The Nature of Leadership and Community Cohesion at Postclassic Xaltocan, Mexico

Summary

Immediately after the consolidation of the Aztec Empire, Itzcoatl, the king of Tenochtitlan, ordered the destruction of the ancient codices from newly incorporated territories. By erasing these alternative histories, Itzcoatl paved the way for the construction of an official imperial history that bolstered the political aims of Aztec leaders. Nearly a century later, a second wave of erasures occurred when Spanish conquerors destroyed indigenous books and idols in an effort to eradicate blasphemous religious beliefs. Although indigenous accounts were eventually rewritten, largely at the hands of Spanish-educated indigenous elites, the diverse histories from Basin of Mexico polities that pre-dated the formation of the Aztec Empire remained lost. Only recently have archaeological investigations begun to demonstrate the diversity that characterized the Postclassic Basin of Mexico. Recent archaeological excavations at Xaltocan recovered the remains of successive structures that once housed Xaltocan’s Postclassic political leaders. The structures and their associated artifacts reveal the distinctive political strategies utilized by Xaltocan’s leaders. New revelations concerning the nature of leadership at Xaltocan, combined with other archaeological evidence from across the site, contradict or call into question certain long held historical assumptions about how Basin of Mexico polities functioned on the eve of the Aztec conquest.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 83rd Annual Meeting, Washington, DC (2018)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 22390