Recent Research in Puebla Prehistory - Springer Link

C 2005) Journal of Archaeological Research, Vol. 13, No. 2, June 2005 ( DOI: 10.1007/s10804-005-2485-5

Recent Research in Puebla Prehistory 1 ˜ Patricia Plunket1,2 and Gabriela Urunuela

This review of recent research in the state of Puebla, Mexico, focuses on six issues: (1) reevaluations of the Tehuacan Valley Archaic; (2) rural household archaeology at Tetimpa; (3) the impact of Popocatépetl’s eruptions; (4) the city of Cholula; (5) the Nahua-Otomangue frontier; and (6) new perspectives on the MixtecaPuebla art style. Not only do these topics illustrate the scope of archaeological work, but they can be linked to broader anthropological themes like the origins and spread of agriculture, relationships between rural populations and emergent cities, the environmental, social, and cultural impact of natural disasters, the operation of geographical frontiers and ethnic interfaces, the construction of cultural landscapes, and the connections between political organization and art style. Puebla’s location along numerous environmental and cultural divides makes it an excellent laboratory for the study of human interaction across diverse kinds of frontiers. KEY WORDS: volcanism; Cholula; frontiers; Mixteca-Puebla.

INTRODUCTION The central Mexican state of Puebla, located between the Basin of Mexico and the Mixteca of Oaxaca, most often is treated as a footnote in surveys of Mesoamerican prehistory. Key developments— the evolution of agricultural subsistence economies; the rise of elaborate chiefdoms; the emergence of major cities and pilgrimage centers; the industrial production of ceramics, obsidian, basalt, tecalli and salt; and the elaboration of international iconographic and stylistic communication systems—took place here, yet with few exceptions, archaeological 1 Departamento

de Antropolog´ıa, Universidad de las Américas-Puebla, Sta. Catarina Mártir, Puebla, México. 2 To whom correspondence should be addressed at Departamento de Antropolog´ıa, Universidad de las Américas-Puebla, Sta. Catarina Mártir, 72820 Cholula, Puebla, México; e-mail: plunket@ mail.udlap.mx. 89 C 2005 Springer Science+Business Media, Inc. 1059-0161/05/0600-0089/0

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research of the last 50 years has not resulted in a clear, synthetic understanding of Puebla’s prehispanic past. In large part, this situation results from the enormous environmental and cultural diversity of the state’s seven major regions (Fig. 1). Puebla sits at the very heart of the Mesoamerican culture area, straddling the central highlands along the southeastern edge of the Mesa Central, and has served as a major crossroad between north and south, east and west. The northern

Fig. 1. Geographic regions of the state of Puebla showing sites mentioned in the text (based on Fuentes 1972, p. 129).

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extreme includes the humid, forested Atlantic slope that leads down to the Gulf Coast, whereas the southern area is composed of a series of small valleys separated by dry mountain ranges that step down into the Rio Balsas drainage that empties into the Pacific; the broad highland valleys of the center of the state lie along the eastern side of the neo-volcanic axis, which forms a significant geographical barrier between them and the Basin of Mexico. The frontier between the Nahua and Otomangue worlds—a major cultural divide within Mesoamerica—spans the eastern periphery, along the border with the states of Veracruz and Oaxaca. Like the Basin of Mexico and the Valley of Oaxaca, the Puebla region was the focus of major archaeological research programs during the 1960s and early 1970s. The first of these, Richard MacNeish’s Tehuacan Archaeological-Botanical Project, has been well published (Byers, 1967a,b; Johnson, 1972; MacNeish, 1970, 1972, 1981) and until recently has stood as the unquestioned sequence for our understanding of the transition from hunting-gathering to agriculture subsistence strategies during the Mesoamerican Archaic. The second investigation was the Proyecto Arqueológico Puebla-Tlaxcala directed by Peter Tschohl for the Fundación Alemana para la Investigación Cient´ıfica (Tschohl, 1977; Tschohl and Nickel, 1972). With the notable exception of Angel Garc´ıa Cook’s (1981) summary in the first supplement to the Handbook of Middle American Indians, the German project did not result in a synthetic treatment of settlement patterns, ceramic sequences, economic systems, or political development in the region, and to date the results remain poorly published. The same is true of the second phase of INAH’s3 Proyecto Cholula,4 first directed by Miguel Messmacher (1967) and then by Ignacio Marquina (1970, 1975; López et al., 1976); consequently Cholula— one of the major cities of Mesoamerica—has not played a significant role in any anthropological consideration of the prehispanic past. Because its Great Pyramid is the largest pre-Columbian structure in the New World (Fig. 2), Cholula is assumed to have been a thriving metropolis and potential rival of Teotihuacan during the Classic period (ca. A.D. 200–700) and a core zone with “high population and concentrated political power” (Smith and Berdan, 2003a, pp. 25–26) during the entire Postclassic, but the archaeological evidence that might allow a reconstruction of urban planning, residential patterns, population size, craft specialization, or socioeconomic variation lies buried beneath the modern city. During the past decade there have been few attempts to remedy this situation. The rate of development, particularly in the western part of the state, is extremely intense, and archaeological sites are being impacted at an alarming rate. Most of the archaeological research in the state of Puebla has been undertaken in response to activities such as highway and airport construction, housing projects, water and 3 Instituto Nacional de Antropolog´ıa e Historia, the government agency that oversees cultural patrimony

in Mexico. first Proyecto Cholula, also directed by Ignacio Marquina (1981, pp. 115–129), began work in 1931.

4 The

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Fig. 2. View of the south side of the Great Pyramid (Tlachihualtepetl) of Cholula, Puebla; the church dedicated to the Virgen de los Remedios crowns the prehispanic structure.

sewage installation, electrification, tourism initiatives, and mining; very little of the work has been research oriented, although this does not mean that research interests have been ignored entirely. Although it is difficult to find common themes in the archaeological research undertaken during the past decade in the state of Puebla, in this short review we focus on six specific issues: (1) the Mesoamerican Archaic and the Tehuacan sequence; (2) household archaeology at the Formative village of Tetimpa; (3) the impact of volcanic eruptions of Popocatépetl on prehispanic communities; (4) Cholula; (5) the Nahua-Otomangue frontier; and (6) new perspectives on the Mixteca-Puebla phenomenon. These topics not only illustrate the nature of archaeological work in Puebla during the last 10 years but they also can be used to link the prehistory of this area to broader anthropological themes such as the origins and spread of agriculture, the relationship between rural populations and emergent cities, the impact of natural disasters on human communities, the significance and operation of frontiers and ethnic divides, the construction of cultural landscapes, and the connections between political organization and art style. TEHUACAN AND THE MESOAMERICAN ARCHAIC For almost 40 years the Tehuacan Valley sequence has provided archaeologists with a model for the gradual development of maize agriculture in


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Mesoamerica during the Coxcatlán phase (5000–3400 B.C. [uncalibrated] [Johnson, 1972, p. 40]). These solid foundations were challenged by the publication of 12 Accelerator Mass Spectrometer (AMS) dates on corn cobs—personally selected by Richard MacNeish from well-dated levels of the Coxcatlán and San Marcos caves (Long et al., 1989, p. 1036)—that were about 1500 years younger than radiocarbon dates the original excavators had obtained on charcoal associated with the same stratigraphic proveniences (Long et al., 1989; Long and Fritz, 2001; MacNeish, 2001). Four of the AMS dates from Archaic contexts fell within the Terminal Formative, Classic, and Postclassic periods. This discrepancy has led several authors to suggest that some of the ecofacts recovered by the Tehuacan Project are more recent intrusions into earlier levels (e.g., Benz and Long, 2000, p. 464; Fritz 1994, p. 306). MacNeish (Flannery and MacNeish, 1997) first considered the AMS dates to be unacceptable due to sample contamination from the use of bedacryl as a consolidant by INAH conservators; he later decided that the problem was more likely a result of flawed protocols at the University of Arizona radiocarbon laboratory, which processed these and other AMS dates he likewise considered questionable (MacNeish, 2001, pp. 103–104). The Tehuacan Valley sequence also has been contested on other grounds. In an attempt to take a fresh look at the preceramic period in central Mexico, Karen Hardy (1993, 1996, 1999) questioned some of the basic premises, methodological procedures, and final results of the Tehuacan Project, particularly Flannery’s (1967) faunal analysis and MacNeish’s lithic typology (Byers, 1967b). In spite of some unfortunate problems with Hardy’s reevaluation (Fennell, 2001; Flannery and MacNeish, 1997), she did draw attention to a very real need to promote further study of the Mesoamerican Archaic. As indicated above, the advent of AMS techniques has made it possible to directly date the botanical remains from Middle Holocene sites in Mesoamerica and elsewhere (e.g., Flannery, 1999; Kaplan and Lynch, 1999; Smith, 1997). This dating is an essential part of reconstructing the domestication process and improving our understanding of the origins of New World agriculture; it would seem unwise, however, to throw out the Tehuacan Valley sequence (Fritz, 1994, p. 305) and interpretations (Hardy, 1996) just yet. The new dates do suggest that the traditional, gradualist models for agricultural origins derived from the Tehuacan data should be reconsidered in light of evidence that the Middle Holocene consisted of “two temporally and developmentally distinct cultural transitions— the initial domestication of plants and the subsequent emergence of economies centered on food production” (Smith, 1997, p. 379). New excavations in other areas of Puebla—such as the Valsequillo Depression (Garc´ıa Moll, 1977) or the swamp lands of the Puebla-Tlaxcala Valley—might provide valuable information on the apparently prolonged period of “low-level food production” (Smith, 1997, p. 379) and how this relates to both earlier hunting-gathering subsistence strategies (Pichardo, 2000) and the subsequent settled agricultural villages of the Formative period. Indeed, it may turn out that the accelerated rate of morphological change

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in maize in the period between 3555 and 3370 B.C. that Benz and Long (2000, p. 462) cite is evidence for both human selection and genetic drift involved in a late and rapid origin of maize agriculture. But there are many new techniques to be applied to both stored and recently excavated materials and many additional questions to be asked before we should decide to adjust the “period of earliest agriculture in Mesoamerica to 3500–3000 B.C.” as suggested by Fritz (1994, p. 308). Chronological challenges to the long-established Tehuacan Valley Archaic sequence demonstrate the importance of bolstering existing data on the transition to agricultural subsistence economies in highland Mesoamerica. Although the dry caves of Tehuacan and the Valsequillo Depression undoubtedly provide the best situations for the preservation of organic materials, the natural swamp lands of the Puebla-Tlaxcala Valley may present additional opportunities for research on the changing nature of human subsistence patterns under less arid conditions between 5000 and 2000 B.C. Linguists also have found reasons to reevaluate the Archaic of central Mexico. In a recent study by Jane Hill (2001), Puebla is implicity, if not explicitly, suggested as a homeland for the Proto-Uto-Aztecan speech community, which according to her formed sometime between 5600 and 4500 BP and participated in the primary domestication of maize. In opposition to the prevailing view that Uto-Aztecan languages originated in the southwestern United States and moved south at a much later date (Fowler, 1983), Hill and others (e.g., Diamond and Bellwood, 2003) link the spread of this language group to a northward expansion of early farmers out of the Mesoamerican heartland during the fourth millennium B.C. Whether the specific merits of the linguistic argument are valid or not, they concur with Bellwood and Renfrew’s (2003) claim that widespread, multibranched language groups may represent the trace of human expansions driven by Neolithic technological innovations, especially cultivation, not only in Mesoamerica but worldwide (Diamond and Bellwood, 2003). Hill’s study implies that many Aztecan speakers were central to the development of the Mesoamerican worldview and not latecomers who acculturated to civilized patterns in recent prehistory. Few projects have focused on the succeeding Early Formative period in the state of Puebla. During the late 1980s, abundant Early Formative ceramics like those described by Niederberger (1976) for the southern Basin of Mexico were found in test excavations at Colotzingo in the Atlixco Valley (Uruñuela, 1989b). More recently, Paillés (2000; Paillés et al., 2000) has undertaken a limited program of test pitting and a small extensive excavation at the heavily looted Olmec horizon site of Las Bocas. Early Formative remains include floors, a hearth that was possibly used for firing ceramics, fragments of “baby face” figurines, and burials. In the adjoining state of Tlaxcala, Richard Lesure (2002) has initiated a project to explore the transition to sedentary life around the lakes of the Apizaco area. Both of these projects, however, are in their initial stages.


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HOUSEHOLD ARCHAEOLOGY AT THE FORMATIVE VILLAGE OF TETIMPA About the middle of the first century A.D. a major Plinian eruption of Popocatépetl devastated the agricultural communities settled along the volcano’s northeastern flank. This was a huge natural disaster. But by sealing the Formative period landscape under more than 1 m of pumitic ash, the remains of fragile domestic buildings were protected from the predation of later groups and the erosive natural forces that alter and destroy archaeological evidence. During the past 10 years, archaeologists at the Universidad de las Américas in Cholula, Puebla, have recorded data from 29 operations that include household units, detached kitchens, ritual structures, and agricultural fields from the ancient village of Tetimpa (Aguirre, 2000; Aguirre and Quintana, 1998; Clear and Plunket, 1998; Hernández, 1998, 2000; López, 2000; Panfil, 1996; Panfil et al., 1999; Plunket and Uruñuela, 1998a,b,c,e,f, 1999a,b, 2000a,b, 2001, 2002a, 2003; Uruñuela and Plunket, 1998, 2001, 2002a,b, 2003; Uruñuela et al., 1998). Tetimpa was occupied from the late eighth century B.C. until the eruption in the first century A.D. The site offers an opportunity to study the structure and organization of a large, dispersed village during a period of colonization and population build-up along both the eastern (Garc´ıa Cook, 1981, pp. 248–262) and western flanks (Sanders et al., 1979, pp. 97–104) of the Sierra Nevada that peaked just prior to the first century B.C. More importantly perhaps, Tetimpa witnessed the succeeding demographic decline of this area, a process that was evidently related to impressive population increases both at Teotihuacan (Sanders et al., 1979, p. 107) in the northeastern corner of the Basin of Mexico and at Cholula (Plunket and Uruñuela, 2000a) in the western Puebla Valley during the following two centuries. Thus, the data retrieved from Tetimpa relate to two important issues: (1) village organization prior to and contemporary with the formation of the urban centers at Teotihuacan and Cholula, and (2) unequivocal evidence of a natural disaster that must have played a significant role in the abandonment of the Sierra Nevada piedmont and the massive migrations to these emerging cities. In this section we focus on the first of these two topics. The houses of Tetimpa utilize a highly standardized building program (Plunket and Uruñuela, 1998a) that, as Flannery (2002, p. 431) has recently noted, combine “the flexibility of ‘growth on demand’ with the formality of a stereotypic module” in a pattern suggesting population growth with segmentation at the nuclear family level. The mature house uses the same format as Plaza One, a first century A.D. Three Temple Complex in Teotihuacan (Cook de Leonard, 1957, 1971, p. 192; Plunket and Uruñuela, 2002c). This consists of a large central platform flanked by two smaller lateral structures that together frame a courtyard (Fig. 3). An altar or shrine marks the midpoint of the courtyard, and in some cases, an elongated platform located opposite the central building serves to restrict access to the compound. The stone-faced platforms, usually about 0.7–2.0 m high, have a central

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Fig. 3. Plan of Operation 2, a typical Terminal Formative house compound at the village of Tetimpa, Puebla.

staircase and use talud-tablero architecture, a feature that although long considered diagnostic of Classic period Teotihuacan religious constructions, appears on both domestic (Plunket and Uruñuela, 1998a) and civic-ceremonial (Garc´ıa Cook, 1981, p. 252) structures in western Puebla during the Late Formative. The presence of the talud-tablero “temple” diagnostic on the residential platforms of Tetimpa leads us to believe that the earliest first century A.D. three-temple-complexes of Teotihuacan were originally elite houses and not specialized religious structures, although they subsequently seem to have acquired temple status (compare with Grove and Gillespie, 2002; Kirch, 2000). At Tetimpa, the three-to-four room modules apparently form clusters that include one larger house and a nonresidential building. We have interpreted these as social subdivisions of the village, perhaps extended lineages or maybe some version of a “social house” (Joyce and Gillespie, 2000), where junior residential compounds are grouped around a senior or elite house and a specialized structure


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that may have been used for communal activities and/or as an ancestor hall for lineage ritual (Plunket et al., n.d.). At most houses the central room is distinguished from the lateral ones primarily by size but also usually by the floor assemblages that include censers. In a single case—a house we have identified as a senior lineage residence based on mortuary patterns—a talud-tablero altar was attached to the rear wall of the main room (Uruñuela and Plunket, n.d.-a). Thus it appears that certain rituals only took place at the senior lineage house and not at the junior houses, and that ceremonial activities, like the lineage itself, were hierarchically structured. The altar may have been used to display the bundled corpse of an important individual for a period of time before interment, but the singularity of this feature indicates that the largest house was distinguished from other residences by more than size alone. Although the courtyards of the Tetimpa houses were used for a variety of domestic tasks (Uruñuela and Plunket, 1998), the midpoint is always marked by a small shrine or at least a stone cobble; this is true for all houses and detached kitchens. The shrines are highly variable and probably reflect aspects of individual family history, but most include carved anthropomorphic or zoomorphic stones set on top of subfloor chimneys. In five cases, shrine stones were placed on top of effigy volcanoes, a reference that obviously relates to Popocatépetl (Smoking Mountain) whose crater lies only 13 km to the southeast (Plunket and Uruñuela, 1998c). Ritual activity around these shrines is manifested in the presence of incense burners (Uruñuela and Plunket, 2002a, p. 28, Fig. 3.8), ash, reddened areas of burnt earth, prismatic obsidian blades, concentrations of small stones, and cremated bird remains inside the chimneys (Plunket and Uruñuela, 2002a). The village was probably composed of patrilineages. The orientation towards the paternal line is reflected in the mortuary program. Only a few individuals, almost always adult males, were buried—often with abundant grave goods—in tombs or pits located under the floor of the central room of each house compound (Uruñuela and Plunket, 2001, 2002a,b). The incense burners that frequently are included in these interments also have been found on the floors of the room above or at the patio shrine, providing a ritual link between the living and the dead within this structure and at the sacred center of the family compound. The few women and children buried in the houses of Tetimpa were generally excluded from the ritually significant central room. The existence of patrilineages at Tetimpa is supported further by the distribution of imported ceramics associated with the burials (Plunket et al., n.d.). Members of senior lineage houses appear to have engaged in a variety of reciprocal trading partnerships that are evidenced by the ceramics brought back home and ultimately inhumed with important individuals who may have been lineage heads. Neutron activation analyses of these ceramics indicate that the villages traded locally for most of their serving vessels, but a significant number of items were imported from the northeastern Basin of Mexico, the area between Huejotzingo and Tlaxcala and the Tepexi region of southern Puebla, which provided early

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(ca. 300 B.C.) examples of Thin Orange wares (Plunket et al., n.d.). Although each cluster of houses was affiliated with two or more distinct regions, all of them forged alliances to the north in order to procure obsidian from the mines of Otumba and Paredón. Although we know next to nothing about the domestic organization of Classic period Cholula, the city of Teotihuacan offers many intriguing parallels to Tetimpa that seem to reflect the village on a monumental scale. The very specific triadic format of the three-temple-complex at Teotihuacan is a mirror of the residential architecture at Tetimpa and probably other Formative villages and towns. We and others have suggested links between this architectural format and lineage structures, both along the Street of the Dead and within the apartment compounds of Teotihuacan (Headrick, 1999, 2001; Plunket and Uruñuela, 1998a, 2002c). The talud-tablero system used on every platform at Tetimpa served no practical purpose. The tablero embellishment that wraps around the façade of the sloping wall of the platform can be viewed best as a symbolic divide between the underground quarters of deceased family members and those of their living descendants who occupy the surface (Uruñuela and Plunket, n.d.-a). Urban Teotihuacan adopted this ancient symbolic device (dated as early as 300 B.C. at Tlalancaleca, Puebla [Garc´ıa Cook, 1984]) for use on most of the city’s temples, enhancing the tablero with a thin stone frame and painted stucco. Rather than create an entirely new symbol, Teotihuacan drew upon the canons of the past—the emblem of house and lineage—in order to deal with the problems of continuity and change in a complex urban environment. We believe that the city embraced this traditional configuration as one of several strategies designed to incorporate the tremendous influx of immigrants that arrived at the beginning of the first century A.D.; the modular nature of the building program was well suited to rapid growth and could bridge the imposing chasm between village and city, between past and present. At the same time, Teotihuacan appears to have established this triadic structure as a cornerstone of its emerging state ideology, converting it into a formula that was repeated on a monumental scale along the Street of the Dead, perhaps to provide lineage representation at the very heart of the city (see Headrick, 1999). Traces of ancient agricultural systems are usually not preserved in the archaeological record, their imprint having been erased long ago by more recent activity. The furrowed fields of the Tetimpa region, however, have provided new insights into prehispanic agricultural systems. There are two temporally distinct sets of fields, one that was covered by the first century A.D. eruption (Plunket and Uruñuela, 1998a) and a second that was impacted by a later volcanic event sometime between A.D. 700 and 850 (Hirth, 2001; Panfil, 1996). The early fields occupy all of the space between house compounds, and they were designed to arrest the erosive force of torrential rains on the sandy piedmont soil. The majority of the furrows are spaced regularly at intervals of 1.0 to 1.3 m apart and probably represent milpa agriculture (Aguirre, 2000). Others are more compact with


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only 0.45–0.85 m between furrows; these most likely are vestiges of orchards and gardens (López, 2000). On the basis of the size of corn cobs recovered from the houses and the spacing of the furrows in Tetimpa’s milpas, agricultural productivity at this time period (López et al., 2001) was less than estimates derived for the Basin of Mexico (Sanders et al., 1979, p. 373). The Classic period furrows are limited in extent due mainly to the meager soil development on top of the pumitic ash deposits of the Formative period eruption; indeed, the reoccupation of the Tetimpa area during the Classic seems to have been fairly limited. After the initial blast of the second volcanic event, farmers tried to rescue these furrow systems and replant, but they were forced to abandon their fields and homes by subsequent pyroclastic flows that devastated the northeastern side of Popocatépetl (Hirth, 2001). THE IMPACT OF VOLCANIC ERUPTIONS ON THE WESTERN PUEBLA VALLEY One theme that has generated interest since the 1994 eruption of Popocatépetl is the impact of the volcano’s activity on human settlement (Panfil, 1996; Panfil et al., 1999; Plunket and Uruñuela, 1998a,b,c, 1999a,b, 2000a,b, 2002a, 2003; Siebe, 2000; Siebe et al., 1996; Uruñuela and Plunket, 2003, n.d.-a). Although the volcano has erupted over 30 times since the fourteenth century (Simkin and Siebert, 2000, p. 1379), none of these events had major destructive consequences. Geologists and archaeologists have documented two earlier eruptions, however, whose volcanic explosivity indices were of a different order and can be classified as major eruptions (e.g., Panfil, 1996; Plunket and Uruñuela, 1998a; Seele, 1973; Siebe et al., 1996). The earliest of these was a Plinian event that took place during the first century A.D., the second a series of pyroclastic flows and subsequent mud flows, or lahars, that rushed down the slopes of Popocatépetl in the eighth century A.D.

Research has focused on two initial problems: (1) accurate dating of the eruptions visible in local stratigraphy, and (2) determination of the lateral impact of the volcanic events. The Tetimpa area has provided the best dating for the eruptive sequence because of the primary contexts offered by the village setting. At present the most precise date for the early eruption is an AMS determination of 2010 ± 40 BP (Beta-146572) on a carbonized corn cob found inside a sealed olla. The 2 sigma range is between cal 100 B.C. and A.D. 70. On the basis of this date and a suite of 13 others, we have established that the Terminal Formative event took place towards the middle of the first century A.D. The second eruption is less securely dated5 to ca. A.D. 700 (Panfil, 1996; Siebe et al., 1996). 5 Charcoal

samples from the Classic period furrowed fields and floors of a contemporary residence are being dated at this time.

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The first century event has been classified as a VEI-6 eruption (Volcanic Explosivity Index) (Siebe, 2000, p. 61). It produced over 3.2 km3 of pumitic lapilli that collapsed across an area extending at least 25 km east of the crater; the eruption column has been estimated at between 20 and 30 km (Panfil, 1996, p. 16). Following this Plinian phase, lava flows covered 50 km2 of the eastern piedmont of the volcano with between 30 and 100 m of rock that dammed and diverted drainages, altering the surface hydrology of the western Puebla Valley (Panfil, 1996, pp. 16–20). Although the eastern slopes of the volcano were strongly impacted by the Plinian fallout and lava, the northwestern sector (the southeastern corner of the adjacent Basin of Mexico) was devastated by pyroclastic flows that led to massive migrations of survivors (Siebe, 2000, p. 61). Indeed, archaeological surveys of this area have documented an enormous population decline between 100 B.C. and A.D. 100 (Sanders et al., 1979, p. 183). We believe that the first century eruption was ultimately responsible for the displacement of some 50,000 people in the Basin of Mexico and that these refugees contributed heavily to the extraordinary population build-up at Teotihuacan, situated far from the volcanically active mountains that ring the southern basin. Although Millon (1981, p. 217) and Sanders (Sanders et al., 1979, p. 107) both argue that Teotihuacan’s aggressive bid for political control of the countryside was the principal factor involved in the rapid growth of the city, we believe that the emergent state was confronted with an ecological disaster of unprecedented proportions that accelerated social and ideological processes already underway, including population nucleation and modifications of prevailing belief systems (Plunket and Uruñuela, 2002d). According to Siebe et al. (1996), the second volcanic event dated to the eighth century A.D. resulted in massive lahars that rushed into the western Puebla Valley and destroyed the city of Cholula. They base their reconstruction on an inspection of the deposits that overlie the Classic period architecture on the southern side of Cholula’s Great Pyramid; they identify these as the lahars. Although it is unquestionable that the eruptions would have impacted Cholula socially, politically, and environmentally, it is very doubtful that the city was buried under immense mud flows. Excavations in the low-lying fields at the northeastern corner of the pyramid (López et al., 2002a) show no sign of destructive lahars, nor do explorations in the area between the Great Pyramid and the Palacio Municipal located to the west of the monumental architecture—between the Pyramid and the volcano— a zone that would necessarily show remains of these deposits if they had covered the Pyramid (López et al., 2002b; Plunket and Uruñuela, 1993, 2002b; Plunket et al., 1994). Although the volcano has been invoked by geologists in a wave of catastrophism stimulated by present-day activity, it is unlikely that Cholula was devastated in the way Siebe and his colleagues propose. Integrating archaeological and geological observations of Cholula’s complex stratigraphy will form an important part of assessing the effects of volcanic activity on this pre-Columbian city.


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With the advent of Schiffer’s (1987) work on formation processes and subsequent publications by Cameron (1991; Cameron and Tomka, 1996), abandonment has evolved into an important area of investigation, particularly for household archaeology. Tetimpa has provided an excellent laboratory for understanding both rapid and gradual abandonment (Plunket and Uruñuela, 2000b, 2003; Uruñuela and Plunket 2003). Our analysis of the distribution and placement of artifacts at the first century houses demonstrates that some families were absent when the eruption occurred while others were immersed in their daily chores, perhaps indicating that inhabitants were aware of the imminent danger posed by the volcano and were already establishing alternate living arrangements elsewhere (Plunket and Uruñuela, 2000b). The scarcity of portable, exotic goods in relation to large or heavy craft items at most houses points to the possibility that householders were selectively removing valuables while leaving behind items useful for daily life during the relocation process; the presence of high proportions of “improvised,” recycled or waiting-to-be-recycled artifacts that would not be taken to new homes and the lack of caching behavior are both consistent with our interpretation that abandonment was imminent and there was little anticipation for return (Plunket and Uruñuela, 2003).

CHOLULA Archaeological work in Cholula almost always occurs in response to development projects or maintenance of protected areas around the Great Pyramid (Fig. 2), and most of what has been done can be found only in unpublished technical reports (e.g., Hernández et al., 1998; López et al., 2002a,b; Plunket et al., 1994; Plunket and Uruñuela, 1993), theses (e.g., Edelstein, 1995; Hermosillo, 1992; McCafferty, 1992), or abbreviated summaries published in symposia memoirs (e.g., Suárez, 1992). One exception to this pattern is McCafferty’s (1992, 1994, 1996b, 2001c; McCafferty and McCafferty, 2000) analysis of Daniel Wolfman’s 1968 excavations on the Universidad de las Américas campus at the eastern edge of the city (Wolfman, 1968). The random nature and limited extent of salvagegenerated exploration, however, makes it difficult to find common themes in this work. The Great Pyramid, or Tlachihualtepetl, was the focus of archaeological research from the 1930s until the 1970s; since then most efforts have been directed at the maintenance of this enormous structure (e.g., Rodr´ıguez, 1999, 2000, 2001; Vela and Solanes, 1991). Recent work in fields abutting the northeast corner of the pyramid (López et al., 2002a) has produced evidence of early colonial and Postclassic houses constructed on top of the ruins of earlier Classic period platforms that represent the initial occupation of this swampy zone; however, Noguera (1956) reported Late Formative materials from the adjacent Templo Rojo so earlier buildings may have existed in this area.

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Until last year, the dating of the pyramid relied entirely on ceramic studies of materials from selected areas of fill, a situation that has created controversy about the building’s construction sequence (Marquina, 1970, 1975; McCafferty, 1996a). In an effort to assess the possibility that the first century A.D. eruption of Popocatépetl led to enhanced strategies of tempering divine justice and new political agendas that were partially manifested in an acceleration of monumental construction within the city, the Tetimpa Project has begun to explore the developmental sequence of the Great Pyramid (Uruñuela and Plunket, 2002b). The first part of the work has involved the detailed recording of an unreported excavation of a tunnel about 2 m underneath what has been referred to as the “initial” construction phase (Marquina, 1970). The tunnel terminates in a “room” with remains of wooden beams that McCafferty (1996a, p. 5) has referred to as “an interior chamber . . . that may relate to an artificial ‘cave’ as a symbolic portal to the underworld” (see also McCafferty, 2001a, p. 286). In fact, the stratigraphy of the tunnel clearly indicates that it was excavated into an adobe construction that predates the “first” stage (A) of the Great Pyramid; a 14 C determination on the remnants of the beams provided a date of 110 ± 50 BP (Beta-162996). It appears that the modern tunneling ended in an adobe-walled cell—typical of platform construction in Cholula—that may have contained an offering that merited the reinforcement of the “ceiling” with beams for excavation. Charcoal from the adobe fill underneath the “chamber” has been dated to 1810 ± 40 BP (AMS Beta162997), providing a 2 sigma range of cal A.D. 110–330, considerably later than McCafferty’s (2001a, p. 285) second century B.C. estimates. A third date that was obtained from the fill placed directly on top of Marquina’s “initial” construction phase (A) yielded a determination of 1700 ± 60 BP (Beta-162998) with a 2 sigma range of cal A.D. 220–450, suggesting that the “first” pyramid was built during the second century A.D. More dates are necessary to validate these initial findings, but the construction of an independent chronological sequence for the pyramid and surrounding structures is essential for our understanding of Early Classic urban development in the central highlands. Other monumental architecture in Cholula also has been dated to this time period. Salvage excavations immediately south of the junction between the kitchen of the Franciscan monastery of San Gabriel and its Portal de Peregrinos uncovered a well-preserved staircase—over 12-m wide with more than 13 steps—of a large east-facing platform that continues under the 16th century building and the adjoining school yard (Plunket and Uruñuela, 2002b). A 14 C determination on charcoal from a hearth associated with the superstructure of this platform provided a date of 1890 ± 80 BP (I-17,627) with a 2 sigma range of cal 41 B.C. to A.D. 268 and cal A.D. 273 to 336. Importantly, this platform is constructed directly on top of sterile tepetate, and no Formative period remains were found in the excavations. Farther to the northwest, in the patio of the building adjacent to the Casa del Caballero Aguila, salvage excavations found no evidence of monumental architecture and


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no occupation prior to the latter part of the Classic (López et al., 2002b). The Formative and Classic remains of the city center apparently lie primarily to the east and south of the present-day main square of Cholula. The eastern limits of the settlement coincide with the campus of the Universidad de las Américas. Salvage excavations there have documented Classic period burials and midden deposits, but the soil is so thin that most structural remains have been destroyed by agricultural activities. The western edge of the campus is pocked with huge pits excavated into the tepetate during Classic times— apparently to extract building material for platform construction—that were then filled with trash during the subsequent centuries. One of these mines was filled with broken drinking vessels and other elements of a ceramic assemblage similar to that depicted in the mural of Los Bebedores (Uriarte, 1999), and it appears that this deposit resulted from the discard of artifacts used on a single ritual occasion (Salomón et al., 2001, 2002). McCafferty (1996b, 2001b; see also Edelstein, 1995) has briefly reported on Sergio Suarez’s INAH salvage excavation of a Classic period house, but there is still very little that can be said about Cholula during this epoch. The transition between the Classic and Postclassic in Cholula represents an extremely complex problem (Garc´ıa Cook and Merino, 1991; Uruñuela and Plunket, n.d.-b). Excavations in Cholula (Dumond and Müller, 1972)—in addition to work at nearby Cerro Zapotecas (Mountjoy, 1987), Cacaxtla-Xochitécatl (Serra, 1998), and the various surveys of the Puebla-Tlaxcala Valley—suggest important changes at the beginning of the seventh century A.D. that included a cessation of monumental construction in the city, the establishment of a new political ideology linked to the Olmeca-Xicalanca of Cacaxtla (Ringle et al., 1998), and the Teotihuacan diaspora (however, see McCafferty, 1996a). Some of this turbulence may have been caused by the second eruption of Popocatépetl (Siebe et al., 1996). Excavations on the campus of the Universidad de las Américas have demonstrated that in areas where stratigraphy is intact, the black clay deposits of the Classic are consistently sealed by a sterile layer of sandy volcanic ash; materials on top of this ash include Early Postclassic ceramics, specifically black-on-orange wares similar to Aztec I. As in so many other areas of Mesoamerica, the Postclassic of Cholula is generally dealt with from an ethnohistoric perspective rather than an archaeological one (e.g., Lind, 1994b; McCafferty, 2001a; McCafferty and McCafferty, 2000; Pinto et al., 2001; Suárez and Mart´ınez, 1993). Most of the important exceptions have to do with ceramic studies that stem from Michael Lind’s seminal work on Cholula polychrome wares (Lind et al., n.d.). On the basis of form and decoration, Lind seriated the complex decorated Postclassic ceramics of Cholula into three phases: Aquiahuac (A.D. 1000–1200), Tecama (A.D. 1200–1350), and Mártir (A.D. 1350–1519). Although his work is still being tested and verified (Hernández, 1995a; Plunket, 1995; Suárez, 1994, 1995), his basic divisions have been modified


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by McCafferty (1992, 1994, 2001c) in his analysis of the assemblage from UA-1, a residence located at the eastern limits of the Postclassic city. McCafferty (2001c, p. 14) has published a detailed chronological sequence, with new phase names— Early Tlachihualtepetl (A.D. 700–900), Middle Tlachihualtepetl (A.D. 900–1050), Late Tlachihualtepetl (A.D. 1050–1200), Early Cholollan (A.D. 1200–1400), and Late Cholollan (A.D. 1400–1520)—based on four radiocarbon dates. Cholula now has three different Postclassic chronologies, none of which is grounded in sufficient temporal information. We return to a discussion of the Postclassic ceramics below.

THE NAHUA-OTOMANGUE FRONTIER Although the linguistic frontier between Uto-Aztecan (Nahuatl) and Otomangue speakers probably developed late in Mesoamerican culture history (Hopkins, 1984; however, see Hill, 2001, and Manrique, 2000), it evolved along a major geographic transition. The Plains of San Juan as well as the southeastern and southern regions (Fig. 1) lead out of the broad central valleys and into the broken terrain occupied by Otomangue groups like the Mixtec and Popoloca, or Totonacs. With the exception of the Tehuacan Valley, these are poorly explored areas even though they should be considered vital to any discussion of frontiers—particularly fortified frontiers—during the latter part of the Classic and the Postclassic. We briefly review several sets of research on two frontier areas: the city of Cantona situated at the northern rim of the Plains of San Juan (Garc´ıa Cook and Merino, 1998), and the nahuatized Popoloca kingdoms of Tepexi (Castillo, 1997, 1998a,b), La Mesa (Alduc´ın, 1998; Arana, 1995, 1998; Castillo, 1995, 1998c; Chacón, 1995, 1998; Sisson and Lilly, 1994a,b), and Cuthá (Castellón, 1995, 1999; Castellón and Dumaine, 2000) located in the southeastern section of the state.

Cantona The fortified city of Cantona spreads across 12.6 km2 of rugged volcanic topography west of Cofre de Perote near the border between the states of Puebla and Veracruz (Garc´ıa Cook and Merino, 1996, 1998). Obsidian from the nearby mines of Oyameles-Zaragoza was converted into prismatic cores and bifaces in its numerous obsidian workshops. Rojas (2001, pp. 69, 107) considers Cantona to have been a major competitor of Teotihuacan’s obsidian industry, and in certain areas of Mesoamerica this may have been the case. However, a study of the distribution of obsidian from Classic contexts in the Tehuacan Valley demonstrates that while Cantona was the major supplier for this area, Teotihuacan’s materials moved through the Tehuacan Valley and on to the Gulf Coast and the Maya


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lowlands where more exotic luxury goods could be obtained (Drennan et al., 1990). Cantona may have participated on a limited scale in the long-distance exchange of obsidian for prestige commodities during the Classic since Oyameles-Zaragoza artifacts have been identified as far away as Tikal (Moholy-Nagy and Nelson, 1990, pp. 73–74), but its role as an important international exporter appears to have mushroomed primarily during the post-Teotihuacan era. Its workshops contributed significant percentages of obsidian to the lithic assemblages at sites in the Puebla Valley, along the Gulf Coast, in the Valley of Oaxaca, and across the southern Isthmus; its products also occur in minute quantities in the northern Maya area at sites like Chicanna, Chichén Itzá, Uxmal, Ek Balam, and Labná (Braswell, 2003, Table 20.1). Use of Oyameles-Zaragoza obsidian declined at the beginning of the Postclassic as Cantona was abandoned around A.D. 1000 (Garc´ıa Cook and Merino, 1998, p. 213). The city was constructed upon a series of superimposed andesitic flows that form natural terraces—each about 10-m high (Ferriz, 1985)—using asymmetrical architectural layouts to adapt building plans to the highly irregular ground (Garc´ıa Cook and Merino, 1998, p. 197). Most of Cantona’s civic and religious buildings are located on the upper terrace, or Acropolis, that rises at the southern end of the site while the habitation areas cover the lower two flows along the southern and western boundaries of the geological formation. The city’s public architecture includes 24 ballcourts and more than 100 plazas. Twelve of the ballcourts were embedded into an entirely new architectural complex that consists of a plaza with a stepped platform at one end and the I-shaped ballcourt at the other (Fig. 4); most of these complex architectural configurations are located on the Acropolis (Garc´ıa Cook and Merino, 1998, pp. 200–201). Thirty of Cantona’s plazas also were built on the Acropolis while the remainder were scattered among the residential patio groups, perhaps functioning as civic and religious hubs for the city’s subdivisions. Garc´ıa Cook and Merino (1998, p. 197) identified two large rectangular open areas defined by low walls and platforms—covering 11,200 and 16,000 m2 , respectively—that may have functioned as marketplaces. A complex network of elevated stone-paved streets meanders through the residential patios that occupy more than 3000 terraces, while clearly defined roads linked the settlement with a number of neighboring towns (Garc´ıa Cook and Merino, 1998). Over 20 14 C dates place the occupation between the Late Formative and Epiclassic. The site seems to have become more fortified through time, reinforcing its frontier status and perhaps reflecting the political turmoil of the Epiclassic. Both Cantona’s building program and ceramic assemblage are unique in Mesoamerica and do not employ the canons of the central valleys or Gulf Coast sites, although certain similarities to the styles of Veracruz, Oaxaca, the central highlands, and West Mexico are present (Garc´ıa Cook and Merino, 1998, pp. 210, 213–214). The ethnic composition of Cantona and the nature of the


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Fig. 4. Plan of ballcourt complex no. 7 at Cantona (redrawn from Talavera et al., 2001, Fig. 50).

settlement’s outside contacts and alliances remain unresolved; further analysis of the excavated materials and their contexts (e.g., Rojas, 2001; Talavera et al., 2001) should provide important insights about this frontier polity and its interaction with other parts of Mesoamerica. In many ways, the city is like other Epiclassic centers (e.g., Xochicalco, Cacaxtla, and El Taj´ın): It is located on a prominent hill with fortified architecture; it possess a road network with controlled accesses; it focuses strongly on ballcourt ritual; and its artifact assemblages includes reworked human bone. Unlike the above-mentioned cities, however, Cantona has little public artwork, which makes ideological and symbolic comparisons difficult. Popoloca Region Ethnic identity also represents an important issue for archaeologists working in the southeastern corner of the state. Not only are the small polities centered at sites like La Mesa (Tehuacan Viejo), Cuthá, and Tepexi located in a region of both geographic and cultural transitions, but the area was subject to an influx of Nahuatl speakers from the northwest early in the 13th century, and two hundred years later much of it became subject to the Aztec empire (Castillo, 1997, p. 239; Sisson and Lilly, 1994a, p. 33). Although some authors stress the relevance of an ancient Popoloca identity (Castillo, 1998c), others have given more importance to the Postclassic Nahua migrants (Sisson and Lilly, 1994a,b). La Mesa has been described


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as being occupied by either Popoloca (Castillo, 1998c) or Nahua refugees (Sisson and Lilly, 1994a, p. 33), while Tepexi and Cuthá have traditionally been classified as Popoloca. Some authors propose that the Popoloca kingdoms flourished after the fall of Tula (Castillo, 1994, p. 18), but Castellón (1999) has recently suggested that Cuthá, one of the most important sites in the area, reached its peak during the Epiclassic. Researchers who have worked in the region during the last dozen years agree that its population was not homogeneous but rather a complex mixture of the various ethnic groups whose geographic boundaries coalesce in southeastern Puebla (Castellón, 1999; Castillo, 1998c; Sisson and Lilly, 1994a). Surrounded by Nahua groups to the north and Mixtecs, Chochos, and Mazatecs to the south, the Popoloca kingdoms were linked to one another and to their outside neighbors through marriage alliances (Castillo, 1998c, p. 1876; Sisson and Lilly, 1994a, p. 33), although they were simultaneously engaged in local conflicts that resulted in the fortification of many of the major cabeceras, such as Cuthá and Tepexi (Castillo, 1994). Although a great deal of the recent archaeological work has centered on mapping and the excavation of public architecture at La Mesa (Alduc´ın, 1998; Arana, 1995, 1998; Chacón, 1995, 1998; Sisson and Lilly, 1994a,b), Tepexi (Castillo, 1996, 1997), and Cuthá (Castellón, 1999), much of the interpretation reviewed above is based primarily on legendary accounts in ethnohistoric documents and ceramic studies. The fact that the ceramics and murals found in the region belong to the generalized Mixteca-Puebla tradition does not help clarify issues of ethnic identity. Surface collections at La Mesa include not only local bichromes and polychromes but also ceramics from Acatlán, Tepeaca, Cholula, Cuauhtinchan, Tlaxco, the Basin of Mexico, the Mixteca Alta, the Chinantla, and the Huasteca (Márquez, 1994)—a situation paralleled at Cuthá (Castellón, 1999). In addition to ethnic diversity, this suggests the existence of complex exchange networks and marriage alliances that were fundamental to the social, political, and economic organization of these often fortified polities that occupied the small valleys of the region. Ceramics are not particularly good indicators of ethnicity, and more work needs to be done at the household level to investigate the population mix at these settlements and how the Nahua migrants affected the political and demographic structure of the region. Southeastern Puebla also has witnessed research on productive systems. Neely’s (Neely and Castellón, 2003) continuing work on the fossilized canal systems of the Tehuacan Valley has shown that spring water was being channeled to agricultural fields by the beginning of the Late Formative, and organic materials sealed between the travertine layers of the canals should provide important environmental data for this initial period of agricultural intensification. The canal water also was employed in salt making that was a major industry of the area around Cuthá (Castellón, 1999).


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During the Classic period the Popoloca region’s interaction with the great power centers, especially Teotihuacan, revolved around the production of Thin Orange ceramics (Plunket and Uruñuela 1998d) made from clay deposits along the R´ıo Carnero drainage. Rattray’s survey (Rattray, 1990a,b, 1995) of about 100 km2 of an area between Tepexi and San Juan Ixcaquixtla was designed to study the production of this ware and the interaction between the Popoloca and Teotihuacan. She located 83 sites, including three regional centers and nine cabeceras (Rattray, 1998, p. 80, Fig. 2), and partially excavated a house compound with a Thin Orange workshop (Rattray, 1990a). Although Rattray (1998, p. 81) places the earliest appearance of this highly traded ware around A.D. 200, neutron activation analyses of pink-orange paste vessels from Late Formative contexts at Tetimpa demonstrate that ceramics chemically identical to Classic period Thin Orange were in circulation much earlier (Plunket et al., n.d.).

Atlixco The northern frontier of the Popoloca and Mixtec areas is located at the southern edge of the Atlixco Valley. Here studies have focused not so much on the nature of this boundary but rather on the political division that developed between cabeceras conquered by the Aztec empire and the independent kingdoms of Puebla-Tlaxcala after 1465 (Plunket, 1990; Plunket and Uruñuela, 1994). Hostilities between these two groups, known as the xochiyaoyotl or Flowery Wars, apparently resulted in the episodic abandonment of settlements in the Atlixco Valley, particularly in the southern area near Quauhquechulan where the Aztecs installed a garrison (Dyckerhoff, 1988, p. 26). As opposed to the situation in the Popoloca region, ceramics and probably other goods did not cross this frontier easily. Aztec III and the cream wares typical of the Mixteca are absent or scarce in the Puebla Valley to the north, while Cholula polychromes are very uncommon around Quauhquechulan to the south. The nature of the Nahua-Otomangue divide seems to have varied considerably according to the political and economic relations between bordering groups. Internal regional hostilities among peer polities, like those indicated for the southeastern area, seem to be reflected in the defensive position and frequent fortification of cabeceras without major or long-term effects on economic exchange. Threats of conquest by a major foreign military alliance, however, appear to have affected both settlement continuity and commercial activity.

THE MIXTECA-PUEBLA PHENOMENON In a recent synthesis, Nicholson (2001) reminds us that the origins of the Late Postclassic International Style—also known as the Mixteca-Puebla Horizon


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Style—are still unclear. One group of researchers associates it with the emergence of the Mixtec kingdoms in Oaxaca and southern Puebla, while others argue for roots in the turbulent Early Postclassic of Cholula in the western Puebla Valley, or in the highland-lowland interaction along the Gulf Coast. For many years, interest in the origins of this art style was interwoven with diffusionist models that posited a culture core in central Mexico from which Mixteca-Puebla “culture” spread (Nicholson, 1960; Vaillant, 1940). Smith and Heath-Smith (1980, p. 15) challenged this traditional view, arguing that it confuses three distinct phenomena: (1) the Religious Style of the Early Postclassic; (2) the Mixtec Codex Style of the Late Postclassic; and (3) the Mixteca-Puebla Regional Ceramic Sphere composed of local central Mexican ceramic complexes that share certain stylistic features. They concluded that the conflation of these phenomena has led to inappropriate models and flawed interpretations, and they propose that trade and developing communication networks provide better explanations. A recent volume on Postclassic Mesoamerica (Smith and Berdan, 2000, 2003b) examines the Mixteca-Puebla phenomenon from a world-systems perspective. To distinguish between style and iconography, two categories are used: (1) the Postclassic International Style (painting styles of codices, murals, and ceramics), and (2) the Postclassic International Symbol Sets (iconography) that have early and late components (Boone and Smith, 2003). The world-systems approach reverses the culture core concept that held that traits diffuse outward from a center and instead contends that the styles and symbols originate outside central Mexico, but were incorporated into the exchange networks of the Postclassic world system (Smith, 2003, p. 183). “Mixteca-Puebla style” is used now to refer to ceramic decoration, murals, and codices in Puebla, Tlaxcala, and Oaxaca (Smith, 2003, p. 182). In Puebla, recent work has sought to separate and define substyles (Castellón and Dumaine, 2000; Castillo, 1994; Dennis, 1994; Lind, 1994a; McCafferty, 1994, 2001c; Quiñones-Keber, 1994; Smith and Berdan, 2000, 2003b), identify loci where materials were made (Neff et al., 1994; Uruñuela et al., 1997), determine the style’s application in different media—codices, ceramics, and mural—(Contreras, 1994; Sisson and Lilly, 1994b), “read” the iconographic references (Hernández, 1995a,b; Nicholson, 1994; Sisson and Lilly, 1994a), and understand how this ritually charged symbolism was woven into the social fabric (Pohl, 1998, 2003a,b,c,d; Pohl and Byland, 1994). Several studies have demonstrated strong relationships between regional substyles and certain codical traditions, lending weight to arguments about the origins of particular manuscripts. For example, there is such a strong correspondence between the Late Postclassic polychrome wares and murals of the Puebla-Tlaxcala Valley and the Codex Borgia that it is highly probable that this pre-Columbian document was produced in that area (Boone, 2003; Contreras, 1994; Hernández, 1995a,b; Nicholson, 1994; Pohl, 1998; Quiñones-Keber, 1994; Uruñuela et al., 1997).

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These links between the Codex Borgia and the codex-style ceramics from the Puebla-Tlaxcala Valley have led several researchers to isolate elements and motifs in the complex compositions in an attempt to create “vocabularies” that can be translated or tied to culturally specific meanings (Hernández, 1995a,b; Lind, 1994a; Lind et al., n.d.; Nicholson, 1994). Based on Lind’s (1994a, pp. 94–95) comparative dictionary of motifs that occur on Late Postclassic Mixtec Pilitas and Cholula Catalina polychromes, these ceramics functioned within two significantly different political systems. According to Lind (1994a, p. 97) the Mixtec vessels served as drinking vessels at royal weddings and other gatherings of the political elite; consequently they illustrate distinctive Mixtec rituals, anthropomorphic representations of royalty, and mythological themes that are similar to those found in the Mixtec Codex Vindobonensis. The Cholula ceramics, on the other hand, use design motifs that reflect bloody rites, including human and animal sacrifice; they focus on the ritual paraphernalia like maguey thorns and bone awls used in these events. Occasional references to deities like Xochipilli, Xochiquetzal, or Tezcatlipoca on drinking vessels and plates are achieved through esoteric symbols rather than anthropomorphic representations; likewise, representations of jaguars and eagles allude to the two high priests of Cholula, the Tlalchiach and the Aquiach, respectively. For Lind, the elegant Catalina polychrome (Fig. 5) is thematically related to the interests of the religious bureaucracy of the holy city of Cholula and was not employed in the aggrandizement of the political elite like the Mixtec Pilitas ware appears to have been. If Lind is correct in his interpretation, an intensive study of “vocabularies” depicted on the “codex style” ceramics produced in the other kingdoms of the Puebla-Tlaxcala Valley should reveal patterns similar to those of the Mixtec Pilitas polychromes since the sacred pilgrimage city of Cholula is probably a unique case. Neutron activation analysis of ceramics decorated with “Mixteca-Puebla” iconography has shown that these were made at a number of locations in the Basin of Mexico, the Puebla-Tlaxcala Valley, the Popoloca area, the Mixteca Alta, the Oaxaca Valley, and the Chinantla (Neff et al., 1994, p. 129); therefore the signs and symbols should reflect the rituals and mythology used by the local elites. In a recent article on the Late Postclassic painted altars in Tlaxcala, Pohl (1998, pp. 194–195) proposes that some of the sacrificial references in these murals and on local ceramics are related to the Tzitzimitl, fearsome spirits that personified disease, drought, war, sacrifice, death, and divine castigation who serve as emblems of the chaos caused by drunkenness and violent discord. He suggests that drunkenness was common at the palace feasts that played such an important role in maintaining social relations among the multiethnic kingdoms of highland Mexico (Pohl 2003a,b,c,d), and that the movable feasts of the 260-day sacred calendar were celebrated in these palaces and dedicated to the Tzitzimime (Pohl, 1998, pp. 197, 200). In effect, he suggests that, like their Mixtec counterparts, the Tlaxcalan kingdoms also used ceramics and other art forms depicting the ritual and mythological themes that were specifically relevant to their own social


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Fig. 5. Catalina polychrome pulque goblet (courtesy of the Museo de la Ciudad de Cholula en la Casa del Caballero Aguila, Cholula, Puebla).

milieu. Hernández’ (1995a,b) comparison of the motifs of Cholula, Huejotzingo, and Tlaxcalan ceramics shows that the Tzitzimitl references—the severed hands, the skulls, and human hearts—frequently appear in Cholula, so it is likely that the sacred city used the polychrome wares not only as a vehicle for the interests of the religious bureaucracy but also for promoting the political elite. The discovery of codex-style murals at La Mesa (Tehuacan Viejo) in 1991 provides significant information about how Mixteca-Puebla style iconography


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was used in nonpalatial architectural settings. On the back wall of the west room in a courtyard group, Edward Sisson (Sisson and Lilly, 1994a,b) uncovered a well-preserved mural painted on mud plaster that depicts eight shields (originally 9) surmounted on diagonally crossed lances and banners. The building has been interpreted as an armory decorated with the symbolism of the night sun where the elaborate costumes, shields, and lances of elite warriors were stored (Sisson and Lilly, 1994a, p. 43). The shields themselves make reference to deities like Xipe Totec, Tezcatlipoca, and Mixcoatl-Camaxtli and employ metaphors for warfare and sacrifice like the atl-tlachinolli (“burning water”), the mitl-chimalli (a shield on top of atlatl darts), anthropomorphized sacrificial knives, and the aztamecatl (a feathered rope for binding sacrificial victims). The paintings were probably made by a Nahuatl-speaking component of the Popoloca region since there are strong iconographic similarities between the murals and the Codex Borgia (see, Boone, 2003). Sisson and Lilly (1994a, p. 42) stress that the full meaning of the murals could be better understood if the surrounding rooms were excavated, but difficulties in the conservation of the paintings have made archaeologists reluctant to undertake this exploration. As opposed to the Tlaxcalan palace murals that emphasize the Tzitzimime motifs, the La Mesa artwork demonstrates that the Mixteca-Puebla style also articulated military themes for warrior societies whose ranks probably included members of the political elite.

FINAL COMMENTS As this review demonstrates, the amount of research-oriented archaeology in the state of Puebla during the past dozen years has been limited. With the exception of the Tehuacan Archaeological-Botanical Project, this situation results from the failure of the large-scale projects of the 1960s and 1970s in the Puebla-Tlaxcala Valley to produce and publish a coherent chronological framework (however, see Garc´ıa Cook, 1981, 1988), well-established ceramic sequences, and a detailed, comprehensive analysis of settlement patterns that could serve as a platform from which to launch more specific research. Forty years ago modern settlement was not an important impediment to archaeological research, but today the problems caused by population growth and resource use have made it much more difficult to obtain the kind of information needed to create the broad outlines that can generate theoretical discussions. Not only have important sites been impacted by development projects and squatters settlements, but also the topsoil of a large section of the western Puebla Valley has been removed and used by cottage industries to make bricks. It is now almost impossible to record small villages and hamlets in these zones. Other areas of the state remain virtually unknown archaeologically. The Sierra Norte and the Atlantic slope that leads into the Totonac area have many


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important sites such as Yohualichan and Xiutetelco, but little systematic exploration has been undertaken. The Izucar-Chiauhtla area to the southwest and the Mixteca Baja to the south are unexplored with the exception of limited work at Las Bocas (Paillés, 2000; Paillés et al., 2000). The Mixtec kingdom of Acatlán that apparently produced the Codex Tulane (Smith and Parmenter, 1991) has seen little archaeological research. The Plains of San Juan around Cantona have been and continue to be the subject of archaeological survey by Angel Garc´ıa Cook in spite of Leonor Merino’s untimely death. The western extreme of the central valleys around Tepeaca-Acatzingo was intensively surveyed by James Sheehy; unfortunately, this work remains unpublished and can only be consulted in two licenciatura theses (Maldonado, 1997; Medina, 2001) and in technical reports to the Mexican government (Sheehy, 1994; Sheehy et al., 1995, 1996). The publication of detailed analyses of salvage work has been very inadequate. Major excavations were undertaken during the 1980s in response to the construction of the Huejotzingo airport. The only published mention of the airport project (Cepeda, 1997) summarizes in one paragraph evidence of an Early Classic occupation that included the remains of an urban settlement with palaces surrounded by walls and separated by streets 1.5-m wide, a drainage system to recycle rainwater, canals for irrigation, domestic artifacts, ceremonial burials, and more than 4000 ceramic vessels. There are no maps, drawings, or photographs. During this same period a modern drainage system cut a 4 km long east-west trench through Cholula two blocks south of the Great Pyramid. With the exception of three midden deposits (Fajardo, 1985) and the burials (Uruñuela, 1989a), the excavated materials from this salvage project were never analyzed and no report was prepared. Occasionally, however, results from these kinds of excavations are published (e.g., Suárez, 1990, 1995). In spite of the problems we have mentioned, the state of Puebla has tremendous potential for archaeological research. The Middle and Late Formative saw impressive population growth and the establishment of numerous chiefdoms. Relations between Teotihuacan and Cholula are still not clearly understood for the Classic period, and this is an important research problem that needs to be addressed. To the east of Cholula there are several important centers (Hirth and Swezey, 1976; Medina, 2001, pp. 124–132) that may provide significant data about Teotihuacan’s relations with lesser highland political structures, a subject that, having been overshadowed by research on the Teotihuacan-Maya interaction, requires attention. And finally, Puebla’s location along the fringe of the Nahuatlspeaking world—at least during the Postlcassic—provides archaeologists with excellent opportunities to investigate social, economic, and political interaction along frontier zones and ethnic divides. This short review brings together various sets of the recent archaeological work in the state of Puebla. We have attempted to show that, in spite of the sporadic and opportunistic nature of many projects, there is much to be learned from this

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central area; its exclusion from general considerations of Mesoamerican prehistory due to a lack of regional synthesis shows that our reconstruction and understanding of basic culture history and social process in this “cradle of civilization” is far from adequate. As Richard MacNeish recognized long ago, certain parts of the state provide excellent prospects for the study of agricultural origins and the spread of Neolithic lifeways. Chronological challenges to the long-established Tehuacan Valley Archaic sequence demonstrate the importance of bolstering existing data bases on the transition to agricultural subsistence economies in highland Mesoamerica. Although the dry caves of Tehuacan and the Valsequillo Depression undoubtedly provide the best preservation of organic materials, the swamp lands of the Puebla-Tlaxcala Valley also may present opportunities for research on the changing nature of human subsistence patterns under less arid conditions between 5000 and 2000 BP. More and better archaeological and linguistic data from the Archaic period will help trace the Neolithic expansion so that the Mesoamerican experience can be compared to similar processes worldwide. Almost 30 years ago, Flannery (1976) wrote about the early Mesoamerican village. Some of these early villages in Puebla were tested by the German archaeological project of the 1960s (Aufdermaeur, 1970), but along the eastern base of the Sierra Nevada there is a string of villages that developed into important chiefdoms during the Middle and Late Formative—sites like Tlalancaleca, San Francisco Coapan, and Colotzingo—that need intensive study in order to make better sense of the political and economic processes documented in the Basin of Mexico to the northwest and the Valley of Oaxaca to the southeast. Our studies at Tetimpa have shown that even the rural settlements that dotted the piedmont were active participants in Formative exchange networks, and we might expect that the centers located on the valley floor were prime movers in the political development of central Mexico. The population declines documented for both sides of the Sierra Nevada during the first century A.D.—including the large chiefdoms of the western Puebla Valley—may have been a consequence of a huge eruption of the Popocatépetl volcano. This natural disaster has direct bearing on the rapid growth of the two major urban centers of highland Mesoamerica, Teotihuacan, and Cholula, in that it provides a specific set of circumstances under which decision making took place at both the impacted communities and the powerful political centers closest to them. Generally, it has been assumed that the emergent cities of the central highlands coerced the inhabitants of the towns and villages of their respective regions to relocate to the urban environment, yet the dating of the VEI-6 eruption provides an alternate explanation for the massive population movements of the first century A.D. and requires us to reconsider our ideas about population implosion and the nature of the Terminal Formative/Early Classic transition in the central highlands.


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Ethnic and environmental diversity played major roles in the political and economic development of Puebla. The northern, eastern, and southern sectors of this macroregion constitute major linguistic and environmental divides that create excellent opportunities to study the interaction between environmentally and/or ethnically distinct territories. In spite of internal regional hostilities, the small polities of the Postclassic developed communication systems that could function in multiethnic circumstances to promote alliance formation and maintain active exchange networks. This kind of social and commercial interaction appears to have been curtailed, however, by the emergence of the Triple Alliance and the imperialistic designs of the Aztec empire. Puebla sits at the crossroads of Mesoamerica, and in a sense, it divides the ancient culture area in two rather distinct parts, just as it divides the modern nation of Mexico into the developed north and the impoverished south. The transitions in environment and language are complex and obviously have deep temporal roots, but these transitions make Puebla an important laboratory for the study of interaction across frontiers.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS We thank the Mesoamerican Research Foundation, the Sistema Regional Ignacio Zaragoza, the Consejo Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnolog´ıa, and the Decanatura de Investigación y Posgrado of the Universidad de las Américas, Puebla, for their generous support of our research. Kent Flannery, Kenneth Hirth, James Sheehy, Gary Feinman, and Linda Nicholas all provided helpful suggestions and sound advice that were much appreciated.

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