard deviations from the mean. The statistic calculates the differences in the means relative to the variance and takes correlations between variables into account. SAS 9.4 statistical software was used to acquire the Mahalanobis distance measures and SPSS V25 was used to illustrate these relationships graphically with multidimensional scaling (MDS). Model-Bound Analyses

Although biological distance estimates are informative, it is assumed that they are the result of random genetic drift. In general, genetic drift increases biological distance (as allelic variation is randomly lost) and gene flow decreases biological distance (by passing allelic diversity between populations). To detect gene flow (i.e., migration) it is necessary to have additional information about how the biological variation is distributed. In order to acquire this additional information about gene flow, data must be interpretable through population genetics models so that predictions can be made about expected outcomes (Crow 1986; Hartl and Clark 1997; Relethford and Blangero 1990). One such model is Wright’s (1943) isolation by distance model, which provides the simplest example of how this works.

Classic Period Migration in the Maya Area: A Morphometric Analysis · 179

According to this model, biological distance increases as geographic distance increases (Wright 1943). This is based on the premise that individuals are more likely to interact with individuals in populations that are closer geographically than they are with individuals that are more distant geographically (Wright 1943). If we assume an isolation by distance model as the null hypothesis, we can compare biological and geographical distance matrices to quantify how well these distance measures correlate (Kimura and Weiss 1964). For the geographical distance matrix, I simply measured the shortest linear distance between sites using Google Maps.1 Matrix correlation analysis was performed using Mantel 3.1 statistics software2 to test the linear correlation between the biological and geographic distance matrices (Smouse et al. 1986). This test randomizes the rows and columns for 999 random permutations of the data to evaluate if the two distance matrices are significantly different (Smouse et al. 1986). If migrations occurred into the Maya area from Central Mexico during the Classic period, sites that received more migrants would show more genetic variation and be distinct from those that did not. In order to identify this gene flow, the null hypothesis assumes that all sites received the same amount of external gene flow from a homogenous “outside world” (Relethford and Blangero 1990). Thus, the identification of sites that violate the null hypothesis and deviate from expected levels of genetic variation are the ones that received differential numbers of extra local migrants. R-matrix analysis is the statistical procedure that provides a measure of intraregional genetic heterogeneity for the pooled samples, an estimate for genetic heterozygosity to be expected for each subpopulation (i.e., site), and the genetic distance of the population to the regional centroid (rii) (Relethford and Blangero 1990).3 The model tests the observed within-group heterogeneity (as a subset of the larger pooled population) and compares it to that expected under the conditions of random mating (i.e., the null hypothesis). Where the subpopulations fall relative to the regression line (expected genetic heterozygosity) provides information about the level of gene flow from outside the sample area (Relethford and Blangero 1990). Positive residuals indicate greater than expected extralocal gene flow and negative residuals indicate that the sample is isolated from nonlocal populations. The RMET statistical program was used to perform the R-matrix analysis.4 Combining genetic heterozygosity results with biological distance results could also point to the origin of migrant populations (i.e., sites between regions that have small biological distances). For example, if populations

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from Tula moved into Chichén Itzá, then we would expect Chichén Itzá to exhibit greater than expected genetic variability (i.e., a positive residual). We would also expect these two sites to have a smaller biological distance estimate than expected in an isolation by distance model. Morphometric Measurements

As stated above, this study records the dimensions at the cementoenamel junction (CEJ). Recently, new calipers have been developed to allow for the recording of these dimensions on teeth in situ (Hillson et al. 2005). CEJ dimensions have been shown to be highly correlated with crown dimensions (Aubry 2014; Hillson et al. 2005). CEJ dimensions are also much less susceptible than the crown to both interproximal and occlusal attrition (Hillson et al. 2005). The impact of interproximal and occlusal wear is obvious; wear affects the reliability of using the dimensions of the crown in population affinity studies. Van Reenen (1982) and Hillson et al. (2005) demonstrated that when the crown is worn to the extent that the dentin is exposed, there could be as much as a 10 percent reduction in mesiodistal (MD) length because of interproximal wear. At the point where secondary dentin is evident, there can be as much as a 20 percent reduction in mesiodistal length (Hillson et al. 2005; van Reenen 1982). Occlusal wear also reduces tooth dimensions as wear moves below the maximum dimensions of the crown. When worn teeth are excluded from analysis, sample sizes are further reduced (van Reenen 1982). The problems of interproximal and occlusal wear significantly affect the reliability of using the maximum crown dimensions in biological affinity studies and may account for differences in results between studies. Hillson and colleagues developed a method for obtaining mesiodistal and buccolingual measurements at the cervix of the tooth (Hillson et al. 2005), but several problems were identified with the method they outlined (see Aubry 2014 for a detailed discussion). The current study records the mesiodistal (MD) and buccolingual (BL) dimensions at the cervix using the modified method described in Aubry 2014. The dimensions recorded include upper and lower central incisors (UI1MD, UI1BL, LI1MD, LI1BL), upper and lower canines (UCMD, UCBL, LCMD, LCBL), upper and lower anterior premolars (UP3MD, UP3BL, LP3MD, LP3BL), and upper and lower first molars (UM1MD, UM1BL, LM1MD, LM1BL). A subset of these sixteen dimensions was used in the statistical analysis.

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Sample

The original sample analyzed for this study consisted of 1,319 individuals from twenty-three sites—twenty Maya sites and three key sites from Central Mexico (figure 7.1, table 7.1). All samples date from 250–1050 CE; most of the Maya skeletal material dates from the more narrow range of 550–950 CE. Including a large number of sites was essential for estimating genetic heterozygosity for the region and for identifying site-specific genetic variability in the Maya area. Material from Teotihuacan consists of four skeletal Table 7.1. List of analyzed sites with sample sizes Site

Recorded n

Final sample n

Altar de Sacrificios

71

32

Calakmul

39

20

Petén sites (Ix Ek, Curucuitz, Ixkún, Ixtonton, Calzada Mopan)

77

32

Chichén Itzá

29

9

Cholula

61

44

Copán

35

9

Dos Pilas

46

24

Dzibilchaltún

26

11

Kaminaljuyú

23

12

Palenque

13

8

Piedras Negras

81

40

Playa del Carmen and San Gervasio

45

9

Teotihuacan 1986

37

13

Teotihuacan–La Ventilla barrio

52

22

Teotihuacan 1980–1982

45

24

Teotihuacan: Mixed Centro

16

11

Tikal: Early Classic

180

18

Tikal: Late Classic

180

21

Tula

59

14

Uaxactún

41

18

Xcambó

312

161

Yaxuná

31

13

1,499

565

Total

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samples excavated at different times from around the site. Three of these are from the site epicenter and one is from the La Ventilla barrio just outside the epicenter (Manzanilla 2017; Serrano and Lagunas 1974). As with nearly any bioarchaeological study, this analysis is limited by the available samples. Small samples, sample bias during excavation, the length of time since discovery, and the ever-present problem of missing data all impact whether or not the samples studied actually represent the parent populations (see Wrobel 2014 for an excellent discussion). Sample bias likely affects older collections the most. For example, 64 percent of the burials from Altar de Sacrificios come from ceremonial and public architecture (Wright 1994), which skews data toward the elite. In addition, Maya burials are not located in cemeteries but are located under floors, in construction fill, in caches, and in other contexts, and this affects how representative these skeletal collections are (see Cucina 2015b; Scherer 2017). Missing data can easily reduce a relatively large skeletal sample of 200 individuals down to fifty or even thirty individuals for any given analysis. As sample sizes are reduced, the covariance matrices derived from the data become increasingly problematic. In addition, the type of access a researcher has to skeletal samples often limits which questions can be addressed. These problems are exacerbated by the fact that many individual burials lack provenience information, phase assignments, and so forth. These issues must be acknowledged and the interpretations of results must be qualified by the limitations they present. Because of issues with sample sizes, most site samples cannot be divided by time period, although Tikal is an exception to this generalization. Other sites with small samples were grouped together if this was deemed appropriate (e.g., the Petén sites of Ix Ek, Curucuitz, Ixkún, Ixtontón, and Calzada Mopán, which are within 15 kilometers of each other) (Laporte et al. 1990, 2–3). San Gervasio and Playa del Carmen skeletal samples were also combined into a single population for the same reason. No other sites were grouped together. Of the sixteen measurements, a smaller subset of these variables (six measurements) were chosen for statistical analysis (UP3MD, UP3BL, UM1MD, LCMD, LP3MD, LP3BL). Variables with a large amount of missing data were excluded prior to analysis. To further reduce the number of variables, Ward’s hierarchical clustering method was used to maximize within-cluster homogeneity to reduce variables that are highly correlated and therefore redundant (Subhash and Kumar 2006). Within the

Classic Period Migration in the Maya Area: A Morphometric Analysis · 183

hierarchical cluster, measurements were chosen to maximize the number of individuals per site that could be included for statistical analysis. Of the original 1,319 individuals that were analyzed, individuals missing more than one of the six remaining variables (or roughly 15 percent) (following Schafer 1999) were dropped from the analysis. Missing data were imputed for the remaining individuals using the EM algorithm in SPSS, which uses means and covariance matrices to predict missing values (Piggot 2001). A total of 565 individuals were included in the results in table 7.1. Results

The results of this analysis should be interpreted with the understanding that numerous samples included in this study are small and may not accurately reflect the parent population. Small samples often result in poorly estimated covariance matrices for individual sites (Manly 1994) and these poor estimates are then used in both the R-matrix and the Mahalanobis distance statistics. Despite these issues, consistent patterns in the results can be informative. For example, although a single biological distance estimate may not reflect the true nature of a biological relationship, patterns that demonstrate that sites of a particular type (e.g., coastal sites) show greater biological distance would be an important result. R-Matrix Results The results of the R-matrix analysis for the Maya sites are shown in table 7.2. The FST is a fixation index that measures population differentiation in the genetic structure. The index ranges from 0 to 1, with 0 indicating complete sharing of genetic material and 1 indicating no shared genetic material. For Classic period Maya sites this measure is 0.0182, which indicates close relationships and is nearly identical to a previous estimate (Scherer 2007). However, a number of samples overlap in our two studies, so this is not unexpected. This number is low and indicates large-scale migration between sites in the Maya area. A number of sites exhibit positive residuals. This indicates that these sites experienced greater than expected levels of extralocal gene flow compared to other sites in the Maya area. These sites include Altar de Sacrificios, Kaminaljuyú, Copán, Palenque, and Early Classic Tikal. Late Classic Tikal and Xcambó have a near-zero residual, and the rest of the sites have negative residuals, indicating less than expected extralocal gene flow.

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Table 7.2. R-matrix results for Maya sites Population

rii

Observed Variance

Expected Variance

Residual Variance

Altar de Sacrificios

0.08094

1.214

0.928

0.286

Calakmul

0.020743

0.79

0.989

-0.199

Petén

0

0.635

1.01

-0.375

Chichén Itzá

0.028497

0.701

0.981

-0.28

Copán

0.028742

1.262

0.981

0.281

Dos Pilas

0.005739

0.701

1.004

-0.303

Dzibilchaltún

0

0.81

1.01

-0.2

Kaminaljuyú

0.019368

1.894

0.991

0.903

Palenque

0

1.3

1.01

0.29

Piedras Negras

0

0.693

1.01

-0.317

Playa del Carmen and San Gervasio

0

0.817

1.01

-0.193

Tikal Early Classic

0

1.487

1.01

0.477

Tikal Late Classic

0

1.111

1.01

Uaxcactún

0.023144

0.79

0.987

-0.197

0.1

Xcambó

0.122591

0.882

0.886

-0.004

Yaxuná

0

0.74

1.01

-0.27

Mahalanobis Distance Results: Maya Area The biological distance results for Maya sites are presented in table 7.3 and are presented graphically in figure 7.2. In table 7.3, it is clear that the majority of significant biological distances are limited to a relatively few sites, including Altar de Sacrificios, Copán, Kaminaljuyú, Palenque, and Xcambó. Copán, Kaminaljuyú and Palenque suffer from small sample sizes, but there is a definite pattern that illustrates that sites on the periphery of the Maya area are more biologically distant. Except for Altar de Sacrificios, all of the sites in the southern and northern lowlands exhibit small pairwise distance measures, indicating close biological relationships. The only exception is a single significant pairwise distance between Chichén Itzá and Uaxactún. Figure 7.2 illustrates these relationships graphically, which shows that Copán, Altar de Sacrificios, Xcambó, and, to a lesser extent, Chichén Itzá and Kaminaljuyú are separated from the rest of the southern

Classic Period Migration in the Maya Area: A Morphometric Analysis · 185

Figure 7.2. Multidimensional scaling plot of Mahalanobis distances for Maya sites.

and northern lowland sites, which are clustered together in the center of the MDS plot. These five sites exhibit numerous significant pairwise differences with a number of Maya sites. Mahalanobis Distance Results: Maya and Central Mexico The biological distance results for all sites are presented in table 7.4 and are presented graphically in figure 7.3. Once again, a few sites are responsible for the majority of significant values. In order, these sites include Altar de Sacrificios, Copán, Xcambó, Teotihuacan 1986, and Kaminaljuyú. Altar de Sacrificios, Copán, and Xcambó are significantly distant from all four Teotihuacan samples. Kaminaljuyú is significantly distant from Teotihuacan (1986) and Teotihuacan (La Ventilla) but is biologically close to the other Teotihuacan samples. Tula and Cholula exhibit no significant pairwise distances with any of the Maya sites and are located in the cluster of sites in the center of the plot.

Table 7.3. Mahalanobis distance matrix for Maya sites

Altar de Sacrificios

Calakmul

Petén

Chichén Itzá

Copán

Dos Pilas

Dzibilchaltún

Altar de Sacrificios Calakmul

2.372

Petén

1.398

0.523

Chichén Itzá

2.244

1.55

1.306

Copán

1.271

2.902

1.435

2.549

Dos Pilas

2.155

0.196

0.326

1.122

1.879

Dzibilchaltún

1.862

0.816

0.133

1.748

1.341

0.454

Kaminaljuyú

1.581

1.01

1.083

1.311

2.375

0.916

1.646

Palenque

1.945

0.448

0.293

2.267

2.505

0.618

0.376

Piedras Negras

1.145

0.433

0.107

1.157

1.226

0.238

0.323

Playa del Carmen and San Gervasio

2.054

1.188

0.449

1.145

2.204

0.955

0.535

Tikal Early Classic

1.555

0.878

0.24

1.32

1.041

0.422

0.12

Tikal Late Classic

1.97

0.642

0.316

1.54

1.669

0.34

0.164

Uaxactún

2.424

0.988

0.427

3.045

2.247

0.917

0.4

Xcambó

0.425

3.083

1.529

3.523

1.068

2.703

1.639

Yaxuná

3.063

0.865

0.481

1.75

1.938

0.452

0.408

Significant values are in bold. Distance measures are in standard deviations from the mean. p < 0.05 at 1.96; p < 0.01 at 2.575.

Kaminaljúyu

Palenque

Piedras Negras

Playa del Carmen and San Tikal Early Gervasio Classic

Tikal Late Classic

Uaxactún

Xcambó

1.79 0.972

0.429

2.342

0.698

0.616

1.641

0.578

0.267

0.478

1.38

0.481

0.447

0.786

0.166

1.744

0.441

0.77

1.379

0.902

0.708

2.732

1.911

1.497

2.153

1.522

2.006

2.042

2.264

0.82

0.542

0.684

0.499

0.72

0.95

3.059

Table 7.4. Mahalanobis distance matrix for Maya and Central Mexico sites

Altar de Chichén Sacrificios Calakmul Petén Itzá Cholula

Copán

Dos Pilas

Dzibilchaltún

Kaminaljúyu Palenque

Altar de Sacrificios Calakmul

2.57

Petén

1.532

0.552

Chichén Itzá

2.34

1.649

1.349

Cholula

1.059

0.496

0.489

1.077

Copán

1.417

3.139

1.543

2.713

1.922

Dos Pilas

2.339

0.214

0.329

1.207

0.508

2.02

Dzibilchaltún

2.065

0.876

0.149

1.836

1.043

1.434

0.464

Kaminaljuyú

1.629

1.092

1.127

1.439

0.736

2.547

1.015

1.762

Palenque

2.129

0.447

0.309

2.329

0.823

2.688

0.612

0.406

1.851

Piedras Negras

1.257

0.461

0.111

1.194

0.201

1.331

0.244

0.35

1.016

0.446

Playa del Carmen and San Gervasio

2.247

1.254

0.489

1.141

1.116

2.369

0.988

0.583

2.479

0.751

Teotihuacan 1986

4.449

1.581

1.572

1.97

1.814

5.302

1.853

2.232

2.951

1.78

Teotihuacan– La Ventilla barrio

2.844

0.791

0.596

1.204

0.834

3.216

0.805

0.99

2.138

0.804

Teotihuacan Centro

2.646

0.409

0.505

0.979

0.692

3.403

0.544

0.882

1.547

0.581

Teotihuacan 1980–1982

2.506

0.776

0.792

0.356

0.779

3.085

0.641

1.278

0.797

1.429

Tikal Early Classic

1.734

0.955

0.266

1.39

0.883

1.122

0.446

0.128

1.787

0.616

Tikal Late Classic

2.164

0.697

0.333

1.645

1.06

1.781

0.359

0.165

1.52

0.491

Tula

1.248

1.198

0.483

0.803

0.468

1.484

0.822

1.001

0.646

1.411

Uaxactún

2.655

1.04

0.46

3.201

1.484

2.398

0.94

0.435

1.801

0.486

Xcambó

0.445

3.261

1.625

3.608

1.903

1.119

2.831

1.765

2.772

2.067

Yaxuná

3.386

0.939

0.531

1.864

1.287

2.098

0.474

0.433

2.457

0.879

Significant values in bold. Distance measures are in standard deviations from the mean. p < 0.05 at 1.96. p < 0.01 at 2.575.

Piedras Negras

Playa del Carmen and San Gervasio

Teotihuacan 1986

Teotihuacan– Tikal Tikal La Ventilla Teotihuacan Teotihuacan Early Late barrio Centro 1980–1982 Classic Classic

Tula

Uaxactún Xcambó

0.656

1.791

1.232

0.658

0.378

0.364

0.596

0.466

0.628

0.187

0.833

1.027

1.229

0.77

0.399

0.295

0.507

2.531

1.058

0.933

1.208

0.473

0.822

2.677

1.302

0.88

1.097

0.173

0.449

1.088

1.688

0.949

0.961

0.592

0.986

1.256

0.821

1.514

2.434

1.528

1.372

1.937

0.976

0.746

1.427

1.58

2.32

5.263

3.362

3.33

3.618

1.626

2.116

1.935

2.21

0.601

0.743

1.599

0.643

0.863

1.379

0.535

0.753

1.278

1.022

3.303

190 · B. Scott Aubry

Figure 7.3. Multidimensional scaling plot of Mahalanobis distances for Maya and Central Mexico sites.

The biological and geographic distance matrices were very poorly correlated (r = 0.0016; p < 0.01). This was expected, given the fact that the Central Mexican sites are situated so closely biologically to many of the Maya sites. Discussion

Almost all biological studies, including this one, have indicated a great degree of movement of peoples in the Maya area (Aubry 2009; Cucina et al. 2015b; Freiwald 2011; Miller 2015; Price et al. 2010; Scherer 2004, 2007; Wright 2012). This is true for both biological and chemical analyses. However, outside of isotopic studies and a few nonmetric studies, few researchers have investigated the relationship between the Maya and Central Mexico. The results of this study add to a growing number of bioarchaeological analyses in Mesoamerica that together are producing a better understanding of population structure and migration.

Classic Period Migration in the Maya Area: A Morphometric Analysis · 191

Population Structure in the Maya Area First, the R-matrix analysis allows for the identification of sites that received greater amounts of extralocal gene flow. For the Maya area, populations that preferentially interacted with nonlocal populations would be expected to have greater than average genetic variability because more nonlocal alleles would be introduced into the population (i.e., gene flow from other locations that are not included in this R-matrix calculation). In this study, the sites at the geographic periphery of the sampling area are also the sites that exhibit positive residuals, indicating that they received differential gene flow from sites not included in the analysis. We might also expect sites nearer to the coast to be more genetically variable because of the importance of long-distance trade. Yet Xcambó, which has a small negative residual variance, was not receiving more gene flow than expected despite the importance of the long-distance trade in salt (Cucina et al. 2015b; Cucina and Tiesler 2004; Sierra Sosa 2015). In general, northern lowland sites either exhibit negative residuals or, like Xcambó, have small residuals. This does not rule out some external gene flow and it does not rule out interaction in the Maya area. The positive residual for Early Classic Tikal indicates that this site, which is near the geographic center for the region, received greater than expected “nonlocal” gene flow in the Early Classic period. As stated earlier, this is also the time when there is epigraphic evidence of foreign intrusion at Tikal (Martin and Grube 2000; Stuart 2000). When we look at biological distance, we see some consistent patterns. First, southern and northern lowland sites cluster together for the most part (table 7.3 and figure 7.2). Some coastal sites—Yaxuná, Playa del Carmen/San Gervasio, and Dzibilchaltún—cluster with the southern lowland centers, which could indicate more migration between these sites. None of the sites in the central cluster exhibit any significant pairwise distances. If we look at Maya sites as a whole, there are numerous significant pairwise comparisons, but these are almost entirely limited to a few sites: Xcambó, Altar de Sacrificios, Copán, and to a lesser extent Chichén Itzá and Kaminaljuyú. This is also clear in the MDS plot (figure 7.2). These sites are primarily near the periphery of the Maya area. Altar de Sacrificios is an outlier in other bioarchaeology studies as well (Austin 1978, Scherer 2004), and it may be important that the burials from Altar de Sacrificios are disproportionately from ceremonial or public contexts (Wright 1994). If that is the case, sampling bias may be producing this effect.

192 · B. Scott Aubry

Other than those sites, the vast majority of pairwise comparisons are not significant. The fact that Calakmúl groups together with other southern lowland sites was expected based on the archaeologically defined relationships and because of the geographic location of the site. Cucina and Tiesler (2004) and Scherer (2004, 2007) also found that Calakmúl was biologically close to other southern lowland sites. Palenque is near the Isthmus of Tehuantepec and is important because of its proximity to Oaxaca and the Valley of Mexico and because it was one of the first sites to experience a “collapse” during the Late Classic period (Willey 1990). Given its geographic location, it seems likely that the center would have been in contact with populations outside the sample area and the positive residual for Palenque supports this. However, Palenque falls in the cluster of southern lowland sites, indicating a close relationship with these sites. This is not unexpected given its location, but the sample size for Palenque is very small and may not reflect the true biological reality of the population. Pasión sites, including Dos Pilas, are important because their inhabitants were erecting stone monuments at a time when many lowland sites (including Tikal) were collapsing (Palka 1995; Willey 1974). Dos Pilas, a site with ties to Tikal, was one of the most important sites in the Pasión/Petexbatún region. Hieroglyphic inscriptions indicate that Dos Pilas was occupied for only about the last 150 years of the Late Classic period (Palka 1995), but during that time it may have dominated the Pasión and Petexbatún areas as an ally of Calakmúl (Demarest 2004). The results of this study show a close relationship with nearly all other lowland sites. These results do not allow us to reject the hypothesis that there was an outside intrusion into Dos Pilas or Piedras Negras. Dos Pilas and Piedras Negras are in the main cluster of sites in figure 7.2, and the only significant pairwise distances for these sites are between Dos Pilas and Altar de Sacrificios and between Dos Pilas and Xcambó. When Central Mexico is included, we see that Tula and Cholula exhibit no significant pairwise comparisons to Teotihuacan or any of the Maya sites. Only one of the new samples stands out as biologically distant: Teotihuacan 1986 (table 7.4), This sample is biologically close to other Central Mexican samples but it is biologically distant from Altar de Sacrificios, Chichén Itzá, Copán, Dzibilchaltún, Kaminaljuyú, Uaxactún, Early Classic and Late Classic Tikal, and Xcambó. This means that of all the sites in the southern lowlands (excepting Altar de Sacrificios), there are only three significant pairwise distances between southern lowland sites and the Central Mexican samples. Altar de Sacrificios, Copán, and Xcambó are biologically

Classic Period Migration in the Maya Area: A Morphometric Analysis · 193

distant from all of the Teotihuacan samples. Xcambó’s population is the greatest outlier even when sites from Central Mexico are included. Its placement outside the main cluster of sites is similar to what Cucina and Tiesler (2004) and Cucina et al. (2015a) found for Xcambó. They suggest that this may reflect Xcambó’s position as a locus of trade that had connections as far away as Veracruz and Belize. Other dental studies that compare Xcambó to other Maya sites suggest that Xcambó does not show any consistent pattern in terms of its relationship to other sites (Cucina and Tiesler 2004; Cucina et al. 2015b). Copán and Kaminaljuyú are both located at the periphery of the Maya area, and both contain abundant archaeological evidence of contact with Teotihuacan. Despite the evidence of contact, Copán exhibits significant biological distance estimates with all four of the Teotihuacan samples and Kaminaljuyú exhibits significant biological distance estimates with two of the four Teotihuacan samples. Copán and Kaminaljuyú do exhibit positive residuals, which indicates that extralocal gene flow was greater than expected for both sites. For Copán, this gene flow could have come from the south and east of the site, which may explain why it is also an outlier relative to other Maya sites. The Copán-Kaminaljuyú pairwise comparison is also significant despite the archaeologically defined ties between these two sites (Valdes and Wright 2004). Once again, the Copán sample is small, and that needs to be taken into consideration. Kaminaljuyú is both genetically distant from and more genetically variable than Copán, which is what we would expect if people migrated into Kaminaljuyú in sufficient numbers from outside of the Maya area. The identification of Kaminaljuyú as having greater than expected genetic variability agrees well with other studies (Scherer 2004, 2007). Numerous researchers have posited that Central Mexican cultures (specifically Teotihuacan) were politically dominant in the southern highlands (Adams 1997; Cheek 1977; Kidder et al. 1946). The most suggestive evidence was found during the excavations of Mounds A and B, where Mexican-style artifacts were found (Smyth and Rogart 2004). Kidder et al. (1946) argued that Teotihuacan intruders married local women. Sanders (1977) and Adams (1997) argued that Teotihuacan was interested in Kaminaljuyú because of its strategic location between the cacao-growing zones of the Pacific coast and the Petén. Table 7.4 shows that Kaminaljuyú is biologically distant from two of the four Teotihuacan samples. If we look at just the sites that group with the Central Mexican samples, many of them contain evidence of Teotihuacan involvement, including

194 · B. Scott Aubry

Calakmúl and Uaxactún. Uaxactún is located to the north of Tikal in the northeastern Petén. There is evidence of a conflict between these sites that resulted in Tikal conquering Uaxactún in 378 CE (Foley 2017; Valdes and Fahsen 1995). Uaxactún exhibits two references on stelae to the 378 CE “arrival” event. Evidence of Teotihuacan influence is also seen in the presence of Teotihuacan-style architecture and artifacts at the site. There is evidence that the site was subordinate to an outside political power, possibly Teotihuacan but more likely Calakmúl (Martin and Grube 2000). In addition, a ball court marker that was found at Tikal is nearly identical to one found at La Ventilla at Teotihuacan (Spence 1996), and the Teotihuacan (La Ventilla) sample is biologically close to the Tikal samples. It is important to note that in the entire lowland area, only Tikal (Early Classic) and Palenque exhibit positive residuals indicative of differential external gene flow. Most of the other lowland sites group together with the Central Mexican samples, but the results indicate that they received lower than expected extralocal gene flow. The northern lowland sites of Dzibilchaltún, Yaxuná, and Playa del Carmen/San Gervasio all group with southern lowland sites and with the Central Mexican samples. Like Xcambó, Dzibilchaltún was heavily involved in the salt trade (Andrews and Andrews 1980; Cucina and Tiesler 2004). During the Terminal Classic, Dzibilchaltún architectural preferences shifted from typical lowland style to Puuc style, possibly indicating an important trade relationship or dominance by Puuc sites. Based on evidence from the nearby site of Chac, Smyth and Rogart (2004) suggest that Teotihuacan may have been politically and economically involved in this area, which may explain why Dzibilchaltún groups with samples in the southern lowland sites. Grube and Krochock (2007) suggest that Dzibilchaltún’s use of titles such as kalo’mte’ and the use of emblem glyphs indicate strong links to the southern lowlands. This grouping of Dzibilchaltún with southern lowland sites also occurs in the results of Cucina and colleagues (2015b). San Gervasio and Playa del Carmen also lie on the coast. San Gervasio is a small site located in the north central region of Cozumel. Playa del Carmen is located farther south along the coast (Márquez Morfín 1982). Like Dzibilchaltún and Xcambó, San Gervasio and Playa del Carmen were heavily involved in trade up and down the Caribbean coast. Some researchers believe that San Gervasio and Cozumel more generally were an important trading center that the Putún Maya dominated (Márquez Morfín et al. 1982; Matheson et al. 2003). The small biological distances support a close relationship between these sites, Dzibilchaltún, and the southern lowland sites,

Classic Period Migration in the Maya Area: A Morphometric Analysis · 195

but once again these sites exhibit negative residuals, so these results do not necessarily support the idea of biological links with populations outside the Maya area. Yaxuná, located just a few miles from Chichén Itzá, was connected to Cobá, a rival of Chichén Itzá, via a causeway 100 kilometers long (Folan et al. 1983; Johnson 2012; Suhler et al. 2004). Although material from Cobá is not included in this study, it was an extremely important player in the northern Yucatan during the Classic period. Yaxuná was a satellite of Cobá (Folan et al. 1983; Demarest 2004; Freidel 2007), and Cobá is a massive Late Classic site that culturally resembles sites in the southern lowlands (e.g., the Petén) (Demarest 2004). Yaxuná is thought to have been the first site to fall when Chichén expanded, followed by Uxmal and Dzibilchaltún (Johnson 2012). It has also been proposed that Cobá declined along with the southern lowland centers, while other northern Yucatan sites were emerging (Demarest 2004). This connection may relate to my finding that Yaxuná groups biologically with southern lowland sites. Chichén Itzá demonstrates an interesting pattern in that it is biologically close to all of the Central Mexican samples except Teotihuacan (1986) but biologically distant from a number of Maya samples, including Copán, Palenque, Uaxactún, and Xcambó. The possibility of interaction and even intrusion of Central Mexican populations is not rejected by the results of this study (although this could be the result of the small sample size for Chichén). If large-scale migration from Tula did occur, we would expect Chichén Itzá to exhibit greater variability relative to other Maya sites, but Chichén Itzá exhibits less genetic variability, indicating less external gene flow. Conclusions

These results are simply one more piece of information to add to a more detailed understanding of the relationships between Central Mexico and the Maya. Despite the obvious limitations of this research due to the small sample sizes and biased samples, factors that call into question the results from individual sites, the broader patterns are important. The biological distance estimates reinforce the idea that interaction between Central Mexico and the Maya area was common enough to bring these regions together biologically. Some basic conclusions for the Maya area are that there is little genetic variability (i.e., low FST) in the Maya region as a whole, an indication of a lot of internal movement. This is in line with almost all other

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bioarchaeological studies in the Maya area. Sites at the periphery of the Maya area tend to be biologically distant and more genetically variable than expected and sites near the coast are less genetically variable than expected despite evidence for long-distance trade. With the exception of Chichén Itzá, sites near the coast tend to be close biologically to other Maya sites. The fact that Kaminaljuyú and Altar de Sacrificios exhibit greater than expected levels of genetic variability is in agreement with other bioarchaeological studies (see Austin 1978; Scherer 2004; Wrobel 2003). Sites near the coast that likely participated in long-distance trade were expected to exhibit greater variability, but that is not what this study found. Sites near the coast either exhibit the expected level of genetic variation (Xcambó) or less genetic variation than expected (Chichén, San Gervasio/Playa del Carmen, and Yaxuná). This study also presents evidence of close biological ties between Central Mexico and the Maya area. In general, lowland sites have small pairwise distances with Central Mexican samples and Central Mexican samples are all closely related to each other. The close proximity of Teotihuacan samples to Petén sites is relevant to questions about migration and interaction between these two regions. The results presented here do not allow us to reject the hypotheses about populations migrating between Central Mexico and the Maya area at various times during the Classic period. In fact, the results of this study appear to support this interregional migration. Additional support for this interaction comes from the facts that the R-matrix analyses identify specific sites that have more genetic variability than expected and that many show archaeological evidence of nonlocal interaction (Altar de Sacrificios, Copán, Early Classic Tikal, Palenque, and Kaminaljuyú). Early Classic Tikal is the only lowland site with a positive residual. These results may indicate long-term interaction or they could also indicate a single large-scale movement into the lowlands and then gene flow that distributed this variability throughout the area over centuries. The evidence presented here says little about the nature of this relationship between these two regions, however. It simply provides evidence for gene flow. The small biological distances could be the results of anything from unidirectional migration from Central Mexico and domination of the Maya area to more equitable interaction with migration in both directions. More biological studies are needed on populations not included in this study to create a more complete picture of population structure. Only through the inclusion of additional material from sites within and outside this region can we begin to fully understand the degree and direction of

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migration in the past. Unfortunately, difficulties accessing existing collections are an issue. In addition, new, large burial populations that would be needed to more fully address this issue are unlikely to be produced in the foreseeable future (although Xcambó is a recent exception to this). This is particularly true as projects become increasingly focused around specific research questions, which Scherer (2017, 159) correctly attributes to changing institutional priorities and reduced funding, particularly for residential excavation, which is what is really needed. Notes 1. Absolute linear distances may not be the best measure of actual distance between sites, since many sites are located at different altitudes and along the coast or along rivers. Unfortunately, although White and Barber (2012) provide a model of cost paths for Oaxaca, it is difficult to determine whether these different weights accurately reflect the differences in terrain as people experienced it in the past. There are simply too many unknown variables, and for this reason I retained the simple linear measurements for this study. 2. Available at “John Retherford’s Software Page,” http://employees.oneonta.edu/ relethjh/programs/ 3. This statistic assumes that the populations were subsets of a larger randomly mating population (Crow 1986; Harpending and Jenkins 1973; Harpending and Ward 1982; Relethford and Blangero 1990; Williams-Blangero and Blangero 1989). This assumption allows for the estimation of expected frequencies for trait expression (i.e., genetic heterozygosity), which can be compared to the observed frequencies (Relethford and Blangero 1990). 4. Available at “John Retherford’s Software Page.”

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8 The Murals of Cacaxtla Monumental Art as Evidence of Migration Andrew D. Turner

The movement of populations, whether motivated by political, economic, or environmental factors, is a fundamental reality of human societies, past and present. Owing in no small part to recent advances in DNA and stable isotope analysis, migration has recently reemerged as a vital topic of archaeological inquiry after decades of neglect (Cabana 2011; van Dommelen 2014). While these analytical methods have tremendous potential to reveal dynamics of past human mobility, other types of investigation, including the analysis of monumental art, have shied away from the topic of migration. Under certain circumstances, analysis of monumental art not only provides an independent line of evidence for migration but can also reveal how statements of ethnic identity are articulated and expressed in the midst of population movements. Since the Epiclassic murals of Cacaxtla, Tlaxcala, came to light in the mid-1970s, investigators have faced a fundamental problem concerning the identity and origin of the artists who painted them. The stylistic similarity of the murals to Late Classic Maya monumental art is immediately apparent, yet Cacaxtla is located some 700 kilometers away from the nearest Maya site (see Introduction, figure 1.1) with no clear antecedent for the Cacaxtla murals in Central Mexico. With some exceptions (e.g., Abascal et al. 1976, 18; Peterson 1995), authors frequently comment on the relative lack of lowland Maya exchange goods at Cacaxtla, despite the strong “Maya” appearance of the murals. The murals are devoid of the Maya hieroglyphic writing that, for some, would constitute unequivocal evidence of Maya cultural presence. Instead, they feature inscriptions in a style similar to that in

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use at other highland Mexican sites during the Epiclassic period, such as Xochicalco and Teotenango. Studies have often assumed that the murals are a result of cultural diffusion or a product of migrants from the Maya lowlands or southern Gulf Coast, but the uncritical associations between art style and ethnicity and the selective use of ethnohistorical texts that characterize early investigations have undoubtedly contributed to a recent paradigm shift that favors autochthonous development as the explanation of the murals at Cacaxtla. Previous studies have suffered from lack of specificity in defining Mayastyle traits in these murals and how they might constitute an expression of Maya ethnic identity. Furthermore, scholars who argue in favor of migration have not critically approached the topic and have generally failed to address key questions about the possible scale and frequency of migrations to Cacaxtla and the social composition and motives of migrant groups. This study argues that the murals at Cacaxtla present deliberate statements of Maya ethnic identity that were sustained for several generations. Analysis of the style and content of the murals links traits in the monumental art programs at Cacaxtla to specific sites in the Maya lowlands and strongly suggest that at least some members of Cacaxtla’s population were migrants from eastern Mesoamerica. I begin by briefly summarizing the major scholarly views regarding the identity of the mural painters at Cacaxtla. I then raise some of the key theoretical concerns that underpin the entangled concepts of art style, ethnicity, and migration. The next section presents Maya-style traits and concepts that appear in monumental art at Cacaxtla and demonstrates how they relate to similar examples from the Maya lowlands. The goals of this section are to link the art at Cacaxtla to specific regional traits in the Maya lowlands and to demonstrate that the Cacaxtla artists were not simply copying foreign forms but were actively creating art in a style that engages with and articulates themes in a manner that is consistent with and specific to Late Classic Maya religious beliefs and ideology. The section that follows considers the relationship between writing and the murals’ creators. I conclude by discussing the possible nature and context of migrations by mural painters and patrons at Cacaxtla. Exchange, Emulation, and Migration

The introduction of eastern Mesoamerican themes, motifs, and styles into Epiclassic highland Mexico has been widely attributed to incursions by the Olmeca Xicalanca, a mysterious group of invaders described in

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colonial-period texts whose origin is generally placed in southern Veracruz, Tabasco, and coastal Campeche (Armillas 1946; Jiménez Moreno 1966).1 Some scholars doubt that colonial-period documents accurately describe historical events that happened nearly 1,000 years before they were recorded (e.g., Brittenham 2008, 255–259; Smith 2007, 586–593). Others note that some historical sources suggest that the arrival of the Olmeca Xicalanca postdates the peak of the painting tradition at Cacaxtla (Santana Sandoval 2007; Testard 2017, 144–145). Accounts that discuss the Olmeca Xicalanca are often contradictory about their ethnic composition, origin, and accomplishments (Nagao 2014, 501–515; Testard 2017). The difficulty in discussing the Olmeca Xicalanca as an archaeological culture is compounded by the relative lack of archaeological investigation carried out in the region that is generally considered to be their homeland. Because the explanatory capacity of early colonial Olmeca Xicalanca migration accounts is at best limited, the Cacaxtla murals must be evaluated on their own terms. Stein (1999, 12–14) and Cowgill (2013, 133) note that the appearance of works of material culture executed in a foreign style may be the result of exchange, emulation, or migration. The task at hand is to evaluate the social processes that account for the presence of such works. According to Stein (1999, 13), while some or all of these processes may operate in tandem in a particular situation, they “are conceptually discrete, and each should leave recognizably different archaeological signatures.” While the murals were immobile, some scholars have raised the possibility that the artists who created them arrived at Cacaxtla through exchange. Walling (1982) and Robertson (1985) suggest that the painters who created the Cacaxtla murals were imported from Maya courts or perhaps traveled as itinerant artists. The individual styles of multiple painters are discernible in the Cacaxtla murals (Brittenham 2013; Foncerrada de Molina 1993, 23; Kubler 1980; Lombardo de Ruiz 1986, 214). Robertson (1985) believed that the murals were painted within one generation and therefore could not be considered a “tradition.” Through close analysis of the murals, Brittenham (2013, 2015) identifies more than twenty individual painting styles represented at Cacaxtla that appear on murals painted over several generations, pointing to the presence of a sustained mural-painting tradition at Cacaxtla. Emulation has gained traction as an explanation that could account for the appearance of stylistically foreign murals at Cacaxtla. Nagao (1989, 2014) and Brittenham (2015) argue that the adoption of foreign artistic traits was a local deliberate effort to place ideological distance between

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Cacaxtla and the collapsed Teotihuacan while at the same time proclaiming desired (but largely unrealized) ties to foreign powers. Others (López Austin and López Luján 2000; Ringle et al. 1998) argue that a supra-ethnic Postclassic cult devoted to Quetzalcoatl linked elites across Mesoamerica through shared imagery and ideology and that the cult may have originated with Epiclassic sites such as Cacaxtla and Xochicalco. In these models, the murals at Cacaxtla strive to achieve an “international” character that links Cacaxtla to distant regions. These interpretations provide alternatives to outmoded and undertheorized models of cultural diffusion. If Maya painters did not travel to Cacaxtla, we must ask how local artists were able to create murals with such distinct Late Classic Maya style and content. Quirarte (1983, 219) suggests that the mural scenes were copied from imported Maya vases. To date, however, no vessels bearing similar imagery have been recovered at Cacaxtla. In addition, the murals do not directly resemble any particular Maya vase-painting style. While other portable media that could convey complex imagery include painted textiles and books, no comparable examples exist from the Late Classic period and surviving Postclassic examples bear little resemblance to the Cacaxtla murals. Furthermore, and perhaps most significantly, mural painting is a distinct medium that has unique technical and pictorial constraints and opportunities. The style and content of the Cacaxtla murals are most directly comparable to Late Classic Maya monumental relief carvings and extant murals. Robertson (1985, 299) and Kubler (1980, 170) suggest that the murals could have been transferred as patterns or sketches on paper or hide drawn from examples from the Maya lowlands. However, Robertson (1985, 300) cautions that “when patterns move alone, without the artist who made them or who at least understands them, a style does not move intact.” Robertson’s statement reads as an axiom, but it does signal important considerations about the relationship between form, technical execution, and content as interdependent constituents of style. A hindrance to investigations of Cacaxtla is that relatively few studies have addressed in depth specific Late Classic Maya iconographic traits that appear in the murals, with some notable exceptions (e.g., Foncerrada de Molina 1993; Helmke and Nielsen 2013b, 2014; Nagao 1989). Due to recent advances in Maya studies, the internal cultural and political diversity of the Maya lowlands is now more widely acknowledged than it was by previous generations of scholars. Lowland Maya art and architecture reflect considerable diversity, and inscribed monuments demonstrate that Late Classic Maya cities and their rulers actively engaged in profitable networks

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of alliance and intense and often detrimental rivalries (see Golden and Scherer 2013; Martin and Grube 2000; Schele and Freidel 1990; Schortman and Ashmore 2012; Tokovinine 2013). The relative uniformity in hieroglyphic writing may even conceal a variety of spoken vernaculars in the Maya region (Houston et al. 2000). Further consideration of specific Maya traits that appear at Cacaxtla and their parallels in the Maya region clarifies the nature of Cacaxtla’s relationship to individual sites in the Maya lowlands and the anomalous appearance of Maya-style murals far from the Maya region. Migration, Ethnicity, and Style

Under the culture history paradigms that shaped archaeological thought for the first half of the twentieth century, migration framed as a form of cultural diffusion was often considered a default explanation for culture change. Recent investigations into ancient migrations are grounded in ethnographic observation and offer a more nuanced view of how and why groups of people migrate. Mass migrations, the staple of early twentiethcentury migration models, are rare, as are those that are not embedded in longer-term patterns of interaction (Anthony 1997; Burmeister 2000). Migrations often follow well-defined routes, or migration streams, that are oriented toward specific destinations and can also facilitate return (Anthony 1990, 903; Lee 1966, 54–55). Migrating groups may be organized along lines of class, gender, or age (Burmeister 2000, 543). Initial migrants may be merchants, warriors, or missionaries who maintain contact with their place of origin and thus leave open channels for subsequent migrations and return migrations. These events are integral to migrations as events embedded in longer-term social processes (Burmeister 2000, 544; Lee 1966, 54–55). Whether or not we are able to recognize evidence of migration in material remains is framed by our expectations of what type of archaeological signature migration might leave. An acculturation model that Stein (2002, 905) has soundly critiqued assumes that the material culture of smaller, less powerful groups will become more like that of their more powerful counterparts over time. Another closely related expectation is that quotidian ceramic types and domestic architecture are more resistant to change and will exhibit patterning similar to those of migrants’ place of origin. An assumption underlying this notion may be that functional (i.e., practical) aspects of material culture may be more durable than presumably

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superficial stylistic aspects, although the distinction between the function and style of artifacts is subject to critique (e.g., Sackett 1977). Burmeister (2000, 542) draws a distinction between public and private spheres, arguing that the private sphere is more conservative among migrating groups. This view may carry an assumption that immigrants arrived in situations in which they were forced to adapt to publicly visible social conventions but were free to retain ancestral practices in low-visibility contexts when they were not under scrutiny. However, distinctions between public and private have also been roundly criticized (e.g., Bowser 2000; Ortner 1974). One might expect that the social composition of migrant groups and the circumstances that led them to migrate might play a greater role in determining the nature of their archaeological imprint. One of the greatest challenges to the archaeological study of migration involves the potentially problematic association between material remains and ancient ethnic groups (Snow 1995, 72). As with the study of migration, the conceptual terrain of ancient ethnicity has shifted in response to observations drawn from ethnography. Largely due to the work of Barth (1969), objectivist views of ethnicity, which treat ethnic groups as bounded and relatively isolated entities, have lost ground in favor of subjectivist considerations, which stress the constructed nature of ethnic categories and their role in mediating social interaction and behavior (Jones 1997, 56–57). Barth (1969, 10) stresses that social actors self-ascribe ethnicity. Eriksen (1991) argues that ethnicity does not reflect a totality of a group’s cultural practices and that different expressions of ethnicity may be mobilized in different social contexts. While ethnic recognition is based on perceived similarities and origins within a group, it involves the objectification of cultural differences from other groups (Eriksen 1991; 2010, 68; Jones 1997, 96–100). Eriksen (1991, 141) stresses the oppositional and expressive nature of ethnicity by defining it as the “collective enaction of socially differentiating signs.” Until relatively recently, archaeologists assumed that interethnic interaction and proximity inevitably leads to gradual “sameness” through acculturation. However, interethnic interaction and interdependence in contested areas can also lead to the creation, maintenance, and persistence of ethnic boundaries (Barth 1969, 9–10). Furthermore, political or economic pressure may heighten ethnic consciousness (Hodder 1982; Urbańczyk 2003, 46). Ethnic identity may thus be expressed most strongly in contested areas (Barth 1969). Style in material culture is actively deployed in the expression of group identity. Wiessner (1983, 256) defines style as “formal variation in material

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culture that transmits information about personal and social identity” and, following Wobst (1977), adds that emblemic style “has a distinct referent and transmits a clear message to a defined target population about conscious affiliation or identity” (Wiessner 1983, 257). While emblemic style conveys aspects of group identity, it may be contrasted with assertive or stochastic style, which communicates aspects of an individual’s identity or how they perceive the world (Franklin 1986; Wiessner 1983, 258). Wobst’s emphasis on the functional properties of style as a form of communication is a departure from previous models that treated style as a passive or residual phenomenon (Hegmon 1992, 519–520). Bourdieu’s (1977, 1990) concept of habitus provides a productive middle ground that acknowledges that some aspects of style and ethnicity are conscious and deliberate and others are passively inherited through structural dispositions (Cowgill 2013, 133; Curta 2014, 2508–2509; Jones 1997). Crucially, material symbols may be actively mobilized as expressions of ethnicity in negotiations of power (Curta 2014, 2509). As expressions of group identity, the murals of Cacaxtla may be classified under Wiessner’s (1983) rubric of emblemic style. Given their prominent location, the significant investment in labor and materials they required, their distinct content, and the fact that they were produced over several generations, there is little reason to doubt that they convey deliberate messages about the identities of their painters and patrons that were aimed at target audiences who could understand their content. Before returning to the questions of whether or not artists at Cacaxtla migrated from the Maya lowlands, what form the migration(s) may have taken, and the social circumstances that led to the creation of the murals, it is first necessary to more clearly define the style and content of the murals and discuss how they relate to other works from the Maya lowlands. The Epiclassic Murals of Cacaxtla

The major mural programs of Cacaxtla are situated on its acropolis, which is oriented north to south (see figure 8.1). The fortified hilltop on which the acropolis sits is located just east of Xochitécatl, a Late Formative site that was reoccupied during the Epiclassic period. The nearby hilltop sites of Mixco Viejo, Atlachino, and Nativitas were also likely integrated with Cacaxtla. The Temple of Venus murals consist of two painted pillars decorated with frontal blue-painted supernatural figures with wings and “star belts” that adorned a structure on the southwest edge of the acropolis. The

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Figure 8.1. Map of the acropolis of Cacaxtla with locations of major mural programs. After Lucet 2013, 1.8.

murals on the Captive Stair (which is decorated with emaciated captives) and the Red Temple were painted in a corridor that provided southern access to the central Great Plaza. The Red Temple murals portray a merchant deity with a pack laden with goods in a supernatural landscape. The Battle Mural is painted on the two lower taluds of Structure B, which defines the northern boundary of the Great Plaza. It presents vivid scenes of warriors clad in feline costumes slaughtering foes with avian headdresses (plate 14). Structure A, which features the first murals discovered at the site, was situated off the northeast corner of the Great Plaza. A partially preserved inner mural was painted on the back wall of the structure and its porticos and jambs are decorated with well-preserved anthropomorphic figures. Using different methods, recent studies have proposed dates for the indi-

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vidual mural programs at Cacaxtla. Based on associated radiocarbon dates, Brittenham (2015, 52) proposes a late seventh- to early eighth-century date for the Captive Stair murals, an eighth-century date for the Temple of Venus and Structure A inner murals, and a ninth-century date for the Battle Mural, the Red Temple Mural, and the Structure A portico murals. Based on comparison of iconographic motifs that appear in the Cacaxtla murals to dated Maya stelae, Helmke and Nielsen (2013b, 2014) place the Battle Mural between 692 and 755 CE and the Structure A portico murals between 746 and 810 CE.2 Regardless of the precise dating of the murals, it is clear that based on relative dating, chronometric dating, and stylistic comparison, they were painted over a span of several generations. An additional point worth noting is that the surviving murals at Cacaxtla do not represent the full extent of the tradition. Known murals have been either discovered by chance after the investigation of looting activities or during construction of the massive awning that now covers the acropolis. The Cacaxtla Murals and Lowland Maya Art

Authors often describe the artwork of Cacaxtla and other Epiclassic sites as eclectic because they combine artistic elements from Teotihuacan, the Gulf Coast, Oaxaca, and the Maya lowlands (e.g., Abascal et al. 1976; Brittenham 2015, 37–38; Cohodas 1989; Foncerrada de Molina 1976; 1978, 146; 1993, 106; Hirth 2000, 265–266; Kubler 1980; Nicholson 1971, 104; Piña Chán 1977). However, traits from Oaxaca and the Gulf Coast are not particularly prevalent in the Cacaxtla murals and, as Nagao (1989, 91–93) has noted, the Teotihuacan traits that appear had first “filtered down” to the Maya lowlands before they appeared at Cacaxtla (see also Baird 1989, 119; Stone 1989). The term “eclecticism” masks the overwhelming affinities the Cacaxtla murals share with art of the Late Classic Maya lowlands. In terms of style, technique, and iconography, the mural tradition at Cacaxtla runs parallel to roughly contemporaneous developments in Late Classic Maya art. Furthermore, the site’s painters created coherent statements in a complex Maya visual vocabulary over several generations, and it is reasonable to assume that their continued success was supported by a local audience who understood them and considered them relevant. The style, techniques, manner, and materials used in the Cacaxtla murals have no direct parallel outside the Maya region. Walling (1982) notes that Maya stylistic traits in the Cacaxtla murals include the use of space, the treatment of the body, perspective, foreshortening, mass, and a sense

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of movement. Robertson (1985) adds line quality and emotion to the traits that appear in Late Classic Maya art but do not otherwise appear in Central Mexico prior to Cacaxtla. Compositions in the Battle Mural that show victorious warriors and vanquished captives are arranged similarly to those of the Late Classic Maya mural paintings of Bonampak (Lombardo de Ruiz [1978] 1995, 254–256). Likewise, the Battle Mural’s sense of narrative and immediacy deviates strongly from painting traditions of Teotihuacan, Cholula, and Oaxaca, and finds a closer parallel in Maya art (see Brittenham 2011). Anthropomorphic figures that appear in the Cacaxtla murals and indeed the emphasis on the human body itself more closely resemble Late Classic Maya art than other traditions. The figures on the jamb and portico murals of Structure A at Cacaxtla feature poses and costume elements that are similar to Late Classic Maya depictions of rulers on monuments. The figures, with the exception of the south jamb figure who stands with crossed legs, stand frontally with turned-out feet and the head facing to the side, a pose the Temple of Venus figures and some of the figures in the Battle Mural exhibit. This method of portraying the human figure is a hallmark of Late Classic Maya art (Proskouriakoff 1950, 22–23) and contrasts with the typical method of portraying figures in full profile or frontally in the art of Teotihuacan. The figure dressed in an eagle costume on Structure A’s south portico mural stands with one heel elevated in a pose that signifies dance in Late Classic Maya art (Kubler 1980, 166; Looper 2009, 88–93; Proskouriakoff 1950, 28). On the acropolis at Cacaxtla, red-painted bands (guardapolvos) along the basal registers of white plastered walls delineate interior spaces (Brittenham 2015, 15; López de Molina and Molina Feal 1986, 33–34; Lucet 2013, 85–90). Although these seem to be novel, a similar convention of red bands framing painted scenes set against a white or cream-colored ground appears on Late Classic Maya codex-style ceramics. Perhaps of more direct relevance, the interior walls of Copán’s Early Classic Rosalila structure feature red upper and lower basal bands set against otherwise unadorned white walls. Red basal and upper bands appear in the Late Classic Maya murals of Bonampak, Xultun, and Uaxactún, and the painted tombs of Río Azul and the Chik Nahb murals of Calakmúl use red borders to frame decorated white walls. Although authors frequently point out the relative lack of imported Maya objects that would suggest strong trade connections, the liberal use of Maya blue in the Cacaxtla murals provides unequivocal evidence of

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exchange with the Maya lowlands (see plate 14). Maya blue, which consists of palygorskite clay dyed with indigo, became widely used in Maya art by the late fifth century (Houston et al. 2009, 78). It is notably absent from the murals of Teotihuacan. Although other pigments used in the Cacaxtla murals were available locally (Magaloni Kerpel et al. 2013, 167–183), palygorskite is scarce and has been sourced to deposits in Yucatan (Arnold 2005; Arnold and Bohor 1977; Arnold et al. 2008; Arnold et al. 2007; Folan 1969). Maya blue was also used at El Tajín and Las Higueras, Veracruz, although artists at those sites mixed the blue to make it lighter in hue and more opaque (Brittenham 2015, 82, 159). As Santana Sandoval (1990, 2002) has noted, nearly every zoomorphic being represented in the Cacaxtla murals, whether mammal, bird, reptile, fish, or invertebrate, has a large crescent-shaped eyebrow, or orbital, rendered in Maya blue. He draws comparisons to Nahua conceptions of the eyebrow as a spiritual center of the body, although he does not acknowledge that blue eyebrows are a convention that similarly appears on zoomorphic representations in Late Classic Maya art. A well-known example appears on the lid of a vessel from Toniná (see Miller and Martin 2004, pl. 40). A zoomorphic incense bag held by the seated ruler portrayed on the north wall mural of Structure 10K-2 at Xultun, which may represent the head of the same simian entity on the aforementioned vessel lid from Toniná, also has a crescent-shaped eyebrow rendered in Maya blue (see Saturno et al. 2015). The water bands that contain aquatic animals that are separated by diagonal bars and that serve as basal registers for the murals of the Red Temple, the Temple of Venus, and Structure A have most often been discussed in terms of their similarity to aquatic bands in the murals of Teotihuacan (Brittenham 2008, 87–88; Foncerrada de Molina 1980, 196; Kubler 1980, 164; Lombardo de Ruiz 1986, 237; McVicker 1985, 84–85). However, the water bands in the Cacaxtla murals more directly recall those that appear in Classic Maya art (Nagao 1989, 91, 2014, 192–195). The water bands in Cacaxtla art repeatedly portray a shell that resembles the le signs that appear as a common convention in Maya water bands (Brittenham 2015, 63; Martin 2013, 533; Nagao 2014, 194; Taube et al. 2010, fig. 56). These signs often signify water in Maya art and are incorporated into the NAHB glyph, a waterlily that denotes pools of water (Houston 2010, 71; Martin 2013, 533; Taube 2010b, 81). Maya water bands likewise form the basal registers of Classic Maya vases and stucco façades and may be punctuated by scalloped diagonal bars, as in the water bands of Cacaxtla (Taube 2010b, 206).

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Supernatural Beings and Cosmology For the most part, the supernatural beings that appear in the Cacaxtla murals are otherwise distinct to the Maya region, indicating that invoking important Maya religious themes was a concern to the painters at Cacaxtla. The Central Mexican rain god Tlaloc may be an exception. It appears on a jar that a figure on the north jamb of Structure A is holding and emerges from behind a shield of one of the combatants in the Battle Mural. As Brittenham (2015, 130) notes, Tlaloc was a later addition to the Battle Mural, but it is not clear how long after the mural’s initial iteration it was added. Regardless of whether or not these features were originally conceived as integral to the content of the murals, Tlaloc imagery appears to have been imported into the Maya region along with other Teotihuacan conventions during the fourth century and Maya artists continued to deploy it well after the city’s decline. In other words, Tlaloc imagery in the murals is not necessarily a non-Maya convention. The artists at Cacaxtla represented supernatural beings in ways that were consistent with Late Classic Maya conventions and symbolism. A scorpiontailed male figure with a lobed “star belt” (see Baird 1989) that is painted on one of the pilasters in the Temple of Venus at Cacaxtla has no apparent antecedent in Central Mexico, but it resembles other scorpion-tailed supernaturals in Late Classic Maya art (Brittenham 2015, 103; Carlson 1991, 24; Šprajc 1996, 96; Uriarte Castañeda and Velázquez García 2013, 679). On the south jamb of Structure A, a figure with long red hair emerges from a conch shell. This figure has been compared to the Maya God N (e.g., Nagao 1989, 92) and to the youthful Maya Maize God (Brittenham 2015, 201). Taube (pers. comm. 2015) notes that this being is a likely manifestation of the long-haired anthropomorphic Maya wind god (see Taube 1992, 59–60; Taube 2004a, 73–78). Although rare, the jaguar serpent that the figure on Structure A’s north portico stands on also appears in Maya artwork, notably on the Birth Vase (Taube 1994, 665–666), on the bottom of a Late Classic codex-style bowl (Robicsek and Hales 1981, 47; Taube 1994, 665), and on an Early Classic Maya vessel found at Teotihuacan (Taube 2011, 8–9). Taube (1994, 665–666; 2011, 8–9) observes that the Maya jaguar serpent is often juxtaposed with the Bearded Dragon, analogous to the bearded feathered serpent that appears on the south portico mural (Taube 2003, 296), suggesting a fundamental cosmological duality that is rendered as the pairing of jaguar serpent and plumed serpent on the Cacaxtla Structure A murals.

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Figure 8.2. Merchant God from Red Temple mural, Cacaxtla. Drawn by author based on multiple photographs.

The Red Temple Mural conveys several direct references to the Maya lowlands. At the foot of the staircase, a figure readily identifiable as God L, the Classic Maya merchant god, stands in front of a pack laden with goods from the Maya lowlands (figure 8.2) (Carlson 1991; Martin 2013; Taube 1992, 85; Tokovinine and Beliaev 2013).3 Taube (1992, 84–85) notes that during the Late Classic period, most representations of God L appear in the wealthy and fertile western Maya lowlands. The scene is set in the lowlands, as denoted by a cacao plant and a quetzal in front of the deity and the plumed serpent he stands on (Schaafsma and Taube 2006, 271; Taube 2006, 158). Along the stairs and above the cacao plant, corn plants bear cobs

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in the form of heads of the Maya Tonsured Maize God (Carlson 1991, 42; Taube 1992, 46). The journey God L takes in the mural, toward the upper level of the acropolis, essentially mimics the route lowland Maya merchants (and perhaps migrants) took to the highlands of Central Mexico. Costume Elements and Accoutrements in the Structure A Murals Costumes and accoutrements that appear on anthropomorphic figures in the Structure A murals (figure 8.3) are directly comparable to adornments in Late Classic Maya art. Several studies have made broad comparisons of the clothing of the two figures that decorate the north and south porticoes of Structure A—including long loincloths, hip cloths, padded belts, and knotted wristlets and anklets—to similar examples drawn from Late Classic Maya art (e.g., Foncerrada de Molina 1993; Lombardo de Ruiz 1986; Quirarte 1983). The long paper streamers spotted with black rubber and the knotted rope pectorals of both the jaguar-clad figure on the north portico and the eagle-clad figure on the south portico parallel costumes worn by rulers at Copán as they perform war dances that involve bloodletting, as do their white cloth wristlets and the stacked bowtie knots that adorn the bundles they hold. In the case of the Stair Block II sculpture of Structure 10L-16 at Copán, the ruler Yax K’uk’ Mo’ is apotheosized as a solar deity (Taube 2004b, 288–290). Another Maya trait that appears on solar deities and has received relatively little attention is the pair of serpent wings that line the upper arms of the jaguar figure of the mural in the north portico of Structure A (figure 8.3b) (see Bardawil 1976, 196–198). On the mural on the south portico of Structure A, the eagle figure holds a tubular object that is most often described as a Maya ceremonial bar (figures 8.3d–e). While ceremonial bars in general appear frequently in Early and Late Classic Maya art, the object the eagle figure at Cacaxtla holds is not a generalized symbol of Maya rulership; it is a specific type of ritual object comparable to lances, often held by Maya rulers, that terminate in the heads of centipedes with flint-blade tongues (Brittenham 2015, 190–191; Helmke and Nielsen 2013b, 365; 2014, 19; Taube 2011, 9). The method of depicting the blade, as an “eccentric” with a round notch cut out of it and an undulating line down the center, is consistent with Late Classic Maya conventions for portraying flint (see Stone and Zender 2011, 82–83). The juxtaposition of the flint-tongued centipede with the bundle of darts tipped with obsidian points the jaguar figure holds (figure 8.3c) may reference eastern and western cosmological realms in Classic Maya thought (Taube 2011, 9). Although the flint-tipped centipede lance is not shown in Central

b.

c. a.

d. Figure 8.3. Figures from Structure A murals, Cacaxtla. A) North portico mural jaguar figure, after Matos Moctezuma 1987, 95; B) Serpent wing from north portico mural, after Matos Moctezuma 1987, 95; C) Obsidian dart bundle from north portico mural, after Matos Moctezuma 1987, 95; D) Centipede with flint tongue from south portico mural, after Matos Moctezuma 1987, 115; E) South portico mural eagle figure, after Abascal et al. 1976, fig. 50.

e.

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Mexican imagery prior its appearance at Cacaxtla, a number of representations of the weapon are shown in contemporaneous Late Classic Maya artwork. Helmke and Nielsen (2013b, 364–366; 2014, 19–21) provide a list of known examples and note that most are clustered at sites along the Río Usumacinta and the Río Pasión.4 The Representation of Ethnicity in the Battle Mural The Battle Mural, which faces the Great Plaza of Cacaxtla and decorates the two lower taluds that flank the stairway of Structure B, depicts a graphic scene of combat and captive sacrifice that is unique in Mesoamerican art but incorporates Late Classic Maya iconographic conventions, compositions, and costumes (plate 14). The scene portrays victorious warriors, many of whom wear feline pelts, slaughtering victims who are generally nude except for jade ornaments and, in most cases, avian headdresses decorated with long quetzal plumes. Although the pelts the victors wear are usually considered those of jaguars, other spotted felines may be represented in the Battle Mural (see Guerrero Martínez 2013). Some of the defeated warriors wear blue and yellow body paint, whereas the victors are decorated with black pigment. The bodies of the victorious warriors are given greater artistic emphasis and are rendered in a variety of skin tones, whereas the bodies of their foes are painted in a single tone (Brittenham 2015, 133). As Brittenham (2011) points out, the scene conflates several narrative events, simultaneously portraying climactic moments of combat, capture, and sacrifice. While the mural may incorporate supernatural events, allegory, and structural oppositions (Escalante Gonzalbo 2002; Lombardo de Ruiz 1986, 229–230; McVicker 1985, 94; Uriarte Castañeda and Velázquez García 2013), the sense of immediacy and graphic realism suggests that it represents a historical conflict configured through a lens of myth and ideology (Brittenham 2011, 78; Miller 1986, 101–102). If the Battle Mural represents a historical conflict, the two warring sides, which are differentiated by costumes and physical features, appear to represent two different ethnic groups. Because some of the dying bird warriors appear to display tabular oblique cranial modification with long, sloping foreheads and prominent brows, several scholars have interpreted the mural as the defeat of a lowland Maya group at the hands of non-Maya Central Mexicans or Olmeca Xicalanca (e.g., Carlson 1991, 14; Foncerrada de Molina 1993, 12–13; 1995, 33; Graulich 1990, 94, 107; Kubler 1980, 168; Matos Moctezuma 1987, 24–25; McCafferty and McCafferty 1994, 160–161; McVicker 1985, 86–87). However, a variety of types of cranial modification,

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including tabular oblique, were common in the western Maya lowlands and in adjoining Veracruz and Oaxaca during the Late Classic period (Tiesler 2012, 13). The identification of the defeated group as lowland Maya has led to the assumption that the patrons of the Cacaxtla murals were not Maya because it is unlikely that they would have commissioned a prominent monumental painting that portrayed their own slaughter and humiliation. Although the defeated warriors are usually assumed to be Maya, their headdresses and body paint are not readily comparable to costuming that appears in Maya artwork. The costumes the aggressors wear may provide a stronger reference to the Maya lowlands than to Central Mexico, as the puma is usually favored in the art of Teotihuacan and the spotted feline pelts likely came from the Maya lowlands. Victorious Maya rulers and warriors also frequently wear jaguar costumes in scenes related to battle. Several of the victorious warriors in the murals of Room 2 of Structure 1 at Bonampak wear jaguar costumes and pelts that are strikingly similar to those the warriors in the Battle Mural wear (Miller 1986, 107–108). On the north wall of Room 2, ruler Yajaw Chan Muwaan of Bonampak stands on a platform above tortured and dying captives while wearing a jaguar-pelt jerkin and is flanked by captains who are also dressed in jaguar costumes (see Miller and Brittenham 2013, 108–112, fig. 190; Miller 1986, 128–129). The murals follow Maya conventions of evoking a predator-prey relationship by equating fearsome, victorious warriors to apex predators. The Cacaxtla feline warriors wear a variety of accoutrements that could mark distinctions between different warrior orders or allies of different ethnicities. While the feline warriors’ shaved heads capped with eagle plumes and black face paint do not readily meet modern expectations of how lowland Maya should appear (figures 8.4a, b), comparable representations appear on Late Classic Maya painted vessels (figures 8.4c–e). At least six of the feline warriors wear what appear to be circular goggles affixed to bands on their brows (see figures 8.4a, b).5 Although goggles were strongly associated with Teotihuacan warriors during the Early Classic period, after the fall of Teotihuacan, they appeared frequently on Maya warriors and rulers. In both scale and appearance, the goggles the warriors wear resemble a pair of shell goggles excavated in an Early Classic burial at the Maya site of Copán (see Bell et al. 2004, 142–143). Similar goggles placed on a headband on the brow are relatively common on depictions of warriors on ceramic vessels (figures 8.4c–e) and appear on figures labeled yajawk’ahk’ (vassal of fire), particularly on monuments from Palenque and Toniná (figures 8.4f, g). Yajawk’ahk’ is a nonroyal military title (Stuart 2005, 31; Zender 2004, 196,

b. a.

e.

c. d.

g.

f.

Figure 8.4. Cacaxtla and Late Classic Lowland Maya warriors. A) Detail of Battle Mural, Cacaxtla, after Matos Moctezuma 1987, 67; B) Detail of Battle Mural, Cacaxtla, after Uriarte Castañeda & Velásquez García 2013, fig. 14.51; C) Detail of Maya vessel, after photograph by Justin Kerr, Maya Vase Data Base K638; D) Detail of Maya vessel, after photograph by Justin Kerr, Maya Vase Data Base K2036; E) Detail of Maya vessel, after photograph by Justin Kerr, Maya Vase Data Base K8083; F) Censer stand, Palenque, after Zender 2004, fig. 108. G) Detail of Monument 27, Toniná, after Zender 2004, fig. 116b.

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202–204) that may have been gained by taking captives (Zender 2004, 370). Zender (2004, 314) considers the headband with goggles to be specifically associated with the yajawk’ahk’ title.6 The Cacaxtla warriors wear lowland Maya emblems of military rank in the form of goggled headbands as they take and dispatch captives. A figure who is labeled by the calendrical name 3 Deer (designated by a deer antler accompanied by a numerical coefficient of three disks) appears twice in the Battle Mural (figure 8.5a and plate 14). He wears Maya Tlaloc regalia consisting of a fanged mask with scrolls issuing from the mouth, a three-pronged obsidian piece set between the eyes, a balloon headdress that incorporates a trapeze and ray, and jaguar pelt.7 Helmke and Nielsen (2013b, 376–378; 2014, 30) relate 3 Deer to yajawk’ahk’ warrior priests. However, he likely outranks the other warriors. Unlike the other warriors in the Battle Mural who may have been yajawk’ahk’, he does not wear goggles on his brow. The costume of 3 Deer is directly comparable to regalia worn by a victorious Maya ruler who stands on captives on Stela 2 at Aguateca and Stela 16 at Dos Pilas (figures 8.5b, c) and the figure that emerges from the maw of a supernatural serpent on Lintel 25 from Yaxchilan (figure 8.5d). While the mask 3 Deer wears resembles the visage of the Central Mexican rain deity Tlaloc, the costume is of lowland Maya origin (Nagao 1989, 88–89). Maya Tlaloc regalia appears in contexts of blood sacrifice and warfare (Robicsek and Hales 1984; Schele 1984, 33). Importantly, instead of associations with rain and agricultural fertility that characterize the Central Mexican Tlaloc, the Maya Tlaloc costume conveys militaristic and sacrificial themes, as in the Battle Mural at Cacaxtla. However, the Central Mexican Tlaloc appears in the mural behind a victorious warrior’s shield, perhaps portraying the intervention of a local deity in the outcome of the events or to provide a contrast to the similar but decidedly Maya costume 3 Deer wears. In the context of the Battle Mural, 3 Deer appears as a victorious Maya warrior. Not only are the costumes of the Maya figures in figures 8.5b and 8.5c nearly identical to the costume 3 Deer wears, so is the way they are depicted. The method of portraying the mask in “X-ray” view is a Maya convention that has no precedent in Classic period Central Mexico (Houston et al. 2006, 271–272; Velázquez García 2007). The three-pronged object on the brow of the mask that 3 Deer wears is painted black, resembling an obsidian eccentric, as Berlo has noted (1989, 27). An actual obsidian example of this type of mask was found at Cacaxtla (see Piña Chán 1998, 16) (figure 8.5g). Helmke and Nielsen (2013b, 378–379; 2014, 29–30) report six

a.

d. b.

e.

f.

c.

g.

Figure 8.5. Maya-style Tlaloc masks. A) 3 Deer from Battle Mural, Cacaxtla. B) Detail of Stela 2, Aguateca. After drawing by Ian Graham. C) Detail of Stela 16, Dos Pilas. After drawing by Linda Schele. D) Detail of Lintel 25, Yaxchilan. After drawing by Ian Graham. E) Detail of Lintel 25, Yaxchilan. After drawing by Linda Schele. F) Detail of Stairblock I, Structure 10L-16, Copán. G) Obsidian mask from Cacaxtla.

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representations of the mask from the Maya lowlands, including the three previously mentioned examples, two examples from Yaxchilan (Stela 35 and another that appears on Lintel 25—figure 8.5e), and the Jonuta Panel from the Palenque area. Several additional examples appear in the monumental artwork of Yaxchilan (including Lintels 26 and 41) and Copán (including a massive frontal mask on Stair Block I of Structure 10L-16) (figure 8.5f) (see Taube 2004b, 284–285). Aside from examples at Copán, like the centipede lance, known examples are clustered around the Río Usumacinta and the Río Pasión (Helmke and Nielsen 2013b, 2014). However, it is worth noting that the pose of 3 Deer on the eastern talud of the Battle Mural, where he is rendered in profile holding a weapon at the ready and a circular shield that is shown from the back with the handle visible (figures 8.5a and 8.6), is strikingly similar to that of the figure that emerges from a serpent’s maw on Lintel 25 from Yaxchilan (figure 8.5d), suggesting that the artist who painted the figure on the Battle Mural may have been familiar with a similar image, if not the original work from Yaxchilan. The lowland Maya costume elements the victorious jaguar warriors wear carry significant implications for the identity of their vanquished foes. One possibility is that the conflict the mural represents is between two Maya groups. The otherwise stripped and humiliated avian warriors retain symbols of high status, including quetzal feathers, jade ornaments, and, in two cases, lavish woven garments. Thus, there may be a class component to the Battle Mural, as the defeated bird warriors, despite their nudity, display more signs of wealth than their executioners, suggesting the overthrow and humiliation of figures of high social rank. Another intriguing possibility is that the bird warriors do not represent a lowland Maya group. The two defeated figures who retain their clothing likely represent the same personage, who is arguably the most important member of the opposing side.8 In both instances, the figure wears a skirt and quechquemitl (plate 14), a triangular upper body garment typically worn by women, suggesting that the figure may be gendered female (Graulich 1990, 107; McCafferty and McCafferty 1994). Koontz (2009) cogently argues that the Battle Mural represents an inversion of a Gulf Coast investiture ceremony, noting the distinct similarity in pose and dress between one of the Battle Mural’s quechquemitl wearers and an accession scene from the Mound of the Building Columns at El Tajín. The defeated bird warriors may therefore be more closely affiliated with the Gulf Coast than with the Maya lowlands. While the defeated figures on the Battle Mural may be of Gulf Coast origin, I suggest that the scene is of more local relevance. The quechquemitl,

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which is worn by the most prominent of the defeated avian figures, is not a common Late Classic Maya garment, but it appears frequently on figurines found at nearby Xochitécatl (Brittenham 2015, 122; Serra Puche 1998, 103–114; 2001; Testard and Serra Puche 2011). Although relatively little is known of Late Classic Cholula, located a short distance from Cacaxtla and Xochitécatl, the site may show affiliation with Gulf Coast centers such as El Tajín (McCafferty 1996, 13; 2007, 457–459). Foreign ceramic assemblages from Cacaxtla-Xochitécatl also reflect a high degree of exchange with the Gulf Coast (Santana Sandoval and Delgadillo Torres 1995, 366). A Late Classic burial from Cholula, which its excavator considered to be that of a Maya merchant or priest, displayed jade dental inlays and, most importantly for the purposes of this study, oblique cranial modification similar to that of the bird warriors in the Battle Mural (see Suárez Cruz 1985). While stable isotope analysis could determine whether this person was of local or foreign origin, it is a strong possibility that the burial was that of a local Cholula elite. Interestingly, Aubrey (chapter 7, this volume) has indicated the close biological similarity between his Cholula sample and samples from certain sites in the Maya region. Instead of representing lowland Maya per se, the bird warriors in the Battle Mural may represent Cholula or Xochitécatl elites overthrown by lowland Maya invaders. Although all of the figures in the Battle Mural are configured through a lens of Late Classic Maya stylistic conventions, only the feline warriors display clear signs of Maya militaristic rank and rulership. Writing and Identity To date, no Maya texts have been found at Cacaxtla, although a vessel incised with Maya glyphs has been found at nearby Xochitécatl (Brittenham 2015, 25). Instead, the murals are embellished with signs from a glyphic system that is present at other Central Mexican Epiclassic sites, including Xochicalco and Teotenango, and other sites in Guerrero and the Gulf Coast (see Baus de Czitrom 1986; Berlo 1989; Helmke and Nielsen 2011, 2013a; Urcid 2011). The presence of these signs plus the absence of Maya writing in the Cacaxtla murals has raised doubts that the murals were produced by Maya artists. Foncerrada de Molina (1978, 143) states: “The lack of Mayan glyphic symbols in the painting leads me to believe that we cannot talk of an authentic Maya cultural influence, but merely of a simple phenomenon of contact, probably through trade, which did not substantially modify the cultural structure of the site.” She continues: “It is not possible, however, to speak of Maya influence, with all the implications that the term carries,

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since we do not find any hieroglyphic material in any of the murals. We do not have evidence of any glyphic sign that would certify the real, absolute, unquestionable presence of Maya culture in Cacaxtla” (1978, 147).9 While we might question what “authentic Maya cultural influence” might entail, for the purpose of this study it is worth unpacking the assumptions that underlie the possible relationship between Maya hieroglyphic writing and Maya cultural presence. Epiclassic scribal traditions differ in fundamental ways from Maya hieroglyphic writing. The script used at Cacaxtla is classifiable as an “open” system, in contrast to the “closed” Maya system (Helmke and Nielsen 2011, 1). Open writing systems have fluid boundaries and are used by diverse cultures and languages, whereas closed systems are used by a particular culture, language, or group of languages (Houston 2004, 275). In other words, unlike Maya writing, the legibility of glyphs in the art at Cacaxtla did not depend on the ability to comprehend any particular spoken language. Thus, the presence of Epiclassic script in the murals of Cacaxtla should not be taken as proof that painters, patrons, and viewers did not speak a Mayan language. While Maya hieroglyphic writing may be considered an expression of “Mayanness,” it is by no means an essential component of a Maya ethnic identity. Classic Maya texts are now understood to reflect a prestige language that may mask the diversity of languages spoken in the Maya region (Houston et al. 2000). Furthermore, hieroglyphic writing is not ubiquitous at Maya sites. Although true Maya writing does not appear in the murals of Cacaxtla, artists used specific iconographic content in a manner that implies a certain visual literacy of Maya artistic conventions and concepts. In addition to the probable le signs that appear on the aquatic borders of Cacaxtla art, Helmke and Nielsen (2013b, 367–370; 2014, 21–24) note that a preserved sculpted clay jamb on the north portico of Structure A portrays a human figure seated in the cave maw of a Maya-style zoomorphic mountain (witz), complete with tun (“stone”) markings in the form of triple arrangements of dots. Another similar usage of a Late Classic Maya motif appears on the Captive Stair. One of the glyphs, a probable toponym portraying the head of a turkey superimposed on a hill, employs the “earth net” motif, which consists of a series of crossed diagonal undulating lines that symbolically represent the earth’s surface (Quenon and Le Fort 1997, 897–898; Taube 2010a, 149). It is worth noting that although fragmentary Mayan texts have been found at the apartment compound of Tetitla, similar iconographic and stylistic evidence has been used to argue in favor of Maya presence in

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Early Classic Teotihuacan (see Miller 1973, 31–32; Miller 1978, 68–69; Taube 2003, 2011). Several possible scenarios could account for the lack of Maya writing in the Cacaxtla murals that do not preclude the possibility that the murals were painted by immigrants from the east. It is possible that the artists were versed in Maya artistic conventions but came from an area near the western periphery of the Maya lowlands where the Epiclassic script was used, such as those in southern Veracruz or Tabasco (see Budar Jiménez 2008). Conversely, artists may have painted the glyphs on the murals after adopting a local language and script or they may have opted to embellish the murals in an “open” system so the verbal content on the murals would be legible to more viewers. It is also possible that the migrants were speakers of a Mayan language but were not literate in Mayan script. Contrary to what Foncerrada de Molina implies, migrants (or migrating artists) do not need to have been literate in Mayan script to be Maya or to have the ability to artistically express a Maya identity. Discussion and Conclusions

The distinct similarity of the Cacaxtla murals to Maya artwork raises crucial questions about the relationship between its inhabitants and the Maya lowlands that are difficult to reconcile through emulation models. If the artists at Cacaxtla sought to emulate an exotic art style as a means of visual differentiation and “distancing” from the types of work that prevailed among prior local traditions, would it have been necessary—or even possible—to achieve the level of stylistic and conceptual specificity visible in the murals? Was this strategy sustainable for multiple generations if it was alien to local audiences? Was the investment in labor and materials justifiable if the intricacies of the messages the artists conveyed were not apparent to their patrons and intended viewers? It is necessary to ask who created the murals and for whom; the intentions of the artists and the reception of their work are central issues. The most probable conclusion is that the Cacaxtla murals were legible and directly relevant to their patrons and at least some members of their intended audience. If the Cacaxtla murals present evidence of migration from the western Maya lowlands, what form might that migration have taken? Migration often occurs along established networks in which there is a history of interaction (Anthony 1990). Cacaxtla is situated at a strategic location between the Basin of Mexico and coastal trade routes and it has become apparent

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that there was considerable direct interaction that involved not only exchange but also political interference and population movement between Teotihuacan and Maya sites during the Early Classic period despite the considerable geographic distances involved (e.g., chapter 7, this volume; Braswell 2003; Fash and Fash 2000; Stuart 2000; Taube 2003). Given a pattern of interaction that was likely driven by the exchange of prestige goods, it is plausible that Maya merchants sought to maintain access to goods from Central Mexico, such as obsidian and cotton, after the collapse of Teotihuacan and established an entrepôt that also would facilitate the importation and distribution of goods from the Maya lowlands to Central Mexico. The goods that are shown and implied in the Red Temple Mural (figure 8.2), including cacao and quetzal feathers, illustrate the types of items Maya merchants imported into Central Mexico. Aside from this visual evidence, these perishable goods have left little trace in the archaeological record. Maya migration to Cacaxtla may have been characterized by constant movement of people and goods in the form of a trade diaspora. In trade diasporas, culturally distinct, corporate groups of merchants establish settlements at strategic points along interregional exchange networks where movement is difficult but maintain economic and social ties with their communities of origin (Cohen 1969; 1971, 266–267; Stein 2002, 908). The acropolis of Cacaxtla may have been analogous to Teotihuacan’s ethnic barrios, which supported a relatively small population of migrants who left little visible impact on outlying communities. Structures on the acropolis may have served as elite residences, shrines devoted to foreign deities, and warehouses. In this scenario, the relative lack of imported goods from the Maya lowlands and the absence of Maya dynastic artwork, inscriptions, and burials is easily accounted for: Cacaxtla was a point of transit for goods and people from the Maya region rather than the ultimate destination. Foreign merchants who did not perish due to occupational hazards may have chosen to return to their homeland(s) to age and die after becoming wealthy. This interpretation of the nature of the acropolis at Cacaxtla also explains its defensible location and the uniqueness of its architectural and artistic programs among surrounding communities. The presence of a merchant colony at Cacaxtla would have facilitated interregional commerce, and presumably the merchants who may have established Cacaxtla would have been supported by military force. That the relationship between Cacaxtla and neighboring communities may have been uneasy is suggested by the presence of fortifications on the acropolis and the grisly Battle Mural, which may have served as a reminder of the

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circumstances that led to its establishment.10 Cacaxtla’s rise as a mercantile center may have served as a template for Postclassic Cholula, a mercantile hub that supported cults devoted to a merchant deity, or it may have temporarily supplanted Cholula, as some Olmeca Xicalanca accounts suggest. The murals at Cacaxtla present statements of ethnic identity that were reinscribed and refined over several generations. In a contested area, the Cacaxtla painters articulated a series of oppositions to local identities rendered in a nonlocal style that make overt references to the Maya lowlands and symbols of Maya power. The murals also attempt to legitimize foreign presence by portraying, as I have argued, the decisive overthrow of local elites in the Battle Mural by combatants wearing Maya trappings of war and sacrifice; the flow of wealth from the Maya lowlands in the murals of the Red Temple; and the convergence of opposed but complementary forces in the Structure A murals. The murals do not present a unified statement meant to be viewed collectively, but rather a series of statements that were at times asserted forcefully and at others softened, suggesting that the relationship between migrants to Cacaxtla and local populations was dynamic. The Cacaxtla murals may have been commissioned by prosperous merchants and soldiers who either imported artists over several generations or supported a sustained local painting tradition. It remains a possibility that some of the colonial sources regarding the Olmeca Xicalanca relate historical memory of migrants to Cacaxtla, although collectively they do not offer clear evidence. While the use of non-Maya script in the murals does not confirm or deny the ethnic identity of the artists or patrons, it may well be that migrating groups formed a multiethnic confederacy of merchants and warriors, as suggested by the varied appearances of some of the victors in the Battle Mural. The murals draw inspiration from and respond most directly to artwork from the Usumacinta corridor, the western Maya lowlands’ major commercial artery, especially from powerful Late Classic cities such as Yaxchilan and Palenque. The murals of Cacaxtla not only constitute an independent line of evidence in favor of Epiclassic migration between the western Maya lowlands or southern Gulf Coast and Central Mexico, they also point to the motivations, social compositions, and conscious group affiliation of their creators. Notes 1. For summaries and assessments of ethnohistoric sources that discuss the Olmeca Xicalanca, see Nagao 2014, 501–515, Piña Chán 1998, 19–40 and Testard 2017.

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2. Helmke and Nielsen argue that in addition to the centipede lance, a serpent held by a figure on the north jamb of Structure A represents the Maya “shell-winged dragon” and provide dates for its occurrence in Maya monuments. The Maya “shell-winged dragon” appears as a reptilian creature, typically with hind legs, that sports a pair of Spondylus valves that serve as its “wings.” The volutes on the Cacaxtla serpent do not strongly resemble Spondylus shells; they appear to be more similar to curling smoke or flames that are attached to ophidian lightning bolts held by the rain deity Tlaloc in the art of Teotihuacan. The figure on the north jamb of Structure A holds a jar bearing the face of Tlaloc in the crook of his right arm, from which drops of liquid fall. In other words, the figure is holding metaphorical representations of rain and lightning (Graulich 1990, 99). While the symbolism is derived from Teotihuacan, this image bears conceptual resemblance to and may be analogous to the Dumbarton Oaks Panel, likely from Palenque, that portrays the ruler K’an Joy Chitam II holding an “akbal” jar and a serpent in his right hand and a probable lightning ax in the form of a serpent in his left hand. The substitution of the Tlaloc jar for the akbal jar may be an accommodation to more locally relevant symbolism. 3. Features shared by Late Classic Maya representations of God L and the being in the Red Temple Mural include an aged, chapfallen face, a prominent nose, a squared eye with a curling pupil, a frontal topknot of hair, a patch of jaguar skin on the chin, a wide-brimmed hat topped with a bird, and luxurious objects including lavish jade jewelry, a fine woven shawl, and a jaguar-pelt hip cloth. 4. Other comparable examples on Late Classic Maya monumental art include Palenque’s Tablet of the Sun, Yaxchilan Stela 1, and Copán Stela M. 5. Figures E2, E9, W1, W3, W7, and W13, according to the labeling system used in Brittenham 2015, fig. 164. 6. Zender (2004, 381–382) relates the yajawk’ahk’ title to the Aztec tlenamacac (“fire vendor”) priests who are shown taking captives and wearing conical hats with affixed goggles in the Codex Mendoza. 7. Figures E3 and W2 according to Brittenham 2015, fig. 164. 8. Figures E6 and W5 according to Brittenham 2015, fig. 164. 9. I have silently corrected the typographical errors in the quotes from Foncerrada de Molina in this paragraph. 10. As Brittenham (2015, 142–143) notes, the Battle Mural was covered shortly after completion, perhaps because of its controversial nature.

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9 The Itzá Maya Migration Narratives Historic Reality, Myth, or . . . Weighing the Idea of Migrations in Light of New Research Erik Boot

To what or whom does Itzá refer in the place-name Chichén Itzá? The question has underpinned much of my research over the last twenty years (e.g., Boot 1995, 1997, 2005, 2010; Schele et al. 1998). If Itzá in Chichén Itzá is a toponym, the name would be translated as “Mouth of the Well of Itzá.” However, there is the statement in the work of fray Diego de Landa that “Chicheniza . . . quiere dezir el pozo de los Aizaes” suggests that Chichén Itzá means “Mouth of the Well of the Itzá.”1 People from Itzá are referred to as Aj Itzá or Itzá Winikob in ethnohistoric sources written by native scribes (Boot 2005, 179). However, in Spanish sources, the Aj Itzá are also referred to as Itzá, Ytza, or Itzaes/Itzaex, without the prefixed agentive aj or the postfixed marker winik (man). I translate Chichén Itzá as “Mouth of the Well of (the) Itzá,” thus incorporating both possibilities.2 In various ethnohistoric narratives from Yucatan, the Itzá Maya are described as being of foreign origin and not native to the northern Maya lowlands. They are said to have arrived in and wandered around northern Yucatan before “discovering” the mouth of the well of (the) Itzá. Here I will address some of the pertinent elements of these stories as part of a reexamination of the Itzá Maya migration narratives. I define migration as the displacement of part of a population from one area to another, which can be voluntary or involuntary and internal or external in origin. Migration is thus a social process (e.g., Anthony 1990; Meiggs and Freiwald 2014; Rouse 1986). Migration may leave tangible and nontangible evidence. Among the nontangible evidence are oral narratives that may be formulated as some sort of testament by the migrants or by those who

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received them. The migration narratives can be highly detailed or can be reduced or formalized. Also nontangible would be any linguistic change if the newcomers speak a different language. This nontangible evidence becomes physical when it is transferred into a more permanent form, such as writing. Tangible evidence can be found in the archaeological record and can be identified as a change in material culture (e.g., ceramic production, settlement patterns, construction techniques, sculptural style), in heirlooms of some sort from the migrants’ prior location, and in human remains (including changing patterns in funerary customs, strontium and oxygen isotopic signatures, and differing dental morphology). The Itzá migration narratives have been placed in a time frame of circa 650–1000 CE. More precise placement depends on the researcher and the sources (e.g., Barrera Vasquez and Morley 1949; Boot 1995, 1997, 2010; Brinton 1882; Kremer 1994; Roys 1933; Schele et al. 1998; Schele and Mathews 1998; Thompson 1966, 1970; Tozzer 1957). This time frame overlaps the Late Classic (ca. 550–750 CE), the Terminal Classic (ca. 750–1000 CE), and the Postclassic (ca. 1000–1525 CE) periods. Part of the time frame 650–1000 CE is associated with the “Maya collapse,” a systemic breakdown of sociopolitical and religious authority in the polities of the central Maya lowlands. The Itzá Maya migrations have been associated with this collapse (e.g., Boot 1997, 2005, 2010; Schele et al. 1998; Schele and Mathews 1998). To address the identity of the Itzá, it is necessary to first establish which sources of information are available about the Itzá Maya migration. The first group of sources encompasses ethnohistoric documents written by indigenous Yucatec scribes in the adopted Latin script in the Yucatecan language (sources such as The Books of Chilam Balam of Chumayel and Tizimin) and by early Spanish missionaries and chroniclers in the Spanish language (sources as Landa’s “Relación de las cosas de Yucatán” manuscript or the published work by Cogolludo and Lizana). A second group of sources comes from the archaeological site of Chichén Itzá, namely epigraphic, iconographic, and architectural evidence. The chapter will also address recent research into the chronology of the site of Chichén Itzá and bioarchaeology. The third group of sources entails ethnohistoric, archaeological, epigraphic, iconographic, and architectural data from the central Maya lowlands. This group can only be addressed in a cursory manner at this time due to space limitations. The next sections discuss the social and political setting for the Itzá migrations and each of the data sources available. The final section presents a short discussion, conclusions, and suggestions for further research.

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The Social and Political Context of the Itzá Migrations

In a recent article, Turner and Sabloff (2012, 13911) summarized the collapse of the Classic Maya in the central lowlands: “The old political and economic structure dominated by semidivine rulers decayed. Peasants, artisan-craftsmen, and others apparently abandoned their homes and cities to find better economic opportunities elsewhere in the Maya area, leading to a significant depopulation, even abandonment, of many major city-states and their hinterlands.” Depopulation has always been considered a major component of the collapse, but they add that “to date, there is little evidence for large-scale famine and death” (Turner and Sabloff 2012, 13911). Abandonment through migration is thus a likely factor in the depopulation of the region. Models and theories for the collapse can be placed into a few major groups. The category of environmental disruption includes natural factors largely out of human control—earthquakes, hurricanes, drought, volcanic eruptions, and disease (e.g., Aimers and Hodell 2011; Diamond 1999, 2005; Folan et al. 2000; Gill 2000; Nooren et al. 2009; Tainter 2008). Ecological models argue that the rise in population toward the Late and Terminal Classic period led to damaging and irreversible changes to the natural environment (e.g., Lentz et al. 2014, 2015; Ostrom 2009; Scarborough and Burnside 2010; Scarborough et al. 2012; Stokols et al. 2013; Tainter 2008, 2014; Turner and Sabloff 2012). The social disruption model includes peasant or noble revolts (Fash 1991, 153–183; Thompson 1966, 104–108), increased internecine warfare (e.g., Boot 2005, 32–33; Schele and Freidel 1990, 146–147; Stuart 1993), and foreign influence or invasion (Sabloff and Willey 1967). Proponents of this last group see foreign influences in iconography, ceramic wares, and ceramic styles, while opponents see all or most of these traits as local cultural developments (e.g., Boot 2005; Schele and Mathews 1998; Stuart 1993, 339). The waxing and waning of city-state authorities who controlled the sources or distribution of trade goods can be another important contributor to societal stress as long-standing intersite and interregional trade relationships were altered or abandoned (Golitko et al. 2012; Rathje 1973; Webb 1973). Most scholars would probably agree that no single model has ever satisfactorily explained the collapse of Classic Maya civilization. Many proposals interlock in one or more aspects (compare Demarest 2013; Lowe 1985; Webster 2002). The collapse was most probably due to a combination of reinforcing factors and played out differently at various sites and subregions

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but with similar results (Boot 2005, 33; compare to Aimers 2007). Not all regions were deserted, for example. There are clear archaeological indications that large populations were still in place in areas that had previously been governed by some of the most important Classic centers long after the monument production and the construction of large architectural complexes ceased (e.g., at Copán, see Freter 1992, 2004; Webster et al. 1992; for Calakmúl, see Folan et al. 1995, 330). Other areas sustained large populations until the Spanish conquest in the fifteenth to seventeenth centuries, such as the Tayasal-Paxcaman area around and to the east of Lake Petén (Chase 1990, 156, table 7.2; Culbert 1988, 87; Rice 1987, 235; Rice and Rice 1990, 129, table 6.4). The differing histories of these sub-areas have to be recognized in order to fully understand not only what happened between circa 700 to 900 CE but also before and after then. The migration model of social change has been under revision since the appearance of a number of critical studies that dismissed it as an explanation for abrupt change or apparent discontinuities in material culture (Adams et al. 1978). Migration started making a comeback after Anthony (1990, 1992, 1997) and researchers in the humanities began to discuss it again, critically assessing interpretations and data-driven models (e.g., Burmeister 2000; Cassel 2000; Chapman and Hamerow 1997; Hakenbeck 2008; see chapter 1, this volume). The Itzá Maya: The Yucatecan Sources

Ethnohistoric sources dating to the centuries after the Spanish conquest (1519–1697 CE) are of great importance for reconstructing the historical and archaeological cultures in Mesoamerica and without them much would still be unknown (Brambila Paz and Monjarás-Ruiz 1996; Tavárez and Smith 2001; see also Knapp 1992). Within the limits of this chapter it is not possible to cite all of the passages from the ethnohistoric sources on the Itzá Maya; only those that narrate population movements will be discussed.3 These narratives can be found in a variety of sources, either written in Spanish by clergy or historians or in Yucatec Maya by native scribes. The sources by indigenous scribes were written in the period 1550–1850. These texts, which are written in the Yucatecan language in Latin script, need to be handled with some care. First, the sources currently available are mostly copies of long-lost originals and there is the probability of intentional or unintentional editing. Second, any text is written in a certain perspective and social context, so bias is a concern (compare Gunsenheimer 2000, 2001;

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Marcus 1992). Third, there is the problem of translation, a complex process that can have a literal, liberal, or literary result in a bilingual and bicultural context (e.g., Brinton 1882, 72; Edmonson 1986, 2–7; Roys 1933, iii).4 These sources, The Books of Chilam Balam, contain summary descriptions of chronologically ordered historical events and are known from several different Yucatecan communities. These texts are referred to as the k’atun chronicles and they are presented in a particular calendrical format. The sources name these chronicles u k’ahlay k’atun (the memorial, recollection, record, or chronicle of the k’atuns) and u k’ahlay u xokan k’atun (the memorial, recollection, record, or chronicle of the counting of the k’atuns) (Boot 2005, 90). The k’atun is a circa 20-year period (20 × 360 or 7,200 days) and in a complete cycle there are thirteen k’atuns, making the cycle some 256 years long. When a cycle is completed, a new one begins. A k’atun is named after the last of the 7,200 days contained in that k’atun. This is always the day Ajaw, as it is based on a multiple of twenty; the twentieth day was Ajaw. The k’atun cycle thus opens with k’atun 11 Ajaw and closes with k’atun 13 Ajaw (Boot 2005, 2011). As there are thirteen k’atuns in a cycle, the Ajaw coefficient descends by two (i.e., 11, 9, 7, 5, 3, 1, 12, 10, 8, 6, 4, 2, and 13 Ajaw). The first chronicle from the Book of Chilam Balam of Chumayel opens as follows: V kahlay u xocan katunob: uchci u chictahal u chi 05 cħeen ytza: uchi lae: lay ɔiban ti cab lae: u chebal yoheltabal tumen hijmac yolah yohel ta u xocol katun lae VI Vac ahau uch ci u chictahal uchicħeenytza IIII Can ahau lae 10 II Cabil ahau XIII Oxlahun ahau tzol ci pop XI Buluc ahau IX Bolon ahau VII Vuc ahau 15 V Ho ahau III Ox ahau I Hun ahau. XII Lahca ahau. X Lahun ahau. (Gordon 1913, MS 74, ll. 4–19)

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(The chronicle of the counting of the k’atuns. Occurred the discovery of the mouth 05 of the well of [the] Itzá. It occurred. Here it is written for this country, the happenings, the facts, so any person he senses, he understands, the count of the k’atuns. VI 6 Ajaw, occurred the discovery of the mouth of the well of [the] Itzá. IIII 4 Ajaw 10 II 2 Ajaw XIII 13 Ajaw, was set in order the mat. XI 11 Ajaw IX 9 Ajaw VII 7 Ajaw 15 V 5 Ajaw III 3 Ajaw I 1 Ajaw XII 12 Ajaw X 10 Ajaw.) The Book of Chilam Balam of Tizimin provides another chronicle of these events: Vaxac ahau—vac ahau—Can ahau—cabil ahau. ca kal haab ca tac hum ppel hab tu hum pis tun ah oxlahun a hau, oxlahun ahau—vaxac ahau—vac ahau—can ahau, kuch ci chac nabiton mekat tutul xiu, hum ppel hab ma ti ho kal hab = vaxac ahau—uch cuchican pahalchicħen ytza uchcu 10 chic pahaltzucubte sian canlae—Can ahau, cabil ahau, oxlahun ahau—lai tzolci pop—buluc ahau—bolon ahau vuc ahau—ho ahau—ox ahau—hun ahau. (Mayer 1980, fol. 23v [18v], ll. 5–12)

(8 Ajaw, 6 Ajaw, 4 Ajaw, 2 Ajaw, two score years and one measured year on the first measured tun of 13 Ajaw. 13 Ajaw, 8 Ajaw, 6 Ajaw, 4 Ajaw, then arrived at Chaknabitón Mek’at Tutul Xiw, one measured year less than five score years. 8 Ajaw, occurred the discovery of the mouth of the well of Itzá,

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10 occurred the discovery of Tzukubte’ Siyan Kan. 4 Ajaw, 2 Ajaw 13 Ajaw, that was set in order the mat. 11 Ajaw, 9 Ajaw 7 Ajaw, 5 Ajaw, 3 Ajaw, 1 Ajaw.) The first Chumayel chronicle opens with an introduction, then begins with a record for k’atun 6 Ajaw, “occurred the discovery of the mouth of the well of (the) Itzá.” The next k’atuns have no associated text, with the exception of k’atun 13 Ajaw, which says “was set in order the mat.” The Tizimin chronicle opens with an incomplete series of k’atuns and a 4 Ajaw event in reference to the Tutul Xiw. Here I note the next mentioned k’atun 8 Ajaw5 and the sentence “occurred the discovery of the mouth of the well of (the) Itzá.” It is followed by 4 Ajaw, 2 Ajaw, and 13 Ajaw with the sentence, “was set in order the mat.” Missing in the opening section of the Chumayel chronicle is k’atun 8 Ajaw, while in the Tizimin chronicle there is an 8 Ajaw and an (apparently) associated text but no mention of 6 Ajaw, as the associated text is followed by 4 Ajaw, etc. Does the short sentence in the Tizimin refer to the k’atun 8 Ajaw or does it belong to 6 Ajaw, the k’atun not mentioned? The alternative could be that either k’atun 8 Ajaw or 6 Ajaw (as long as they are consecutive) can be associated with the phrase “occurred the discovery of the mouth of the well of (the) Itzá,” The phrase “occurred the discovery of Tzukubte’ Siyan Kan” refers to the area of Bacalar, Chetumal, another migration (see below and Boot 2005). The Codex Pérez provides this short text: Laitun uchci u chicpahal tzucubte ziyan caan lae Bak halal, can ahau, cabil ahau, oxlahun ahau, oxkal haab cu tepalob ziyaan caan ca emob uay lae: lay u habil cu. MS135 tepalob bakhalalahchuulte lai tun chicpahci chicħen itzalae: 60 a.s. Buluc ahau, bolon ahau, vuc ahau, ho ahau, ox ahau.6 (That time occurred the discovery of Tzukubte’ Siyan Kan, that is, Bak’halal. 4 Ajaw, 2 Ajaw, 13 Ajaw, three scores of years they ruled at Siyan Kan, then they descended there. This is the year they MS135 ruled at Bak’halal the Ah Chuulte’. This period they discovered Chichén Itzá, that is, sixty years. 11 Ajaw, 9 Ajaw, 7 Ajaw, 5 Ajaw, 3 Ajaw.)

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Within these chronicles, the pivotal k’atun periods are named 8 Ajaw, 6 Ajaw, and 4 Ajaw. A k’atun 8 Ajaw corresponded to 672–692 CE and 256 years (and multiples thereof) before or after. I prefer the correlation with 672–692 CE. The intriguing fact is that a k’atun 8 Ajaw at 672–692 CE coincides well with the beginning of the period commonly attributed to the Maya collapse, from around 700 to 900 CE (Boot 1997, 2005, 2010; Schele et al. 1998). The k’atuns 6 Ajaw and 4 Ajaw would fall circa twenty and forty years later, that is 692–711 CE (k’atun 6 Ajaw) and 711–731 CE (k’atun 4 Ajaw). K’atun 13 Ajaw, associated with “was set in order the mat,” would be placed at 750–770 CE. The Codex Pérez says that the discovery of Chichén Itzá took place in a k’atun 13 Ajaw. This is not necessarily a mistake, as the period from 8 Ajaw to 13 Ajaw is the time when Chichén Itzá was discovered and the mat was set in order. Ultimately, this time leads to taking the land into possession in k’atun 11 Ajaw. Other early texts seem to substantiate the fact that indeed different groups were involved in the settlement of the Chichén Itzá and Bacalar (Bak’halal) areas. Confirmation of this can be found in Document 1 of the so-called Valladolid Lawsuit of 1618 CE: Y asi poblaron à Chichenica los unos, y otros se fueron hacia el Sur poblaron á Bacalar, y hacia el Norte que poblaron la costa . . . su padre y otros Indios principales . . . vinieron de los reynos de Mejico à poblar estàs provincias, los unos se quedaron en Chichinica que fueron los que edificaron los edificios sontuosos que hay en el dicho asiento, y otros se fueron à Bacalar, y otros fueron à poblar la costa hacia el norte (And so some of them populated Chichén Itzá and others went toward the south and populated Bacalar and those who went toward the north populated the coast . . . his father and other important Indians . . . came from the kingdoms of Mexico to populate these provinces, those that stayed in Chichén Itzá built the sumptuous buildings that are in the said place and others went to Bacalar and others went to settle the coast to the north). (Brinton 1882, 114, 115, original spelling retained) This Spanish text connects different groups (none of them specifically named) to a Central Mexican origin (even the name Moctezuma is given in another section in this document), which has been doubted in previous research, based on the general contents of the text (Brinton 1882, 114–116). Independent of the putative Mexican origin (which may have been included to provide legitimacy to the newcomers; see Boot 2005, chapter 3

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and below), this source confirms the arrival of different groups of newcomers in Yucatan and thus is also a migration narrative. The second Chilam Balam of Chumayel provides a more elaborate overview of events, here associated with the k’atuns of 4 Ajaw and 13 Ajaw: MS77 Can ahau. u kaba katun. uchci u çi hilob—paua haen cuh uyahauoob. 10 Oxhunte ti katun lic utepalob lay ukaba ob tamuk utepalob lae. Can ahau a kaba katun. emciob noh he mal: ɔee mal. u kabaob lae. Oxlahun te ti katun. lic utepalob. lic u 15 kaba ticob: tii ualac. u cutob lae ox lahun cuthi: u cutob lae. Can ahau. u katunil uch ci u ca xanti cob u chicħeen ytzae. tij utz cin nabi mac tzil tiob tumen u yumoobe: Can tzuc 20 luk ciob can tzucul cab. V kabaob likul ti likin. kin colah peten bini hun tzuci kul xaman naco cob hok hun tzucci. heix hoki hun tzucie: holtun çuyuaa ti chikin hoki: hun tzucie: Canhek 25 uitz: bolonte uitz: u kaba uluumil lae MS78 Can ahau ukatunil. uchci upayalob tu can tzucci lob. can tzucculcab u kabaob caemiob. ti yumta lob caemiob. tu chicħeen ytzae. ah ytzatun u ka baob. Oxlahunte ti katun. lic utepalobi. (Gordon 1913, MS 77, l. 08—MS 78, l. 4)

MS77 (4 Ajaw was the name of the k’atun, occurred the births of the Pawahaen Kuh, their lords. 10 Thirteen k’atuns they ruled, they were named while they ruled. 4 Ajaw was the name of the k’atun they came down. Great Descent, Small Descent were their names. Thirteen were the k’atuns that they ruled, 15 that they were named, to raise their seats. Thirteen seats were their seats. 4 Ajaw was the k’atun when occurred their discovery

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of the mouth of the well of [the] Itzá. There good things came about because of their lords. Four divisions 20 came forth, four divisions of the land, as they were named. From some place in the east, K’in Kolah Petén, came one division. North, from Na’ Kokob emerged one division. There emerged one division from Holtún Suywa, in the west it emerged. One division from Kanhek’ 25 Witz Bolonte’ Witz, the name of the land. MS78 4 Ajaw was the k’atun. Occurred the guidance of the four divisions. The four divisions of the land was their name. They arrived as lords. Then they descended to the mouth of the well of [the] Itzá. The Itzá, thus, was their name. Thirteen were the k’atuns they ruled.) The passage opens with the k’atun 4 Ajaw, dated to 711–731 CE. It also states that “thirteen were the k’atuns they ruled.” That would be a full k’atun cycle of 256 years and would bring the chronology from k’atun 4 Ajaw at 711–731 CE to a k’atun 4 Ajaw at 968–987 CE. After those thirteen k’atuns, or 256 years, Chichén Itzá’s power thus seems to have waned in the perception of the compiler. This second Chumayel chronicle describes two different “descents”—a noh emal (noh he//mal) or “Great Descent” and a tz’e emal (ɔee mal) or “Small Descent”—and a fourfold division of migrating groups. The two “descents” are also described in the work of fray Bernardino de Lizana in 1633: La Historia, y Autores que podemos alegar, son unos antiguos Caracteres, mal entendidos de muchos, y glossados de algunos Indios antiguos, que eran hijos de los Sacerdotes de sus Dioses, que son los que solo sabian leer y adivinar, y a quien creian y reverenciavan los demas como a Dioses destos. . . . Que la gente de aqui, parte vino del Puniente, y parte del Oriente; y, assi en su lengua antigua, nombran al oriente de otra manera que oy. . . . Y antiguamente dezian al Oriente, Cenial, y al Poniente, Nohenial. celnial, quiere dezir la pequeña baxada: y nohemal la grande baxada. Y es el caso que dize que por la parte del Oriente baxó a esta tierra poca gente, y por la de Puniente mucha, y con aquella silava entendian poco, ó mucho al Oriente, y Puniente; y la poca gente de una parte, y la mucha de otra; y qual fuesse la una, y la otra gente,

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remito al Lector, que quisiere saber mas, al Padre Torquemada en su Historia Indiana, que all vera, como los Mexicanos vinieron del Nuevo Mexico y de alli (The histories, and authors that we can claim, are in ancient characters misunderstood by many and glossed by some ancient Indians who were children of the priests of their gods, who were the only ones that knew how to read and to understand and who they believed and revered like their gods. . . . That of the people here, part came from the West, and part from the East; and in their ancient language they referred to the East in a different manner than today. . . . And formerly they called the East, Cenial, and the West, Nohenial. Celnial means the small descent and Nohemal the great descent. And they say that from the East came to this land few people, and from the West many, and with that term they understood few, or many to the East, and West; and the few people from one part, and many from the other; and to which went one or the other person, I refer the reader that would like to know more to Father Torquemada in his Historia Indiana, that all will see how the Mexicans came from New Mexico and from there). (Lizana [1633] 1995, 61 [fol. 5v–5r]; emphasis and spelling in original) From the readings some old Yucatec Maya men gave, who glossed “ancient characters,” there were once two descents. There was a “Small Descent” from the east and there was a “Great Descent” from the west. The descent from the west involved a much larger population movement than the one from the east.7 Fray Diego López de Cogolludo described the same event in 1688, citing an unknown source, apparently written in the Yucatec Maya language using Latin script.8 His version states: De las gentes que poblaron este reino de Yucatan, ni de sus historias antiguas, no he podido hallar mas razon de lo que aqui dire. En algunos escritos, que dejaron los que primero supieron escribir, y están en su idioma (demás de practicarse asi entre los indios) se dice, que vinieron unas gentes de la parte occidental y otras de la oriental. Con las del occidente vino uno, que era como sacerdote suyo, llamado Zamná, que dicen fue el que puso nombres, con que hoy se llaman en su lengua todos los puertos del mar, puntas de tierra, esteros, costas, y todos los parages, sitios, montes y lugares de toda esta tierra, que cierto es cosa de admiracion, si así fue, tal division como hizo de todo, para que fuese conocido por su nombre, porque apenas hay palmo de tierra, que no le tenga en su lengua. En haber venido pobladores del occidente á

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esta tierra (aunque ya no saben quienes, ni como vinieron) convienen con lo que dice el Padre Torquemada en su monarquia indiana (From the peoples that populated this kingdom of Yucatan nor from their ancient histories, have I been able to discover more than what I give here. In some writings, left by those that first knew how to write and in their language (in addition to being practiced among the Indians), it is said that some people came from the western part and others from the eastern part. With those from the west, one came who was a priest of theirs called Zamná, who they say was the one who gave the names with which today they call all the ports of the sea, points of land, estuaries, coasts, and all the sites, mountains, and places of this whole land, which is certainly a thing to admire if it was so, such a division as he did of everything, so that it would be known by its name, because there is scarcely a measure of land that does not have a name in their language. Insofar as settlers from the West having come to this land (although they no longer known who, or how they came), this agrees with what Father Torquemada says in his Monarquia Indiana). (López de Cogolludo [1688] 1971, 177–178, Lib. IV, Cap. 3; emphasis in original) Cogolludo refers only to groups of people arriving from the west and the east without giving references in Yucatec Maya, as Lizana did. However, he associates the people who came from the west with Zamná. This name Zamná and especially the things with which he is credited identify him as a kind of creator god who was commonly known as Itzamna among the Yucatec Maya.9 Zamná is thus (most probably) a contraction of the Yucatec Maya theonym Itzamna. The Chumayel provides a section that may refer to the founding of Chichén Itzá in more specific detail (Boot 1997, 174–175; Schele et al. 1998, 412–414): MS09 Ca hoppi: uheɔ luumob. yahauobi: ti yanah yah kin paloncabi: heklay yah kinobe mutupul vkaba: heahkin palon cabe: 15 ah may: heah kin mutupule: ahcanul: Vay yom cħicħix xan nunilixan: yu ca tun ah chable: ah ych caan sihoo: holtun Balam: v mehen: lay u chaah yx yaxum chakane: ti tun kuchi: v lak ahauobi:

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20 Laobi ahau vnup v thanobe: ti yahau lilob ti Buluc ahau tun: v Kaba Cu chi: cauheɔah cabobi: Caix tiheɔluum nahobi: Caix cahlahobi: ych Caan si hoo: Caemob ah holtun Ake: Ca emob: 25 ah sabacnailob: he ah sabac naile: v chun v uinicil: ahna: Catun umolah vbaob te ych caan sihoo: ti yan yx pop ti balam. tilic yahaulili: hol tun balam: MS10 [ti t u cħeen] tili [c] yah[a]ulili. [pochek ix]ɔoy: lay u chun uuinicil. Co poe. [tutul] xiuix tloualxan: chacte ahau: chac te u lumil vchuc yahaulilob. (Gordon 1913, MS 09, ll. 11—MS 10, l. 4)

MS09 (Then began the taking possession of the lands by the lords. There was the Ah K’in of Palonkab; there was the Ah K’in of Mutupul, his name; the Ah K’in of Palonkab, 15 Ah May; the Ah K’in of Mutupul, Ah Kanul, Wayom Ch’ich’ also, Nunil also. And the second Ah Chable’, Ah Ichkansihoo’, Holtun Balam his son; then received was the cotinga by Chak’an. Here then arrived the other lords, 20 these lords were the companions, the speakers for the lordships in 11 Ajaw thus, the name of the burden. Then they populated the lands, then was taken possession by them of the land. Then they settled Ichkansihoo’. Then came down they from Holtun Ak’e’. Then came down 25 those of Sabakna’il. He of Sabakna’il was the first of the people of the Na’ family. Then they gathered themselves at Ichkansihoo’, here was the mat for the jaguar, during the reign of Holtun Balam, MS10 [there at the well], during the reign of [Pochek’ Ix]tz’oy. He was the first of the people of Kopo’. Tutul Xiw Ixtlo[w]al also [there]. Chakte’ lord, Chakte’ was the land of the capture by the lordships.)

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I identify K’atun 11 Ajaw as the k’atun that follows 13 Ajaw, which I previously placed at 731–750 CE and which was associated with the phrase “was set in order the mat.” I place K’atun 11 Ajaw at 750–770 CE. Note that the Yucatec Maya writers of these texts used both the last k’atun (13 Ajaw) of the previous cycle and the first k’atun (11 Ajaw) of the new cycle and associated them with pivotal events in the history of the newcomers (i.e., the Itzá Maya), the setting in order of the mat, and the taking possession of the land. While this hints that the periodization of events in these sources may be an ideal format that follows the fixed order and the cyclical character of the k’atun cycle, this does not mean that the information presented on the migrations is invalid or that the actual events are far removed from the temporal placements employed in these sources (Boot 2005: 182–183). The most important phrases that seem to indicate the nonnative origin of the new population(s) are “then they populated the lands, then was taken possession by them of the land” and “the land of the capture by the lordships.” As I have suggested in a previous contribution (Boot 2003), these phrases may hint at the Mesoamerican settlement tradition called the toma de posesión, which involved the literal seizure or capture of the land and which was formalized by shooting arrows to the four world directions and the grabbing of grass or reeds. In a similar vein, among the Nahua-speaking Mexica, the name of the founder and first huey tlatoani (Great Speaker) was Acamapichtli (Handful of Reeds/Darts/Grass) (e.g., Van Zantwijk 1982). Landa’s manuscript also provides two passages that refer to the arrival of people to the northern Maya lowlands. The first passage is probably one of the most cited passage(s) from his work: Que es opinion entre los Indios que con los Izaes que poblaron a Chicheniza reyno vn gran señor llamado Cuculcan, y que muestra ser esto verdad el edificio principal que se llama Cuculcan, y dizen que entro por la parte de poniente, y difieren en si entro antes o despues de los Izaes, o con ellos (It is the opinion among these Indians that with the Izaes that populated Chicheniza there reigned a great lord named Cuculcan, and that the principal building that is called Cuculcan shows this to be the truth, and they say that he entered from the West, and they differ among themselves if he came before or after the Izaes, or with them).10 This text says that the Itzá Maya (Itzaes) populated Chichén Itzá and that a king or great lord named K’uk’ulkan reigned them who came from the west. A building is named after him (the Castillo). Where the Itzá Maya

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came is not stated in this passage. However, another passage in the same manuscript may provide additional information: Que cuentan los Indios que de parte de medio dia vinieron a Yucatan muchas gentes con sus señores, y q[ue] parece aver venido de Chiapa aunq[ue] los Indios no lo saben mas que este autor lo congetura porque muchos vocablos y composiciones de verbos es la misma en Chiapa y en Yucatan y que ay grandes señales en la parte de Chiapa de lugares que an sido desploblados, y dizen que estas gentes anduvieron xl. años por los despoblados de Yucatani (The Indians say that from the direction of midday, many people came to Yucatan with their lords, and that they appear to have come from Chiapa although the Indians do not know more than this author conjectures because many terms and verb compositions are the same in Chiapa and in Yucatan and that there are many indications in the direction of Chiapa of places that have been depopulated and they say that those people traveled forty years to reached the depopulated areas of Yucatan).11 The passage refers to the Tutul Xiu, as Landa indicates in the continuation of this text.12 I quote this particular passage to indicate that according to the sixteenth-century oral tradition that Landa collected (“que cuentan los Indios”), different groups did come from the south (here referred to as “medio dia”), probably from as far away as Chiapas. It took this particular group some forty years (“xl. años”) to arrive, a period of two k’atuns. Landa also noted that there were clear indications that places in Chiapas had been depopulated. He thus had little doubt that these migrations had taken place and that Chiapas was the place of origin. There are thus various narratives of migration in sources of both Yucatec Maya and Spanish origin, the last based on information obtained through written and/or oral traditions. The Yucatec Maya narratives on migration are predominantly found in the chronicles contained in The Books of Chilam Balam. K’atuns 8 Ajaw, 6 Ajaw, and 4 Ajaw are associated with the arrival of people and the discovery of the mouth of the well of (the) Itzá. I have dated these k’atuns to 672–731 CE. This would coincide with the early part of the period of the Maya collapse, circa 700–900 CE. The k’atuns 13 Ajaw and 11 Ajaw are associated with the setting of the mat and the taking possession of the land. I interpret this as the founding of the new polity to be ruled by the Itzá Maya elite, their k’uhul ajaw or “god-like kings,” in 750–790 CE. Their rule lasted for thirteen k’atuns, counting from k’atun 4 Ajaw (711–731 CE), thus making a full k’atun cycle of 256 years. This would

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Table 9.1. Reconstructed chronology of events following the order in the Yucatec Maya ethnohistoric sources, including events relative to Mayapan, Yucatan, and the Lake Petén area (all dates CE, following the 584,285 correlation constant) K’atun cycle

End Date in the Long Count

CE Date

Short Description of Event

8 Ajaw

9.13.0.0.0

672–692

Discovery of Chichén Itzá

6 Ajaw

9.14.0.0.0

692–711

Discovery of Chichén Itzá

4 Ajaw

9.15.0.0.0

711–731

Small and Big Descents

13 Ajaw

9.17.0.0.0

751–771

Setting the mat in order

11 Ajaw

9.18.0.0.0

771–790

Taking possession of the land

4 Ajaw

10.8.0.0.0

968–987

End of 13 k’atun cycle of rule

13 Ajaw

10.10.0.0.0

1007–1027

Mayapan settled

8 Ajaw

11.12.0.0.0

1441–1461

Mayapan depopulated

11 Ajaw

11.16.0.0.0

1539–1559

Maya men become Christians

8 Ajaw

12.5.0.0.0

1697–1717

Nojpetén conquered; last Itzá king Kanek’ taken prisoner

All dates calculated and reconstructed by the author. For discussion of dates relative to Mayapan, Yucatan, and the Lake Petén area, see Boot 2005, chapter 2.

lead to a tentative end date of the new Itzá Maya polity of circa 968–987 CE. My reconstruction of these events can be seen in table 9.1, set in the larger framework of the Maya bak’tun cycle, or Long Count. I have included several other events related to Mayapan and Noj Petén in this reconstruction for a better overview of these k’atun dates.13 For a final reference to Itzá Maya migration narratives in the Yucatec Maya sources, I present a short section from one of the so-called k’atun prophecies, which are also based on the k’atun cycle of 256 years and the thirteen numbered k’atun ajaw. In those prophecies, events that took place in the past in a particular k’atun are projected forward in time and are prophesied to happen again. This is the prophecy for k’atun 4 Ajaw: MS99 Primero— Can ahau katun ubuluc ɔitkatun cu xocol. chicħeen y 5 tza: uheɔ katun. ulom u cahal.ah

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ytzaobi: hulom kuk ulom ya xum: ulom ah 10 kantenal. ulom xe kik: hulom kukulcan=tupachob tu cate u than Ds.— lae—Vlom ah ytza— (Gordon 1913, MS99, ll. 1–13).

MS99 (First. 4 Ajaw is the k’atun. It is the eleventh part of the k’atun to be counted. Chichén 5 Itzá is the seat of the k’atun. Arrive will the settlement of [the] Aj Itzá. Arrive will [the] quetzal, arrive will [the] cotinga, arrive will Ah 10 K’ante’nal, arrive will vomit of blood. Arrive will K’uk’ulkan, after them for a second time. It is the word of God, that is. Arrive will [the] Aj Itzá). This text opens with the Spanish “primero.” It also says that is the eleventh of thirteen numbered k’atun ajaw. This section projects past events into the future. However, note that the arrival of the Aj Itzá is placed in a k’atun 4 Ajaw, the k’atun defined by the “Small” and “Great” descents in the chronicles and in Lizana. Their arrival [here expressed as (h)ulom (arrive will)], like in the passage from Landa, is correlated with the arrival of K’uk’ulkan. He is said to arrive after them [tupachob (on their back)] and “for a [tu] second (ca) time [te(n)]”). This is a rather enigmatic statement. Might this somehow explain the confusion among Landa’s informants because they did not know if K’uk’ulkan arrived before, with, or after the Itzá Maya? Also note that the arrival of people from the west, as Cogolludo describes it, was associated with a priest of some sort named Zamná. The people arriving from the west probably included large contingents of Itzá Maya, as they are the subject of the descents as described in the chronicles and in the work of Lizana.

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The migration narratives need to be extended with three other passages from the work of Landa to obtain a better view of the complexity of the issues: Que Chicheniza es vn assiento muy bueno x leguas de Izamal, y xi de Valladolid donde dizen que reynaron tres s[eñore]s hermanos que vinieron a aquella tierra de la parte de poniente los qualos eran muy religiosos, y que assi edificaron muy lindos templos, y que vinieron sin mugeres muy honestamente, y que el vno de estos se murio, o se fue por lo qual los otros se hizieron parçiales y deshonestos, y que por esto los mataron (Chichenize is a very good seat ten leagues from Izamal, and eleven from Valladolid where they say that there reigned three lord brothers, who came to that land from the direction of the west, who were very religious and so they built many beautiful temples, and that they came without women very honestly, and that one of them died or the others became partial and dishonest, and for that they killed them).14 Que es opinion entre los Indios que con los Izaes que poblaron a Chicheniza reyno vn gran señor llamado Cuculcan, y que muestra ser este verdad el edificio principal que se llama Cuculcan, y dizen que entro por la parte de poniente, y que difieren en si entro antes o despues de los Izaes, o con ellos, y dizen que fue bien despuesto, y que no tenia muger ni hijos, y que despues de su vuelta fue tenido en Mexico por unos de sus Dioses, y llamado Cezalcouati, y que en Yucatan tambien le tuvieron por dios por ser gran republicano, y que esto se vio en el asiento que puso en Yucatan despues de la muerte de los señores para mitigar la dissension que sus muertes causaron en la tierra. Que este Cuculcan torno a poblar otra çibdad tratando lo con los señores naturales de la tierra en que el y ellos viniessen, y que alli viniessen todas las cosas y negocios, y que para esto eligieron vn asiento muy bueno viii leguas mas dentro en la tierra que donde esta agora Merida, y xv. o xvi de la mar, y que alli cercaron de una muy ancha pared de piedra seca como medio quarto de legua dexando solas dos puertas angostas, y la pared no muy alta y q~ en medio desta hiziero[n] sus templos, y q~ al mayor, que es como el de Chicheniza llamaron Cuculcan, y que hizieron otro redondo con quarto puertas diferente de quantos ay en aquella tierra, y otros muchas a la redonda juntos vnos a otros, y dentro de este cercado hizieron casas para los señores solos entre los quales repartieron toda la tierra dando pueblos a cada vno conforme a la antiguedad de su

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linaje, y ser de su persona, y que Cuculcan puso nombre a la cibdad no del suyo como hizieron los Ahizaes en Chicheniza que quiere dezir el pozo de los Aizaes mas llamo la Mayapan que quiere dezir el pendon de la Maya, porque a la lengua de la tierra llaman Maya y que los Indios Ichpa, que quiere dezir dentro de las cercas. Que este Cuculcan vivio con los señores algunos años en aquella çibdad, y q~ dexando los en mucha paz, y amistad se torno por el mismo camino a Mexico, y que de pasfada se detuvo en Champoton y que para memoria suya y de su partida hizo dentro en la mar vn buen edificio al modo del de Chiçeniza vn gran tiro de piedra de la ribera, y que assi dejo Cuculcan en Yucatan perpetua memoria (It is the opinion among these Indians that with the Izaes that populated Chicheniza reigned a great lord named Cuculcan, and that the principal building that is called Cuculcan shows this to be the truth, and they say that he entered from the West, and they differ among themselves if he came before or after the Izaes, or with them, and they say that he was well-disposed and that he did not have a wife or children, and that after his return he was taken in Mexico for one of their gods and called Cezalcouati, and that also in Yucatan he was also taken to be a god for being such a great leader, and that this was seen in the seat he placed in Yucatan after the death of the lords to mitigate the dissension their deaths caused in the land. This Cuculcan was about to populate another city, discussing it with the natural lords of the land in which he and they had come, and that things and business would come, and that for this they chose a very good seat eight leagues further inland where Merida is today, and fifteen or sixteen from the sea, and there they enclosed it with a very wide dry stone wall of about a quarter of a league leaving only two narrow doorways, and a not very high wall and that in the middle of this they built their temples, and that the biggest, like that at Chicheniza named Cuculcan, and they made another round one with four doorways different from those in that land, and many others all around together, and inside of this wall they made houses just for the lords among which they divided all the land giving towns to each one in accordance with the age of his lineage, and being of his person, and Cuculcan gave a different name to the city instead of his own as did the Ahizaes in Chicheniza, which is to say the well of the Aizaes, instead he called it Mayapan, which means the pendant of the Maya, because the language of the land is called Maya and the Indians are called Ichpa, which means inside the walls. This Cuculcan lived with

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the lords for some years in that city, and leaving them in peace and friendship he took the same road to Mexico, and that on the way he stopped in Champoton and for his memorial he made a good building like at Chicheniza a stone’s throw from the shore, and that is how Cuculcan left his Yucatan in perpetual memory).15 Espues Chicheniza vn assiento muy bueno x leguas de Yzamal, y xi de Valladolid en la qual segun dizen los antiguos de los Indios reynaron tres señores hermanos los qualos segun se acuerdan auer oido a sus passados vinieron a aquella tierra de la parte del poniente, y juntaron en estos assientos gran poblaçon de pueblos y gentes las quales rigieron algunos años en mucha paz y justicia. Eran muy onradores de su dios, y assi edificaron muchos edificios, y muy galanos en especial vno. . . . Estos señores dicen vinieron sin mugeres, y en muy grande honestidad y todo el tiempo que vinieron assi fueron muy estimados, y obedecidos de todos. Despues andando el tiempo falto el vno dellos el qual se devio morir avnq~ los Indios dizen salio por la parte de Bac halal de la tierra. Hizo la ausencia deste, como quiera que ella fuesse, tanta falta en los que despues del regian que comencaron luego a ser en la republica parciales (Chicheniza, a very good seat ten leagues from Yzamal and eleven from Valladolid, where the ancients among the Indians say that there reigned three brother lords who, according to what they remember hearing from their ancestors, came to that land from the west and brought together a large population of towns and people, and they governed for some years in peace and justice. They honored their god very much, and they built many buildings, and one was especially elegant. . . . They say these lords came without women and in very great honesty and the whole time they came they were very esteemed, and obeyed by all. As time went on, one of them went missing and must have died, although the Indians say that he left in the direction of Bachalal. With his absence, however it may have occurred, those who reigned after him were so lacking that the nation broke up).16 These three passages inform us that K’uk’ulkan, who had arrived from the west (as Landa stated in another section), is equated with Quetzalcoatl, the Feathered Serpent that is known in Central Mexico. Not only is he associated with Chichén Itzá, he is also associated with Mayapan and Champoton. Furthermore, at one time Chichén Itzá was governed by “tres s[eñore]s hermanos” who came from the west. I identify these three “lord

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brothers” as three priests of some sort who, like K’uk’ulkan and Zamná, came from the west. Perhaps these brothers even served the elevated entities who were said to have also arrived from the west, K’uk’ulkan and Zamná. As I have hypothesized on another occasion (Boot 2005, chapter 3), K’uk’ulkan (Quetzalcoatl) (and thus also Zamná) probably were supreme priests who served the gods of the same name. Sahagún clearly states that the priests who served the gods in Central Mexico were named after the gods they served (Sahagún [1582] 1997, 598, Lib. X, Cap. XXIX). In sum, various ethnohistoric sources composed by both indigenous scribes and Spanish clergy or historians contain migration narratives that feature the Itzá Maya. Various population movements are described and the chronicles in the Yucatecan sources provide relative dates for these movements. These movements may have started as early as 672–692 CE (8 Ajaw) and led to the setting of the mat in 750–770 CE (13 Ajaw) and the taking possession of the land in 770–790 CE (11 Ajaw). The reign of the Itzá Maya lasted 256 years, from 711–731 CE (4 Ajaw) to 968–987 CE (4 Ajaw). Can these dates be corroborated through other lines of information on Chichén Itzá? But first, if they migrated, where would the Itzá Maya homeland have been? The Itzá Maya: A Central Maya Lowland Origin?

Where did the Itzá Maya come from if they migrated to Chichén Itzá? It is my contention that they came from the central Maya lowlands (Boot 1995, 1997, 2005; also see Schele et al. 1998; Schele and Mathews 1998). Here I will consider the Classic Maya paramount title K’uhul Itza’ Ajaw (God-like Itzá’ King) and the Classic Maya anthroponym Kanek’, which between 1524–1697 was the name of consecutive kings of the colonial Itzá Maya around Lake Petén who had their capital at the island of Noj Petén. Based on the limited distribution of these terms, the ancestors of the Itzá Maya may have dwelled in the area defined by their distribution. This was confirmed by the identification at Itzimte-Sacluk of two paramount titles tentatively transliterated as K’uhul Itza’ Ajaw, one on Stela 7 by Beliaev (personal communication) and the other on Altar 1 by me (Boot 2010). Itzimte-Sacluk is located some 50 kilometers west of Lake Petén, within the proposed area (figure 9.1). As archaeological research around Lake Petén has shown, the area was never completely depopulated and after a steady decline following the collapse, population rose there during the period 1200–1450 CE (Chase 1990;

Figure 9.1. Distribution of the titles with Itza and the anthroponym Kanek’ in the Maya area. 1a) Chichén Itzá, Las Monjas Lintel 2; 1b) Chichén Itzá, Great Ball Court, South Building, Pillar 6; 1c) Chichén Itzá, Caracol Panel; 1d) Chichén Itzá, Caracol Circular Stone; 2a) K4387, unprovenanced (Xultun); 2b) K4909, unprovenanced (Xultun); 2c) K8732, unprovenanced (Xultun); 3) Pusilha Stela D; 4) K6547, unprovenanced, Petén area; 5) Motul de San Jose Stela 1; 6a) Itzimte-Sacluk Stela 7; 6b) Itzimte-Sacluk Altar 1; 7) Seibal Stela 11; 8) Yaxchilan Stela 10. For full epigraphic analysis of these examples, see Boot 1995, 1997, 2005, 2010. Designed and drawn by the author.

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Rice and Rice 1990), probably by groups migrating south who originated in northern Yucatan. Both the Itzá Maya and the neighboring Kowoj Maya recalled these migrations and narrated stories of them to Spanish clergy and chroniclers after the final conquest in March of 1697, just prior to the beginning of a k’atun 8 Ajaw (Avedaño y Loyola [1696] 1996; Elorza y Rada [1714] 1930; Villagutierre Soto-Mayor [1701] 1985; also see Boot 2005; Jones 1998; Rice and Rice 2009; Rice et al. 1998). Several portable objects have been found at Chichén Itzá that contain inscribed hieroglyphic texts. Two of these objects were found in the Cenote of Sacrifice and the third was excavated as part of a cache at the base of the stairway of the sub-Castillo. These objects may have leap-frogged through some kind of social process (i.e., gifting or elite exchange) from their places of origin to their final resting places at Chichén Itzá. However, the very specific temporal and geographical correlations that can be made with these objects suggest to me that they may have been carried from the area from which the Itzá Maya (and others with them) migrated. Perhaps they even visited these places for some time during their sojourn to Chichén Itzá and obtained these objects through direct contact. The first item, which was found in the Cenote of Sacrifice, is a small blue jadeite portrait head of a Piedras Negras ruler named Koj(?) K’inich Yo’nal Ahk, who reigned in 687–729 CE (Martin and Grube 2008, 142, 145–146). The short texts on this jadeite object provide two dates from the reign of this Piedras Negras king, one in 699 CE (his thirteenth haab anniversary as king) and one in 706 CE. These dates correlate very well with the period of the k’atuns 8 Ajaw-4 Ajaw at 672–731 CE, associated with the discovery of the mouth of the well of the Itzá and the two descents. The second object, which also comes from the Cenote of Sacrifice, is a large pectoral bead that provides a portrait of Palenque king K’inich Kan Bahlam, who reigned in 684–702 CE (Martin and Grube 2008, 162, 168–170). There are three dates on this jadeite tube, 642 CE, 690 CE, and (probably) 695 CE. The object must have been produced after the last recorded date and again correlates well with the period of the k’atuns 8 Ajaw–4 Ajaw, 672–731 CE. The third object, which was found in a box cached at the base of the stairway of the sub-Castillo, is a small jadeite resized triangular pendant that displays the Calakmúl paramount title, Kanu’l Ajaw.17 It also contains a cartouche that provides the spelling yu[ku]-no-ma for Yukno’m (Shaker[?]), which opens the nominal phrase of five kings known to have ruled at Calakmúl in 619–731 CE (Martin and Grube 2008, 105, 108, 112). It is my contention that the correlation of the dates on all three portable objects with the period of

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k’atuns 8 Ajaw–4 Ajaw, or 672–731 CE, is not a coincidence. These objects were heirlooms of some sort that migrants brought to Chichén Itzá. These items help establish dates for the ritual use of the cenote and date one of the construction phases of the Castillo complex. It must have occurred after 619–731 CE, the date range of the object. Two other objects from the Cenote of Sacrifice need to be mentioned. These are a small copper medallion and a gold foil wrap from a knife handle. Both were found in 1961 (Littlehales 1961). It is unknown whether these objects are of local manufacture, but the dates on these objects are intriguing. The copper medallion has a three-part date: 4 Kawak, 4 Ajaw, 4 haab. I reconstruct this date as the day 4 Kawak (a year bearer) on the first of Pop in a tuun (a 360-day period) that ends on 4 Ajaw (1 Kej). This particular dating method is known from the Crónica de Oxkutzcab. A date recorded in this method only occurs every 936 years. The date on the medallion is thus 1012–1013 CE. The date on the gold foil is 4 Muluk, 13 Ajaw, or 1090– 1091 CE. Whether these objects were produced locally or imported, they employ the year bearers of Yucatan and provide some additional calendrical information about the ceremonial use of the cenote, as their final deposition must have taken place after these dates.18 The Itzá Maya: Weighing the Idea of Migrations

How can the validity of the ethnohistoric narratives I have used to interpret the dates of the Itzá Maya migrations be assessed? For this I present five short sub-sections. Dates at Chichén Itzá: Epigraphic and Other The hieroglyphic corpus at Chichén Itzá provides an interesting set of retrospective and contemporary dates. The Caracol Circular Stone provides a reference to the second tuun in a k’atun 8 Ajaw (672–692 CE). This is most probably a back reference to 673–674 CE (alternatives: ± 256 years). It is unfortunate that the associated verb is completely eroded. A series of names and titles follows. The second half of the text may have opened with u’ul-i (arrived), after which a series of names and titles is given. This full text may contain three titles that spell Itzá Ajaw. The Water Trough Lintel provides a reference to a k’atun 7 Ajaw, which must be 810–830 CE. This is just forty years after the k’atun 11 Ajaw at 770–790 CE, the k’atun in which possession of the land took place, the founding of Chichén Itzá. Between 832 CE (a date in k’atun 5 Ajaw, 830–850 CE) and 890 CE, a series

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of monuments was dedicated, including the seven lintels at the Las Monjas building, five of which were dedicated in 880 CE. The last contemporary date is 998 CE, found in the short text of a pillar at the High Priest’s Grave (see Boot 2005, chapter 4, table 4.4). The sub-Castillo and Castillo building provide several important approximate date ranges. Radiocarbon dates of wood samples taken from the sub-Castillo date to 790 CE ± 70 and 780 CE ± 70 (corrected to 755 CE ± 70 and 776 CE ± 100; see Cohodas 1978, 105n10; and Parsons 1969, 178). The upper structure contained an inner chamber or sanctum with a jaguar statuette that functioned as a throne or seat. The imprint of a fiber mat was found below this statuette (Morley 1946, 1947, 410; Morley et al. 1983, 452; Sharer 1994, 727). This room therefore embodied the Mesoamerican “mat and throne” metaphor for paramount rulership (Boot 2000, 2005, chapter 5). Also note that the k’atun 13 Ajaw, which I date to 750–770 CE, was associated with the phrase tzolki pop (set in order was the mat). The cache at the base of the staircase of the sub-Castillo contained the small resized jadeite pendant that referred to Yukno’m, part of the name of five kings of the Kanu’l dynasty at Calakmúl in 619–695 CE. The cache must date from after that period and so also must the outer Castillo. A wood sample taken from one of the lintels of the outer structure provided the radiocarbon date 810 CE ± 100 (Andrews 1965, 63, sample Y-626b; cited in Kubler [1962] 1990, 293, note 14) or, through its calibrated midpoint and 1-sigma range, 780 (891) 1000 CE (Ringle et al. 1998, table 1). The Castillo was used for ceremonies for some time, as indicated by lime plaster fragments containing up to ninety layers of coating (Boot 2005, 281n41).19 Building Technique, Architecture, and Sculptural Programs Many of the iconic buildings in “Old Chichén” provide hieroglyphic inscriptions with dates between 832 and 890 CE. These include Casa Colorada (870–873 CE), Temple of the Three Lintels (878–879 CE), Las Monjas (880 CE), Temple of the Four Lintels (881 CE), and the Caracol (884–890 CE). They are built in the semi-veneer modified mosaic style or technique, slightly different from but comparable to the Puuc veneer mosaic style used in northern Yucatan (Andrews 1981; Pollock 1980). Many (if not all) buildings show mosaic masks, representations of the witz (living mountain). The western facade of La Iglesia, the building next to Las Monjas, shows four gods seated in sunken panels. Two have shells on their back, one a turtle carapace and the other an undefined back element suggesting a cobweb. These four gods occur all over Chichén Itzá and are the local manifestation

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of a Classic Maya group of gods named the Chan Tuun Itzam. Two of these figures can be found on each side of a witz mask, on which a fifth anthropomorphic entity, body and head largely gone, is seated with a characteristic bifurcated headdress. In my opinion, the same entity (identified by the same headdress) is found seated in a Late Classic rendition of a sun disk (a multipetaled flower?) or feathered disk in the visual narrative on the east facade of the Las Monjas Annex building. I tentatively identify this central entity as a god supreme to and flanked by the Chan Tuun Itzam. Within the Classic Maya pantheon, this god, I suggest, would be Itzamna, the Creator God (Boot 2008) (plate 15).20 The final versions of the buildings on the Great Plaza, or “New Chichén,” are built using the same technique but often contain elaborate colonnades or colonnaded fronts carved in a style that has been absolute dated at the Castillo (after ca. 891 CE) and the High Priest’s Grave (998 CE). Since the time of Charnay, many researchers have claimed a direct connection between Tula in Central Mexico and Chichén Itzá. The evidence they point to is a visual and stylistic resemblance in architecture and iconography and ethnohistoric sources (e.g., Charnay 1885; Taube 1994; Thompson 1966; Tozzer 1957). However, these resemblances do not need to be based on a Central Mexican conquest or invasion; they could be based on a variety of social processes, including the incorporation of foreign architectural and iconographic elements to support elite superiority and royal legitimization (e.g., Boot 2005, chapter 3). The most iconic buildings in “New Chichén” (the Castillo, the Great Ball Court, and the Temple of the Warriors) have a very specific east-west orientation that is different from the east-west orientation at La Iglesia–Las Monjas Annex. I consider this architectural complex (including the range structure Las Monjas itself) to be representative of the “Old Chichén” section of the site. The Castillo is the most prominent building on the Great Plaza and is dedicated to the Feathered Serpent, indicated by the giant feathered serpent heads at the base of the balustrades on the north side and the sculptured columns at the north entrance of its upper structure. The light-andshadow serpent that descends on the yearly equinoxes, an architectural hierophany, stresses the importance of this building even more. As I have proposed in another study, this particular building is part of an extensive iconographic and architectural program to support the legitimization of Itzá Maya paramount lordship at Chichén Itzá, which can be placed in a larger Mesoamerican context of a legitimization of new, intrusive, and/or

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nonnative paramount lordships that did not require conquest (Boot 2005, chapter 3). Ceramic Sequence Organization of the ceramic sequence of Chichén Itzá has shifted dramatically over the years. The bone of contention is the two major ceramic phases or complexes named Cehpech and Sotuta, which were sequential, partially overlapping, or completely overlapping (e.g., Andrews and Sabloff 1986; Brainerd 1958; Lincoln 1990; Pérez de Heredia 1998, 2007; Ringle et al. 1998; Schele and Freidel 1990; Schele and Mathews 1998; Schmidt 1999, 2003; Smith 1971; Tozzer 1957). However, recently yet another shift has taken place that is based on an extensive analysis of the ceramics excavated during the Chichén Itzá archaeological project directed by Peter Schmidt (1993–2010) and other pertinent collections from the 1900s to 1990s. The relatively short (renamed) Huuntun-Cehpech phase (ca. 830/850–930/950 CE) is now associated with all buildings that carry epigraphic dates from circa 860 to 890 CE. The Sotuta phase (ca. 900/920–1100/1150 CE) is now associated with buildings (most on the Great Plaza, but some in “Old Chichén,” as for instance the High Priest’s Grave) constructed after these epigraphic dates. The major defining construction of this phase is the High Priest’s Grave, which has an epigraphic date of 998 CE. The Huuntun-Cehpech and Sotuta complexes thus date from around 830 to 1150 CE. Although they are distinct, Sotuta evolves out of Huuntun-Cehpech (itself a local manifestation of a regional complex named Cehpech). Only around 900–950 CE might there be some overlap as the earlier complex was gradually replaced by the later complex (Pérez de Heredia 2010). Most important, Sotuta is a local ceramic complex that originated at Chichén Itzá. Foreign ceramics (e.g., Silho Fine Orange from the Gulf Coast, Tohil Plumbate from the Soconusco) and Central Mexican obsidian (Ucareo, Pachuca) are associated with the Sotuta complex (Pérez de Heredia 2010, 395). Ceramic styles associated with Central Mexico (more specifically Tula and its environs) are extremely rare and actually constitute imitations. Paste and thus production is local while shape and decoration is imitated (Schmidt 2003, 57). Bioarchaeology Population movements and migrations have been proposed in a variety of cases in Mesoamerica. The analysis of skeletal remains can provide information on the origin of individuals and relatedness among groups of

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individuals. If differences are found, this could inform us of any nonnative origin. While the results of a biodistance and bioarchaeological study “will not be able to definitively answer archaeological questions about the nature of the interaction between . . . sites, they will be able to provide information on whether population movements correlate with what is known archaeologically” (Aubry 2009, 74). Based solely on metric and nonmetric dental morphological traits, Aubry (2009; chapter 7, this volume) shows that Chichén Itzá has its own signature that is distinct from other sites in the Maya area. It shows relatively small biological distance estimates between Chichén Itzá and some other sites. Chichén Itzá clusters with Altar de Sacrificios, Calakmúl, San Gervasio/Playa del Carmen, and Uaxactún. A contrasting cluster is formed by Dos Pilas, Piedras Negras, Tikal, the southern Petén sites, Xcambó, and Kaminaljuyú. Yaxuna is slightly outside this second cluster and although it is close to Chichén Itzá, it is very different (Aubry 2009, 187). However, the limited sample from Chichén Itzá is based on only twenty-nine individuals (Aubry 2009, table 5.1). In one measurement, it is reduced to just nine (Aubry 2009, 186) and in others it is excluded altogether (Aubry 2009, 183, 202). Unfortunately no information is provided about where the individuals were found at Chichén Itzá. As Aubry (2009, 208) notes, “non-significant distance measures were obtained by comparisons between Tula and Chichén Itzá, Dzibilchaltún, Kaminaljuyú, Petén, San Gervasio/Playa del Carmen, Tikal (Early Classic), Uaxactún, and Yaxuna.” Based on the facts that sampling in many cases was low or nonexistent and that a major site in Veracruz (El Tajin) (Aubry 2009, 111, 234) and sites from Oaxaca (Aubry 2009, 115) were not included, I refrain from providing any conclusions based on the bioarchaeological information currently at hand. Linguistics and Epigraphy The hieroglyphic texts composed between 832 CE (Temple of the Hieroglyphic Jambs) and 998 CE (High Priest’s Grave) follow the common grammatical paradigm of Late Classic Maya. These texts show no inclusion of recent (i.e., seventh to tenth century CE) non-Mayan words. Interestingly, various vernacular traits are present in these texts, such as specific spellings for ka’ (two) (ka; vs. the numerical “two dots” sign that can be read either cha’ or ka’) and kan (serpent) (ka-na; vs. a sign that can be read either chan or kan) and a specific passive paradigm (-V|u/u|) (Boot 2005; Grube 2003). Also the spelling |b|wo-’i is paired with the spelling for the month Ik’at (Las

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Monjas, Lintels 2–6) to reference Wo’, the second month in the Yucatec calendar. These features show a Yucatecan linguistic environment (compare Lacadena and Wichmann 1999) that is distinct from that of the central lowland Classic Maya, which was based on languages in the Cholan group (see Houston et al. 2000). The Itzá Maya around Lake Petén, at least from some time before the colonial period, spoke Itzaj, a language in the Yucatecan language group. Interestingly, a Late Classic codex-style vessel (K6751) that provides a long list of kings of the Kanu’l dynasty and was likely produced in the Greater Nakbe area contains the spelling wo-hi for Woh as the second month (Boot 2009, 203). This month name Woh (and the very specific spellings ka-KAN for kan [serpent] in kanu’l; also note ka-na-’a for kana’ on K1457) could be indicative of the vernacular of the Greater Nakbe area. The vessel can be provisionally dated to circa 680–750 CE. A Yucatec language may thus have already been spoken in this area by the Late Classic period. The Greater Nakbe area is located some 100–120 kilometers north of Lake Petén. Also recall that a small object was cached at the Castillo that referred to a royal name from the Kanu’l dynasty at Calakmúl (located in the northern section of the Greater Nakbe area). However, there are other “texts” at Chichén Itzá. These constitute short (commonly single sign) captions that accompany the sculptures at the structures on the Great Plaza (e.g., the Great Ball Court, the Lower Temple of the Jaguars, a mural, the Temple of the Warriors, the Northwest Colonnade). Close to 250 different captions can be identified. These texts have been interpreted as non-Mayan in origin. A similar caption system can be found at Tula, but far fewer examples are known (e.g., De La Fuente et al. 1988, Cat. 64, 69–72, 104, 157, 158). I suggest that sculptures from El Tajin need to be incorporated in any study (Kampen 1972, Fig. 39c; Pascual Soto 2009, Figs. 58, 100–109). The El Tajin caption from Structure 2 dates from approximately 350 to 600 CE (Pascual Soto 2009, 100–101, Fig. 58) and thus antedates the Chichén Itzá and Tula examples (both probably were produced ca. 900–1100 CE). While the script that forms the base of these captions may be non-Mayan in origin, that does not automatically mean that a large non-Mayan population or even an elite group took control of the polity of Chichén Itzá. As several ethnohistoric sources indicate, Chichén Itzá received visitors from local tributaries and from as far away as (central) Mexico, Chiapas, and Guatemala (“Relación de Citilum y Cabiche,” De la Garza et al. 1983, 1:175, 182; “Relación de Kizil y Sitilpech,” De la Garza et al. 1983, 1:192, 200; “Relación de Tekanto y Tepakan,” De la Garza et al. 1983, 1:209, 216; “Relación de Izamal y Santa María,” De la Garza et al. 1983, 1:298,

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Figure 9.2. “International” name caption at Chichén Itzá, Great Ball Court, South Building, Pillar 5 (ca. 900–1100 CE) (Seler 1902, vol. 1, Figure 5).

305; “Relación de Tiab y Tiek,” De la Garza et al. 1983, 1:312–313, 319). The often “easily recognizable” (or, perhaps better, “international”) captions can be read in various unrelated languages (figure 9.2). This is a conscious strategy among elites, just as the incorporation of nonnative iconographic and monumental architectural expressions is. Both are elite-driven social processes that seek to support their legitimacy to rule. More important, monumental architecture designed through this strategy perhaps provides the most basic definition of hierarchy and distance between groups in social space and ultimately shapes world views, since monumental architecture is representative of an ideal instead of being strictly functional (compare Burdett and Sudjic 2011; Kowalski 1999; Moore 1996; Pearson and Richards 1993; Wilson 1988).

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Discussion and Conclusions

This essay opened with a primary question: To what or to whom does Itzá refer in the place-name Chichén Itzá? Itzá is part of specific ethnonyms, as in Aj Itzá and Itzá Winik, which are referred to in various ethnohistoric sources in which Itzá functions as a toponym. However, Landa states that Itzá in Chichén Itzá refers to the Aj Itzá. I decided to translate Chichén Itzá as “Mouth of the Well of (the) Itzá,” which included two possibilities: that Itzá is a toponym and/or that Itzá refers to the (abbreviated) ethnonym. The ethnohistoric sources indicate that the Itzá Maya were not native to northern Yucatan. I referred to the specific passages on this subject as migration narratives and defined migration as a displacement of part of a population from one area to another, the cause of which can be either voluntary or involuntary and either internal or external in origin. In these texts, Chichén Itzá is said to have been discovered in a certain period (8 Ajaw, 6 Ajaw), to have been populated by “Small” and “Great” descents (4 Ajaw), to have had its mat set in order (13 Ajaw), and to have had its land taken into possession (11 Ajaw). I proposed that these periods, referred to in an indigenous calendrical system, can be dated to 672–692 CE (8 Ajaw) to 731–750 CE (11 Ajaw). These particular migration narratives do not inform us about the cause of the Itzá Maya migrations. I suggested that the so-called collapse of the central Maya lowland polities in circa 700–900 CE may be the reason. Collapse is a gradual process of multicausal systemic breakdown of society at most of its levels. If I am correct, where could the Itzá Maya have come from? Based on the distribution of a specific Classic Maya paramount title, K’uhul Itza’ Ajaw (God-Like Itzá’ King) and the anthroponym Kanek’, I proposed that the Itzá Maya may have migrated from an area some 50 kilometers east of Lake Petén, where the archaeological site of Itzimte-Sacluk is located. I discussed three objects that have been found at Chichén Itzá and that originally came from Piedras Negras, Palenque, and Calakmúl. The objects carry dates or refer to a royal name that can be associated with a specific historical period. I suggested that the times recorded on these objects (all before 700 CE) and the places they came from may indicate that they were heirlooms the Itzá Maya migrants took to Chichén Itzá, where they were cached (Castillo) or deposited (Cenote). Two other objects of generally local manufacture provided dates in the eleventh century, possibly indicative of the extended ceremonial use of the cenote but also of local calendrical methods for keeping time.

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The growth and florescence of Chichén Itzá is associated with two consecutive ceramic complexes, Huuntun-Cehpech and Sotuta. The HuuntunCehpech complex is a local expression of the regional Cehpech complex. The Sotuta complex evolves out of the Huuntun-Cehpech complex and is associated with objects of foreign origin (e.g., ceramics, obsidian) and imitations of Central Mexican vessel forms and decoration. The buildings are constructed in the semi-veneer modified mosaic style or technique, slightly different from but comparable to the Puuc veneer mosaic style employed in northern Yucatan. Chichén Itzá is divided in two sections, Old Chichén (south) and New Chichén (north). The defining constructions of Old Chichén are the buildings of the Monjas–La Iglesia complex. The defining constructions of New Chichén are the buildings on the Great Plaza, of which the Castillo is the most important. The east-west orientations of these two architectural complexes are very different and may indicate a change in the sociopolitical and religious orientation of the ruling elite. The Castillo, as indicated in the work of Landa and through its sculptural decoration, is dedicated to the Feathered Serpent K’uk’ulkan, who is absent from Old Chichén (except as integrated in later architectural constructions and additions). The Feathered Serpent and its associated sociopolitical and religious complex have a Central Mexican origin. A unifying factor between Old and New Chichén can be found in the prominence of four old gods (a local manifestation of the Chan Tuun Itzam), which are integrated into the west facade of the Iglesia and incorporated into sculptural programs on the Great Plaza. At the Iglesia, these four old gods flank a fifth god I have tentatively identified as Itzamna. If my identification is correct, Old Chichén may show the presence of Itzamna and New Chichén may show the presence of K’uk’ulkan, the two gods the Itzá Maya are associated with in the ethnohistoric sources and the migration narratives. The sculptural programs at New Chichén contain a multitude of human portraits, many of which are associated with short captions in a non-Mayan script. Close to 250 different captions can be identified. At Tula, only a few comparable captions can be found. Perhaps a closer look should be taken at El Tajin, which shows a comparable style of caption, and other Gulf Coast sites (e.g., Río Blanco, Nopiloa, Mixtequilla area). Change, either subtle or extreme, can take place due to migration. I observe a well-structured series of events based on ethnohistorical and archaeological sources that may explain the changes in material culture and the possible origins of the Itzá Maya (table 9.2). Perhaps the placement

Table 9.2. Overview of dates and events for Chichén Itzá, including some dates for Mayapan, Yucatan, and the Lake Petén area (all dates CE, following the 584,285 correlation constant) Ethnohistoric Data by k’atun Cycle

Chichén Epigraphic Corpus

Other Epigraphic Data

Ceramic Association Data

Architectural Context with Radiocarbon Date

672–692 (8 Ajaw) 673–674 (Caracol) Discovery arrival(?) (in 8 Ajaw) 619–731 (3 objects) (cenote and Castillo)

692–711 (6 Ajaw) Discovery 711–731 (4 Ajaw) Descents; arrival Itzá and K’uk’ulkan 750–770 (13 Ajaw) Setting in order mat

755 ± 70 CE and 776 ± 100 CE (sub-Castillo; “mat and throne”) 770–790 (11 Ajaw) Possession of land 810–830 (Water Trough) 832 (Hieroglyphic Jambs)

ca. 830/850– 930/950 (HuuntunCehpech complex)

862–863 (Water Trough) (continued)

Table 9.2—Continued

Ethnohistoric Data by k’atun Cycle

Chichén Epigraphic Corpus

Other Epigraphic Data

Ceramic Association Data

Architectural Context with Radiocarbon Date

864(?) (Great Ball Court) 869 (Halakal Lintel) 870–873 (Casa Colorada) 873–874 (Yula Lintels) 876–877 (Caracol) 878 (Initial Series Lintel) 878–879 (Three Lintels) 879–880 (Akab Dzib Lintel) 880 (Las Monjas Lintels 2–6) 881 (Four Lintels) 884–890 (Caracol) 780 (891) 1000 CE (Castillo; “Feathered Serpent”) ca. 900/920– 1100/1150 (Sotuta complex) 968–987 (4 Ajaw) after 13 k’atuns rule ends 998 (High Priest’s Grave)

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Ethnohistoric Data by k’atun Cycle 1007–1027 (11 Ajaw) Mayapan settled

Chichén Epigraphic Corpus

Other Epigraphic Data

Ceramic Association Data

Architectural Context with Radiocarbon Date

1012–1013 (medallion) 1090–91 (gold foil) 1106–1283 (date range stelae at Mayapan)

1441–1461 (8 Ajaw) Mayapan depopulated 1539–1559 (11 Ajaw) Maya men become Christians 1697–1717 (8 Ajaw) conquest Noj Peten All dates calculated and reconstructed by the author; for discussion of dates relative to Mayapan, Yucatan, and Lake Peten area, see Boot 2005, chapter 2.

of some of the migration narratives has been manipulated to fit certain consecutive k’atuns in the k’atun cycle following some ideal type, but this is not necessarily so. Information from other sources seems, in my opinion, to corroborate the sequence of events as proposed here. The chronicles as such do represent historical reality (compare Harrison-Buck 2014). Myth or perhaps cosmology entered this chronology as well, as the migration narratives were paired with the arrivals of Zamna (Itzamna) and K’uk’ulkan. Further research on various aspects of Chichén Itzá continues, from ethnohistorical sources to the study of the hieroglyphic corpus. I also follow bioarchaeological research on material from Chichén Itzá and the Maya area. I hope that more skeletal material will be made available for analysis and that the locations where that material was found will be presented to obtain a better view of the composition of the population at Chichén Itzá to establish if they were of local or migrant descent.

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Acknowledgments

I thank Christopher Beekman for his kind invitation to contribute to this volume. I also thank him for his patience as, due to unforeseen circumstances, I went some considerable time over the deadline to deliver this contribution. Notes 1. Diego de Landa, “Relación de las cosas de Yucatán,” 1566, fol. 5r, ll. 38–39, 9-24-3-B68 and 9-5153, Real Academia de Historia, Madrid. 2. Ethnohistoric sources in the Yucatecan language show that Chichén Itza was also known as Wak Habnal and Wuk Yabnal, for instance in Vuc yab nal uheɔ katun. ti kan Ahau katun: tuchi cħeen: uuc yab nal uheɔ (Wuk Yabnal is the seat of the k’atun. In k’atun 4 Ajaw at the mouth of the well, Wuk Yabnal is the seat) (Gordon 1913, MS73, ll. 7–8; my translation). This phrase provides some support for the claim that Itza in Chichén Itza can be toponymic, as Wuk Yabnal (a toponym) substitutes for Itza. 3. For other references to the Itza Maya in these sources, see chapter 2 in Boot 2005. 4. All transcriptions of the Yucatec Maya texts are mine after cited facsimile editions and follow as closely as possible the original colonial orthography (as such the inclusion of /cħ/ for ) and /ɔ/ for ). They are derived from my 2005 publication or updated from those versions. In the main text and the translations, I transfer the Yucatec Maya words into an orthography commonly used in modern epigraphic studies, facilitating comparison. I consider my translations to be within the confines of “mechanical literalness” (Tedlock 1985, 17), i.e., formal, and I keep the translations as close as possible to the word order of the original Yucatecan text. 5. This is probably a back reference to the previously stated k’atun 8 Ajaw, otherwise there would be a gap of some 216–256 years between the migrations of the Tutul Xiu and the Itza Maya. These sources and the work by Landa, in my opinion, clearly show that these migrations were (nearly) contemporaneous. Specifically note Chumayel MS 10, l. 3, which notes that “Tutul Xiw Ixtlo[w]al was also there” (see citation in main text). 6. Juan Pío Pérez, “Codex Pérez,” 1837, 134, ll. 24–26—135, ll. 1–2, transcript of various Books of Chilam Balam, manuscript at Museo Nacional de Antropologia, Mexico, DF. 7. In two recent studies, substantial evidence has been presented, derived from previously undisclosed manuscript letters and testimonies kept at the Archivo de las Indias in Sevilla, that Maya ritual specialists all over the Yucatan peninsula regularly used hieroglyphic books well into the seventeenth century and possibly even in the early eighteenth century. In total, 125 separate books are mentioned, most of which were destroyed, but local clergy kept or sent to archives sixteen to eighteen hieroglyphic books (Chuchiak 2000, 2003). Thus far only three codices have surfaced in Europe (Dresden, Madrid, and Paris). This evidence lends further credibility to the idea that Lizana had a hieroglyphic book at his disposal in the early seventeenth century that was glossed by those who could still read them (Boot 2005, 97). 8. Cogolludo describes the contents of this source but does not refer to its author or its original whereabouts before he summarizes the version as given by Lizana. As no other

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Yucatec Maya source is known on the subject of migration that includes the name Zamná, it is thus not one of the surviving Books of Chilam Balam. The text Cogolludo cites must be considered lost. 9. E.g., Landa, “Relación de las cosas de Yucatán,” fol. 31r; López de Cogolludo ([1688] 1971, 196, Lib. IV, Cap. 8). 10. Landa, “Relación de las cosas de Yucatán,” folio 5r, ll. 14–18; Landa (1986, 12–13); Tozzer (1941, 20–22). 11. Landa, “Relación de las cosas de Yucatán,” folio 6r, ll. 18–25; Landa (1986, 15–16); Tozzer (1941, 29–31). 12. Landa, “Relación de las cosas de Yucatán,” fol. 6r, l. 30–33. 13. For a discussion of the calendrical placements of these events, see Boot (1995, 1997, 2005, 2010). 14. Landa, “Relación de las cosas de Yucatán,” 5r, ll. 1–7; Landa (1986, 12). 15. Landa, “Relación de las cosas de Yucatán,” 5r, ll. 14–45 & 5v, ll. 1–2, spelling in original; Landa (1986, 12–13). 16. Landa, “Relación de las cosas de Yucatán,” 48r, ll. 1–19; Landa (1986, 112–113). 17. There is no space to elaborate here, but the Aj Kanul most probably originated from the Kanu’l area and thus migrated from the greater Calakmúl area to Campeche and established their capital at Maxcanu’ (*Maaxkanu’l). Note the reference to “Ah Kanul” in the Chumayel (MS09, l. 15; see citation in main text). 18. Landa, “Relación de las cosas de Yucatán.” 19. At the Temple of the Warriors at the basal zone of the north side of the summit structure, archaeologists counted 131 layers of lime plaster (Morris et al. 1931, 118–119). When or how often these layers were applied at the Castillo or the Temple of the Warriors remains unknown. 20. I keep the possibility open that it could be the portrait of a human impersonator. Note that at Palenque (Temple XIX, Bench, South Side) there is a high-ranking court representative who impersonates Itzamna within the reenactment of the mythological accession ceremony of the Palenque Triad God G1 (e.g., Stuart 2005; Boot 2008).

References Adams, William Y., D. P. V. Gerven, and Richard S. Levy. 1978. “The retreat from migrationism.” Annual Review of Anthropology 7(1): 483–532. Aimers, James J. 2007. “What Maya collapse? Terminal Classic variation in the Maya lowlands.” Journal of Archaeological Research 15: 329–377. Aimers, James, and David Hodell. 2011. “Societal collapse: Drought and the Maya.” Nature 479(7371): 44–45. Andrews, Edward Wyllys, IV. 1965. Progress report on the 1960–1964 field seasons, National Geographic Society-Tulane University Dzibilchaltun Program. New Orleans, LA: Middle American Research Institute, Tulane University. Andrews, E. Wyllys, V. 1981. “Dzibilchaltun.” In Supplement to the Handbook of Middle American Indians, vol. 1, Archaeology, edited by Victoria Bricker and Jeremy Sabloff, 313–345. Austin: University of Texas Press. Andrews, E. Wyllys, V, and Jeremy A. Sabloff. 1986. “Classic to Postclassic: A summary

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discussion.” In Late lowland Maya civilization: Classic to Postclassic, edited by Jeremy A. Sabloff and E. Wyllys Andrews V, 433–456. Santa Fe: School of American Research. Anthony, David W. 1990. “Migration in archaeology: The baby and the bathwater.” American Anthropologist 92: 895–914. ———. 1992. “The bath refilled: Migration in archeology again.” American Anthropologist 94(1): 174–176. ———. 1997. “Prehistoric migration as social process.” In Migrations and invasions in Archaeological explanation, edited by John Chapman and Helena Hamerow, 21–32. BAR International Series 664. Oxford: Archaeopress. Aubry, B. Scott. 2009. “Population structure and interregional interaction in pre-hispanic Mesoamerica: A biodistance study.” PhD diss., Ohio State University. Avedaño y Loyola, fray Andrés. (1696) 1996. Relación de las dos entradas que hice a la conversión de los gentiles ytzáes, y cehaches. Edited by Temis Vayhinger-Scheer. Mexicon Occasional Publications 3. Möckmühl: Verlag Anton Sauerwein. Barrera Vásquez, A., and S. G. Morley. 1949. “The Maya Chronicles.” Carnegie Institution of Washington Contributions to American Anthropology and History 10(48): 1–86. Boot, Erik. 1995. “‘Kan Ek’ at Chich’en Itsa: A quest into a possible Itsa heartland in the Central Peten, Guatemala.” Yumtzilob 7(4): 333–339. ———. 1997. “‘No place like home’: Maya exodus, Itsa Maya migrations between ca. A.D. 650 and A.D. 1450.” In Veertig jaren onderweg, edited by Henri J. M. Claessen and Han F. Vermeulen, 165–187. Leiden: DSWO Press, Rijksuniversiteit Leiden. ———. 2000. “Mat and throne in the Maya area: The jaguar statuette in the sub-Castillo at Chich’én Itsá and a re-evaluation of the hieroglyphic superfix T168.” Paper presented at the symposium “Mat and Throne: Cosmovision and Society in Mesoamerica,” Leiden University, Leiden, May 10–12. ———. 2003. “The great ballcourt at Chichén Itzá, Yucatán, Mexico: Perpetuation of rulership of the Itzá Maya.” In Colecciones latinoamericanas—Latin American Collections, Essays in Honour of Ted J. J. Leyenaar, edited by Dorus Kop Jansen and Edward K. de Bock, 95–123. Leiden: Ed. Tetl. ———. 2005. Continuity and change in text and image at Chichén Itzá, Yucatán, Mexico. Leiden: CNWS Publications. ———. 2008. “At the court of Itzam Nah Yax Kokaj Mut: Preliminary iconographic and epigraphic analysis of a Late Classic vessel.” Justin Kerr’s Mayavase.com Essays. http: www.mayavase.com/God-D-Court-Vessel.pdf. ———. 2009. The updated preliminary Classic Maya-English, English-Classic Maya vocabulary of hieroglyphic readings. Mesoweb Resources. http://www.mesoweb.com/resources /vocabulary/ ———. 2010. “Chichén Itzá in the Mesoamerican world: Some old and new perspectives.” In The Maya and their neighbors: Internal and external contacts through time, edited by Laura van Broekhoven, Rogelio Valencia Rivera, Benjamin Vis, and Frauke Sachse, 73–88. Acta Mesoamericana Volume 22. Markt Schwaben: Verlag Anton Saurwein. ———. 2011. “Fray Diego de Landa y la cosmovisión Maya-Yucateca a inicios del período colonial.” In Cosmovisión Mesoamericana, edited by Horacio Cabezas Carcache, 35–81. Ciudad de Guatemala: Universidad Mesoamericana.

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Brainerd, George. 1958. The archaeological ceramics of Yucatan. University of California Anthropological Records, vol. 19. Berkeley: University of California Press. Brambila Paz, Rosa, and Jesús Monjarás-Ruiz. 1996. Los arqueólogos frente a las fuentes. México, DF: Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia. Brinton, Daniel G. 1882. The Maya chronicles. Brinton’s Library of Aboriginal American Literature no. 1. Philadelphia: Published by the author. Burdett, Ricky, and Deyan Sudjic, eds. 2011. Living in the endless city: The Urban Age Project by the London School of Economics and Deutsche Bank’s Alfred Herrhausen Society. London: Phaidon Press. Burmeister, Stefan. 2000. “Archaeology and migration: Approaches to an archaeological proof of migration.” Current Anthropology 41: 539–567. Cassel, Kerstin. 2000. “Where are we going? Attitudes towards migrations in archaeological thought.” Current Swedish Archaeology 8: 33–49. Chapman, John, and Helena Hamerow, eds. 1997. Migrations and invasions in archaeological explanation. British Archaeological Reports no. 664. Oxford: Archaeopress. Charnay, Désiré. 1885. Les anciennes villes du Nouveau Monde. Voyages d’explorations au Mexique et dans l’Amérique Centrale par Désiré Charnay, 1857–1882. Paris: Librairie Hachette et Companie. Chase, Arlen F. 1990. “Maya archaeology and population estimates in the Tayasal-Paxcaman Zone, Petén, Guatemala.” In Precolumbian population history in the Maya lowlands, edited by T. Patrick Culbert and Don S. Rice, 149–165. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press. Chuchiak, John F., IV. 2000. “The images speak: The survival and production of hieroglyphic codices and their use in post-conquest Maya religion, 1580–1720.” Paper presented at the 5th European Maya Conference, Universität Bonn, Bonn, December 9–10. ———. 2003. “De Extirpatio Codicis Yucatanensis: The 1607 colonial confiscation of a Maya sacred book: New interpretations on the origins and provenience of the Madrid Codex.” Paper presented at the 8th European Maya Conference, Madrid, Spain, November 29–30. Cohodas, Marvin. 1978. “Diverse architectural styles and the ball game cult: The Late Middle Classic period in Yucatan.” In Middle Classic Mesoamerica: AD 400–700, edited by Esther Pasztory, 87–107. New York: Columbia University Press. Culbert, T. Patrick. 1988. “The collapse of Classic Maya civilization.” In The collapse of ancient states and civilizations, edited by Norman Yoffee and George L. Cowgill, 69–101. Tucson: University of Arizona Press. De la Fuente, Beatriz, Silvia Trejo, and Nelly Gutiérrez Solana. 1988. Escultura en piedra de Tula: catálogo. México, DF: Instituto de Investigaciones Estéticas, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México. De la Garza, Mercedes, ed. 1983. Relaciones histórico-geográficas de la gobernación de Yucatán. 2 vols. Fuentes para el estudio de cultura Maya 1. México, DF: Instituto de Investigaciones Filológicas, Centro de Estudios Mayas, Universidad Autónoma de México. Demarest, Arthur A. 2013. “The collapse of the Classic Maya kingdoms of the southwestern Petén: Implications for the end of Classic Maya civilization.” In Millenary Maya societies: Past crises and resilience, edited by M.-Charlotte Arnauld and Alain Breton, 22–48. Mesoweb resources, www.mesoweb.com/

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Diamond, Jared. 1999. Guns, germs, and steel: The fates of human societies. New York: W. W. Norton and Co. ———. 2005. Collapse: How societies choose to fail or succeed. New York: Viking. Edmonson, Munro S., ed. 1986. Heaven born Merida and its destiny: The book of Chilam Balam of Chumayel. Trans. Munro S. Edmonson. Austin: University of Texas Press. Elorza y Rada, Don Francisco. (1714) 1930. A narrative of the conquest of the province of the Ytzaes. Translated by Philip Ainsworth Means with Spanish text in facsimile. Collection de Texte Relatifs aux Anciennes Civilisations du Mexique et de l’Amerique Centrale, tome 7. Paris: Les Editions Genet. Fash, William L. 1991. Scribes, warriors and kings: The city of Copán and the ancient Maya. London: Thames & Hudson. Folan, William J., Joyce Marcus, Sophia Pincemin, María del Rosario Domínguez Carrasco, Laraine Fletcher, and Abel Morales López. 1995. “Calakmul: New data from an ancient Maya capital in Campeche, Mexico.” Latin American Antiquity 6(4): 310–334. Folan, William J., Betty Faust, Wolfgang Lutz, and Joel D. Gunn. 2000. “Social and environmental factors in the Classic Maya collapse.” In Population, development, and environment on the Yucatán Peninsula: From ancient Maya to 2030, edited by Wolfgang Lutz, Leonel Prieto, and Warren Sanderson, 2–32. IIASA Research Report no. 14. Laxenburg: International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis. Freter, AnnCorinne. 1992. “Chronological research at Copan.” Ancient Mesoamerica 3: 117–133. ———. 2004. “Multiscalar model of rural households and communities in Late Classic Copan Maya society.” Ancient Mesoamerica 15: 93–106. Gill, Richerson. 2000. The great Maya droughts. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press. Golitko, Mark, James Meierhoff, Gary M. Feinman, and Patrick Ryan Williams. 2012. “Complexities of collapse: The evidence of Maya obsidian as revealed by social network graphical analysis.” Antiquity 86(332): 507–523. Gordon, George Byron. 1913. The Book of Chilam Balam. The Museum Anthropological Publications vol. 5. Philadelphia: The University Museum, University of Pennsylvania. Grube, Nikolai. 2003. “Hieroglyphic inscriptions from Northwest Yucatán: An update of recent research.” In Escondido en la selva: Arqueología en el norte de Yucatán, Segundo Simposio Teoberto Maler, edited by Hanns J. Prem, 339–370. México, DF: Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia. Gunsenheimer, Antje. 2000. “Historical accounts in The Books of Chilam Balam: How late colonial scribes recorded the history of their ancestors.” Paper presented at the 2nd Symposium Teobert Maler, Universität Bonn, Bonn, July 4–8. ———. 2001. “What happens after deconstruction? Postmodern approaches to Yucatecan ethnohistory.” Paper presented at the 6th European Maya Conference, University of Hamburg, Hamburg, December 8–9. Hakenbeck, Susanne. 2008. “Migration in archaeology: Are we nearly there yet?” Archaeological Review from Cambridge 23(2): 9–26. Harrison-Buck, Eleanor. 2014. “Reevaluating chronology and historical content in the Maya Books of Chilam Balam.” Ethnohistory 6(4): 681–713. Houston, Stephen D., John Robertson, and David Stuart. 2000. “The language of Classic Maya inscriptions.” Current Anthropology 41(3): 321–356.

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Jones, Grant D. 1998. The conquest of the last Maya kingdom. Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press. Kampen, Michael E. 1972. The sculptures of El Tajín, Veracruz, Mexico. Gainesville: University of Florida Press. Knapp, A. Bernard, ed. 1992. Archaeology, annales, and ethnohistory. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kowalski, Jeff Karl, ed. 1999. Mesoamerican architecture as a cultural symbol. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Kremer, J. 1994. “The Putun hypothesis reconsidered.” In Hidden among the hills: Maya archaeology of the northwest Yucatan Peninsula, edited by H. J. Prem, 289–307. Mockmuhl: Verlag Von Flemming. Kubler, George. (1962) 1990. The art and architecture of ancient America. The Mexican, Mayan, and Andean people. 3rd ed. London: Penguin Books. Lacadena, Alfonso, and Søren Wichmann. 1999. “The distribution of lowland Maya languages in the Classic period.” Paper presented at the III Mesa Redonda de Palenque, Palenque, Chiapas, México, June 27–July 4. Landa, Diego de. 1986. Relación de las cosas de Yucatán. México, DF: Porrúa. Lentz, David L., Nicholas P. Dunning, and Vernon L. Scarborough, eds. 2015. Tikal: Paleoecology of an ancient Maya city. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Lentz, David L., Nicholas P. Dunning, Vernon L. Scarborough, Kevin S. Magee, Kim M. Thompson, Eric Weaver, and Christopher Carr. 2014. “Forests, fields, and the edge of sustainability at the ancient Maya city of Tikal.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 111(52): 18513–18518. Lincoln, Charles E. 1990. “Ethnicity and social organization at Chichén Itzá, Yucatan, Mexico.” PhD diss., Harvard University. Littlehales, Bates. 1961. “Into the well of sacrifice II: Treasure hunt in the deep past.” National Geographic Magazine 120(4): 550–561. Lizana, fray Bernardo de. (1633) 1995. Devocionario de Nuestra Señora de Izamal y conquista espiritual de Yucatán. Critical annotated edition by René Acuña. Fuentes para el estudio de la cultura Maya 12. México, DF: Instituto de Investigaciones Filológicas, Centro de Estudios Mayas, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México. López de Cogolludo, fray Diego. (1688) 1971. Los tres siglos de la dominación española en Yucatan o sea historia de esta provincia. Facsimile of 1842–1843 edition. Graz: ADEVA. Lowe, John W. G. 1985. The dynamics of apocalypse: A systems simulation of the Classic collapse. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press. Marcus, Joyce. 1992. Mesoamerican writing systems: Propaganda, myth, and history in four ancient civilizations. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Martin, Simon, and Nikolai Grube. 2008. Chronicle of the Maya kings and queens: Deciphering the dynasties of the ancient Maya. 2nd ed. London: Thames & Hudson. Mayer, Karl Herbert. 1980. El libro de Chilam Balam de Tizimín. Fontes Rerum Mexicanarum Vol. 6. Graz: ADEVA. Meiggs, David C., and Carolyn Freiwald. 2014. “Human migration: Bioarchaeological approaches.” In Encyclopedia of global archaeology, edited by Claire Smith, 3538–3545. New York: Springer. Moore, Jerry D. 1996. Architecture and power in the ancient Andes: The archaeology of public buildings. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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Morley, Sylvanus G. 1946. The ancient Maya. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. ———. 1947. The ancient Maya. 2nd ed. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Morley, Sylvanus G., George W. Brainerd, and Robert J. Sharer. 1983. The ancient Maya. 4th ed. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Morris, Earl H., Jean Charlot, and Ann Axtel Morris. 1931. The Temple of the Warriors at Chichén Itzá, Yucatan. 2 vols. Carnegie Institute of Washington Publication 406. Washington, DC: Carnegie Institution of Washington. Nooren, C. A. M., Wim Z. Hoek, Leo A. Tebbens, and A. L. Martin Del Pozzo. 2009. “Tephrochronological evidence for the Late Holocene eruption history of El Chichón Volcano, Mexico.” Geofísica Internacional 48(1): 97–112. Ostrom, Elinor. 2009. “A general framework for analyzing sustainability of social-ecological systems.” Science 325(5939): 419–422. Parsons, Lee A. 1969. Bilbao, Guatemala: An archaeological survey of the Pacific Coast Cotzumalhuapa Region (Part 2). Publications in Anthropology 12. Milwaukee, WI: Milwaukee Public Museum. Pascual Soto, Arturo. 2009. El Tajín: Arte y poder. México, DF: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México. Pearson, Michael Parker, and Colin Richards. 1993. Architecture and order: Approaches to social space. London: Routledge. Pérez de Heredia Puente, Eduardo J. 1998. “Datos recientes sobre la cerámica de Chichén Itzá: Análisis de fragmentos de las temporadas 1993–1994 del proyecto Chichén Itzá.” Los Investigadores de la Cultura Maya 6(2): 271–300. ———. 2007. “Chen K’u: La cerámica del Cenote Sagrado de Chichén Itzá.” Estudio de los fragmentos cerámicos de las exploraciones de los años sesentas. Report submitted to the Foundation for Ancient Mesoamerican Studies, Inc., Crystal River, FL. http://www. famsi.org/reports/97061es/index.html ———. 2010. “Ceramic contexts and chronology at Chichén Itzá, Yucatan, Mexico.” PhD diss., La Trobe University. Pollock, H. E. D. 1980. The Puuc: An architectural survey of the hill country of Yucatan and northern Campeche, Mexico. Memoirs of the Peabody Museum, vol. 19. Cambridge, MA: Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, Harvard University. Rathje, William L. 1973. “Classic Maya development and denouement: A research design.” In The Classic Maya Collapse, edited by T. Patrick Culbert, 405–454. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press. Rice, Prudence M. 1987. Macanché Island, El Petén, Guatemala: Excavations, pottery, and artifacts. Gainesville: University of Florida Press. Rice, Don S., and Prudence M. Rice. 1990. “Population size and population change in the central Petén Lakes region, Guatemala.” In Precolumbian population history in the Maya lowlands, edited by T. Patrick Culbert and Don S. Rice, 123–148. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press. ———, eds. 2009. The Kowoj: Identity, Migration, and geopolitics in Late Postclassic Petén, Guatemala. Boulder: University Press of Colorado. Rice, Don S., Prudence M. Rice, and Timothy Pugh. 1998. “Settlement continuity and change in the central Petén Lakes region: The case of Zacpeten.” In Anatomía de una civilización: Aproximaciones interdisciplinarias a la cultura Maya, edited by Andrés Ci-

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udad Ruiz, María Yolanda Fernández Marquínez, José Miguel García Campillo, María Josefa Iglesias Ponce de León, Alfonso Lacadena García Gallo, and Luis Tomás Sanz Castro, 207–252. Madrid: Sociedad Española de Estudios Mayas. Ringle, William M., Tomás Gallareta Negrón, and George J. Bey III. 1998. “The return of Quetzalcoatl: Evidence for the spread of a world religion during the Epiclassic period.” Ancient Mesoamerica 9: 183–232. Rouse, Irving. 1986. Migrations in prehistory. Inferring population movement from cultural remains. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Roys, Ralph L. 1933. The Book of Chilam Balam of Chumayel. Carnegie Institute of Washington Publication no. 438. Washington, DC: Carnegie Institution of Washington. Ruppert, Karl. 1952. Chichén Itzá: Architectural notes and plans. Carnegie Institution of Washington Publication 595. Washington, DC: Carnegie Institution of Washington. Sabloff, Jeremy A., and Gordon R. Willey. 1967. “The collapse of Classic Maya civilization in the southern lowlands: A consideration of history and process.” Southwestern Journal of Anthropology 23(4): 311–336. Sahagún, fray Bernardino de. (1582) 1997. Historia general de las cosas de Nueva España. Edición de Ángel María Garibay K. México, DF: Editorial Porrúa, S.A. Scarborough, Vernon L., and William R. Burnside. 2010. “Complexity and sustainability: Perspectives from the ancient Maya and modern Balinese.” American Antiquity 75(2): 327–363. Scarborough, Vernon L., Arlen F. Chase, and Diane Z. Chase. 2012. “Low density urbanism, sustainability, and IHOPE-Maya: Can the past provide more than history?” UGEC Viewpoints: 20. Schele, Linda, Nikolai Grube, and Erik Boot. 1998. “Some suggestions on the K’atun prophecies in The Books of Chilam Balam in light of Classic-period history.” In Memorias del Tercer Congreso Internacional de Mayistas (9 al 15 de julio de 1995), 397–432. México, DF: Instituto de Investigaciones Filológicas, Centro de Estudios Mayas, Universidad Autónoma de México. Schele, Linda, and David Freidel. 1990. A forest of kings: The untold story of the ancient Maya. New York: William Morrow. Schele, Linda, and Peter Mathews. 1998. The code of kings: The language of seven sacred Maya temples and tombs. New York: Scribner. Schmidt, Peter J. 1999. “Chichén Itzá: Resultados y proyectos nuevos (1992–1999).” In Arqueología Mexicana VII (37): 32–39. ———. 2003. Proyecto Chichén Itzá: Informe de actividades, julio de 1999 a diciembre de 2002. 3 vols. Mérida: Centro INAH Yucatán. Seler, Eduardo. 1902. Gesammelte Abhandlungen zur Amerikanischen Sprach- und Alterthumskunde. Vol. 1. Berlin: A. Asher & Co. ———. 1923. Gesammelte Abhandlungen zur Amerikanischen Sprach- und Alterthumskunde. Vol. 4. Berlin: Behrend & Co. Sharer, Robert J. 1994. The ancient Maya. 5th ed. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Smith, Robert E. 1971. The Pottery of Mayapan. Cambridge: Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnography, Harvard University. Stokols, Daniel, Raul Lejano, and John Hi. 2013. “Enhancing the resilience of human-environment systems: A social ecological perspective.” Ecology and Society 18(1). https:// www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol18/iss1/art7/.

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10 The Pipil Migrations in Mesoamerica History, Identity, and Politics William R. Fowler Migrations of peoples are a special and not the normal means of culture spread. (Kroeber 1923, 214)

Obviously some peoples have migrated sometimes, and some Mesoamerican peoples (see the Historia Tolteca-Chichimeca) many times. . . . But population movement is a radical explanation . . . calling for especially careful and exhaustive justification. (Paddock 1974, 181)

In 1977, at the 42nd Annual Meeting of the Society for American Archaeology in New Orleans, in a session organized by Paul F. Healy, I presented a paper on the Postclassic period of central El Salvador and the Pipil migrations. This paper, subsequently published in English and in Spanish in two rather obscure venues (Fowler 1978, 1979), represents to my knowledge the earliest detailed statement based on secure archaeological data concerning the significance of the Pipil migrations in southeastern Mesoamerica. Today, over forty years later, a dissertation (Fowler 1981), three books (Fowler 1989a, 1995a, 1995b), about a dozen papers and book chapters (e.g., Fowler 1985, 1988, 1989a, 1989b, 1989c, 1991a, 1991b, 1994, 2001, 2011; Fowler and Earnest 1985; Fowler et al. 1987; Fowler and Solís 1976), and scores of public presentations have been made on the topic. However, I submit that the Pipil migrations in Mesoamerica remain understudied and poorly understood. I argue that the Pipil migrations are a well-defined historical phenomenon that can be studied profitably through a coordinate and contextual approach using multiple lines of evidence from archaeology, ethnohistory, and historical linguistics (Beekman and Christensen 2003, 2011). After some comments on method and theory, I will explore some salient aspects

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of the archaeological data on the Pipil migrations and what we can learn from them. Sound method requires a clear definition of migration. In this chapter, I follow Jeffery Clark’s (2011, 84) definition, based on his research in the US Southwest, as “a long-term residential relocation by one or more social groups across community boundaries in response to spatially uneven changes in social and economic conditions.” Building on this definition, we may specify factors and variables under the four broad research categories Herr and Clark (1997) (quoted in Clark 2011, 86) identified for the archaeological study of migration: (1) detection of occurrence and scale; (2) motivation; (3) logistics/organization during migration; and (4) impact in homeland and destination areas. This chapter deals primarily with the first and fourth categories: detection of occurrence and scale of the Pipil migrations and impact on regions of origin (Central Mexico, Gulf Coast) and destination (southeastern Mesoamerica). The reasons for prehistoric population movements may have been various. Armillas (1964, 1969) suggested that droughts gripped the US Southwest and Northwest Mexico during the thirteenth century, contributing to the collapse of the Toltec state and pushing Chichimec invaders from the northern frontier toward more hospitable lands in the south. More recently, Stahle et al. (2011) published a paleoclimatic study of droughts in Mesoamerica for the past millennium based on a tree-ring sequence from Barranca de Amealco, Queretaro, just 60 kilometers west of Tula, Hidalgo. This chronology shows the occurrence of two severe and sustained droughts in the region, the first at the end of the Epiclassic at 897–922 CE that correlates with the collapse and abandonment of the first Toltec state at Tula Chico and a second toward the end of the Early Postclassic at 1149–1167 CE that would have affected the decline of the reformulated Toltec state at Tula Grande (see Cobean et al. 2012, cuadro III.1). In a xerophytic environment where maize-based agriculture was dependent on annual rainfall and irrigation, extended droughts would have had disastrous consequences for food production and exacerbated any existing internal problems (Cobean et al. 2012, 25–30; Diehl 1983, 158). In a recent publication (Fowler 2011), I offered two contrasting interpretations of the nature of the Pipil migrations that consider a combination of economic, social, political, and ideological factors. The first position, the colonization model, considers the Pipil centers of Epiclassic and Early Postclassic El Salvador as intentional, state-sponsored Toltec trading colonies.

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The second position, the independent expansion model views the evidence as indications of gradual, independent, expansionist movements of Nahuatspeaking populations that had in effect separated from the Toltec state. The logic underlying both models emphasizes the extraordinary similarities in landscape appropriation, site planning, architecture, and material culture in Tula and Cihuatán. A practice-based, historical interpretation (Bourdieu 1977, 1990) of the Pipil migrations favors an independent expansion of heterogeneous groups of Nahuat speakers and puts identity politics at the dynamic core of these movements. Concerning logistics and organization, Clark (2011, 86) notes that this topic is difficult to address with archaeological data because of the ephemeral character of emigrant communities on the move. In the case I am examining here, ethnohistoric and linguistic data provide important clues to the social structure that grounded the logistics and organization of the Pipil migrations. I advocate a practice theory interpretation of migration inspired by Pauketat (2000, 2001a, 2001b, 2003, 2005, 2007; Pauketat and Alt 2005), who, based on his work on Cahokia and Middle Mississippian sociopolitical development in the American Bottom region of the US Southeast, has argued that identity politics associated with cultural construction are often closely related to historical processes of migration (Pauketat 2003, 2007). Beekman and Christensen (2003, 2011) and Clark (2001, 2011) have taken similar theoretical positions on migrations. Linked to identities, inequalities, and ranking, migrations are closely related to incipient and developed forms of centralization that may be crystalized through population movements. Migration itself does not explain change, but population movement, displacement, and migration are closely related to the negotiation of the novel social conditions experienced during or after the movement. The material culture traits, new landscapes, and cultural traditions that make it possible to recognize the Pipil migrations in the archaeological record should be viewed in a broader context as markers of daily practices, social identities, and political differentiation among different groups of Pipil migrants. I emphasize the phrase “different groups of Pipil migrants” because these movements consisted of a series of temporally distinct migrations involving distinct social groups with different identities and competing interests. I view the cultural practices, identities, and politics embodied in the landscapes and material culture I discuss here as dimensions or expressions

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of ethnic identity. The study of ethnicity formed a central theme of culturehistorical archaeology of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, especially in areas such as Mesoamerica where ethnic cultural continuities can be shown to be quite strong, prehistoric migrations occurred, and ethnic enclaves clearly existed (Emberling 1997, 316–317). Ecological archaeology and settlement archaeology of the late twentieth century tended to disavow an interest in ethnicity because of the racist and nationalist overtones of earlier culture-historical archaeology in Europe (Jones 2008, 323–325; Kohl 1998; Trigger 2006, 380). Ethnological interpretations of ethnicity during this time were dichotomized between the primordialist—emphasizing affect—and the instrumentalist—emphasizing economic or political motivation—approaches. Both of these approaches are systemic rather than agent-based (Bentley 1987). Postprocessual concerns in archaeology led to the adoption of an agentcentered approach to ethnicity, sometimes referred to as constructivist. This approach was pioneered by Barth (1969), who argued that ethnic group membership is based on both self-ascription and attribution by others and on criteria of presumed common origins or heritage. Barth emphasized the political dimensions of ethnic identity in resource competition, conflict, and boundary maintenance (Stark and Chance 2008, 4–5). This view of ethnicity has now become well articulated in the contemporary archaeological repertoire (Cordell 2008, 148; Gosden 1999, 194–197; Jones 2008, 326–327; Lyons and Clark 2008, 196–198; Trigger 2006, 309–310). Barth argued that ethnic affiliation is not fixed but is mutable and unstable because of its dynamic political character. In one example in Mesoamerica, Brumfiel (1994) examined the ethnic policies of the Aztec state and explored the archaeological evidence for ethnic affiliation in Central Mexico through a detailed study of ethnic markers in the multiethnic, predominantly Otomí city-state of Xaltocan in the northern Basin of Mexico during the Middle and Late Postclassic periods. Departing from the premise that ethnicity, defined as “social identification based on the presumption of shared history and common cultural inheritance” (Brumfiel 1994, 89), may have played an important role in politics in the premodern world, Brumfiel showed that while political factions were multiethnic coalitions, ethnicity “provided no fixed alignments for factional competition and political development” (Brumfiel 1994, 102). Instead, ethnicity served as an important structural principle in Postclassic Mesoamerica because it could be manipulated for political purposes and because it “served as a unifying ideology at the community level” (Brumfiel 1994, 101).

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As Stark and Chance (2008, 9) point out, truly monoethnic states have probably never existed, but the Postclassic city-states of the Basin of Mexico consisted of a number of ethnic groups dominated by a Nahua elite (see also Stark 2008, 39). Brumfiel (1994, 100–101) argued that the Otomís of Xaltocan displayed their ethnic affiliation more frequently when it was to their advantage as a symbol of cooperation between commoners and elites during the Middle Postclassic (1100–1300 CE). During this time, the Otomís were the majority ethnic group of Xaltocan. They later suppressed symbols of their ethnic identity during the Late Postclassic (1300–1519 CE) after the Tepanecs of Azcapotzalco conquered them in 1395 and the town was abandoned. In 1435, Xaltocan was resettled under Mexica rulership (Hicks 1994, 67). Its Late Postclassic ethnic composition included several additional ethnic groups, including Acolmatlacas, Colhuas, and Tenochcas. Brumfiel posited that it became more advantageous for Xaltocan elites to align themselves with the Nahua ruling class after a dominant Nahua ethnicity emerged on a regional scale. Brumfiel (1994, 102) concluded that in late pre-Hispanic Mexico, when the altepetl or petty kingdom was the most important political unit, ethnicity was “shaped by political development” and its use in political action depended on the scale of existing political structure. The same factional conflict between ethnic groups that promoted political action also informs a plausible model of multiethnic interactional dynamics during migrations. While interethnic conflicts often resulted in the breakup of a polity and the movement of ethnic groups to new territories, membership in an ethnic group promoted unity and provided a platform social groups could use to stake a claim to land or to enter into an alliance with a patron state that could provide protection and land. Common ethnic identification provided the social basis for coherence and stability during long-distance migrations. The studies by Castañeda de la Paz (2002, 2013) and Smith (1984) of the Chichimec and Aztlan migrations provide a number of examples that can serve as historical analogs for the Pipil migrations. The primary data discussed here come from a group of ancient settlements in western and central El Salvador dating to the Epiclassic and Early Postclassic periods (800–1200 CE). Their principal occupants were Pipils, the term used in El Salvador to refer to Nahuat speakers whose ancestors migrated from Mexico to Central America during pre-Hispanic times (Fowler 1989a, 32–49). These migrations constituted several in a series of multistage population movements that took Nahuas from the central

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highlands and the Gulf Coast region of Mexico down the Isthmus of Tehuantepec and on to Central America. Although the evidence points primarily to Nahuat-speaking Pipil as the majority population in these movements, other ethnic groups participated in cultural construction in western and central El Salvador. Following the lead of Beekman and Christensen (2011, 159–160), Clark (2011, 85) and Pauketat (2007, 58–60), I suggest that some degree of cultural pluralism must have existed but that any non-Nahua segments of the resulting communities are probably virtually invisible in the archaeological record due to fact that the high-prestige, high-visibility Nahua component subsumed or “mitigated” diversity (Pauketat 2007, 58–59). The Meaning of “Pipil”

The term “Pipil” has meant or connoted different things to different people during at least the last five centuries. To avoid confusion, I discuss three well-understood meanings of the term Pipil. First, the term originally derives from the Nahua pilli (plural pipiltin), which means simultaneously “child” and “noble” (Carrasco 1971, 354; LeónPortilla 1980, 249; Lockhart 1992, 95, 102; Rojas 1986, 88). Probably even in pre-conquest times, the term referred to the Nahuat-speaking populations of Central America. The earliest European use of the term known to me occurs in a Spanish royal decree of 1538. Subsequently, the term occurs frequently in the sixteenth-century probanzas of the conquistadors of Guatemala and El Salvador. One must assume that the Spaniards adopted the term from their native allies from Central Mexico. Some specialists have accepted the popular notion that the Central Mexicans thought that the Nahuat spoken by the Pipils sounded like an unsophisticated or childish version of their own Central Mexican Nahuatl dialect (Armas Molina 1974, 9; Barón Castro [1942] 1978, 99; Vivó Escoto 1972, 27). A far more likely explanation for the term derives from its meaning as “noble,” probably a reference to the central role of noble lineages in organizing the migrations and founding new settlements and polities (Carrasco 1976; Fowler 1989a, 200, 1995b, 164; Krickeberg 1961, 37). The term came to be applied to the Nahuat speakers whose movements were organized according to the structure and ranking of noble lineages. The structure and ranking of the lineages remained in flux during the period of migrations, creating a critical factor that was subject to negotiation in the development of Pipil cultural identity.

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Second, in its broadest archaeological or ethnological sense, the term Pipil refers to any Nahuat-speaking group in Central America, past or present. Anthropologists and other social scientists routinely refer to modern Nahuat-speaking groups of El Salvador as Pipil, especially when considering their historical context (Burgos 2001; Comité Técnico 2003, 29–32; Domínguez Sosa 2006; Lara Martínez 2006; Mejía de Gutiérrez 1998; Peretti 2002; Schultze Jena [1935] 1977, [1935] 1982). In a recent work on politics and indigeneity in contemporary El Salvador, Tilley (2005) expressed a preference for the term “Nahuas” over “Pipils.” This usage accords with that of scholars of Central Mexico who refer to Nahua speakers in general as Nahuas (Lockhart 1992, 1; Smith 2012, 4). Often when historians of Central America refer to “Pipils,” they have in mind the populations of the conquest period and the sixteenth century, although many make explicit statements concerning the considerable pre-conquest time depth of the Nahua presence in Central America (e.g., Escalante Arce 2001, 27–28; MacLeod 1973, 33–34). Archaeologists have tended to use the term in the broadest sense to refer to any Nahuat-speaking group in Central America during any time period, although they are more concerned with pre-Hispanic Pipils. Frequently in archaeological and ethnohistoric usage the term has acquired connotations of a Teotihuacan or Toltec connection or both, whether justified or not (Barberena [1914] 1977; Borhegyi 1965; Cobean and Mastache Flores 2001, 240; Davies 1977; Fowler 1989a, 38–49; Hasemann and Lara Pinto 1993, 165–166; Jiménez Moreno 1966; Krickeberg 1961, 38; Lehmann 1920, 1922; Linné [1942] 2003b, 195–199; Longyear 1966, 143, 145; Lothrop 1927, 192, 216, 1939; Marquina 1964, 162; Noguez 2001, 206; Stoll [1884] 1958, 13–14; Thompson 1948). Third, in Mesoamerican linguistics the term Pipil is often used synonymously to refer to the Nahuat dialect or to language spoken in the Gulf Coast of Mexico, Chiapas, and Central America (Aráuz 1960; Calvo Pacheco 2000; Campbell 1985, 1988; Johnson 1940; García de León 1976; Hasler 1954–1955, 1975; Knab 1980; Lemus 1997a, 1997b, 1998; Maxwell 2001; chapter 11, this volume). The Linguistic Context

Nahuat, a dialect or language of the Uto-Aztecan Nahua language (AguilarMoreno 2006, 69–70; Campbell 1976; 1985, 1988; chapter 2, this volume; Kaufman 1974, 25, 73, 1976, 2001; Luckenbach and Levy 1980; Krickeberg

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1961, 37–38; Mason 1940; Maxwell 2001), is still spoken today in the Mexican states of Puebla, Veracruz, and Tabasco and in western El Salvador, especially in the towns of Cuisnahuat, Nahuizalco, and Santo Domingo de Guzmán (Comité Técnico 2003, 32; Peretti 2002). The best available treatment of Nahua classification remains that of Una Canger (1988, 47), who drew a fundamental distinction between Central and Peripheral dialects of “General Nahuatl.” She included Salvadoran Pipil Nahuat (SPN) in an eastern subgroup of the peripheral dialects. This subgroup also includes Sierra de Puebla, East Puebla (Chilac), South Guerrero, and Isthmus (including Gulf Coast varieties) (but see Campbell 1985, 926–933). This grouping has important implications for the archaeological interpretation of the Pipil migrations, as it clearly indicates that Nahuat Pipil populations of El Salvador stemmed from a parent stock in Central Mexico and the Gulf Coast. Canger (1988, 64) suggested that the ancestors of modern speakers of these dialects “represented the first group of Nahuatl speakers—including the Toltecs—in Central Mexico and further south.” Canger thus recognized a basic dichotomy between the early speakers of eastern Nahua and the later western migrants from Aztlan. Karen Dakin (2001), following Canger’s classification, speculated further that “Eastern Nahuatl speakers apparently moved into Mesoamerica much earlier than the Western group, and some evidence suggests that they might have arrived even during the early Teotihuacan period” (Dakin 2001, 364). This scenario appeals to many Mesoamericanists (see chapter 2, this volume). Regarding the timing of the spread of Nahua beyond Central Mexico, most specialists are comfortable with the interpretations of Nahua divergence by Kaufman (2001) and Luckenbach and Levy (1980), who argue that the earliest speakers of Nahuat in Central America probably began to arrive in the area at about 800 CE. The Ethnohistoric Context

The Pipil migrations from Mexico to Central America have intrigued scholars since the middle of the nineteenth century (Habel 1878; Haberland 1964; Krickeberg 1961; Lehmann 1920; Lothrop 1927; Seler 1888; Spinden 1915; Squier 1852; Stoll [1884] 1958; Thompson 1948; Weber 1922). Most of the evidence of these movements is ethnohistorical (summarized by Fowler 1985, 1989a, 32–36, 1989b, 1989c). Previous interpretations of this evidence (Borhegyi 1965; Davies 1977, 116–120; Jiménez Moreno 1966; Krickeberg 1961, 217–218; Lehmann 1920, 978–1075) were overly speculative and were

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hampered by a lack of solid archaeological evidence (Fowler 1989a, 36–38). While the linguistic evidence and the ethnohistoric data provide important cultural-historical context for framing the anthropological problem of the Pipil migrations, only the archaeological evidence can address specific questions of chronology and the material culture correlates of the migrations. The Archaeological Evidence

The archaeological evidence bears largely on detecting the occurrence and scale of the Pipil migrations and the impact of the migrations in both homeland and destination. One of the greatest problems in understanding the Pipil migrations has resulted from the failure to recognize archaeological sites in Central America that can be interpreted securely as Pipil settlements and that date to a time substantially before the conquest. The ethnohistoric data indicate beyond doubt that at the time of the Alvarado entrada in 1524, the Pipils controlled the Escuintla region of southeastern Guatemala, a few locations in western and central Honduras, and the western and central regions of El Salvador (Fowler 1983, 1989a, 51–65, 1994, 588; Herranz 1998, 99–114; Iglesias Ponce de León and Ciudad Ruiz 1995, 120–121; Lara Pinto 1996, 116–119, 132). However, a dearth of archaeological data has left the time of the Pipil arrival in southeastern Mesoamerica in dispute. Since large Pipil populations existed in western and central El Salvador at the time of the conquest, ancestors of these populations must have arrived by at least the Late Postclassic (1200–1524 CE). At issue is whether Nahuat speakers arrived in El Salvador at a deeper time period. I have argued previously that Nahuat speakers arrived in Central America in multiple waves beginning as early as the Epiclassic period and continuing throughout the Postclassic (Fowler 1981, 1989a, 1989b, 1989c, 2011; cf. Wolf 1959, 120–121). The best archaeological evidence bearing on the problem of the Pipil migrations and the Toltec-related presence in El Salvador has emerged from research on the sites of Cihuatán and Santa María, two settlements located in the Paraíso Basin of the middle Lempa drainage in North-Central El Salvador (Fowler 1981; Fowler and Earnest 1985; Sánchez 1991) (plate 16). The material culture of these two sites appears to be virtually identical. I argue, therefore, that the two sites were occupied contemporaneously by members of a single cultural group who participated in the same economic, social, political, and ideological system. Furthermore, the material culture

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of Cihuatán and Santa María indicates beyond reasonable doubt that these centers were settled and occupied by Nahuat-speaking Pipils during the Epiclassic to Early Postclassic periods, although, as noted above, other groups may also have played a role. While I am conscious of the danger of essentializing, my identification of Cihuatán and Santa María as predominantly Nahuat-speaking settlements rests on the following explicit line of reasoning: It is almost universally accepted that Tollan in Tula, Hidalgo, was primarily a product of ancient Nahua culture and that Nahuat was the dominant language in Toltec society (Beekman and Christensen 2003, 119–120, 2011, 155; Canger 1988, 63; Carrasco 1971, 460; Cobean 1990, 1994; Cobean and Mastache Flores 1995; Davies 1977, 161–169; Diehl 1996; Evans 2008, 437–438; Haberland 1974, 123; Jiménez Moreno 1941, 83, 1966, 77–79; Justeson et al. 1985, 68; Kaufman 1974, 49, 1976, 113; Krickeberg 1961, 37–38, 202–203, 209– 210, 217; Lehmann 1920, 990; Mastache Flores 1994; Noguez 2001, 205–206, 230–231; Smith 1984, 176; Wolf 1959, 122). Although Tula was inhabited by several other ethnic-linguistic groups, especially Otomís and other Otomanguean groups (Beekman and Christensen 2003, 124–125, 2011, 159–160; Davies 1977, 176; Fournier 2001, 420; Weitlaner 1941), scholars agree that the principal occupants of the Toltec capital were Nahuas. Just as the population of Tula included non-Nahua groups, the Pipil migrations may have involved some minority non-Nahua ethnic groups. Such a pattern would be expected for Epiclassic and Early Postclassic population movements (López Austin and López Luján 1996, 163, 211; 1999, 17, 19, 41–43). Close affinities exist between the Corral and Tollan complexes of Tula (Acosta 1956–1957; Cobean 1990; Diehl 1983) and the Guazapa ceramic complex of El Salvador (Fowler 1981). Similar parallels may be traced in many other aspects of Corral/Tollan and Guazapa material culture, including urban site planning, architecture, sculpture, figurines, lithics, and more. The documented distribution of Nahuat-speaking Pipil populations from the time of the conquest and the sixteenth century covers essentially the same territory as that of the sites under discussion (Fowler 1981, 1983, 1989a, 60–65). Colonial-period data are derived largely

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from several major sixteenth-century conquistador reports and colonial administrative sources (e.g., Alvarado 1934; García de Palacio 1983; Ciudad Real 1993). Cihuatán and Santa María A number of scholars have investigated Cihuatán, located on the Río Acelhuate near the modern town of Aguilares, 37 kilometers north of San Salvador, since Antonio Sol (1929) explored it (figure 10.1). Bruhns (1980), Fowler (1981), and Kelley (1988) have conducted principal archaeological work at the site. Bruhns (1986, 302) has disputed the identification of Cihuatán as a Pipil settlement, speculating that “the overlords of Cihuatán were of foreign origin, perhaps ultimately from Veracruz or part of the wave of Toltec migration which was happening in Guatemala at about the same time.” Kelley (1988, 18) favors a process of “Mexicanization” over a model of mass migration and population replacement. Far from being simply a product of such ill-defined processes, Cihuatán was a full participant in the Early Postclassic Mesoamerican world system dominated by Tula and Chichén Itzá (Smith and Berdan 2003, 4). As the primary regional center of the Paraíso Basin, Cihuatán was structured politically as a major city-state, or altepetl, during the ninth and tenth centuries CE. The city was built in a defensible location on a series of rolling hills overlooking the basin (Fowler and Earnest 1985). A fully urban center

Figure 10.1. West Ceremonial Center at Cihuatán, satellite image, digital oblique. Image © 2018 Digital Globe, Google Earth.

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covering at least 375 hectares, the townscape consists of a main ceremonial precinct known as the West Ceremonial Center. This includes Structure P-12 (a large stepped pyramid 18 meters tall); two I-shaped ball courts; a round temple dedicated to the cult of Ehecatl, the wind god guise of Quetzalcoatl; a T-shaped temple platform; other smaller temple platforms; and an elite residential compound. An adjacent elite residential district, formerly known as the East Ceremonial Center but now referred to as the Acropolis, features a palace structure and temple platforms. Non-elite residential zones are dispersed around the two main central sectors. The spatial arrangement of non-elite residential zones at Cihuatán is very similar to that of Tula. It is composed of a series of house groups of three or four one-room structures surrounding a small central plaza (Bruhns 2006; Fowler 1981, 54–77; Healan 1989; Mastache Flores 1994, 24; Mastache Flores and Cobean 1999). As at Tula, the residential settlement plan of Cihuatán clearly indicates a hierarchical division of status between elites and commoners. Santa María, a secondary regional center located 16 kilometers eastnortheast of Cihuatán, was excavated in 1976 as a part of the Cerrón Grande Archaeological Project (Fowler and Earnest 1985; Fowler and Solís 1976). Its material culture assemblages replicate virtually all aspects of those of Cihuatán. The settlement patterns, architecture, ceramics, chipped-stone artifacts, and figurines of the two sites are essentially identical in form and content except that Santa María does not seem to have a well-defined elite residential district as Cihuatán does. Santa María was also a very large site, extending over an area of approximately 40 hectares, a considerable size for a provincial secondary center. Like Cihuatán, it was located in a defensible position with an unobstructed view of the eastern end of the basin extending a distance of some 12 kilometers. Both Cihuatán and Santa María are single-component sites that display no continuities with the preceding Fogón phase of the Paraíso Basin (Fowler 1981, 16–27; Fowler and Earnest 1985). The Guazapa-phase traits of these sites appear suddenly and have no local antecedents. Contrary to the assertion of local continuity by Amaroli and Bruhns (2013), for which they cite no evidence, the archaeological evidence from the two sites is most consistent with an interpretation that sees Nahua migrations to and seizure of territory in the Paraíso Basin in the Epiclassic period.

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The Guazapa Ceramic Complex Much of the weight of my argument rests on the aforementioned Toltec affinities of the Guazapa ceramic complex. I originally defined the Guazapa ceramic complex on the basis of materials excavated from Cihuatán and Santa María in the Paraíso Basin of North-Central El Salvador (Fowler 1981, 117–287; Fowler and Earnest 1985; Kelley 1988, 41–109). Research conducted over the past three decades has demonstrated, however, that the diagnostics of this complex are now known from a number of sites throughout western and central El Salvador. These sites include Chalchuapa, Igualtepeque, Las Marías, Tacuscalco, Cerro Ulata, and others that formed a Guazapa ceramic sphere. I defined the Guazapa ceramic complex on the basis of a modified typevariety analysis, similar to that E. Wyllys Andrews (1976) conducted, on more than 28,000 pottery sherds (Fowler 1981, 117–269). The following major ceramic groups represent the majority of the Guazapa ceramic complex. Las Lajas Coarse (Fowler 1981, 129–151). Characterized by very coarse paste and unslipped, smoothed surfaces, the predominant vessel form of this group is a large, thick-walled, hourglass-shaped (or biconical) censer with exteriorly thickened rims and modeled-appliqué conical spikes on vessel bodies. Sherds of Las Lajas Coarse spiked, hourglass-shaped censers are perhaps the most diagnostic indicator of the Guazapa ceramic sphere. These censers are virtually identical to the censers found at Tula, where they are referred to as Abra Coarse Brown (Cobean 1990, 399–430). Modeled effigy decoration also occurs on some of these large censers, often in the shape of Tlaloc faces (Boggs 1949; Cobean 1990, 414). Cobean (1990, 407) noted that Abra Coarse Brown is one of the seven or eight ceramic types most diagnostic of the Tollan phase and that the censer form is not diagnostic of the Corral phase. At the site of Miramar, in the Central Depression of Chiapas, Agrinier (1978) found a sacrificial mass burial associated with large, hourglassshaped, spiked censers that are identical to the Guazapa-complex specimens. Voorhies and Arvey (2016) report on a dense concentration of fragments of the same form from the site of Las Delicias in the Soconusco region of Chiapas. That deposit also included fragments of modeled ceramic effigies of deities and long-handled, ladle-shaped, sahumador-style censers. The dating on these materials is ambiguous; Agrinier (1978, 47) favors a Middle Classic date and Voorhies and Arvey (2016, 105–106) suggest a Late Classic date. I would argue that an Epiclassic to Early Postclassic

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date is more consistent with the dating on the Corral and Tollan complexes at Tula and the Guazapa complex in El Salvador. Other important Las Lajas forms include closed, hollow, spherical, phytoform vessels mounted on pedestal bases and flat-bottom, flaring-wall censer bowls with impressed-fillet rims. The phytoform vessels resemble the modeled-appliqué octecomatl vessels (pulque cups) from Zultepec in northeastern Tlaxcala, Mexico, that Martínez Vargas and Jarquín Pacheco have illustrated (1998, 106–117). These excavators interpreted the pulque cups from Zultepec as maguey effigies (Martínez Vargas and Jarquín Pacheco 1998, 26), but the Guazapa complex phytoforms from Cihuatán and Santa María could also represent the biznaga (barrel) cactus (Echinocactus spp. or Ferocactus spp.) that is native to the desert regions of the northern Mexican states. Recent excavations by Amaroli (2015) and Cabrera (2013) brought to light more than twenty cactus effigy vessels in association with Structure Q-40, a T-shaped temple platform. The vessels had apparently been mounted to the roof of the temple as almenas (merlons) as a form of architectural graphic reminder of ancestral Nahua migrations through the northern desert regions of Mexico (Amaroli 2015, 90–91). Modeled effigy figures of animals (especially jaguars and toads) and Nahua deities (especially Xipe Totec, Tlaloc, Huehueteotl, and Mictlantecuhtli) (Casasola García 1975; Fowler 1995b, 148–149; Ruiz Gallut 2014) were made from the same clay as Las Lajas vessels. These modeled effigies are related to the Tazumal Xipe Totec life-size effigy from Chalchuapa (Boggs 1944) and with Mazapan-horizon Xipe Totec effigies from Central Mexico (Chadwick 1971, 239–240; Gamboa Cabezas et al. 2010; Linné [1934] 2003a, figs. 113, 114; Mateos Higuera 1992, 71; Saville 1897, pl. 23; Scott 1993). Similar specimens are also known from Lake Güija, El Salvador (Boggs 1976, 1977). The Central Mexican counterparts of Las Lajas Coarse Modeled effigies are known as xantiles and they are considered to be Postclassic, Toltec-related traits (Chadwick 1971, 242; Cook de Leonard 1956–1957, 40; MacNeish et al. 1970, 225). The occurrence of life-size or near-life-size ceramic effigies also links the Guazapa complex with Veracruz (Drucker 1943, pl. 45–48; García Payón 1951, 30–31; Gutiérrez Solana and Hamilton 1977). Tlaloc effigy bottles of Las Lajas Coarse Modeled type (Fowler 1981, fig. 31c) are also closely paralleled at Tula (Acosta 1956–1957, fig. 19, 3; Diehl 1983, fig. 25) and in Veracruz (Drucker 1943, pl. 24). According to Cobos (2013, 179), Tlaloc effigies from Cihuatán are very similar to those known from El Tajín and northern Veracruz.

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Tamulasco Plain (Fowler 1981, 152–163). This ceramic group occurs predominantly in flat-bottom, flaring-wall bowls; convex-wall bowls; lowneck and high-neck jars; tecomates (neckless jars); comals (griddles); and large, thick-walled, vertical-wall storage vessels. These principal forms can be linked with preparing, storing, and serving food and liquids. The jar and bowl forms replicate the “five basic forms of Toltec ceramics” (Acosta 1956–1957, fig. 16; Chadwick 1971, 237). García Red (Fowler 1981, 163–178). Monochrome red-slipped pottery occurs abundantly at Postclassic sites of western and central El Salvador. The García Red ceramic group is essentially the Tamulasco Plain ceramic group with the addition of a red slip. The paste is the same, but a polished red slip covers exterior and (except for jars) interior vessel surfaces. Like Tamulasco Plain, this is a service ware. An important difference between the two groups is that flat-bottom, flaring-wall bowls predominate in the former, whereas jars are relatively more common in the latter. An interesting vessel form of both ceramic groups is the thick-walled, vertical-wall storage vessel. These vessels could have served in the preparation and storage of chicha (fermented maize beer). Taken together, the García Red and Tamulasco Plain ceramic groups constitute the bulk of a domestic subcomplex in the Guazapa ceramic complex, although some types, such as the vertical-wall storage vessels, could also be classed in a ceremonial sub complex. Both ceramic groups are distributed throughout both sites. Zancudo White Polychrome (Fowler 1981, 185–199). Vessels of this group are characterized by geometric polychrome decoration painted in three or four colors (black, brown, red, orange) over a hard, well-polished white slip. Stepped-fret, triangles, and curvilinear motifs are common. Major vessel forms include flat-bottom, flaring-wall bowls and vertical-wall vessels. The group appears to be a local manifestation of a red-and-black-on-white polychrome tradition that was widespread in Mesoamerica during the Epiclassic and Early Postclassic. The choice of colors, motifs, and the verticalwall vessel bear a vague resemblance to Mixteca-Puebla polychromes and to other Central American polychromes and bichromes. The white-base Isla de Sacrificios III polychrome may indicate a possible origin in northern Veracruz (García Payón 1971, fig. 31a). In Central America, some general similarities can be found in the ceramics of Quelepa, El Salvador (Andrews 1976, fig. 136d, u); Naco, Honduras (Wonderley 1981, 186–192, figs. 40, 41); the Comayagua Valley of Honduras

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(Stone 1957, fig. 44); the Isthmus of Rivas, Nicaragua (Healy 1980, 163–188); and Mora Polychrome of the Tempisque Valley of Costa Rica (Baudez 1967, planche 39). The overall similarity between the polychromes discussed here is probably because they developed in a common tradition. Jején Red Polychrome (Fowler 1981, 199–206); referred to by Amaroli and Bruhns (2013) as “Banderas Polychrome.” Geometric and naturalistic painted decoration in black, white, and sometimes yellow or orange over a soft red slip constitute the hallmarks of this ceramic group. Forms include flat-bottom, flaring-wall bowls; hemispherical chalices with pedestal supports; small cups on pedestal supports; and vertical-wall vessels. Motifs include banners, flags, shields, darts, human skulls, long bones, rib cages, and serpent heads and bodies. Bruhns (1980, fig. 6) recovered an almost complete Jején Red Polychrome convex-wall bowl with a pedestal base from Cihuatán Structure SS-53. This ceramic group appears to be a local product, and its major forms, except the vertical-wall vessel, replicate those most common in the García Red ceramic group. Tamoa Buff (Fowler 1981, 206–215). A very hard paste and well-polished surfaces distinguish this group. The predominant type of this group is Tamoa Red-on-Buff. Almost certainly derived from Coyotlatelco Red-onBuff and Red-on-Brown wares (Rattray 1966), Tamoa would appear to be a precursor to Marihua Red-on-Buff (Haberland 1964). Decoration includes incised lines and red-painted dots on interiors. The predominant form is a hemispherical bowl with tripod supports. Tamoa Red-on-Buff is related to the Macana Red-on-Brown found in the Tollan phase of Tula (Cobean 1990, 289–312). Ladle-shaped censers identical to those found at Tula (Cobean 1990, 457–463) also occur and are an important diagnostic trait of the Guazapa complex. According to Cobean (1990, 463), this type appears at Tula only in the Tollan phase. Tohil Plumbate (Fowler 1981, 215–224). Plumbate ceramics originated and were made for centuries in the Nahuat-speaking eastern Soconusco region of Chiapas, Mexico (Cobean and Mastache Flores 2001, 240; Beyer 1988, 15; Lee 1978; Neff 1989; Shepard 1948, 121–122). This distinctive hard, gray, lustrous ware with incised and effigy decorations is an unmistakable horizon marker. Shepard recognized two Plumbate types: San Juan (Late Middle Classic/Late Classic) and Tohil (Epiclassic/Early Postclassic). Tohil Plumbate forms include composite-silhouette bowls, vertical-wall vessels, low-neck jars, and effigy vessels. The effigy vessels frequently represent Nahua deities, especially Tlaloc, Xipe Totec, Huehueteotl, and Mictlantecuhtli.

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Tohil Plumbate sherds constitute a relatively minor part of the Guazapa complex at Cihuatán. This raises the possibility that the bulk of the period of occupation of Cihuatán occurred after the peak of Plumbate popularity, say around 1050 or 1100 CE (see a discussion of Tohil Plumbate dating in Beyer [1988, 15–19]). Undoubtedly the most widely traded pottery in Mesoamerica during the Early Postclassic, the intersite distribution of Tohil Plumbate ranges from west and Central Mexico to Panama (Beyer 1988, 69–85, 117–148; Cobean 1990, 483–485; Shepard 1948, 103–114). The role of Tula in the widespread trade of this ware was primordial. Nicoya Polychrome (Fowler 1981, 233–243). “Nicoya Polychrome” is a generic designation for the fine-paste, white-slipped polychromes of southeastern Mesoamerica during the Early Postclassic. Like Tohil Plumbate, Nicoya Polychrome was a widespread trade ware during the Early Postclassic (Baudez 1967; Healy 1980, 169–170; Lothrop 1926, 1, 115), and thus it serves as a convenient marker of this period. Its relatively fine paste was covered with a thin, hard white, pinkish-white, or grayish-white slip that carries painted geometric or naturalistic decoration. Predominant forms include composite-silhouette bowls, convex-wall bowls, and vertical-wall vessels. Most of the specimens recovered at Cihuatán conform closely to the Paloma Black-and-Red-on-White Polychrome type of the Papagayo ceramic group (Healy 1980, 163–167). Baudez (1976, 142) suggested that multiple centers of Papagayo pottery manufacture existed in El Salvador and Honduras and in the Greater Nicoya region. Whatever their locale of manufacture, Papagayo Polychrome ceramics were widely traded throughout Mesoamerica during the Early Postclassic and they have often been found in direct association with Tohil Plumbate (Baudez 1967, 209; Healy 1974, 276–277, 1980, 169–170; see also Lothrop 1926, 1, 115; 1927, 185–186, 205; Shepard 1948, 137–139). A reaffirmation of this association was discovered in a cache at Tula, Hidalgo, by archaeologists of the University of Missouri Tollan project in 1970 (Cobean 1990, 488; Diehl 1981, 281; Diehl et al. 1974; Matos Moctezuma 2001, 328). Commentary on Guazapa

As the foregoing summary reveals, the Guazapa ceramic complex emphasizes many stylistic features such as vessel forms and decorative techniques derived from the Corral and Tollan complexes of Tula, although a number of differences may also be observed. A striking example of this

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correspondence is the similarity of the Las Lajas biconical spiked censers to those of Tula (Acosta 1956–1957, fig. 17, 7; Boggs 1972, fig. 15; Cobean 1990, fig. 193D; Diehl 1983, 104, fig. 25). Sometimes, also like the Tula censers, they carry a modeled effigy face of the Central Mexican rain god, Tlaloc (Boggs 1972, 51; Cobean 1990, fig. 196D; Diehl 1983, pl. 39, 40). On the other hand, the two major decorated ceramic groups, Zancudo White Polychrome and Jején Red Polychrome, do not have parallels in the published materials from Tula or the Basin of Mexico, although the forms and decorative modes are certainly similar. The lack of direct correspondence for these groups may indicate that the closest similarities with the Guazapa complex should be sought in another Toltec-related, Nahuatspeaking region of Mexico such as southern Puebla or the Gulf Coast region. The Pipils may have deployed polychrome ceramic decoration and motifs derived from the Mixteca-Puebla region or the Gulf Coast as a means of marking social identity and political differentiation. Nonceramic traits also link Cihuatán and Santa María with Toltec Central Mexico. A partial list includes Mazapan-style figurines, wheeled figurines, spindle whorls, and technological and formal aspects of the chippedstone industry, especially bifacially thinned projectile points and arrow points made on segments of obsidian prismatic blades (Boggs 1972, 1973; Casasola García 1976–1977; Fowler 1981, 1991a, 1995b; Fowler et al. 1987). These are all items of daily practice and social identity. The Pipils also carried concepts of urban planning from Central Mexico to El Salvador. The plan of the central ritual precinct of Cihuatán is very evocative of the central zone of Tula Grande and it was probably also similar to the plan of the central precinct of Tula Chico (Cobean et al. 2012, 42–50, fig. II.2; Mastache Flores and Cobean 2000). Especially intriguing are the spatial relationships between the principal pyramid (Structure P1 at Cihuatán and Structure B at Tula), the ball courts, and a palace complex to the south of the main pyramid (Marquina 1964, 150–159). Toltec-derived architectural features found at Cihuatán include talud-tablero construction on public buildings, rubble-core columns on temple platforms, two enclosed I-shaped ball courts, an elongated T-shaped platform structure, fired-clay almenas (merlons), and drainage systems constructed of fired clay tubes or stone-lined troughs (Fowler 1981, 78–117, 99, 448; Healan 1989, 63–64). It should be made clear that chronological alignment indicates that the urban plans of both Cihuatán and Tula Grande were derived from Tula

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Chico or the Corral phase (750–850 CE) urban nucleus at Tula Grande (Cobean et al. 2012, 47–48) and that Cihuatán architectural style was not derived from Tula Grande of the Tollan phase (900–1150 CE). Both cities were planned from the beginning of their construction based on the template of Tula Chico as sites of cultural construction and production, “planned convergences of supernatural forces and cultural experience” (Pauketat 2007, 79) that would have had long-term consequences for the formation of social identities and political affiliations. Some of these traits, such as the wheeled figurines and life-size ceramic effigies, suggest connections with the Gulf Coast and the central highlands of Mexico (Casasola García 1976–1977). These parallels are not surprising, since ethnohistoric and historical linguistic evidence clearly indicates that Toltec-derived Nahuat-speaking groups expanded out of Central Mexico and into the Gulf Coast region before the Pipil migrations proceeded down the Isthmus of Tehuantepec to Central America (Fowler 1989a, 39–40, 41). Dating

Stylistic dating of the Guazapa-complex ceramics from Cihuatán and Santa María indicates a chronological alignment with the Corral phase (750–850 CE) and the Tollan phase (850–1150 CE) at Tula. Tohil Plumbate and Nicoya (Papagayo and related) Polychrome ceramics (Diehl et al. 1974) are important horizon markers at the two sites. Radiometric dating supports the stylistic dating. The calibrated means of a suite of seven radiocarbon age determinations, seven from Cihuatán and one from Santa María, range from 678 to 1180 CE (table 10.1). The earliest mean date pertains to a preconstruction level and thus it provides a terminus post quem. Excluding this date (S-1965), the range of the mean calibrated dates is 798–1180 CE (detailed data presentation and discussion of the interpretation of Cihuatán and Santa María radiocarbon chronology may be found in Fowler [1981, 46–53]). The relatively narrow calibrated age ranges reinforce the interpretation that Cihuatán is a single-component Epiclassic to Early Postclassic site. In addition to these radiocarbon determinations, Amaroli (2015, 88–89) has recently reported an AMS date from excavations of Structure Q-40 (Beta 324264) with a calibrated 1-sigma range of 1160 to 1220 CE. Considering this and the radiocarbon assays discussed above, I assign an inclusive range of 800–1200 CE to the Guazapa complex at Cihuatán.

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Table 10.1. Calibrated means in years CE and one-sigma standard deviation ranges of radiocarbon dates from Cihuatán and Santa María Sample No. S-1882

Mean Date CE 1180

1σ

Range CE

%

167

1024–1387

68.2

ELS-35

1101

82

1020–1180

68.2

S-1967

1070

85

993–1155

68.2

ELS-31

1007

107

895–1152

68.3

ELSx-12

878

68

782–966

68.2

ELS-42

798

88

690–881

68.2

S-1965

678

240

433–939

68.2

Calculated using the IntCal 09 series atmospheric carbon calibration curve using the OxCal 4.1 computer program.

Evidence from Other Sites Related to the Guazapa Complex

If the foregoing arguments are accepted, then the presence of a Nahua population in the Paraíso Basin of El Salvador during the Epiclassic and Early Postclassic is clearly indicated. Good archaeological evidence from several sites in the western portion of the country also indicates that they can be associated with the Guazapa or a related complex. Pipils probably occupied the important center of Chalchuapa at this time (Boggs 1962, 1963; Valdivieso 2009). New cultural traits that appear in Chalchuapa at the Tazumal mound group include talud-tablero architecture, a circularshaped temple platform, an I-shaped ball court, a life-size ceramic effigy of the Nahua deity Xipe Totec, two stone Chacmool sculptures, bifacial flaking in the obsidian industry, green obsidian from the Pachuca source in Central Mexico, and various new ceramic types, including Tohil Plumbate and Nicoya Polychrome. Sheets (1984, 107) interprets the evidence as an indication of the arrival of a new population in Chalchuapa during the Early Postclassic. I concur and propose that Chalchuapa was one of the major Pipil centers of western El Salvador during the Early Postclassic, probably due in large part to its location along a major trade route that had operated since the Middle Preclassic. Valdivieso (2009) has also argued for the presence of a significant Pipil population in Chalchuapa during the Early Postclassic on the basis of architectural data from Structure B1-2. Another site in western El Salvador with a very long pre-Hispanic cultural sequence is Tacuscalco, located on the Río Ceniza just across from the modern town of Nahulingo. Tacuscalco is a multicomponent site with

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an occupation sequence that began in the Early Middle Preclassic and continued until the early nineteenth century. Some Pipil populations arrived in the Izalcos region in the Epiclassic to Early Postclassic, as Guazapacomplex traits appear at this time (Escamilla and Amador 2002; Sampeck 2007). One of the principal attractions of this region was its extraordinary cacao-producing potential (Escalante Arce 1992, 2, 17–26; Fowler 1991b; MacLeod 1973, 80–95). Several life-size ceramic effigies of Xipe Totec and Mictlantecuhtli, similar to those from Cihuatán (Boggs 1976, 1977) have been found near the shore of Lake Güija in northwestern El Salvador. Unfortunately, very little else is known of the material culture of the Lake Güija region, but it seems reasonable to assume a Guazapa affiliation. Another important Guazapa-related center is Cerro de Ulata, located in the Balsam Coast mountain range of western El Salvador (Lardé 1926, 221; Longyear 1944, 78). I surveyed it in 1988 (Fowler et al. 1989). Situated at an altitude of approximately 400 meters above sea level on the summit of the Cerro de Ulata, the site was obviously located with defensive considerations in mind. The summit, which has a commanding view of the surrounding countryside to the north, east, and west and the Pacific Ocean to the south, features a linear-oriented ceremonial precinct covering approximately 150 by 300 meters. The largest of the constructions in this complex is approximately 8 meters tall. Other monumental constructions are located on an adjacent ridge of the hill about 400 meters to the northwest. Numerous house platforms are located on artificial terraces below the ceremonial precinct. Among the diagnostic artifacts collected from the surface in the 1988 survey was a sherd of a large Las Lajas Coarse hourglassshaped, spiked censer and an arrow point made on a prismatic blade. Recent surveys in the Balsam Coast range by Escamilla (2011, 2013; Escamilla and Fowler 2013) have documented several potential Epiclassic to Early Postclassic sites situated on high ridge tops in defensible locations. Escamilla and I propose that these are some of the earliest Pipil sites in El Salvador and that they represent a process of landscape appropriation by Nahuat Pipil migrants seeking to settle in environments similar to those of their ancestral homelands. To the west of Cihuatán, near the town of Tacachico, lies the major Guazapa-complex center of Las Marías. This site has not been investigated professionally, but preliminary accounts suggest that Las Marías may be even larger than Cihuatán with the same form of internal spatial patterning in terms of both public buildings and residential remains.

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Mention should also be made of the intriguing site of Loma China in the lower Lempa region of east-central El Salvador. This site was excavated in 1981 by personnel of the Department of Archaeology of the Administración del Patrimonio Cultural (Cobos 1994, 42). Unfortunately, the architecture, ceramics, and artifacts of the site have not been described or reported in any detail. Nevertheless, we know that the architecture consisted of several low mounds and that a number of burials were found associated with one Silho Fine Orange, thirteen Tohil Plumbate, and thirty-four Nicoya Polychrome ceramic vessels (Fowler 1989a, 42–43, 1995b, 156–157). The principal burial was also accompanied by four small ceramic plaques with mosaic decoration of pyrite, turquoise, jadeite, and shell. The two preserved plaques bear a representation of a Toltec warrior or merchant with the characteristic helmet, shield, vest, and sandals. The figure holds a shield in one hand while his other hand is extended toward a feathered serpent that arcs over his head. Also present were prismatic blades of green obsidian. The mosaic plaques may have been manufactured at a major Toltec center, very possibly Tula or Chichén Itzá, but they could also have been made locally (at Cihuatán?). At the very least, Loma China provides a glimpse of Toltec long-distance trade networks in southeastern Mesoamerica. It is reasonable to speculate that the individual with whom the plaques were interred had journeyed to El Salvador from a distant Toltec center, perhaps on a trading mission. Finally, there is the intrusive Early Postclassic Ejar phase at Copán, Honduras, that Manahan (2003, 140–209, 2004) described from his excavations in the Bosque sector, a zone of dense settlement located about 200 meters south of the Copán Acropolis. Manahan recovered ceramics from residential and burial contexts that he radiocarbon dated to 950–1100 CE. The Ejar ceramic complex, according to multiple analyses (Bill 2014, 102; Manahan 2004, 111), represents a sharp break with the local or regional ceramic traditions that specialists trace at Copán as far back as the Late Preclassic period. The Ejar ceramic complex replicates a number of ceramic groups and types of the Guazapa complex, including Las Lajas Coarse, Tamulasco Plain, García Red, Tamoa Red-on-Buff, and the imported wares Nicoya Plumbate and Las Vegas Polychrome. What does this patchwork of evidence indicate? While the inventory of Guazapa-related sites is not numerically overwhelming yet, a consistent pattern is beginning to emerge revealing that Cihuatán and Santa María were not unique. On the contrary, although the evidence remains rather sketchy, it would appear that large, significant areas of western and central

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El Salvador were invaded and occupied by Toltec-related Nahuat-speaking populations during the Epiclassic to Early Postclassic. In some cases, they settled in advantageous locations in well-watered, fertile valleys such as at Chalchuapa, in the Izalcos region, or at Cihuatán. In other cases, they took up defensive locations like they did at Cerro Ulata. The defensible mountaintop locations in the Balsam Range may have been settled before the interior valley locations, but it should be remembered that Cihuatán was totally destroyed by fire at the end of its occupation. This fact alerts us to the presence of armed hostilities occurring during the Early Postclassic among established Pipil populations or between Pipil and nonPipil groups. Thus, the defensible mountaintop centers may have occurred later in the Early Postclassic as well. One could predict that more such centers will be discovered, especially in the Balsam highlands (Escamilla 2011, 2013; Escamilla and Fowler 2013). Loma China, which does not seem to fit any part of this pattern, may be a unique case of sorts, since the site was rather small and provincial and was located in the hinterland of the lower Lempa, to the east of the main Pipil bloc. Perhaps Toltec merchants and troops based at a major center such as Cihuatán or Las Marías journeyed to the eastern fringe of Pipil territory and even into the Lenca territory of eastern El Salvador on trading missions. The Ejar phase settlement at Copán may represent a trading colony Cihuatán established after the collapse of that great southeastern Maya kingdom. To summarize the material culture correlates of these movements, an emphasis on practice would expect broad and pervasive similarities between immigrant and homeland cultures in items of daily use such as tools, weapons, and vessels and containers for food and beverages. Urban site plans and residence forms and plans would also retain a close resemblance to prototypes in the homeland, although some modifications would occur. Items of religious significance such as depictions of deities or objects used in ritual should be essentially identical to those of the parent culture. Yet some differences or divergences would also be evident. One would expect, for example, that with the passage of time and the exposure to other cultural traditions, some stylistic admixtures would occur in assemblages of items of daily use. The ceramic complex of the immigrant group would perhaps add new forms and decorative elements while retaining the essential technical elements and basic formal qualities of ceramics of the place of origin. In my view, this is what we see when we compare the Guazapa complex with the Corral complex of Tula. Utilitarian or daily service wares

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will change over time. The Tamulasco Plain and García Red ceramic groups at Cihuatán find no antecedent or parallel at Tula, although they share similar forms. New luxury wares, such as Zancudo White Polychrome and Jején Red Polychrome, may be added. But items of religious or cosmological significance, such as the large hourglass-shaped censers and ladle-shaped censers would remain unchanged even when they were produced locally. This, again, is precisely what we see in the comparison between Cihuatán and Tula. I propose that large, cohesive groups of migrants from the Tula region in the Epiclassic traveled a leapfrog migration path, establishing a chain of social communities (Anthony 1990) that stretched from central highland Mexico to the Gulf Coast, Puebla, Oaxaca, Tehuantepec, Chiapas, Guatemala, and El Salvador. New aspects of material culture such as Zancudo and Jején Polychrome wares served as a way to express group identity and to define a group in contradistinction to outsiders. In this model, much like Pauketat’s interpretation of the Mississippian period and the sudden rise of Cahokia, cultural construction in the context of the Nahuat migrations deployed traditional practices to negotiate novel social conditions. Centralization of power at centers such as Cihuatán is one possible outcome; resistance to centralization is another possibility. Migration may now be seen as a powerful force leading to the development of new social institutions. Summary Regarding Scale and Impact

Guazapa-sphere sites occurred throughout western and central El Salvador beginning at about 850 CE, implying the presence of a significant population. The new elements of material culture appeared abruptly and uniformly across the entire region from the Río Paz to the lower Lempa, indicating the arrival of a new population rather than an acculturation process. The intensity of the Guazapa occupation does not appear to be the result of a small number of Nahua elites coming into the area and imposing their culture on local groups. Rather, it seems to be the product of a series of migrations of large, cohesive social groups such as calpulli or teccalli, which sometimes banded together during the migrations. I propose that the scale in absolute numbers should be seen as similar to that of the Chichimec and Aztlan migrations that brought Nahua groups from the northwest desert regions of Mexico into the central highlands (Castañeda de la Paz 2002, 2013; Smith 1984). While little evidence exists on which to base estimates of population, Armillas (1964, 73) made the unequivocal statement that “the collapse of

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Toltec power was followed by a general exodus by peoples from the frontier toward the south. The successive invasions that completely changed Central Mexico throughout the thirteenth century were not merely intrusions of bands of adventurers, but rather movements of entire nations whose settlement in the southern zone of the central highlands without doubt produced changes in the ethnic composition of the population of those regions” (my translation). As Mastache Flores and Cobean (2001, 239) have pointed out, the Toltecs’ transformation of basic institutions in Mesoamerica involved four major interrelated processes: (1) the expansion of Nahua-speaking Toltec populations to regions beyond Central Mexico; (2) the founding in various regions of Mexico and Central America of royal dynasties that claimed Toltec origins; (3) the consolidation of an enormous system of commercial networks that extended from Costa Rica and Nicaragua to New Mexico and Arizona; and (4) important changes in the religion and ideology of Mesoamerican peoples, including the introduction of Nahua deities and the dissemination of the epic of the man-deity Quetzalcoatl throughout Central Mexico, Yucatan, highland Guatemala, and other regions (Nicholson 2001). Each of these processes may be elucidated through the data presented here on the Pipil migrations and the Toltec-related presence in El Salvador. Expansion of Nahua-Speaking Populations Social and political turmoil in Central Mexico resulted in the collapse of major Epiclassic centers such as Cacaxtla and Xochicalco and the establishment of the great city of Tollan Xicocotitlan as the center of the Toltec state (Cobean 1994; Cobean et al. 2012; Cowgill 2015, 237; Evans 2008, 358, 370–373; Healan 2001; Mastache Flores 1994; Noguez 2001, 201–203). The Coyotlatelco center of Tula Chico was destroyed by fire around the middle of the ninth century. Mastache Flores and Cobean (2001, 270) speculated that this event may have been associated with the schism between followers of the priest-king Ce Acatl Topiltzin Quetzalcoatl and those of the cult of the god Tezcatlipoca (Noguez 2001, 210). As Pohl (2003a, 64) comments, we may never know whether Quetzalcoatl existed as a historical individual, but that uncertainty should not impede our use of traditional sources to interpret past events (see also, Cobos 2015; Ringle et al. 1998). Thus, the destruction of Tula Chico at about 850 CE may mark the expulsion of Quetzalcoatl and his followers and the commencement of the Toltec diaspora; that is, large-scale population movements out of the region of Tula and

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radiating to the south and east throughout Mesoamerica (Jiménez Moreno 1941, 1966). The Pipil migrations consisted of massive movements of Nahuat-speaking groups, probably organized by calpulli or teccalli subunits and led by the lords of noble lineages, hence the ethnic designation of pipiltin, or Pipil. I propose that these groups left Tollan at the end of the Corral phase (i.e., at about 850–900 CE), perhaps connected with the expulsion from Tollan of the faction supporting Topiltzin Quetzalcoatl (Beekman and Christensen 2011, 161; Pohl 2003a). Some went to the Gulf Coast region of Veracruz and Tabasco, some to eastern and northern Puebla, some to Guerrero. Some journeyed to Yucatan to participate in the founding of the Kukulkan dynasty at Chichén Itzá. Some went to Cholula and continued south through the Tehuacan Valley of southern Puebla, down the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, and along the Pacific coast of Guatemala to El Salvador, where they established several local Toltec Pipil dynasties (Davies 1980, 6–8; Pohl 2003b, 174–175). The evidence from Cihuatán favors the arrival in El Salvador of Toltec-related groups in the ninth century. Arriving in southeastern Mesoamerica, they found a vast, fertile, and relatively depopulated territory after the collapse of the Classic Maya kingdom of Copán during the early ninth century CE (Evans 2008, 339), which probably resulted in a population reduction in western and central El Salvador. The Pipil groups who arrived in southeastern Mesoamerica at this time found a rich opportunity for colonization and expansion. Royal Dynasties Claiming Toltec Origins Virtually every ethnic group in Central Mexico during the Postclassic wanted to establish Toltec dynastic connections. In Central Mexico, after the collapse of Tula the connection was generally traced through Culhuacan, an Epi-Toltec “successor state” in the southern Valley of Mexico (Chimalpahin 1965, 61–62; Davies 1983, 165; Pohl 2003a, 63; see chapter 6, this volume). Toltec dynastic links were often made and traced through royal marriage alliances (Pohl 2003b, 2003c; Spores 2001). Perhaps the best-known example is that of the early Mexica who in 1372 CE acquired a legitimate Toltec dynastic link through their first emperor Acamapichtli, whose mother was a Culhua princess (Davies 1983, 174–175; Gillespie 1989, 21; Smith 2012, 47). The practice was also prevalent among eastern Nahua and non-Nahua groups outside Central Mexico (Akkeren 1999, 286; Davies 1983, 159; Pohl 1999, 170, 2003a, 62–63). Also well known are the putative Toltec connections of the Kaqchikel

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and K’iche’ highland Maya rulers (Braswell 2003; Carmack 1968, 1981; Fox 1978, 1980), perhaps through Chichén Itzá (Jones 1995), a “Tollan” in the Gulf Coast region, rather than Tula, or possibly through Cihuatán (Pohl 1999, 178). These claims of Toltec descent were recorded both in native histories and sixteenth-century Spanish chronicles of indigenous history (Davies 1977, 1983; Jiménez Moreno 1941; Pohl 2003a). Considering the numerous and widespread claims to Toltec heritage of indigenous groups within and beyond Central Mexico and the urgent sociopolitical need of these groups to trace their connections to Toltec civilization, the assumption seems justified that the Pipil groups of Cihuatán and other Guazapasphere centers of El Salvador regarded themselves as nothing less than Toltecs through cultural practice with a direct mythico-historical connection to Tollan. Long-Distance Trading Networks Well-developed commercial networks formed a crucial part of the Toltec economic system and exotic goods arrived in Tollan from all parts of Mesoamerica and the southwestern United States. Archaeological evidence indicates that the Guazapa-complex Pipils of El Salvador also participated in a robust network of long-distance trade that brought in obsidian from Guatemalan sources (Fowler et al. 1987), marine shells and other products from the Pacific coast, Tohil Plumbate and Nicoya Polychrome ceramic vessels from their respective areas of manufacture, and probably also perishable items such as animal pelts and tropical bird feathers. In the early sixteenth century, the area of central El Salvador was especially noted for cotton textile production and indigo dye manufacture. I have previously speculated that one of the major products traded from Cihuatán in return for other goods was dyed cotton textiles (Fowler 1989a, 171–172). Changes in Mesoamerican Religion and Ideology The fourth process Cobean and Mastache Flores enumerated concerns changes in religion and ideology and the introduction of Nahua deities. Guazapa-complex sites, especially Cihuatán, are noteworthy for their life-size ceramic effigies of Nahua deities, most prominently Xipe Totec. Representations of Tlaloc, Mictlantecuhtli, and Huehueteotl also occur. There can be no doubt about the Nahua affiliation of these deities, and by extension, one infers that the Pipil migrations brought new religious and cosmological concepts to El Salvador that had originated among earlier Nahua populations, some very likely in Tula itself. For example, important

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elements of Nahua cosmovision are reflected in the similarities in the planning of sacred space at Cihuatán and Tula, which display similar relationships between major temple platforms, ball courts, and other structures (see discussions by Cobean and Mastache Flores [1995], Mastache Flores and Cobean [2000, 2001], and Cobean et al. [2012, 64–111] of the ritual precinct of Tula). Conclusions

An enhanced understanding of these processes comes from a coordinate and contextual approach that uses multiple lines of evidence from archaeology, ethnohistory, and historical linguistics. I apply this approach through an analytical framework that views population movements and migrations not simply as historical phenomena that can be recognized through research but also—and most important—as powerful forces in the massive transformation of social, political, economic, and religious institutions that occurred all over Mesoamerica after the collapse of Teotihuacan, beginning at about 550 CE. A major theme of the Epiclassic and Early Postclassic periods was mass migration, not simply as a backdrop to major institutional change but also as an important element of human agency that brought about such wholesale, pervasive change. The Coyotlatelco invasion of the northern Basin of Mexico and the region of Tula, Hidalgo, signals the arrival of Nahua speakers from the Bajío region to the west at about the time of Teotihuacan’s collapse (Beekman and Christensen 2003, 2011; Cowgill 2015, 237–239; Mastache Flores and Cobean 1989). This large-scale population movement was only the first in a chain reaction of mass migrations that eventually took Nahuas to the southeast as far as El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica. References Acosta, José R. 1956–1957. “Interpretación de algunos de los datos obtenidos en Tula relativos a la época tolteca.” Revista Mexicana de Estudios Antropológicos 14: 75–110. Agrinier, Pierre. 1978. A sacrificial mass burial at Miramar, Chiapas, Mexico. Papers of the New World Archaeological Foundation no. 42. Provo: Brigham Young University. Aguilar-Moreno, Manuel. 2006. Handbook to life in the Aztec world. New York: Oxford University Press. Akkeren, Ruud van. 1999. “Sacrifice at the maize tree: Rab’inal Achi in its historical and symbolic context.” Ancient Mesoamerica 10: 281–295. Alvarado, Pedro de. 1934. “Relación hecha por Pedro de Alvarado a Hernando Cortés;

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Otra relación hecha por Pedro de Alvarado a Hernando Cortés.” In Libro viejo de la fundación de Guatemala y papeles relativos a D. Pedro de Alvarado. Ciudad de Guatemala: Sociedad de Geografía e Historia. Amaroli, Paul. 2015. “El Templo de la Memoria: La Estructura Q-40 en Cihuatán.” In V Congreso Centroamericano de Arqueología en El Salvador, edited by José Heriberto Erquicia Cruz and Shione Shibata, 83–93. San Salvador: Museo Nacional de Antropología Dr. David J. Guzmán, Secretaría de Cultura de la Presidencia. Amaroli, Paul E., and Karen Olsen Bruhns. 2013. “450 years too soon: Mixteca-Puebla style polychrome ceramics in El Salvador.” Anales del Instituto de Investigaciones Estéticas 25 (103). http: //www.redalyc.org/articulo.oa?id=36929618008. Andrews, E. Wyllys, V. 1976. The archaeology of Quelepa, El Salvador. Middle American Research Institute publication 42. New Orleans: Tulane University. Aráuz, Próspero. 1960. El Pipil de la región de los Itzalcos. San Salvador: Ministerio de Cultura. Armillas, Pedro. 1964. “Condiciones ambientales y movimientos de pueblos en la frontera septentrional de Mesoamérica.” In Homenaje a Fernando Márquez-Miranda, arqueólogo e historiador de América: Ofrenda de sus amigos y admiradores, 62–82. Publicaciones del Seminario de Estudios Americanistas y el Seminario de Antropología Americana. Madrid: Universidades de Madrid y Sevilla. ———. 1969. “The arid frontier of Mexican civilization.” Transactions of the New York Academy of Sciences, series 2, 31: 697–704. Barberena, Santiago I. (1914) 1977. Historia de El Salvador: Época antigua y de la conquista, 2 vols. San Salvador: Dirección de Publicaciones, Ministerio de Educación. Barón Castro, Rodolfo. (1942) 1978. La población de El Salvador. 2nd ed. San Salvador: UCA Editores. Barth, Fredrik. 1969. “Introduction.” In Ethnic groups and boundaries: The social organization of cultural difference, edited by Frederik Barth, 9–38. Boston: Little, Brown. Baudez, Claude F. 1967. Recherches archéologiques dans la vallée du Tempisque, Guanacaste, Costa Rica. Paris: Institut des Hauts Etudes de l’Amérique Latine, Travaux et Mémoires 18. Beekman, Christopher S. 2010. “Comments on Kaufman and Justeson: ‘The history of the word for cacao in ancient Mesoamerica.’” Ancient Mesoamerica 21: 415–418. Beekman, Christopher S., and Alexander F. Christensen. 2003. “Controlling for doubt and uncertainty through multiple lines of evidence: A new look at the Mesoamerican Nahua migrations.” Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory 10: 111–163. ———. 2011. “Power, agency, and identity: Migration and aftermath in the Mezquital area of North-Central Mexico.” In Rethinking anthropological perspectives on migration, edited by Graciela S. Cabana and Jeffery J. Clark, 147–171. Gainesville: University Press of Florida. Bentley, G. Carter. 1987. “Ethnicity and practice.” Comparative Studies in Society and History 29: 24–55. Beyer, Bernd Fahmel. 1988. Mesoamérica tolteca: Sus cerámicas de comercio principales. México, DF: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Instituto de Investigaciones Antropológicas. Bill, Cassandra R. 2014. “Shifting fortunes and affiliations on the edge of ruin: A ceramic

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méstico rural en el área de Tula. A Rural Household in the Toltec Heartland, edited by Robert H. Cobean and Alba Guadalupe Mastache, 31–73. México, DF: Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia, University of Pittsburgh, Latin American Archaeology Publications. ———. 2000. “Ancient Tollan: The sacred precinct.” Res 38: 101–133. ———. 2001. “Tula.” In The Oxford encyclopedia of Mesoamerican Cultures: The civilizations of Mexico and Central America, vol. 3, edited by David Carrasco, 269–274. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Mateos Higuera, Salvador. 1992. Enciclopedia gráfica del México antiguo. Vol. 2, Los dioses creadores. México, DF: Secretaría de Hacienda y Crédito Público. Matos Moctezuma, Eduardo. 2001. Descubridores del pasado en Mesoamérica. México, DF: Editorial Oceano, DGE Ediciones, Antiguo Colegio de San Ildefonso. Maxwell, Judith M. 2001. “Languages at the time of contact.” In Archaeology of ancient Mexico and Central America: An encyclopedia, edited by Susan Toby Evans and David L. Webster, 395–399. New York: Garland Publishing. Mejía de Gutiérrez, Gloria Aracely. 1998. “Los pueblos Pipil en las fuentes históricas del tiempo temprano de la colonia.” In Memorias IV Congreso Lingüístico/I Simposio “Pueblos indígenas de El Salvador y sus fronteras,” 255–273. San Salvador: Consejo Nacional para la Cultura y el Arte. Neff, Hector. 1989. “Origins of Plumbate pottery production.” In Ancient trade and tribute: Economies of the Soconusco region of Mesoamerica, edited by Barbara Voorhies, 175–192. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press. Nicholson, H. B. 2001. Topiltzin Quetzalcoatl: The once and future lord of the Toltecs. Boulder: University Press of Colorado. Noguez, Xavier. 2001. “La zona del altiplano central en el Posclásico: La etapa tolteca.” In Historia antigua de México, vol. 3: El horizonte Posclásico, edited by Linda Manzanilla and Leonardo López Luján, 199–235. México, DF: Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Miguel Ángel Porrúa. Paddock, John. 1974. “Comment on Sharer 1974.” Current Anthropology 15: 181. Pauketat, Timothy R. 2000. “The tragedy of the commoners.” In Agency in archaeology, edited by Marcia-Anne Dobres and John Robb, 113–129. London: Routledge. ———. 2001a. “A new tradition in archaeology.” In The archaeology of traditions: Agency and history before Columbus, edited by Timothy R. Pauketat, 1–16. Gainesville: University Press of Florida. ———. 2001b. “Practice and history in anthropology: An emerging paradigm.” Anthropological Theory 1: 73–98. ———. 2003. “Resettled farmers and the making of a Mississippian polity.” American Antiquity 68: 39–66. ———. 2005. “The forgotten history of the Mississippians.” In North American Archaeology, edited by Timothy R. Pauketat and Fiana DiPaolo Loren, 187–211. Malden: Blackwell. ———. 2007. Chiefdoms and other archaeological delusions. Lanham, MD: Altamira Press. Pauketat, Timothy R., and Susan M. Alt. 2005. “Agency in a postmold? Physicality and the archaeology of culture-making.” Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory 12: 213–236.

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11 Dialectology and the History of Nahua Peoples in Guatemala Sergio Romero

Nahuatl in Guatemala

Guatemala is well known as the cradle of the ancient Maya and as the home of many of their descendants today. Twenty-three different Mayan languages are officially recognized in Guatemala, most of which show substantial regional and stylistic variation (Richards 2003; Romero 2015a, 2015b). Less frequently, however, do the Nahua peoples of Guatemala and their languages receive the same kind of popular recognition and scholarly attention. In particular, the study of Guatemalan Nahuatl is still in its infancy, despite recent advances (Dakin 1981; Dakin and Lutz 1996; Matthew and Romero 2012; Romero 2014; Van Akkeren 2005). Although Nahuatl has been extinct in Guatemala since the nineteenth century, a substantial number of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century manuscripts in Nahuatl are housed in archives in Guatemala City, in Seville, and in libraries in the United States (Matthew 2000; Matthew and Romero 2012). The study of this corpus reveals an unexpected dialectal and literary diversity and provides clues as to the ethnic identities and complex history of Guatemalan Nahua peoples before and after the Spanish conquest in 1523. It also sheds light on the question of Nahua migrations into Central America and provides linguistic evidence of an ethnically diverse Nahua population in preHispanic Guatemala. The linguistic and archival evidence I consider here complements the work of the archaeologists and ethnohistorians in this volume, although linguistic history is not very helpful on the question of Nahua chronology in Central America. In this chapter, I unpack Nahuatl dialectal diversity and discuss its implications for our understanding of

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Nahua history in Central America. After a brief outline of Nahuatl dialectology, I describe the Guatemalan colonial corpus. Next, I examine in some detail the dialectal variation we can identify and critique the common view that a variety of Central Nahuatl1 must have been used as lingua franca in the Guatemalan highlands during the Postclassic and early colonial period. Finally, I argue that the available linguistic evidence suggests that a dialectally and ethnically diverse population of Nahuatl speakers was in linguistic and sociopolitical contact with each other before the Spanish conquest. Nahuatl in Mesoamerica

Nahuatl is a Uto-Aztecan language that is spoken today by close to one million speakers in the Mexican states of Mexico, Morelos, Puebla, Tlaxcala, Guerrero, Jalisco, Colima, Durango, Veracruz, Hidalgo, and San Luis Potosí. It was also spoken until the late nineteenth century in southern and central Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, and Nicaragua. A few speakers remain in El Salvador, where efforts at revitalization are ongoing (Campbell 1985; Canger 1988; Maxwell 1981). Nahuatl shows a substantial degree of dialectal variation that nevertheless does not interfere with mutual intelligibility. Scholars generally agree on the general classification represented in the tree diagram in figure 11.1. Nahuatl is a member of a subgroup of the Southern Uto-Aztecan language family known as “Aztecan,” “Nahuan,” or “Nawan” (Canger 1988; Hansen 2014; chapter 2, this volume; Kaufman 2001). Nahuan splits into three branches: Pochutec, Western and Eastern. The classification is based on widely shared phonological and lexical isoglosses. Local variation, however, is not always well documented, especially concerning Eastern dialects. Pochutec was the most divergent and was spoken until the 1930s in Pochutla, Oaxaca (Boas 1917; chapter 2, this volume). Several diagnostics separate Eastern from Western Nahuan, as can be seen in table 11.1. The distinctions are not always categorical, as successive episodes of regional contact and local innovation created hybrid dialects with overlapping diagnostic features, such as the Mexico City, Zongolica, Huasteca, and Pipil varieties (Canger 1988, 2011; Hasler 1987, 2011; chapter 2, this volume; Kaufman 2001; Lastra 1986). The isoglosses in table 11.1 do not fully describe local variation, although it is culturally important. Small lexical or subphonemic differences act as sociolinguistic markers that distinguish altepetl and villages from each other (Campbell 1985; FloresFarfán 1999; Flores-Farfán 2009; Hill and Hill 1999a; Romero 2014). In the Nahuatl-speaking world, local dialects constitute ethnic registers, socially

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Figure 11.1. The dialects of Nahuan (Aztecan) (Hansen 2014). Guatemala does not appear in Hansen’s Central Nahuatl proposal. I have added it here for the reader’s convenience.

recognized linguistic repertoires with specific discourse and indexical roles (Agha 2007). Despite some disagreements, scholars have achieved a consensus on Nahuan chronology and diffusion. The first varieties that dispersed through Mesoamerica were probably ancestral forms of Eastern Nahuan that developed in the wake of ancient migrations of Nahua peoples from beyond the northern confines of Mesoamerica (Canger 1988; Hasler 2011; Kaufman 2001). These varieties diversified and spread westward and eastward from Central Mexico, eventually reaching southern Mesoamerica at least as early as 900 CE (Fowler 1989). The latter include the Central American varieties generally known as Pipil. Central Nahuan, in turn, dispersed more recently from the original core area. This group included the ancestors of Mexicas, Tlaxcaltecas, Chalcas, Cholultecas, and other ethnic groups that flourished

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Table 11.1. Some isoglosses between Eastern and Central Nahuan Diagnostic features

Eastern Nahua

Western Nahua

Phonetic realization of ProtoUto-Aztecan *u Retention of Proto-Uto-Aztecan *p as [y] in unaffixed stems

e

i

No

Yes

Negation marker

Different markers. If Ahmo or variations thereof (aʔmo, anmo, ahmo is present, it is restricted to conditional/ ammo, amo) imperative clauses.

Default plural marker

-meh

-tin

Source: Hansen 2014.

in Central Mexico at the time of the Spanish conquest in 1521 (Hasler 2011; chapter 2, this volume; Kaufman 2001). The intricate, overlapping distribution of dialect boundaries that we see today is the result of a long history of local innovation, successive episodes of contact between different regional varieties, and contact with other Mesoamerican languages (Hansen 2014, Hasler 2011, Kaufman 2001). The Guatemalan Nahuatl Corpus

The Guatemalan Nahuatl corpus attests to the complex patterns of contact and regional innovation described above. It includes at least fifty-three documents from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The majority are at the Archivo General de Centroamérica in Guatemala City and the Archivo de Indias in Seville and a smaller number are scattered in libraries in the United States. The documents represent different textual genres: annals, padrones, land deeds, wills, letters, doctrinas, actas de cofradía, expense records, cabildo minutes, artes (descriptive grammars), music repertoires, and even marginalia in legajos otherwise written in Spanish or in Mayan languages (Matthew and Romero 2012). We can identify three groups of authors. The first consists of sources written on behalf of preHispanic Nahuatl-speaking communities or their descendants. This group includes at least twenty-six documents, the largest in the corpus. The second group includes texts written on behalf of indios conquistadores or their descendants. Indios conquistadores were mostly Nahuatl-speaking Mexican allies of the Spanish who settled in Guatemala after the conquest (Asselbergs 2008; Matthew 2012; Matthew and Oudijk 2007). For centuries, they

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lived in proximity to Spanish settlements such as the city of Santiago de Guatemala and enjoyed special privileges such as tribute and forced labor exemptions (Lutz 1994; Matthew 2012). This group includes at least twenty documents. Finally, Spaniards were the authors of a few works, including doctrinas and artes, that were addressed to a Spanish audience of religious.2 This group includes four documents. I have not been able to determine the provenience of several manuscripts, however, either because it is not mentioned in the text or because its precise geographic location is unknown. Further work is needed to ascertain and map out their provenience (Matthew and Romero 2012). This corpus affords a bird’s-eye view of the literary, stylistic, and dialectal diversity of Guatemalan Nahuatl. The manuscripts also provide clues about the use of different dialects in local self-identification practices. For example, the name “Pipil,” first used by the Spanish and their Mexican allies to reference the autochthonous Nahua population, is rarely used in the Guatemalan texts.3 The Guatemalan Nahua used ethnonyms such as Ixhuataneca, Tzinacanteca, and Izcuinteca or saints’ names such as calpulli de Santo Domingo Mixco (Matthew and Romero 2012). The name “Pipil” effectively erased the ethnic and linguistic diversity of Central American Nahua peoples in the Late Postclassic and Early Colonial period (see also chapter 10, this volume). To avoid confusion, I will use it only as a glottonym—language name—to refer to the Eastern Nahuan varieties spoken in Guatemala before the Spanish conquest (see figure 11.1). Linguistically, the Guatemalan corpus paints a complex sociolinguistic picture in which Central and Eastern Nahuan varieties coexisted in contact with each other and with Spanish, Mayan, and Xinkan languages. The reader should be aware, however, that the corpus necessarily misses much regional and stylistic diversity. There is no doubt that substantial subphonemic, syntactic, and lexical variation is underrepresented. Although orthographic and spelling differences are systematic through the documents, they are only an indirect window onto the sociolinguistic economy of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Guatemala. Nevertheless, the differences are consistent across the corpus and will allow us to make a good first approximation. Nahuatl Dialectology in Guatemala

My discussion is based on the systematic comparison of orthographic conventions, vocabulary differences, and stylistic variations. A few caveats

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need to be made, however. First, colonial scribes were sometimes inconsistent and orthographic practices often missed local phonological variation. Second, not every Nahuatl-speaking area of Guatemala is equally well represented. Chronic political instability during the first decades after independence from Spain led to the destruction of many local archives and the loss of scores if not hundreds of documents in indigenous languages (Carmack 1973; Woodward 1993). Finally, the textual genres represented in the corpus are predominantly notarial and pastoral and leave out colloquial vocabulary and oral styles. Nevertheless, the distribution of diagnostic traits is systematic, affording a fair outline of variation in Guatemala Nahuatl. My analysis suggests the existence of at least three structurally distinct varieties: Guatemalan Central Nahuatl (GCN), Mexican Central Nahuatl (MCN), and Pipil. Guatemalan Central Nahuatl Although GCN is a Central dialect according to the diagnostic criteria listed in table 11.1, is also somewhat different from the varieties spoken in the Valley of Mexico, Puebla, Tlaxcala, and Cholula, the hometowns of many of the Mexican allies of the Spanish (Asselbergs 2008; Matthew 2012). The features that differentiate GCN from Mexicano4 varieties include the phonetic realization of the lateral consonant [ʎ] as [t] (see table 11.2). The latter is consistently written with a “t” in the texts rather than with the digraph “tl.” The “t” spelling is systematically used in annals,5 letters,6 wills,7 residencias,8 payment slips,9 padrones,10 land deeds,11 cabildo minutes,12 doctrinas such as the Tratado de la vida y muerte de Nuestro Señor Jesu Christo en lengua vulgar de Guatemala (TVM)13 and in one descriptive grammar: the Arte de la lengua vulgar mexicana de Guatemala: qual se habla en Ezcuintla y otros pueblos deste reyno (Arte),14 among other documents. It appears to be a systematic phonological feature, not just a spelling variant. Another consistent orthographic idiosyncrasy that suggests a phonological difference is the spelling of the back round vowel as “u” rather than “o.” This appears in documents of every genre, including the Arte. Although some scribes in the Valley of Mexico and environs also use “u,” the spelling “o” is somewhat more common in Mexican documents (Andrews 1975). Finally, there are also a number of diagnostic lexical differences. For example, the negation marker in negative clauses in GCN is the form aiac, which in other Central varieties functions as a null quantifier (see Text 1). This nonquantificational use of aiac is evidence of Eastern influence on GCN as it is documented only in Eastern varieties (Hansen 2014).

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Table 11.2. Some diagnostic differences between Guatemalan and Mexican Central Nahuatl varieties Diagnostic features Phonetic realization of the back round vowel Phonetic realization of the lateral consonant /ʎ/ (tl) Negative marker in negative clauses

Central Guatemalan Nahuatl

Central Mexican Nahuatl

u

o/u

[t]

[ʎ]

a:yac (aiac)

aʔmo (ahmo), maʧ (mach)

Text 115 Vquiquitac Dios in aiac iecti catca ma izel nemizquia vquichti. U-0-ki-kitta-k Dios in a: yak yekti katka ma i: sel 0-nemi-skiya ukiʧti AN-3sS-3sO-see-CO God D no straight be HO alone 3sS-live-SUB man-ABS.16 [God saw that it was not fair that the man would be [living] alone.] In Text 1, the back round vowel in vquichti is represented with a “v,” equivalent to “u,” instead of the “o” that is more common in Mexicano documents. Also, the clause in aiac yecti (It is not fair) includes the negator aiac rather than the forms mach or ahmo. Note also the antecessive prefix v- [u] in vquiquitac (He saw), a diagnostic feature of many Central varieties lacking in Pipil17 (Campbell 1985; Schultze-Jena 1935). Finally, the reduplication of the direct object morpheme qui- in vquiquitac does not seem to be a scribal error as it appears consistently in several documents. It may be an idiosyncratic orthographic convention marking a geminate [t] in /itta/ (see) (Magnus Pharao Hansen, personal communication). None of these features occurs exclusively in Guatemala. Nevertheless, their systematic co-occurrence and the consistent spelling differences with Mexicano texts, which follow Mexican orthographic conventions that are also known as Classical Nahuatl, suggests the presence of at least two distinct orthographic traditions in the Guatemalan corpus. Spanish religious quickly noticed the differences between the Mexican and Guatemalan varieties and wrote at least one arte for the latter. The Arte de la lengua mexicana que se habla en Ezcuintla y otros pueblos de este reyno describes a Central variety that is not very different from the Nahuatl spoken in the Valley of Mexico.18 Also known as lengua mexicana corrupta

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or lengua mexicana vulgar in the Spanish sources, it should not be confused with the Eastern variety commonly known as “Pipil,” which I discuss below. In spite of mutual intelligibility, however, the differences between GCN and MCN sometimes impaired communication between doctrineros and their new charges, according to the Spanish sources. The anonymous author of one of the Guatemalan doctrinas, for example, the Tratado de la vida y muerte de Nuestro Señor Jesu Christo en lengua vulgar de Guatemala (Treatise on the Life and Death of Our Lord Jesus Christ in the Vulgar Tongue of Guatemala; TVM) warns Spanish clergy to avoid the complex patterns of honorific marking that was characteristic of Mexican doctrinal registers, claiming that they were unintelligible for Guatemalan Nahuas.19 In his introduction to the TVM, he lists a number of the differences between Nahuatl spoken in the Valley of Mexico and the variety spoken in Escuintla and argues for a strategic accommodation of pastoral language to local vernacular practices. He claims that Mexico City Nahuatl boasts the fullest, most elegant stylistic repertoire, while the two other Guatemalan varieties he mentions—what I call in this chapter Central Guatemalan Nahuatl and Pipil—are purportedly shorter in style and structurally simpler. He compares the difference between Guatemalan and Mexican varieties to that between urban and rural Spanish in Castile: in Castilian cities, literary Spanish is spoken entre caballeros y cortesanos (among gentlemen and courtiers), while in the countryside, Spanish is spoken humilde y de corto estilo (humble and short of style).20 He insists, nonetheless, that the successful Christianization of the Guatemalan natives required that the doctrineros follow local linguistic practices and take pains to avoid Mexican-style honorifics. We should not put too much stress on the structural differences between the two varieties, however. I have argued elsewhere that the differences between Guatemalan and MCN varieties of honorific speech are not categorical but quantitative. Guatemalans used honorific marking, especially on verbs, more sparingly than Mexicans. Differences are due to different norms for the performance of reverence and authority rather than to substantial differences in grammar. Other than the phonetic realization of the two phonemes described above and a few lexical idiosyncrasies, structural differences were small indeed (Romero 2014). The social meaning of linguistic variation, however, often hinges on small differences. Apparently small idiosyncrasies were significant indices of ethnic identities, social hierarchy and authority forms (Agha 2002; Hill and Hill 1999b). The differences in honorific usage marked an ethnic boundary between the Guatemalan Nahua and their descendants, on the

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one hand, and the Mexican soldiers and auxiliaries that accompanied the Spanish to Guatemala and their descendants, on the other (Romero 2014). In fact, the introduction to the TVM explicitly identifies three distinct Guatemalan varieties: the vulgar, or GCN; the reverencial, or MCN; and pipil, an Eastern variety (see figure 11.1). He regarded all three as dialects of the same language but considered the reverencial (MCN) as the most perfect and held it as the yardstick for measuring the others.21 Guatemalan Nahuas’ dislike of Mexican norms of honorification may have been a consequence of the latter’s indexical role as an ethnic marker rather than a consequence of mutual unintelligibility (Romero 2014). Mexican Central Nahuatl MCN refers to the Central varieties spoken by the Nahuatl-speaking allies of the Spanish and their descendants. “Mexican” was an ethnonym, a term used for self-identification by a diverse group of members of different ethnicities (Tenochcas, Tlatelolcas, Chalcas, Quauhquecholtecas, Tlaxcaltecas, Cholultecas, Tehuantepecas, Mixtecas, Zapotecas, etc.) that eventually coalesced as Mexicanos in Guatemala (Matthew 2012). Mexicanos regarded themselves as ethnically, linguistically, and socially different from the Maya and Xinkan peoples of Guatemala. As Laura Matthew (2012) has documented, they had a relatively privileged position vis-à-vis other indigenous groups and the Nahuatl they spoke became a contact variety in Santiago de Guatemala and its periphery.22 During the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, Mexicanos wrote numerous documents of diverse textual genres following the same orthographic conventions as contemporary texts from the Valley of Mexico (see table 11.2). MCN did not expand beyond areas with substantial Mexicano population, however. The Guatemalan corpus contains few documents from predominantly Maya areas beyond the valley of Santiago de Guatemala. They include musical texts from Santa Eulalia and San Juan Ixcoy in northwestern Guatemala (Borg 1985), cabildo minutes and summaries of legajos otherwise written in Spanish from Jacaltenango,23 and letters addressed to Spanish officials from Huehuetenango and Soconusco.24 It is not clear from these texts, however, whether Nahuatl was commonly spoken in these provinces (Matthew and Romero 2012). Some Nahuatl fluency seems to have been relatively frequent in Kaqchikel towns near Santiago. Matthew (2012) discusses several documents that register transactions in Nahuatl between Kaqchikel- and Nahuatl-speaking individuals. Our corpus includes the will of a Kaqchikel man that was drafted in both MCN and Kaqchikel.25 Dakin and Lutz (1996) describe a corpus of

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twenty-one letters in Nahuatl addressed to the Spanish king from barrios of Santiago de Guatemala and towns in the vicinity, several of which had predominant or at least substantial Kaqchikel-speaking populations. Some of the documents in the corpus show spelling errors and hypercorrections, suggesting that a few scribes had only an imperfect knowledge of written Nahuatl.26 Hypercorrections, in particular, hint at the tantalizing possibility that some speakers of GCN or Pipil may have been trying to follow MCN as the written norm. In the existing corpus, hypercorrections appear in several letters27 (see Text 2), including a few published by Dakin and Lutz (1996). Text 2 Totlaçomahuiztlatzin Pedro Macul, yehuatzin in igarcia Dios Espiritu Sancto mitzmomaquilia muchicaualiztzin mochipa tonal. Au in axcan nican ovala topilhuan oquivalicaque chicnaui actlas.28 [Beloved father Pedro Macul, may the grace of God the Holy Spirit give you strength every day! Today arrived the town marshals bringing nine actas]. Text 2 is the beginning of a letter addressed by Guatemalan tlatoque29 to a certain Pedro Macul informing him that nine documents identified as actas had been delivered by the town marshals. In this short fragment, there are two hypercorrections: First, in totlaçomahuiztlatzin (beloved father) in line 1 and, second, in actlas (actas) at the end of the second sentence. The scribe wrote “tl” for “t,” suggesting an imperfect knowledge of MCN and Spanish. Speakers of Nahuatl varieties that lack the lateral consonant spelled as “tl” often cannot reconstruct the correspondences between their native “t” and “tl” and tend to overgeneralize so that “tl” is used even where the target variety has “t.” Hypercorrections like these suggest that for some scribes, “tl” varieties were the norm to emulate. The scribes probably included some Kaqchikel Maya and speakers of GCN and Pipil (Dakin and Lutz 1996). Some scholars have suggested that due to its widespread use and cultural prestige, a form of Central Nahuatl must have acted as the lingua franca in pre-Hispanic Guatemala (Heath 1972; Dakin 1981; Navarrete 1976; Madajczak and Hansen 2016). There is no doubt that after the Spanish conquest MCN developed an important role as administrative and pastoral language in multiethnic areas of predominantly Mexicano population in and around Santiago de Guatemala. As mentioned earlier, there is also documentary evidence that Kaqchikel scribes around the Valley of Guatemala may have

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Table 11.3. Fragment from the Historia de los Xpantzay de Tecpán Guatemala Kaqchikel Text (Historia de los Xpantzay de Tecpán Guatemala: Folio 1) (Recinos 2001, 79) Literary Translation (Sergio Romero) Yn ahau Cahi Ymox Ahpozotzil, yn mixicochin xuya Dios. Don Pedro mixnubinaah ruquin don Jorge Cablahuh Tihax, don Juan Uzelut Chicbal, don Juan Mexa Ahau Xpantzay. Ha qabi vae mixux cumal Pe. Friar Turibio Confesario, Fray Pe. de Petazax Quartin mixkazan ya pa kavi.

I am the lord Cahi Imox, the Ahpozotzil. God graced me with the name don Pedro together with don Jorge Cablahuh Tihax, don Juan Uzelut Chicbal and don Juan Mexa, lord Xpantzay. We received our names from the Friar Pedro Toribio Confessor but it was the Friar Pedro de Betanzos Quartin who baptized us.

Nim kalogoxik mixux rumal Ahau Adelantado rumal mixbekaqula chiri Ynkut Cala. Mani xibih ta ki rumal, mani caxlan chi, mani yaqui chi ketaam. Re qa huna 1524 años.

We were much beloved by the lord Adelantado because we were the ones who went out to meet him at Inkut Cala. We were not afraid of him, even though we knew neither Spanish nor the Nahuatl language. It happened in the year 1524.

sent documents drafted in Central Nahuatl to Spanish officials (Dakin and Lutz 1996; Herrera 2003). Nevertheless, in the large majority of predominantly Mayan-speaking areas, there is no evidence of the systematic use of Nahuatl as contact or administrative language. Most Mayan languages developed alphabetic writing traditions using Francisco de la Parra’s adaptation of the Spanish orthography in the 1530s (Sparks 2014). Dominicans and Franciscans quickly adopted Mayan languages to Christianize the natives and wrote scores of doctrinas, artes, and dictionaries. Crucially, there is no evidence of any transitional use of Nahuatl either as an administrative or a pastoral language in predominantly Maya areas. Furthermore, there is some anecdotal evidence in the Kaqchikel sources that few members of the highland Maya elites were fluent in Nahuatl, if indeed any were. For example, the Ajposotz’il Kaji’ Imox, the principal member of the Kaqchikel delegation that was sent to surrender before the Spanish conqueror Pedro de Alvarado in 1524, did not speak Nahuatl, according to the Historia de los Xpantzay de Tecpán (Recinos 2001). The fragment in table 11.3 suggests that high Kaqchikel officials such as the Ajposotz’il, co-ruler of the Kaqchikel confederacy, spoke neither Spanish nor yaqui “Nahuatl.” Knowledge of the latter was probably not a requisite for high office, as Nahuatl was not a commonly spoken language in the

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highlands. Bilinguals were used as translators when necessary, as was the usual practice in Kaqchikel towns around Santiago de Guatemala (Matthew 2012). In the Late Postclassic, the K’iche’ and Kaqchikel confederacies had substantial contact with Nahuatl speakers from the southern piedmont, whom they called yaki (Maxwell and Hill 2006). No highland Maya annals, calendars, land deeds, or wills were written in Nahuatl, however. There was some Nahua influence on the highland Maya in domains such as warfare, calendrics, and proper names. Lexically, however, Nahuatl loanwords are few and are limited to the languages that coexisted with Nahuatl along the piedmont: K’iche’, Kaqchikel, Tz’utujil, and probably Mam (Campbell 1971; Edmonson 1997). Nahuatl place-names, common in predominantly Maya areas in the western highlands and piedmont, are a legacy of the conquest: the Spanish adopted the Nahuatl names their Mexicano allies used instead of the original Maya toponyms. With few exceptions, Nahuatl names are restricted in the Maya highlands to towns, municipal circumscriptions, and major landscape features: lakes, mountain ranges, major rivers, and so forth. Rarely do villages, sacred sites, fields, streams, water falls, lagoons, caves, road intersections, mountain peaks, and other features of the local geography bear Nahuatl names. In summary, during the Late Postclassic, GCN seems to have been confined to the piedmont and along the southern coast of Guatemala, where it coexisted with Pipil and Mayan (K’iche’an)30 and Xinkan languages.31 After the conquest, substantial contingents of Mexican Nahuatl-speaking allies of the Spanish settled near Spanish towns, where MCN became a contact and administrative language. Its influence extended to some Kaqchikelspeaking communities near Santiago de Guatemala. There is no documentary evidence of Nahuatl as an administrative or pastoral language in other predominantly Maya areas, with the exception of the documents from San Juan Ixcoy, Jacaltenango, Santa Eulalia and Soconusco mentioned earlier. Pipil Finally, the third group of Nahuatl dialects in Postclassic and colonial Guatemala was Pipil, an Eastern variety closely related to the Isthmus and Tabasco varieties (see figure 11.1). Surprisingly, however, Pipil is absent from our Guatemalan corpus. None of the manuscripts show the diagnostic features discussed in Leonhart Schultze-Jena and Lyle Campbell’s works (Campbell 1985; Schultze-Jena 1935).32 Although some scholars have translated and published manuscripts claimed to be in Pipil, a comparison against the diagnostic features in tables 11.1 and 11.2 suffice to show that

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they were actually in Central Nahuatl (León-Portilla 1978; Megged 2013; Romero 2014). Pipil may have been used in writing, but to the best of my knowledge no documentary evidence has surfaced yet. The Spanish sources report that Pipil was indeed spoken in a few communities in Escuintla. In the introduction of the TVM, for example, “Pipil” is glossed as lengua de muchachos (boys’ language)33 and its structural units are described as pedazos de vocablos mexicanos (pieces of Mexican words), adding that it was not spoken “in every town” but only in “two or three.” The TVM claimed also that Pipil was not used to communicate with Spanish residents and priests. Instead, the vulgar (GCN) was used as the contact variety.34 The reference to “pieces of Mexican words” is the TVM’s author’s evaluation of the relative morphological simplicity of Pipil compared to Central Nahuatl. Indeed, Pipil morphology is in some ways less transparent and complex than that of Central Nahuatl (Peralta 2007). In the past it has been claimed that the lack of colonial manuscripts in Pipil was evidence of a Postclassic Central Nahuatl lingua franca that the Spanish later adopted as an administrative language. It was proposed that the Guatemalan Nahua presumably spoke Pipil as a vernacular but used Central Nahuatl in writing (Dakin 1981; chapter 2, this volume). This diglossic scenario does not hold well to the evidence, however. First, the linguistic and doctrinal sources such as the arte and the TVM describe GCN, also called lengua mexicana vulgar, as a vernacular, not as a lingua franca. Pipil is characterized as a distinct, almost unintelligible variety that was spoken in “two or three” unidentified towns in Escuintla, as I noted above. Demographic imbalance and geographic extension seem more likely explanations for the use of GCN between Pipil and GCN speakers as a contact variety rather than the purported prestige of a pan-Mesoamerican Nahuatl lingua franca. Second, the sparse number of Nahuatl documents in predominantly Mayan-speaking areas, except the periphery of Santiago de Guatemala, casts doubt on the status of Nahuatl as a contact language among speakers of Mayan languages. In the highlands Mayan-Mayan bilingualism was probably commonplace, especially near language boundaries and among members of merchant guilds (Romero 2015b; Van Akkeren 2000). Communication was also helped by the close genetic proximity and geographic expansion of K’iche’an languages. Although the latter are not necessarily mutually intelligible, they share so many cognates and their morphology is so similar that mutual intelligibility is not hard to achieve, as can be seen today in markets across Guatemala (Little 2004; Romero 2015c).

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Language and the History of the Guatemalan Nahua

My review of the colonial Guatemalan Nahuatl corpus reveals a complex sociolinguistic picture in which GCN, MCN, and Pipil coexisted in contact. Every manuscript in the corpus was written in Central Nahuatl—either Guatemalan (GCN) or Mexican (MCN), however. The TVM suggests, furthermore, that while GCN was a widespread vernacular, few people spoke Pipil in southern Guatemala. The Guatemalan corpus does not provide evidence about the absolute demography of GCN and Pipil or the relative proximity of GCN- and Pipil-speaking communities, however. More work is required to ascertain these issues. GCN was different from the Central Nahuatl of the Mexicanos who settled in Guatemala after the Spanish conquest (MCN). MCN became a contact and administrative language in multiethnic areas with substantial Nahua populations and in Spanish towns. The evidence does not support claims that Central Nahuatl, either GCN or MCN, was used as a contact language between speakers of different Mayan languages in the highlands, however. The majority of Nahuatl documents from predominantly Maya towns hail from the periphery of Santiago de Guatemala, where Mexicanos had settled after the conquest. Furthermore, the colonial Maya sources themselves do not mention Nahuatl as a contact language. The adoption of the exonym “Pipil” to refer to Central American Nahua populations has hampered scholars’ ability to assess Nahua ethnic and linguistic diversity in the Late Postclassic. As I noted earlier, “Pipil” was not used for self-identification in the Guatemalan sources. The endonyms used in the colonial corpus are the names of parcialidades and calpulli, as was the usual practice in Mesoamerica (Van Akkeren 2005). I suggest that we avoid the term to name ethnic groups or parcialidades because it presupposes a Mexico-centric perspective that denies the uniqueness and diversity of Central American Nahua peoples (see chapter 10, this volume). Evidence that GCN was a widespread vernacular in Postclassic Guatemala challenges a few commonly held ideas. First, it draws a much richer, more complex picture of linguistic and ethnic diversity among the Nahua of the Postclassic. Successive Nahua migrations included speakers of Central varieties, not just Pipil. The latter in particular seem to have been the minority, at least in southern Guatemala. Second, although the available linguistic evidence is insufficient to determine the relative chronology of Nahuatl in Guatemala, it highlights the fact that from a sociolinguistic perspective, Central Nahuatl was a differentiated vernacular, not just a

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contact variety or a lingua franca. GCN was an established language variety that clearly differed from the Mexican varieties that the Spaniards’ Mexican allies introduced at the time of the Spanish conquest. More research is needed to establish what forms of Nahuatl can be associated with each wave of Nahua migrations to Guatemala. Much archival work remains to be done to map the precise geography of Central Nahuatl and Pipil in colonial Guatemala. Scores of documents are probably waiting to be found by historians. Nevertheless, it seems clear that Nahua peoples of Guatemala were more complex and linguistically diverse than we thought. Exciting new discoveries await future linguistic historians of Nahuatl in Central America. I thank the Alexander Von Humboldt Foundation for a research fellowship that allowed me to write this chapter. Notes 1. “Central Nahuatl” is a term dialectologists use to refer to varieties genetically related to those spoken in Mexico City, Morelos, Eastern Mexico State, Tlaxcala, Southern Puebla and the Sierra Norte de Puebla. The term is a proper name and does not refer to the actual geographic area where Central dialects may be found, which may be quite far from the Valley of Mexico. The same caveat applies to “Eastern Nahuatl.” 2. Although the target audience of doctrinas and artes was Spanish, native speakers were probably involved as collaborators. 3. The earliest sources mentioning the term “Pipil” include Bernal Díaz del Castillo, Francisco Marroquín, Diego García de Palacio and the “Relación Geográfica de San Bartolomé” (Ruud Van Akkeren, personal communication). 4. Mexicano refers to the diverse group of indigenous collaborators who came with the Spanish from Mexico, settling in Guatemala after the conquest. Although the majority were speakers of Central Nahuatl varieties, they included some Zapotec and Mixtec speakers. 5. Escritura de Santa María Ixhuatán (1615–1715), Archivo histórico de la municipalidad de Santa María Ixhuatán, Santa Rosa, Guatemala. 6. A1, Leg. 5925, Exp. 51597, and A1, Leg. 6074, Exp. 54898, Archivo General de Centro América, Ciudad de Guatemala, Guatemala (hereafter AGCA). 7. A3.16, Leg. 2897, Exp. 42989, AGCA. 8. A1.30, Leg. 4697, Exp. 40632, AGCA. 9. A3.16, Leg. 2897, Exp. 42987–8, AGCA. 10. A1, Leg. 6074, Exp. 54905, AGCA. 11. Sección de Tierras, Leg. 2, Exp. 8, AGCA. 12. A1, Leg. 6074, Exp. 54897, AGCA. 13. Tratado de la vida y muerte de Nuestro Señor Jesu Christo en lengua vulgar de Guatemala (Ciudad de Guatemala: Imprenta de las Animas, n.d.).

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14. “Arte de la lengua vulgar mexicana de Guatemala qual se habla en Ezcuintla y otros pueblos deste reyno,” Berendt-Brinton Linguistic Collection, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, University of Pennsylvania. 15. ABS = Absolutive; AN = Antecessive; CO = Completive; D = Deictic; HO = Hortative; O = Object; RE = Reflexive; s = Singular; S = Subject. 16. Tratado de la vida y muerte de Nuestro Señor Jesu Christo, folio 232v. 17. The antecessive prefix is found in most documents in GCN. For more details, see Matthew and Romero (2012). 18. “Arte de la lengua vulgar mexicana de Guatemala.” 19. Tratado de la vida y muerte de Nuestro Señor Jesu Christo; Romero (2014). 20. Tratado de la vida y muerte de Nuestro Señor Jesu Christo, folio 231r. 21. Tratado de la vida y muerte de Nuestro Señor Jesu Christo. 22. A contact variety is a linguistic variety used for communication between speakers of different languages. 23. Box 4, Folder 27, Christopher Day Collection, Latin American Library, Tulane University, New Orleans, LA. 24. Film 1337, Box 16, Reel 16, American Philosophical Society, Philadelphia. 25. A1.43 Leg 6074 Exp 54896, AGCA. 26. Hypercorrections are overgeneralizations. They suggest an imperfect knowledge of the target writing or speaking conventions. 27. Guatemala 156 folios 9v–10r, Archivo General de Indias, Seville; A3.16, Leg 2897, Exp 42986, AGCA. 28. A3.16 Leg 2897 Exp 42986, AGCA. 29. Tlatoque is the plural of tlatoani (speaker), the highest office in the altepetl (polity) and calpolli (lineage). 30. K’iche’an is the largest sub-branch of Eastern Mayan languages. It includes K’iche’, Kaqchikel, Tz’utijil, Sakapulteko, Sipakapense, Uspanteko, Poqom, and Q’eqchi’. 31. The Xinkan family is extinct but included at least three mutually unintelligible languages that Terrence Kaufman and Lyle Campbell documented in the 1960s (Kaufman 2001, personal communication). 32. Both of these works discuss Salvadoran varieties. 33. Pipil lacks the lateral consonant written as “tl” in the colonial orthography that sounded like children’s speech to Nahuatl speakers from central Mexico. 34. Tratado de la vida y muerte de Nuestro Señor Jesu Christo.

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Boas, Franz. 1917. “El dialecto Mexicano de Pochutla, Oaxaca.” International Journal of American Linguistics 1: 9–44. Borg, Paul. 1985. The polyphonic music in the Guatemalan music manuscripts of the Lilly Library. Indianapolis: Indiana University. Campbell, Lyle. 1971. “Nahua loan words in Quichean languages.” Chicago Linguistic Society 6: 3–13. ———. 1985. The Pipil language of El Salvador. Berlin: Mouton. Canger, Una. 1988. “Dialectology: A survey and some suggestions.” International Journal of American Linguistics 54(1): 28–72. ———. 2011. “El nauatl urbano de Tlatelolco/Tenochtitlan, resultado de convergencia entre dialectos, con un esbozo brevísimo de la historia de los dialectos.” Estudios de cultura náhuatl 42: 243–258. Carmack, Robert. 1973. Quichean civilization: The ethnohistoric, ethnographic, and archaeological sources. Berkeley: University of California Press. Dakin, Karen. 1981. “The characteristics of a Nahuatl lingua franca.” Texas Linguistics Forum 18: 55–68. Dakin, Karen, and Christopher Lutz. 1996. Nuestro pesar, nuestra aflicción. México, DF: UNAM-CIRMA. Edmonson, Munro. 1997. Quiché dramas and divinatory calendars. New Orleans: Tulane University. Flores-Farfán, Jose Antonio. 1999. Cuatreros somos y toindioma hablamos: Contactos y conflictos entre el náhuatl y el español en el sur de México. México, DF: CIESAS. ———. 2009. Variación, ideologías y purismo lingüístico: El caso del Mexicano o náhuatl. México, DF: CIESAS. Fowler, William. 1989. “The Pipil of Pacific Guatemala and El Salvador.” In New frontiers in the archaeology of the Pacific coast of southern Mesoamerica, edited by F. Bove and L. Heller, 229–242. Tempe: Arizona State University. Hansen, Magnus Pharao. 2014. “The East-West split in Nahuan dialectology: Reviewing the evidence and consolidating the grouping.” Paper presented at the Friends of UtoAztecan Workshop, Tepic, Nayarit, June 20. Hasler, Andrés. 1987. Hacia una tipología morfológica del náhuatl a partir del dialecto de Zacamilola. México, DF: CIESAS. ———. 2011. El Nahua de la Huasteca y el primer mestizaje: Treinta siglos de historia Nahua a la luz de la dialectología. México, DF: Centro de Investigaciones y Estudios Superiores en Antropología Social. Heath, Shirley Bryce. 1972. Telling tongues: Language policy in Mexico, colony to nation. New York: Teachers College Press. Herrera, Robinson. 2003. Natives, Europeans, and Africans in sixteenth-century Santiago de Guatemala. Austin: University of Texas Press. Hill, Jane, and Kenneth Hill. 1999a. Hablando Mexicano: la dinámica de una lengua sincrética en el centro de México. México, DF: Instituto Nacional Indigenista & CIESAS. ———. 1999b. “Honorific usage in Modern Nahuatl.” Language 54(1): 123–155. Kaufman, Terence. 2001. “The history of the Nawa language group from the earliest times to the sixteenth century: Some initial results.” Unpublished paper. https://www.albany .edu/pdlma/Nawa.pdf

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Sparks, Garry. 2014. “The use of Mayan scripture in the Americas’ first Christian theology.” Numen 61(4): 396–429. Van Akkeren, Ruud. 2000. The place of the Lord’s daughter. Rab’inal, its ethnohistory, its dance-drama. Leiden: Center for Non-Western Studies, University of Leiden. ———. 2005. “Conociendo a los pipiles de la Costa del Pacífico de Guatemala: un estudio etno-histórico de documentos indígenas y del archivo general de Centroamérica.” In XVIII Simposio de Investigaciones Arqueológicas en Guatemala 2004, edited by J. P. Laporte, B. Arroyo, and H. Mejía, 1000–1014. Ciudad de Guatemala: Museo Nacional de Arqueología y Etnología. Woodward, Ralph Lee. 1993. Rafael Carrera and the emergence of the Republic of Guatemala, 1821–1871. Athens: University of Georgia Press.

Contributors

B. Scott Aubry is lecturer in archaeology at The Ohio State University at Newark. Christopher S. Beekman is associate professor of anthropology at the University of Colorado Denver. Erik Boot (1962–2016) was an independent scholar based in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. Robert H. Cobean is an investigator of the Instituto Nacional de Antropologia e Historia, Mexico City, Mexico. William R. Fowler is associate professor of anthropology at Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee. Dan M. Healan is professor emeritus of anthropology with Tulane University, New Orleans, Louisiana. Christine Hernández is curator of special collections at The Latin American Library, Tulane University, New Orleans, Louisiana. Jane H. Hill (1939–2018) was professor emeritus of anthropology, University of Arizona, Tucson. Sergio Romero is associate professor of Spanish and Portuguese, University of Texas at Austin. Susan Schroeder is professor emerita of history, Tulane University, New Orleans, Louisiana. Andrew D. Turner is senior curator in archaeology, Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, Cambridge University, United Kingdom.

Index

Page numbers in italics refer to figures ( f ) and tables (t). Abra Coarse Brown censers, 297 Acamapichtli, 163, 310 Acoculco, 72–74 Acxitl Quetzalcoatl, 160 Acxoteca, 164–66 Acxotlan, 164, 167 Adams, R., 193 Agency, 111 Agriculture, 71, 112, 121, 127, 135–36, 286. See also Farming Agrinier, P., 297 Aj Itzá, 241, 257, 271 Ajposotz’il Kaji’ Imox, 337 Altachino, 211 Altar de Sacrificios, 182–85, 191, 196, 268 Alta Vista, Zacatecas, 14f Altepetl: in Central Mexico, 113, 160; Chalco, 163–64; Chichimeca and, 155; Cihuatán, 295; Coatepec, 159; defining, 150; ethnic identity in, 289; Mexica/Mexitin, 161–62; migrants and, 19, 155, 157; migration accounts of, 151–52 Alvarado, Pedro de, 337 Alvarado Tezozomoc, Hernando, 149, 151 Amacueca phase, 134 Amaquemecan, 163, 165–67, 169 Amaroli, P., 296, 298, 300, 303 Ana María Red on Brown ceramics, 102 Andrews, E. W., 297 Animal effigy vessels, 298 Anthony, D. W., 4, 81, 244 Anthropomorphic imagery, 131, 214, 218, 219f, 220 Apanecatl, 157 Architecture: Atemajac I phase, 121; ballcourt, 127; box tombs, 121, 130, 132; Chichén

Itzá, 265–66, 272; Chingú phase sites, 70; circular temple groups, 127; El Grillo phase, 121, 124, 125, 127, 133; enclosed patios, 133; international, 176; migrant impact on, 209; platforms in, 127; Puuc-style, 176, 194, 265; ritual, 168; shaft tombs, 130; Teotihuacan monumental, 69; Tepeji phase sites, 83n1; Tequila phase, 123–24, 125; Tula urban, 67. See also Public architecture Armillas, P., 112, 286, 308 Arnauld, M.-C., 8 Arte (Cortés y Zedeño), 114 Arvey, M., 297 Atemajac complex, 121 Atemajac Valleys (Jalisco), 115, 121, 122t, 124, 125, 127 Atempan, 162 Atl, 166 Atlatl, 160 Atlauhtlan Tenanco, 165 Atonaltzin, 166 Atotoztli, 163 Atzaqualco, 163 Atzimba ceramic complex, 94–95, 101 Aubry, B. S., 20–21, 226, 268 Ayala, Gabriel de, 150 Azcapotzalco, 161–62, 289 Aztatlán complex, 112, 121, 134, 136 Azteca, 157–58. See also Mexica/Mexitin Azteca Chicomoztoca, 154 Aztec II ceramics, 82 Aztec State, 288 Aztlan region, 151–53, 165, 168, 289 Bacalar (Bak’halal) area, 248 Bajío region: architecture of, 133; Cantinas Red-Orange ceramics, 95, 97; Coyotlatelco ceramics in, 90; integrated culture in, 98, 100; map of, 91f; Michoacán regions interactions,

350 · Index Bajío region—continued 93; migration from, 100–102, 133, 135–36; shared ceramics tradition in, 93–96, 98, 100, 103; transitional ceramics in, 78; Ucareo Valley interactions, 95, 101; Xajay ceramics in, 76, 80 Baker, B., 2 Bak’tun cycle (Long Count), 256 Ballcourt architecture, 127 Balsam Coast mountains, 305, 307 Banderas polychrome ceramics, 300 Barber, S., 197n1 Barrio de la Cruz, 102 Barth, F., 4, 6, 210, 288 Basin of Mexico: ceramics in, 90; Chupícuaro ceramics in, 92; Coyotlatelco ceramics in, 79, 102; ethnic affiliation in, 288–89; lime production in, 74; Metepec phase and, 15; Mexica conquest of, 19; migration to, 48; Nahua speakers in, 48, 52; Tula region, 66 Battle Mural (Cacaxtla), 212, 212f, 213–14, 216, 220–21, 222f, 223, 224f, 225–26, 229–230 Beekman, C., 7, 15, 18, 45, 47, 101, 176, 290 Beliaev, D., 261 Berlo, J. C., 49 Bernardini, W., 2 Beyer, B. F., 301 Biological anthropology, 9, 120 Boas, F., 20, 45 Bonampak, 214 Books of Chilam Balam, The, 22, 173, 245–47, 249, 255 Boone, E. H., 148–49, 156 Boot, E., 22 Bourdieu, P., 211 Box tombs, 121, 130, 132 Braniff Cornejo, B., 93 Brittenham, C., 207, 213, 216, 220 Brown, C. H., 58 Bruhns, K. O., 295–96, 300 Brumfiel, E. M., 288 Buccolingual (BL) dimensions, 180 Buenavista Orange ceramics, 96 Burmeister, S., 210 Cabrera, E., 298 Cacaxtla: acropolis, 211–12, 212f; collapse of, 309; Gulf Coast exchange and, 226; merchant colony in, 229–230; migration from eastern Mesoamerica to, 206, 228–29 Cacaxtla murals: anthropomorphic imagery in,

214, 218, 219f, 220; artist origins of, 21, 205; autochthonous development of, 206; Battle Mural, 212, 212f, 213–14, 216, 220–21, 222f, 223, 224f, 225–26, 229–230; Captive Stair, 212–13, 227; costumes/accoutrements in, 218, 219f, 220–21, 223, 224f, 225–26; emblemic style and, 211; emulation in, 207–8; glyphic symbols of, 226–28; iconographic traits in, 213, 227–28, 231n2; location of, 211; map of, 212f; Maya appearance of, 205, 208–9, 213, 228; Maya blue in, 214–15; Maya ethnic identity in, 206, 220–21, 222f, 223, 224f, 225–26, 230; Maya iconographic traits in, 208–9, 213–18, 220–21, 223, 225–26; migration evidence in, 205–7, 209–11, 228–230; painting styles of, 207–9, 213–14; radiocarbon dating of, 213; red-painted bands in, 214; Red Temple, 212, 212f, 213, 215, 229; social processes and, 207; Structure A murals, 212–15; supernatural beings in, 216–17, 217f, 218, 220; Temple of Venus murals, 211, 212f, 213, 215–16; Teotihuacan traits in, 213; zoomorphic beings in, 215 Cactus effigy vessels, 298 Cáhita language, 113–14, 119 Cáhitan migration, 134 Cajetes al negativo, 95 Calakmúl, 192, 194, 214, 265, 268 Campbell, L., 45, 51, 56, 57, 338 Campeche, 207 Campo Red on Brown ceramics, 95–97 Canger, U., 49, 292 Cantinas Red-Orange ceramics, 95, 97, 102 Captive Stair murals (Cacaxtla), 212–13, 227 Caracol Circular Stone (Chichén Itzá), 264–65 Carballo, D. M., 94 Casa Colorada (Chichén Itzá), 265 Castañeda de la Paz, M., 289 Castillo building (Chichén Itzá), 264–66, 272 Caxcanes, 113–14, 117–120, 133–34, 136 Ce Acatl Topiltzin Quetzalcoatl, 309 Cehpech complex, 176, 267 Cementoenamel junction (CEJ), 180 Cenote of Sacrifice (Chichén Itzá), 263–64 Central America: Coyotlatelco ceramics in, 90; Epiclassic period in, 74; languages in, 23; migrations to, 22–23; Nahua languages in, 23, 49, 290–93, 309, 327–29; Pipil migrations to, 285–86, 289–290, 293; Toltec dynasties in, 309; Zapotec diaspora, 73, 82 Central Mayan language, 54–55

Index · 351 Central Mexico: altepetl in, 113, 160; animal effigy vessels from, 298; Bajío region material culture and, 103; biological distance and, 192–96; Cacaxtla murals, 21, 205; ceramic exchange in, 94, 267; Chichimeca in, 162; Chupícuaro ceramics in, 92, 93f, 101; Coyotlatelco ceramics in, 96–97; Coyotlatelco settlement in, 103; ethnic affiliation in, 288; externalist influence of, 175; Feathered Serpent in, 272, 275; genetic variability in, 188t–190t, 192–93; geography of, 111–12; influence of Teotihuacan, 193–94; interactions with Maya area, 173–75, 177, 179–180, 193–96; internalist influence of, 175; Mahalanobis distance results, 188t–190t; map of, 91f; migration in, 102, 110, 133, 175, 196; Nahua languages in, 309; order of arrival in, 150; polity identities in, 113; priests in, 261; sociopolitical turmoil in, 309; Toltec dynasties in, 310–11; Toltec invasions, 309; trading networks in, 229; urban planning concepts in, 302; West Mexico and, 88; Zapotec diaspora, 72 Central Nahua language, 48, 54, 329, 330t, 331, 336, 341n1 Centzonhuitznahua, 159 Ceramics: Abra Coarse Brown censers, 297; Ana María Red on Brown, 102; animal effigy vessels, 298; anthropomorphic imagery in, 131; Atzimba, 94–95; Banderas Polychrome, 300; Buenavista Orange, 96; cactus effigy vessels, 298; cajetes al negativo, 95; Campo Red on Brown, 95–97; Cantinas Red-Orange, 95, 97, 102; Central America, 297–300; Chupícuaro, 92, 93f, 100–101; Coyotlatelco, 16–18, 74–75, 75f, 78–79, 82, 88–90, 96; Coyotlatelco Red-on-Brown, 97, 300; Coyotlatelco Red-on-Buff, 300; El Grillo phase, 131–32; Encarnación Red Zone, 96–97; exchange of, 94; García Red, 299, 308; Garita Brown-Black, 96; god-bearers, 131–32; Guadalupe Red on Brown Incised, 98, 103; Guazapa complex, 297–308; Jején Red Polychrome, 300, 302, 308; Las Lajas Coarse censers, 297–98; Late Formative, 100; Loma Linda Red on Brown, 94; Mixtlan, 93–94; Mora Polychrome, 300; Nicoya Polychrome, 301, 303–4, 311; octecomatl vessels, 298; Papagayo group, 301; phytoform vessels, 298; pseudo-cloisonné vessels, 14f, 131–32, 134, 136; Ramon, 94–95,

101–2; Ramon Red on Brown, 97, 101; redon-brown painted, 98, 99t, 100, 100t; Rojo Sobre Bayo El Mogote, 102; Rosalinda Red on Brown Incised, 95, 98; shared decorative elements in, 93–96, 98, 100; Tamoa Buff, 300; Tamoa Red-on-Buff, 300; Tamulasco plain, 299, 308; Teotihuacan, 71–72, 78, 90; Teotihuacanoide, 104n4; Tezoyuca, 93; Tirzo Polychrome Overlay, 104n2; Tohil Plumbate, 300–301, 303–4, 311; Toltec, 297–99; xantiles, 298; Zancudo White Polychrome, 299, 302, 308 Cerro Ahumada, 83n6 Cerro de Ulata, 305, 307 Cerro Magoni, 76, 77f, 78–79 Cerrón Grande Archaeological Project, 296 Chaak Tok Ich’aak, 175 Chac, 194 Chain migration, 4 Chalca Chichimeca, 165 Chalca migrations, 150, 163–68 Chalchiuhmomozco Mountain, 166 Chalchiuhtlatonac, 154 Chalchuapa, 298, 304 Chalco, 163–68 Chalco Atenco, 164–65 Chalmecas, 116, 153 Chalpicos, 116 Champoton, 260 Chance, J. K., 289 Chan Tuun Itzam, 266 Chapoltepec, 160, 167 Charnay, C. J. D., 266 Chiapas, Mexico, 297, 300 Chichén Itzá: architecture of, 265–66, 272; bioarchaeological analysis in, 267–68, 275; biological distance and, 195, 268; ceramic sequence of, 267, 272, 275; chronology of, 242; dates/events in, 273t–275t; dating methods, 264–65; epigraphy, 269–270; ethnohistory and, 241, 276n2; evidence of intrusions in, 175; founding of, 252, 264, 271, 310; four old gods in, 265–66, 272; genetic variability in, 184; hieroglyphics in, 263–64, 268; interactions with Tula, 176, 195, 266; international captions in, 270, 270f; Itzá Maya in, 254–55, 257, 261, 263–64, 266, 271; Itzá Maya objects in, 263–64, 271; K’uk’ulkan and, 260; linguistics in, 268–69; migrants from the west in, 260–61; migration in, 22, 173, 191; mosaics in, 265; New Chichén, 266, 272; non-Mayan

352 · Index Chichén Itzá—continued captions in, 269, 272; Old Chichén, 265–67, 272; place name of, 241, 271; settlements in, 248 Chichimeca, 152–57, 162, 164, 167, 289 Chichimeca Azteca, 157 Chichimecayaotequia, 166 Chicomoztoc, 151, 153, 157–58, 164–66, 168 Chicomoztoc Tzotzompa Quinehuayan, 155 Chiconauatengo River, 111 Chik Nahb, 214 Chilam Balam of Chumayel, 245, 247, 249–250, 252–53 Childe, V. G., 8 Chimalma, 157 Chimalpahin: on Aztlan, 151–52; on Chalco, 163–68; on Mexica/Mexitin, 152–58, 160, 162–63; migration accounts by, 19, 149–158, 160, 162–69; Tenanca people and, 164–65 Chimalquauhtli, 159 Chingú phase sites: abandonment of, 76; ceramics in, 75; Classic period settlements, 70f; migration in, 81; settlement hierarchy in, 69–70; Teotihuacan colonization and, 71–72, 81; Teotihuacan demise in, 75, 82; Zapotec ceramics in, 72 Cholan languages, 54 Cholula, 175–76, 226, 230, 310 Choromuco phase, 97 Christensen, A., 7, 9, 18, 45, 47, 101, 109, 132, 290 Chupícuaro, 95 Chupícuaro ceramics, 92, 93f, 100–102 Cihuatán: affinities with Toltecs, 297–99, 308, 310–11; altepetl of, 295; destruction of, 307; Guazapa ceramic complex in, 297–301, 303, 304t; material culture and, 293–94, 297, 305; Nahua deities in, 311–12; Nahuatspeaking Pipils in, 294–95; occupation period of, 301; settlements in, 296; similarities to Santa María, 293, 296; urban planning concepts in, 302–3; West Ceremonial Center at, 295f, 296 Cihuatecpaneca, 153 Clark, J. J., 7, 286–87, 290 Classical Nahuatl language, 45, 47–48, 55–56, 60, 333 Classic period: Central Mexican influence in, 175; decline of centers in, 15; defining, 24n1; genetic variability in, 183; influence of Cobá in, 195; Maya area and, 196;

migration narrative, 13; Nahua languages in, 52; Teotihuacan hegemony, 15, 17; Tula region, 69 Classic period Maya, 20, 261, 266 Coano, 113 Coatepec, 159 Cobá, 195 Cobean, R. H., 17, 74, 77–78, 96, 102, 132, 297, 300, 309, 311 Cobos, R., 298 Coca language, 114, 117, 120, 134 Codex Pérez, 247–48 Colhuacan, 150, 154, 157, 161–63 Colhuaque, 150, 155, 160 Colonialism, 115 Comayagua Valley (Honduras), 299 Community, 110–11 Community of practice, 7 Contzallan, 162 Copán, 174, 177, 183–85, 191, 193, 214, 225, 306–7, 310 Copil, 159, 163 Corachol language, 113–14, 119–120, 133 Cora language, 46–47, 113 Corral phase, 97, 102, 104n3, 297–98, 301–2 Cortés y Zedeño, J., 114 Cowgill, G. L., 49, 94, 207 Coxcoxtli, 160 Coyolxauhcihuatl, 159–160 Coyotlatelco ceramics: appearance of, 74–75, 82, 90, 132; characteristics of, 89–90; Corral phase, 97, 102, 104n3; Epiclassic period dating of, 16, 74–75, 75f, 88–90, 135; La Mesa phase sites, 78–79, 82, 102; local/nonlocal origin of, 90; migration and, 101, 132; origin of, 17–18, 96; Prado phase, 97–98, 102–3, 104n3; Red-on-Brown, 97, 300; Red-on-Buff, 300; Teotihuacan ceramics and, 90, 103; Toluca Valley, 103; transitional types of, 78 Coyotlatelco settlement, 101–3 Coyula, 124, 125 Cozumel, 194 Cranial modification, 220–21 Cronica de Oxkutzcab, 264 Crónica Miscelanea (Tello), 116 Cuauhcoatl, 157 Cuauhtinchan, 150 Cucina, A., 192–94 Cuepopan, 163 Cuitlahuaca, 157 Cuitlateteloco, 164

Index · 353 Cuitzeo Basin, 95, 101 Culhuacan, 310 Cultural diffusion, 209 Cupan languages, 53 Dakin, K., 49, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 58, 292, 335 Darras, V., 92, 101 Davletshin, A., 49 Dental studies, 178, 180–81, 193 Diguet, L., 118–19 Dos Pilas, 192, 268 Drought, 110–12, 118, 123, 286 Durán, Diego, 149, 152 Dzibilchaltún, 191, 194 Early Classic period, 214, 229 Early Postclassic period, 134, 136, 286 Eastern Nahua language, 48–51, 328–29, 330t, 331, 338 Ecatzinteuctli Tlaquitzcaliuhqui, 165 Ecological archaeology, 288 Ehecatl, 296 Ejar ceramic complex, 306–7 El Bajio. See Bajío region El Grillo ceramics complex, 121, 123, 130–32, 134 El Grillo phase: ceremonial centers in, 124, 125, 126f, 127, 128f–29f, 130, 132; establishment of lifeways in, 132–36; migration in, 132–36; public architecture in, 124, 125, 127, 128f–29f, 135; settlements in, 123–24, 124f, 134; visual culture in, 131–32, 136 El Perú, 175 El Salvador: cotton textile production in, 311; cultural pluralism in, 290; Epiclassic period, 286, 289; García Red ceramics in, 299; Guazapa ceramic complex in, 297–308; migration to, 289–290; Nahuat speakers in, 292–94, 304, 307, 328; Pipil centers in, 285–86, 289–290, 293, 310; Postclassic period, 285–86, 289; Tamulasco Plain ceramics in, 299; Toltec-related populations in, 306–7; Toltec trading networks, 286, 307 El Tajín, 215, 226, 269, 272 El Tesoro, 72–74, 81–82 El Teul, 117–18 Emblemic style, 211 Emery, K. F., 51 Encarnación Red Zone ceramics, 96–97 Epiclassic period: Cacaxtla murals, 205, 211, 213; Coyotlatelco ceramics in, 16, 74–76, 88–90, 135; disruptions of, 15, 17; drought in, 286;

El Salvador, 286, 289; inscriptions in, 205–6; Mezquital region, 132, 134–35; migration narrative, 16; Nahua expansion in, 43; Pipil migrations in, 43, 293–94; scribal traditions in, 227; Teotihuacan demise in, 74–75; Tula region phases, 77–78; Tula region settlement in, 76–77, 77f Epigraphic Mayan language, 54–55 Eriksen, T. H., 210 Escamilla, M. V., 305 Escuintla region (Guatemala), 175, 293, 339 Ethnic identity: acculturation and, 210; agentcentered approach to, 288; contextual variability in, 6; culture-historical archaeology and, 288; ethnic boundaries and, 210; identity politics and, 288–89; imposition of, 6–7; material culture and, 4–7, 210–11; Maya and, 220–21, 222f, 223, 224f, 230; situationalist, 6; style and, 210–11 Factionalism, 5 Farming, 4–5, 7–8, 110. See also Agriculture Farming Language Dispersal Hypothesis, 4 Far West Mexico: biological anthropology and, 120; defining, 88; linguistic history of, 112–15, 119; migration in, 88, 116–17; migration narratives, 116–120; Southern Uto-Aztecan (SUA) languages in, 113–15. See also Jalisco Feathered Serpent, 266, 272, 275. See also K’uk’ulkan (Feathered Serpent) Feathered Serpent pyramid (Teotihuacan), 69, 177 Fikes, J., 119 Fogón phase, 296 Foncerrada de Molina, M., 226, 228 Formative/Preclassic period, 24n1 Fowler, W. R., Jr., 23, 45, 49, 295, 303 Galván Villegas, J., 121, 130 Gamio, M., 13 García Red ceramics, 299, 308 Garita Brown-Black ceramics, 96 General Nahua language, 48, 50 Genetic distance studies, 178–185, 186t–187t, 191 Genetic drift, 178 Genetic heterozygosity, 179, 181 Glottochronology, 50 God-carriers (teomamaque), 157 Great Burning, 16 Great Plaza (Cacaxtla), 212, 212f Great Plaza (Chichén Itzá), 266, 272

354 · Index Grube, N., 194 Guadalupe Red on Brown Incised ceramics, 98, 103 Guanajuato, 18, 88, 93, 95 Guatemala: dialectal diversity in, 340; interactions with Central Mexico, 175; Kaqchikelspeakers, 335–38; Mayan languages in, 327; Mayan people of, 335; Mexicanos in, 335, 340; Nahuatl corpus, 330–31, 340; Nahuatl dialectology in, 331–341; Nahuat speakers in, 327–28; Pipils in, 293, 308, 310–11; Xinkan people of, 335, 338 Guatemalan Central Nahuatl (GCN), 332, 333t, 334–35, 340–41 Guazapa ceramic complex: animal effigy vessels in, 298; Cerro de Ulata, 305; Chalchuapa, 304; Ejar complex and, 306; García Red ceramics, 299; Jején Red Polychrome, 300; Lake Güija, 305; Las Lajas Coarse censers, 297–98; Las Marías, 305; Loma China, 306; stylistic dating of, 303, 304t; Tacuscalco, 304–5; Tamoa Buff, 300; Tamulasco Plain, 299; Tohil Plumbate, 300–301; Toltec affinities of, 297; Tula ceramic complex similarities and, 298, 300–302; Zancudo White Polychrome, 299–300 Guerrero, 115, 310 Habitus, 211 Hale, K. L., 50 Healan, D., 17, 92 Healy, P. F., 285 Helmke, C., 220, 223, 227, 231n2 Hernández, C., 17, 96, 104n2 Herr, S., 286 Hers, M. A., 131 Heyden, D., 148–49, 156 Hieroglyphic writing, 209, 226–27, 263–64, 268, 276n7 High Priest’s Grave (Chichén Itzá), 265–67 Hill, J., 17 Hillson, S., 180 Historia de los Xpantzay de Tecpan, 337, 337t Historical linguistics, 44–45, 50–53, 112–13 Hokan language, 23, 24n2 Holman, E. W., 50 Holt Mehta, H., 73, 81 Honduras, 293 Hrdlička, A., 119 Huastecan language, 55 Huehueteuctli, 165, 311

Hueltiuhtli (older sister), 157–59, 168 Huexotla, 162 Huichol language, 46–47, 113 Huitzilapa, 123 Huitzilhuitl, 160 Huitzilopochtli, 153, 156, 158–162, 169 Huitziltzin, 153–54 Huitznahuaca, 153 Huuntun-Cehpech phase, 267, 272 Identity politics, 287–89, 308 Indigenous populations: accommodation of migrants by, 135; claims to Toltec dynasties by, 311; migration accounts by, 19, 241–42, 244–254, 261 Indo-European languages, 4–5 International architecture, 176 Irrigation, 83n5 Isolation by distance model, 178–79 Isthmus of Rivas (Nicaragua), 300 Itzá, 241, 271 Itzaes/Itzaex, 241 Itzaj language, 269 Itzá Maya: arrival in Chichén Itzá, 254–55, 257, 261, 263–64, 266, 271; ethnohistoric sources of, 241–42, 244, 261, 266, 269–271; identity and, 242; Itzaj language and, 269; Kanek’ kings of, 261, 262f; Maya collapse and, 242; Maya lowlands and, 261; migration of, 261, 263–64, 270–71; oral histories and, 263; origins of, 272; rule of, 255–56 Itzá Maya migration narratives: causes of migration, 271; editing in, 244; indigenous sources of, 241–42, 244–254, 261; k’atun prophecies in, 256–57; sociopolitical context of, 243–44; Spanish sources of, 241–42, 244, 250–52, 254–55, 258–61; time frame for, 242; translation of, 245 Itzamna, 252, 266 Itzá Winikob, 241 Itzimte-Sacluk, 261, 271 Itztlacoçauhcan, 165, 167 Itztlacoçauhque, 165–66 Ixtépete, 124, 125f, 125 Izalcos region, 305 Izquiteca, 153 Iztacmixcoatzin, 157 Jalisco: Amacueca phase, 134; archaeological evidence in, 121, 123–24, 125f, 125, 127, 128f–29f, 130–33; El Grillo phase, 123–24,

Index · 355 124f; establishment of lifeways in, 132–36; linguistic history of, 110–15, 119; migration in, 119, 132–36; narrative accounts of, 116–17, 136; visual culture in, 131–32 Jején Red Polychrome ceramics, 300, 302, 308 Justeson, J. S., 49, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59 %Kakawa, 51–53, 60 Kaminaljuyú, 175, 177, 183–85, 191, 193, 196, 268 Kanek’, 261, 262f, 271 Kanu’l Ajaw, 263 Kanul’ dynasty, 265 Kaqchikel, 310, 335–38 K’atun chronicles, 245, 247–250, 253–57, 263–65, 275 Kaufman, T., 43, 46–47, 48, 49–50, 51, 52–53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 292 Kelley, J. H., 295 K’iche’an language, 338, 342n30 Kidder, A., 193 K’inich Kan Bahlam, 263 Kirchhoff, P., 88 Kitanemuk language, 59 Koj(?) K’inich Yo’nal Ahk, 263 Kossinna, G., 8 Kowoj Maya, 263 Krochock, R., 194 Kubler, G., 208 K’uhul Itza’ Ajaw (God-like Itza’ King), 261, 271 K’uk’ulkan (Feathered Serpent), 254, 257, 260–61, 266, 272, 275, 310 La Higuerita, 123–24, 130, 132, 135 La Iglesia (Chichén Itzá), 265 Lake Chalco, 164 Lake Cuitzeo Basin, 91–93 Lake Güija (El Salvador), 298, 305 Lake Petén, 256t, 261, 269, 271 La Loma, 83n1 La Mesa: Coyotlatelco ceramics in, 96–97; independent polities in, 102; migration in, 79, 81; origin of populations in, 81–82; settlements in, 76–77, 77f; transitional ceramics in, 78–79 La Mesa phase, 77–80 Landa, Diego de, 22, 241, 254–55, 257–58, 260, 271, 272 Langacker, R. W., 45 Las Delicias, 297 Las Higueras, Veracruz, 215 Las Lajas Coarse censers, 297–98

Las Marías, 305 Las Monjas (Chichén Itzá), 265 La Sufricaya, 175 Late Classic Maya, 268–69 Late Classic period: Cholula, 226; cranial modification in, 221; Itzá Maya migration narratives, 242; Maya art in, 205, 208, 213–14, 216, 218, 220–21, 222f, 223, 226–27, 231n3, 231n4; Maya religious beliefs, 206, 217–18, 231n3; migration in, 21; Perales phase, 101 Late Formative period, 100, 211 Late Perales, 95–97 Late Postclassic period, 121, 289, 293, 338 La Venta Corridor, 123, 127 La Ventilla barrio, 182, 194 Leap-frogging, 4 Levy, R. S., 292 Lexicostatistical dating methods, 50 Lime production, 73–74, 81 Lind, M., 72–73 Linguistic history. See Historical linguistics Linguistic paleontology, 50–53 Lizana, Bernardino de, 250, 252, 257, 276n7 Llano Grande, 123 Loanwords: characteristics of, 53–55; Maya inscriptions, 17; Nahua languages, 44, 47, 53–60; Nahuat/Nahuatl, 17, 55–56, 58, 338; Proto-Nahua (PNa) and, 49, 51, 56, 58 Loma Alta I complex, 93–94, 101 Loma China, 306–7 Loma Linda Red on Brown ceramics, 94 López Aguilar, F., 71 López de Cogolludo, Diego, 251–52, 257 Los Altos, 134 Los Guachimontones, 123–24 Luckenbach, A. H., 292 Lumholtz, C., 119 Lutz, C., 335 Macri, M., 52 Magdalena Lake Basin, 123 Mahalanobis distance statistic, 178, 183–85, 186t–190t Majakuagy, 118–19 Malinalca, 157–58 Malinalco, 159 Malinalxoch, 157–59 Mallory, J. P., 9 Manahan, T. K., 306 Manahualtzin, 162 Manning, R. D., 110

356 · Index Martínez Landa, B. E., 78, 97 Martínez Vargas, A. M., 298 Mass migration, 209, 295, 312 Mastache, A. G., 77–78, 96, 102, 132, 309, 311 Mat and throne metaphor, 265 Material culture: acculturation model of, 209; ancient ethnicity and, 210; discursive style and, 6; ethnolinguistic groups and, 4, 110; farming populations and, 4; foreign styles in, 207; functional aspects of, 209–10; group identity and, 210; identity and, 4–7; migration and, 5–8, 242; style and, 210–11 Matlatzinca, 157 Matthew, L., 335 Matűni, H., 119 Maya: bioarchaeological analysis and, 176–183, 190–93, 195–96; biological distance and, 191–93, 195–96, 268; burials, 182; Classic period, 20, 183, 261, 266; costumes/accoutrements of, 220; ethnic identity in, 206, 230; genetic variability in, 178, 181, 181t, 182–84, 184t, 185, 186t–190t, 191–96; hieroglyphics and, 276n7; interactions with Central Mexico, 173–75, 177, 179–180, 193–96; interactions with Cholula, 176; interactions with Teotihuacan, 193; Kanek’ kings of, 262f; Late Classic, 268–69; Mahalanobis distance results, 183–85, 185f, 186t–190t; migration and, 21, 177, 190–91, 196; population-level studies of, 177, 191; religious beliefs, 206; R-matrix analysis and, 183, 184t, 191; spoken vernaculars of, 209. See also Maya collapse; Yucatec Maya Maya art: Classic period, 215; costumes/accoutrements in, 218, 219f, 220–21, 223, 224f, 225–26; ethnic identity in, 206, 220–21, 222f, 223, 224f, 225–26; glyphic symbols of, 226–27; iconographic traits in, 208–9, 213–18, 220–21, 223, 225; Late Classic, 205–6, 208, 213–14, 220–21, 223, 226–27, 231n3; Maya blue in, 214–15; monumental, 205–6, 208, 231n4; red-painted bands in, 214; supernatural beings in, 216 Maya blue, 214–15 Maya collapse: depopulation and, 243; drought and, 22; environmental disruption and, 243; Itzá Maya migration and, 255, 271; migration and, 243; reorganization after, 15; social disruption and, 243; sociopolitical/ religious breakdown and, 242–43; theories for, 243–44; time frame for, 174, 242; trading networks and, 229

Maya highlands, 20–22, 338–39 Maya inscriptions, 17 Maya lowlands: Cacaxtla murals and, 209, 211, 213–15, 217–18, 225, 228; collapse of, 242–43; decline of cities in, 22; depopulation and, 243; diversity in, 208; genetic variability in, 194; glyphic symbols of, 228; interactions in, 21–22, 191; Itzá Maya in, 254, 261; migration from, 22, 218, 228–29, 243; monumental art in, 206, 208; Teotihuacan’s entrada into, 13, 20–22; Teotihuacan traits in, 213; trading networks in, 229 Mayan languages: bilingualism and, 339; Christianization and, 337; classifiers in, 47; in Guatemala, 327, 335; highlands, 339–340; K’iche’an, 338, 342n30; loanwords and, 45, 54–55; Nahua languages and, 48–49, 55, 340 Mayapan, 256, 256t, 260 McCafferty, G., 7 McCullough, J., 74 Mendoza, Antonio de, 169 Mesiodistal (MD) dimensions, 180 Mesoamerica: bioarchaeological analysis in, 176–77; chronological periods in, 12t; drought in, 110, 286; ethnic identity in, 4, 288; ethnohistoric sources of, 244; map of, 11f, 174f; mat and throne metaphor, 265; migration in, 1–2, 11, 13, 66, 176; Northern, 15–20; obsidian sources, 90–92; Papagayo ceramic group in, 301; Pipil arrival in, 293; population decline in, 136; Quetzalcoatl cult in, 208; Southern, 20–23; Tohil Plumbate ceramics in, 301; Toltec transformations of, 309; toma de posesión in, 254; trading networks, 309, 311; West Mexico in, 88 Mesoamerican linguistic area: lexicostatistical dating methods, 50; linguistic paleontology in, 50–52; loanwords in, 44, 47, 53–59; Nahua-Corachol in, 47; Nahua languages in, 17, 43–44, 47–60, 292, 309, 328–330; ProtoNahua (PNa) and, 44–46; sound-symbolic words in, 58 Metepec phase, 15–16, 69, 74–76, 103 Mexica/Mexitin: altepetl of, 161–62; Azteca name change to, 158; in Chapoltepec, 160–61, 167; in Coatepec, 159–160; deities and, 154–55; departure from Aztlan, 154; departure from Chicomoztoc, 155–56; huey tlatoani (Great Speaker) of, 254; migration accounts of, 19, 149–150, 152–161; prophesies for, 156–57; Tenochtitlan migration, 13, 148, 161; in Tollan, 160; in Tzompanco, 160

Index · 357 Mexican Central Nahuatl (MCN), 332, 333t, 334–36, 338, 340–41 Mexicanos, 116–17, 119, 335, 340, 341n4 Mexica Tenochca. See Mexica/Mexitin Mexica Tlatelolca, 161 Mexico, 11, 12t, 13, 16, 328. See also Central Mexico; Far West Mexico Mexico Tenochtitlan: founding of, 148; huey tlatoque of, 154; Mexica arrival at, 13, 148, 161–63; Nahuatl annals of, 149; ruler (tlatoani) of, 163 Mexitin. See Mexica/Mexitin Mexitin Chichimeca, 158–160 Mezquital Valley (Hidalgo), 110, 132, 134–35 Michhuacan, 158 Michhuaque, 158 Michoacán, 90–91, 93, 98, 115, 117, 157 Mictlantecuhtli, 305, 311 Middle Classic period, 101 Migrant communities: accommodation of, 135; agency and, 111; cultural reproduction of, 110–11, 127; establishment of lifeways in, 132–36; integration of, 119–120; public architecture and, 127, 132; public/private sphere and, 210; social identity and, 133; social institutions and, 111; suppression of language, 115 Migration: act of, 150; causes of, 5, 9, 19–20; Central Mexican enclaves and, 175; characteristics of, 2–3; climate change and, 1, 5, 24; contextual variability in, 3; as cultural diffusion, 209; cultural evidence for, 80–81; defining, 241, 286; divinely directed, 132; drought and, 110, 118, 123, 286; empiricist approaches to, 7–8; factionalism and, 5; genetic distance studies for, 178–180; genetic heterozygosity and, 179, 181, 181t; identity and, 6–7; interethnic conflicts and, 289; linguistic evidence and, 9, 16; mass, 209, 295, 312; material culture and, 5–8; by Nahua speakers, 48, 51–52, 60, 118–19, 133, 287, 312, 329; oral histories and, 117–19, 241; patterns and processes of, 4; practice theory interpretation of, 287; short-distance, 81; social change and, 8–9, 244; social consequences of, 109; social processes and, 209; style and, 6 Migration accounts: codification of, 169; deities and, 169; earned exceptionalism in, 161; Itzá Maya, 241–42; native sources of, 9–10, 116–120, 148–169; transcription of, 149; treated as myth, 148

Miramar, 297 Misco Viejo, 211 Mixean languages, 51, 58 Mixe-Zoquean languages, 51–53, 55–57, 60 Mixteca-Puebla iconography, 121 Mixtlan phase ceramics, 93–94, 101 Miyahuatotocihuatzin, 162 Mizquic, 164 Monarquia Indiana (Torquemada), 116 Monjas-La Iglesia complex (Chichén Itzá), 272 Monumental art: Cacaxtla murals and, 205–6, 208; Late Classic Maya, 205–6, 208, 213–14, 216, 231n4; Maya ethnic identity in, 206 Morales complex, 93, 101 Mora Polychrome ceramics, 300 Mosaics, 265 Moteuczoma, 153–54 Moteuczoma Ilhuicamina Chalchiuhtlatonac, 154 Mount Amaqueme, 165–66 Moyotlan, 163 Mural painting, 208. See also Cacaxtla murals Myth, 148 Naco (Honduras), 299 Nagao, D., 21, 207, 213 Naguatlatos, 114 Nahua deities, 311–12 Nahua languages: ants in, 58; chocolate/cacao domain, 51–55, 60; Classic period, 52; dating methods, 50; diversification of, 47–48; domestic turkey in, 51, 56–57; introduction of, 19; koiné, 48, 60; linguistic history of, 44–60; loanwords and, 44, 47, 53–60; postpositional markers in, 47; Proto-Nahua (PNa) and, 44–51, 56–58; sound-symbolic words in, 58; Spanish friars and, 115; word order in, 46 Nahua speakers: in Central America, 23, 49; in El Teul, 118; in Far West Mexico, 114–15; gender and, 169; in Guatemala, 327; in Guerrero, 115; huey tlatoani (Great Speaker) of, 254; in Mesoamerica, 43–44, 48, 113, 309; in Michoacán, 115; migration of, 48, 51–52, 60, 118–19, 133, 287, 312, 329; in Teotihuacan, 49, 52; Totonacan contact and, 48; in Tula, 17, 43. See also Pipils Nahuatl annals: altepetl origins in, 150; on Azteca, 158; on Chalco, 163–68; on Chichimeca Azteca, 157; Hueltiuhtli (older sister) in, 157–58; on Mexica (Mexitin), 152–163; migration accounts in, 19, 149–169; migrationspecific vocabulary in, 152

358 · Index Nahuat/Nahuatl language: branches of, 328–29; chronology of, 329; Classical, 45, 47–48, 55–56, 60, 333; dialectal diversity in, 327–29, 329f, 331–33, 333t, 334–39, 341; in Guatemala, 23, 327–28, 330–341; Guatemalan corpus, 330–31; indios conquistadores and, 330–31; introduction of, 115; isoglosses in, 328, 330t; linguists on, 61n2; loanwords and, 17, 55–56, 58, 338; in Mesoamerica, 328–330; Mexica and, 19, 329; Mexicano sources, 335; in Mexico, 328; Pipils and, 291–92, 310, 329; placenames and, 338; pre-Hispanic authors of, 330, 336; Spanish sources of, 331, 333–34; Toltecs and, 292; at Tula, 17, 23. See also Nahua languages Nalda, E., 102, 104n4 Nativitas, 211 Nauhyoteuchtli Xipil, 164 Navajas, 125 Nayarí, 118–19 Nayarí language, 113 Nayarita, 113–14, 116, 118 Near West Mexico, 88, 90, 91f, 94 New Chichén, 266, 272 New Spain, 155 Nichols, D. L., 74 Nicoya Polychrome ceramics, 301, 303–4, 311 Nielsen, J., 220, 223, 227, 231n2 Noj Petén, 256, 261 Northern Mesoamerica, 15–20 Northern Uto-Aztecan languages, 53 Oaxaca, 20, 72–74, 221, 268 Obsidian sources, 90–92 Occlusal wear, 180 Oconahua, 124, 125 Octecomatl vessels, 298 Old Chichén, 265–67, 272 Older sisters. See Hueltiuhtli (older sister) Old Fire God, 123, 131 Olmeca Xicalanca, 21, 166, 206–7, 230 Opaintzin, 162 Opochhuacan Tlacochcalco, 167 Opochtli Iztahuatzin, 163 Oral narratives, 117–19, 241 Ortega, J., 119 Otomanguean languages, 57, 60, 133 Otomí, 114, 288–89 Pacheco, J., 298 Palenque, 183–84, 192

Paloma Black-and-Red-on-White Polychrome ceramics, 301 Panohuayan people, 166 Pantecatl, Francisco, 116 Pantecatl narrative, 116, 119–120, 134, 136 Papagayo ceramic group, 301 Paraíso Basin, 293, 295–96, 304 Parra, Francisco de la, 337 Pasión sites, 192 Pauketat, T. R., 287, 290, 308 Perales complex, 95 Petén sites, 268 Petexbatún, 192 Phytoform vessels, 298 Piedras Negras, 192, 268 Pipil migrations: archaeological evidence in, 293; Balsam Coast mountains, 305; colonization model of, 286; defensive settlements, 305, 307; Epiclassic period, 43, 293–94; ethnohistoric sources of, 292–93; evidence of, 285–86; identity politics and, 287–88, 308; independent expansion model of, 287; Izalcos region, 305; linguistic evidence and, 291–93; multistage, 287, 289, 308; Nahuat speakers in, 292, 310, 329; reasons for, 286 Pipil Nahuatl, 332, 336, 338–341 Pipils: armed hostilities and, 307; ceramic affinities, 297–301; Chalchuapa center, 304; Guazapa ceramic complex, 297–308; meaning of, 290–91; migrations to Central America, 289–290, 293; Nahua deities, 311–12; polychrome ceramic decoration by, 302; social identity and, 302; Tacuscalco center, 304–5; Toltec dynasties in, 311; Toltec traits of, 297–99, 302–3, 308, 310; trading networks, 311; urban planning concepts of, 302. See also Nahua speakers Playa del Carmen/San Gervasio, 191, 194, 268 Pochutec language, 45, 48, 50, 328 Pohl, J. M. D., 20, 309 Popocatepetl, 163 Portes, A., 110 Postclassic period: Central Mexican influence in, 175; Cholula, 230; defining, 24n1; El Salvador, 285–86, 289; Itzá Maya migration narratives, 242; migration narrative, 13, 15, 18; palace forms, 125; Pipil migrations in, 294; Tula in, 15 Prado phase, 97–98, 102–3, 104n3 Pre-Hispanic settlement, 66, 68–69, 92 Private sphere, 210 Proto-Corachol language, 47

Index · 359 Proto-Mayan language, 54 Proto-Mixe-Zoquean (PMZ), 51–53, 56–58 Proto-Nahua (PNa): dating methods, 50; diversification of, 48; domestic turkey in, 51, 57; etymology, 52–53; linguistic paleontology in, 50–51; loanwords and, 47, 49, 51, 56, 58; Mesoamerican linguistic area and, 44, 46; Nahua languages and, 44–50; relation to Proto-Corachol, 47; speakers of, 44–46 Proto-Uto-Aztecan (PUA), 44–46, 61n3 Pseudo-cloisonné vessels, 14f, 131–32, 134, 136 Public architecture: burials of wealthy in, 130; chamber tombs, 123; circular temple groups, 127; El Grillo phase, 121, 124, 125, 127, 128f– 29f, 135; migrants and, 127, 132; platforms in, 127, 128f–29f, 132–33; U-shaped structures, 124, 127, 133 Public sphere, 210 Puebla, 292, 310 Purhépecha language, 113, 115 Putún Maya, 194 Puuc-style architecture, 176, 194, 265 Quelepa (El Salvador), 299 Querétaro, 88, 95, 101–2 Quetzalcoatl, 208, 260, 309 Quetzalmoyahuatzin, 162 Quirarte, J., 208 Ramon ceramic complex, 94–95, 102 Ramon Red on Brown ceramics, 97, 101 Rattray, E. C., 74 Red Temple mural (Cacaxtla), 212, 212f, 213, 215, 217, 217f, 229 Rees, C., 79 Relaciones Geograficas (Beekman), 15 Rensch, C. R., 57 Río Acelhuate, 295 Río Azul, 214 Río Ceniza, 304 Río Grande de Santiago, 111, 117 Río Lerma-Santiago, 111, 117, 136 Río Pasión, 220, 225 Río Paz, 308 Río Usumacinta, 220, 225 R-matrix analysis, 179, 183, 184t, 191 Robb, J., 7 Robertson, D., 207–8, 214 Rogart, D., 194 Rojo Inciso Postcocción Xajay, 98 Rojo Sobre Bayo El Mogote ceramics, 102 Rosalila structure, 214

Rosalinda Red on Brown Incised ceramics, 95, 98 Rouse, I., 80 Sabloff, J. A., 243 Sahagún, Bernardino de, 21, 149, 261 Salvadoran Pipil Nahuat (SPN), 292 San Cristobal de la Barranca, 117 Sanders, W. T., 73, 94, 104n1, 193 San Gervasio, 191, 194, 268 San Juan del Río, 102 San Juan Ixcoy, 335 San Miguel Rojo Esgrafiado, 98 San Pablo Teopan, 162 Santa Cruz de Bárcenas, 124 Santa Eulalia, 335 Santa María: affinities with Toltecs, 297; Guazapa ceramic complex in, 297–98, 303, 304t; material culture and, 293–94, 296–97; Nahuat-speaking Pipils in, 294–95; settlements in, 296; similarities to Cihuatán, 293, 296 Santana Sandoval, A., 215 Santiago de Guatemala, 335–36, 338, 340 Santoscoy, A., 112–14 Sayula Basin, 120, 136 Scherer, A., 192, 197 Schmidt, P., 267 Schroeder, S., 19 Schultze-Jena, L., 338 Settlement archaeology, 288 Shaft tombs, 130 Siyaj K’ak’, 175, 177 Smith, C. A., 8 Smith, M., 73 Smith, M. E., 149, 289 Smyth, M., 194 Social change, 8–9, 244 Soconusco region, 297, 300 Sol, A. E., 295 Solar Valverde, L., 74 Sotuta complex, 176, 267, 272 Southern Mesoamerica, 20–23 Southern Uto-Aztecan (SUA) languages, 53, 56–59, 61n1, 113–15 Spanish conquest: Guatemalan Nahua speakers and, 327–28, 330–31, 339–340; linguistic history and, 112, 114; Mexican Central Nahuatl (MCN) and, 336–37, 340; Nahua migration during, 119; Nahuatl annals of, 149; Nahuatl place-names and, 338; population loss and, 244

360 · Index Speller, C. F., 50 Spence, M., 72, 177 Stahle, D. W., 286 Stark, B. J., 289 Stein, G. J., 207, 209 Stone, T., 6 Structure A murals (Cacaxtla), 213–15 Stuart, D., 174–75 Stubbs, B. D., 59 Style, 6, 210–11 Suárez, J. A., 57 Sub-Castillo (Chichén Itzá), 263, 265 Tabachines, 121, 123, 130, 132 Tabasco, 176, 207, 228, 292, 310 Tacachico, 305 Tacuscalco, 304–5 Takic languages, 58–59 Tamoa Buff ceramics, 300 Tamoa Red-on-Buff ceramics, 300 Tamulasco Plain ceramics, 299, 308 Tarascan troops, 115 Taube, K. A., 49, 216 Tayasal-Paxcaman area, 244 Tazumal mound group, 304 Tecoxquines, 113–14 Tecual/Tecualme/Tecualteco communities, 113–14 Tecuexes, 114, 119, 134 Teeth. See Dental studies Tehuacan Valley, 310 Tello, A, 116–120, 136 Temazcaltitlan, 162 Tempisque Valle (Costa Rica), 300 Temple of the Four Lintels (Chichén Itzá), 265 Temple of the Three Lintels (Chichén Itzá), 265 Temple of Venus murals (Cacaxtla), 211, 212f, 213, 215–16 Tenanca, 164–65 Tenanco, 163 Tenanco Tepopola Texocpalco, 165 Tenochta, 163 Tenochtitlan, 13, 148, 162. See also Mexico Tenochtitlan Tenochtzin, 161 Teocaltiche, 119 Teocolhuacan, 157 Teohuacan Tlailotlacan, 167 Teohuateuctli, 167 Teomamaque (god-carriers), 157 Teopan, 163

Teotenango, 206 Teotihuacan: biological distance and, 192–93; chronological table for, 68t, 89f; decline of, 175; demise of, 15–16, 74–75, 82, 83n4; genetic variability in, 185; growth in, 176; hegemony of, 15, 17; impact in Southern Mesoamerica, 20; interactions with Central Mexico, 193–94; irrigation systems in, 83n5; map of, 67f; Nahua languages in, 49, 52; Sun and Moon pyramids, 83n2; Tlailotlacan (Oaxaca barrio), 72–73; Tula region colonization, 69–73, 81; Zapotec enclaves in, 72–73 Teotihuacan ceramics, 71–72, 78, 90, 103, 104n4 Teotihuacanoide ceramics, 104n4 Teotihuacan Valley, 76, 79, 93, 102 Tepanceca, 157 Tepanecs, 289 Tepecanos, 114 Tepehuan language, 114 Tepeji phase, 69, 83n1 Tepetlixpan Chimalhuacan, 165 Tepiman language, 113–14 Tequanipan people, 166 Tequila complex, 135 Tequila II–IV phases, 121, 123, 130–31 Tequila Valleys (Jalisco): ceremonial centers in, 125, 127; chronological table for, 122t; demographic shifts in, 110; El Grillo phase centers, 124, 125, 127; geography of, 111–12, 121; linguistic history of, 133; migration in, 119, 135–36; platforms in, 127; Southern Uto-Aztecan (SUA) languages in, 115 Terminal Classic, 22, 194, 242 Testard, J., 21 Tetzahuitl Huitzilopochtli, 157 Tetzauhteotl Yaotequihua, 153–54 Tetzcoco, 150 Teuchitlán culture, 121, 123, 127, 133–36 Texcaltepeca, 159 Texcaltepetl, 159 Texcocan troops, 115 Tezcacoacatl, 157 Tezcatlipoca, 157, 167–68, 309 Tezoyuca complex, 93–94, 101, 104n1 Tezozomoctli, 161 Thornton, E. K., 51 Tiesler, V., 192–93 Tikal: biological distance and, 268; conquering of Uaxactún, 194; Early Classic, 183,

Index · 361 191; evidence of intrusions in, 175; genetic variability in, 183, 191; Late Classic, 183; strontium studies in, 177; Teotihuacan entrada, 14f, 20 Tilley, V. Q., 291 Tira de Tepechpan, 150 Tirzo Polychrome Overlay ceramics, 104n2 Tizatepec, 164 Tizimin chronicle, 247 Tlacatecpaneca, 153 Tlacochcalca, 153, 167 Tlacochcalco, 116, 153, 167 Tlahuizcalpotonqui teuctli, 160 Tlailotlacan (Oaxaca barrio), 72–73 Tlalhuicpaneca, 162 Tlalmanalca, 167 Tlalmanalco, 167 Tlaloc, 216, 223, 302, 311 Tlaloc effigies, 298 Tlamimilolpa phase, 69, 82, 95, 103 Tlaquilxochtzin, 160 Tlatelolca, 161 Tlaxcala, 205, 298 Tlaxcaltecan troops, 115 Tliltecatzin, 166 Tochinteuctli, 162 Tochos, 113 Tohil Plumbate ceramics, 300–301, 303–4, 311 Tollan, 160, 164, 166–68. See also Tula Tollan phase, 297–98, 300–301, 303 Tollan Xococotitlan, 309 Tolteca, 155, 160 Toltec ceramics, 297–99 Toltecs: affinities with Pipils, 297–99, 308; dynastic links, 310–11; Eastern Nahua language and, 49; migration of, 287, 308–10; state collapse and, 286, 309; trading networks, 286, 306–7, 311; urban planning concepts, 302 Toluca Valley, 103 Toma de posesión, 254 Toniná, 215 Topiltzin Acxitl Quetzalcoatl, 159–160, 164, 310 Torquemada, Juan de, 116, 149 Totolin, 166 Totoltecatl Tzompachtli, 164 Totonacan language, 46, 48–49, 55 Totorame language, 113 Totozoquean language, 60 Tozzer, A. M., 74 Trade networks, 112, 194, 286, 307, 309, 311 Tsuda, T., 2

Tula: Abra Coarse Brown censers, 297; chronological table for, 68t; Corral phase, 97, 102, 297–98, 301–2; growth in, 175; interactions with Chichén Itzá, 176, 195, 266; migration and, 18; mythico-historical connection to, 311; Nahua deities, 312; Nahua languages in, 17, 43; non-Mayan captions in, 269, 272; as political center, 15–16; Prado phase, 97; settlements in, 67, 296; Tollan phase, 297–98, 300–301, 303, 311; trading networks in, 311 Tula Chico, 76–79, 82, 96–97, 102, 286, 302–3, 309 Tula Grande, 82, 286, 302–3 Tula region: characteristics of, 66–67; Chingú phase sites, 69–70, 70f, 71–72; chronological table for, 68t, 89f; Classic period occupation of, 69; Coyotlatelco ceramics in, 96–97, 101–2; Coyotlatelco intrusion in, 74–80, 103; Epiclassic period settlement in, 75–76; La Mesa phase, 77–80; lime production in, 73–74, 81; map of, 67f, 77f; migration in, 79–82, 101–2, 308; Oaxaca connection in, 72–74; pre-Hispanic settlement in, 66, 68–69; Teotihuacan ceramics in, 72–73; Teotihuacan colonization, 69–73; Zapotec ceramics in, 72–73 Turner, A., 21 Turner, B. L., II, 243 Tutul Xiu, 255 Tzacualli phase, 94, 103 Tzaqualtitlan Tenanco, 165–66 Tziuhtecatl, 166 Tziuhtlacauhqui Yaopol, 166 Tzompahuacan Tequanipan, 166 Tzompanco, 160 Uaxactún, 175, 194, 214, 268 Ucareo obsidian source, 91–92 Ucareo Valley, 94–95, 101 Ucareo-Zinapécuaro Michoacán obsidian source area, 89f, 90–92, 94–95, 103 University of Missouri Tollan project, 301 Urcid, J., 20 Uruñuela, G., 176 Uto-Aztecan languages, 44, 46–47, 50, 52–54, 57, 59, 328 U-Z source area. See Ucareo-Zinapécuaro Michoacán obsidian source area Valdivieso, F., 304 Valladolid Lawsuit, 248

362 · Index Valley of Mexico, 175–76, 192, 334 van Reenen, F., 180 Veracruz, 176, 207, 221, 228, 268, 292, 310 Visita General (Santoscoy), 112, 114 Volta, B., 176 Von Winning, H., 13, 131 Voorhies, B., 297

Xiuhpetlatlan, 167 Xochicalco, 125, 206, 208, 309 Xochimilca, 157, 161 Xochitécatl, 211, 226 Xolalpan phase ceramics, 16, 69, 75, 98, 103 Xultun, 214–15 Xumatcam, 114, 118

Wak Habnal, 276n2 Walling, S. L., 207, 213 Water Trough Lintel (Chichén Itzá), 264 Weigand, P. C., 118 Western Mono language, 54 Western Nahua language, 48, 50, 328 West Mexico, 21, 88 White, D., 197n1 Whittaker, G., 49 Wichmann, S., 49, 51, 52, 54, 55, 56, 58, 60 Wiessner, P., 210–11 Willey, G. R., 80 Wixáritari, 113–14, 118–120 Wobst, H. M., 211 Wright, L., 178 Writing systems, 209, 226–28. See also Hieroglyphic writing Wuk Yabnal, 276n2

Yaxchilan, 225 Yax K’uk’ Mo’, 177 Yaxuná, 191, 194–95, 268 Yopica, 153 Ytza, 241 Yucatan, 241–42, 244, 256t, 263–65, 310 Yucatec Maya: accounts of descents, 251, 257, 271; chronology of events, 256t; Itzá Maya migration narratives, 241–42, 244–45, 251, 253–55; Itzamna and, 252; k’atun prophecies in, 256–57; linguistic history of, 269 Yukno’m, 265

Xajay ceramics, 76, 79–80 Xaltelolco (Tlatelolco), 161 Xaltocan, 288–89 Xantiles, 298 Xcambo, 183–85, 191, 193, 268 Xinkan language, 335, 338, 342n31 Xipe Totec, 305, 311

Zacapu Basin, 93 Zacatecas, 114, 136 Zamná, 252, 257, 261, 272, 275 Zancudo White Polychrome ceramics, 299, 302, 308 Zapotec ceramics, 72–73 Zapotec diaspora, 72–73, 82 Zapotec enclaves, 72–73 Zapotec-style tombs, 72 Zender, M., 223 Zinapécuaro obsidian source, 91–92 Zoquean languages, 51 Zultepec, 298

Maya Studies Edited by Diane Z. Chase and Arlen F. Chase Salt: White Gold of the Ancient Maya, by Heather McKillop (2002) Archaeology and Ethnohistory of Iximché, by C. Roger Nance, Stephen L. Whittington, and Barbara E. Borg (2003) The Ancient Maya of the Belize Valley: Half a Century of Archaeological Research, edited by James F. Garber (2003; first paperback edition, 2011) Unconquered Lacandon Maya: Ethnohistory and Archaeology of the Indigenous Culture Change, by Joel W. Palka (2005) Chocolate in Mesoamerica: A Cultural History of Cacao, edited by Cameron L. McNeil (2006; first paperback printing, 2009) Maya Christians and Their Churches in Sixteenth-Century Belize, by Elizabeth Graham (2011) Chan: An Ancient Maya Farming Community, edited by Cynthia Robin (2012; first paperback edition, 2013) Motul de San José: Politics, History, and Economy in a Maya Polity, edited by Antonia E. Foias and Kitty F. Emery (2012; first paperback edition, 2015) Ancient Maya Pottery: Classification, Analysis, and Interpretation, edited by James John Aimers (2013; first paperback edition, 2014) Ancient Maya Political Dynamics, by Antonia E. Foias (2013; first paperback edition, 2014) Ritual, Violence, and the Fall of the Classic Maya Kings, edited by Gyles Iannone, Brett A. Houk, and Sonja A. Schwake (2016; first paperback edition, 2018) Perspectives on the Ancient Maya of Chetumal Bay, edited by Debra S. Walker (2016) Maya E Groups: Calendars, Astronomy, and Urbanism in the Early Lowlands, edited by David A. Freidel, Arlen F. Chase, Anne S. Dowd, and Jerry Murdock (2017) War Owl Falling: Innovation, Creativity, and Culture Change in Ancient Maya Society, by Markus Eberl (2017) Pathways to Complexity: A View from the Maya Lowlands, edited by M. Kathryn Brown and George J. Bey III (2018) Water, Cacao, and the Early Maya of Chocolá, by Jonathan Kaplan and Federico Paredes Umaña (2018) Maya Salt Works, by Heather McKillop (2019) The Market for Mesoamerica: Reflections on the Sale of Pre-Columbian Antiquities, edited by Cara G. Tremain and Donna Yates (2019) Migrations in Late Mesoamerica, edited by Christopher S. Beekman (2019)