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4 The Mt. Tlaloc Project Richard F. Townsend The project to sutvey and map the Aztec temple on Mt. Tlaloc was successfully cattied out in April 1989 by the project directors Richard F. Townsend of the Art Institute of Chicago and Felipe SoHs of the Museo Nacional de Antropologfa in Mexico. Wewete assisted by the atchaeologist Alejandro Pastrana and the archaeologist and mapmaker Hernando G6mez Rueda, both from the Instituto Nacional de Antropologfa e Hisrotia de Mexico. Two graduate students from the institute also assisted. The atchaeological site lies at an altitude of13,500 feet above sea level, on the barren summit of Mt. Tlaloc, between the Valley of Mexico and the Basin of Puebla. Because of its remoteness the temple had never been adequately surveyed and little was known of its chronology and atchitectural iconography. Yet, the temple is partly described in a detailed account, in Diego Duran's sixteenth-century Book ofthe Gods and Rites and the Ancient Calendar, of the annual rainmaking rites performed by Aztec kings. We believed that an investigation of this place would find answets to a series of outstanding questions abour religious thought and imagery in the Aztec Empire. What would the Mt. Tlaloc temple tell us about the imagery of architecture and sacred geography? How did the building function, and what do the rites say about the idea ofkingship among the Aztecs and theit neighbors? What underlying mythic themes might be tevealed by an investigation ofthis site? Would the Mt. Tlaloc ternpie cast light on a structure of cultural connections between the Aztecs and their predecessors in the long history of civilization in the Valley of Mexico? After an initial planning meeting at the museum, we decided to carry out the work at the site in three field sessions. Mt. Tlaloc is parr of a complex chain ofvolcanic heights extending The Mt. Tlaloc Project 27 north from the snowcapped peaks of Ixtaccihuatl and Popocatepetl. The best approach is via Texcoco to the village ofTequexquinahuac, and then east by a dirt road winding up into the fotested ravines of the rugged mountain massiE The way was easily passable to our rented VW van. The road is paralleled in its upper reaches by a fifteenth-century Aztec aqueduct , which still brings springwater from the high sources to rhe villages of the Texcocan plain. We established camp in the shelter of fir trees at about the II ,ODD-foot level and spent the remainder ofthe first afternoon prospecting for the best possible route to the summit. Topographic maps and aerial photographs were helpful, for the approach to the upper section of the mountain is traversed by impressive fault escarpments and ancient lava flows. The climb next morning took three and a half hours. Toward the summit the coniferous forest gives way to a progressively colder, bleak, and barren zone ofbasalt, ash, and coarse grass. The summit is not a peak but rather a small, ovoid plateau, elongated and irregular in elevation. The height affords a dramatic view ofixtaccihuatl and Popocatepetl, the range country ofthe north- central plateau. Approaching from the east, we found the entrance to a long processional way much destroyed, bur the remains show that they originally reached approximately three meters high. The corridor between them, measuring some three meters wide, extends about half a city block in length. In former times, the visitor would have seen nothing of the spectacular landscape once inside the corridor. The western end opens into a spacious rectangular precinct, also enclosed by a high surrounding wall. There is evidence of a processional W

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