The New Fire Ceremony is one of the few Aztec rituals documented
in both the archaeological and historical records. The Spanish
chroniclers described the New Fire Ceremony as an imperial
celebration of the renewal of cosmic time that was observed
on the local level by the renewal of household goods. George
C. Vaillant first proposed the identification of artifact dumps
at Aztec sites with descriptions of these local celebrations.
We describe unpublished artifact dumps excavated by Vaillant
at Chiconautla and Nonoalco in the Basin of Mexico and by Smith
at Cuexcomate in Morelos and show that their context and content
support Vaillant's hypothesis. Our data suggest that the
New Fire Ceremony was an ancient and widespread ritual in
Postclassic central Mexico that was appropriated by the Aztec
empire as part of its program of ideological legitimization
and control.
Chiconautla, situated on the northeastern shore of Lake Texcoco and the southern edge of the Teotihuacan Valley, lay at an important juncture for east-west exchange in the Basin of Mexico with connections to asfar away as the Gulf Coast. Recently, we completed an INAA study on ceramics from Chiconautla to examine marketing and exchange patterns from A. D. 950 to 1521. We present these data and contextualize them in light of contexts excavated at the site by George C. Vaillant, in particular materials from an Aztec noble residence he called “Casa Reales.” We also examine historical information regarding Chiconautla’s role in Aztec society as it existed at the eve of Spanish conquest. We evaluate the site’s particular position at the crossroads of important trade routes in light of recent models of Aztec markets and exchange and what these patterns say about shifting political affiliations in this critical region.
Yucay was a royal estate in the Inca heartland built by provincial laborers for Huayna Capac, the penultimate ruler. Permanent retainers staffed the estate, maintaining a palace and leisure facilities for the emperor and providing material support for his family following his death. After the Spanish invasion, Yucay and other royal estates changed hands frequently, and Inca patterns of labor tribute gradually gave way to the Spanish colonial tribute system. The tributary redefinition of permanent retainers (yanakuna) in the Yucay Valley led to the 1571 resettlement of over twenty-three hundred individuals into four colonial towns, an undertaking that involved recording the names, ages, and ethnic identities of these individuals, household by household. This essay considers how the management of the Yucay estate evolved in the early colonial period, then presents an ethnic and demographic overview of the retainer population identified in the documents.
321The Late and Terminal Formative (ca. 300 B.G. to A.D. 200) was the crucial period during which the early Monte Alban state came into being and began to extend its political influence over a wide area in lvhat is now the Mexican state of Oaxaca. One of the most distinctive and frequent ceramic types of this period is the G.12) which is a grayware (gris) bowl with characteristic incising on the interior rim and base. Originally defined by Alfonso Caso) Ignacio Bernal) and ]ot;geAcosta based on their excavations at Monte Alban) the G.12 bowl has also beenftund at many other Oaxacan sites. The incised motifs on the interior bases of G.12 bowlsshow substantial variability) but researchershave been uncertain whether any portion of this variability shows chronologicalpatterning. We present a new microtypology ofG.12 bowls based on our recent excavations at three sites near SanMartin Tilcajete) some 27 km south of Monte Alban. Our analysis yields a finer-grained chronology that helps elucidate the step-by-step territorial expansion of the emet;gentMonteAlban state.
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