Excavations at Aztec-period Houses and Terraces at Calixtlahuaca, Mexico

with Michael E. Smith, PhD

In this program, I will describe the fieldwork and artifacts from excavations at Calixtlahuaca by Arizona State University in 2007. Calixtlahuaca was the capital of a large polity in the Toluca Valley of central Mexico during the Postclassic period. Known initially as Matlatzinco, the city expanded through construction of stone terraces on a large hill; these terraces were used for both houses and farming. Calixtlahuaca was conquered by the Mexica emperor Axayacatl in the 1470s. José García Payón excavated the monumental architecture at Calixtlahuaca in the 1930s, recovering several hundred stone sculptures and other goods. Our project refined the Postclassic chronology and excavated houses and terraces to reconstruct domestic activities and conditions. Artifact analyses reveal a fascinating combination of similarities with other central Mexican sites and distinctive traits. After the Spanish conquest, the population of Calixtlahuaca was moved forcibly into the new Spanish city of Toluca for labor to build a church and convent. Today, the site – in the north part of the city of Toluca – is open to visitors.

Michael E. Smith is an American archaeologist working primarily with Aztec and general Mesoamerican archaeology. He has written numerous scholarly articles about central Mexican archaeology as well as several books about the Aztecs, among them a widely used textbook (Smith 2003). He is currently Professor of Anthropology in the School of Human Evolution and Social Change at Arizona State University. He is known for stressing the importance of assessing archaeological evidence independently of the ethnohistorical sources and advocating its use as a source of knowledge about the Aztecs. Smith’s teaching focuses on Mesoamerican archaeology, comparative urbanism, and archaeological method and theory. Michael’s latest book is: Urban Life in the Distant Past: The Prehistory of Energized Crowding

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