Archaeometallurgy in Mesoamerica: Current Approaches and New Perspectives

2. An Interdisciplinary Survey of a Copper-Smelting Site in West Mexico: The Case of Jicalán el Viejo, Michoacán

29 In addition to the Relación de Michoacán (1539–1541), one of the best-known and most widely studied ethnohistorical documents in Michoacán is the Lienzo de Jicalán (Figure 2.1). This lienzo is a pictographic document used and elaborated upon in the second half of the sixteenth century as proof of the rights that the indigenous authorities of Jicalán believed they held over several mineral deposits, copper sources, and soil-based colorants in the Tierra Caliente (Hotlands) of Michoacán. According to the lienzo, the ancestors who founded this town in remote times were Nahuatl-speaking Toltecs who venerated the god Tezcatlipoca. Born to the east, beyond the coast of Veracruz, where the sun that gives birth to all life rises every day, they had at some moment set out on an arduous migration toward West Mexico that eventually brought them to the area south of the modern city of Uruapan. It was here that they established the so-called cacicazgo (chieftainship) of Jicalán and initiated their main economic activities: copper smelting and the elaboration of painted gourds. The lienzo reveals that the inhabitants of Jicalán exploited copper mines located along three routes leading to different areas of the Tierra Caliente (Figure 2.2). The first led south from town until it reached the northern shore of the Balsas River, in lands that now form part of the municipality of Huetamo (southeast of Jicalán). The second route followed the Marqués River T w o An Interdisciplinary Survey of a Copper-Smelting Site in West Mexico THE CASE OF JICALÁN EL VIEJO, MICHOACÁN Hans Roskamp and Mario Rétiz DOI: 10.5876/9781607322009.c02 30 Hans Roskamp and maRio RéTiz down to the present dam at El Infiernillo (to the south), while the endpoint of the third route was the Pinzándaro region, on the shores of the Tepalcatepec River (southwest). Although it was not until after Jicalán was annexed by the Tarascan Empire in the late fifteenth century that its residents began to pay tribute in the form of gourds and agricultural utensils made of copper, their rights to the mines were recognized by both the pre-Hispanic kings and their Colonial-era successors (Roskamp 1998, 2001, 2010). In the Relación de Michoacán the Tierra Caliente appears almost exclusively as an extraction zone for valuable natural resources that were exploited by the Tarascan rulers at Tzintzuntzan; in contrast, the Lienzo de Jicalán emphasizes the antiquity of the area’s occupation by Nahuatl speakers, who claimed to be masters of arts belonging to the Toltec tradition. It is clear from the lienzo that these people had their own worldview and religion and, moreover, were absorbed into the Tarascan kingdom just a short time before the arrival of the Spanish. To a great extent, the visions of the past revealed in these two ethnohistorical documents (the relación and the lienzo) functioned to legitimize certain political and economic rights. For this reason they must be studied with great care and compared as closely as possible with other written sources and, above all, with the results of archaeological research. The critical combination of archaeology and history has been applied successfully in the Ciénega de Zacapu area. In this case, archaeological FiguRe 2.1. TheLienzodeJicalán.SociedadMexicanadeGeografíayEstadística,photographic archive of Hans Roskamp. 31 an inTeRdisciplinaRy suRvey oF a coppeR-smelTing siTe in wesT mexico research shows that the origin of the Tarascan kingdom is clearly related to the long-term development of the regional population that already possessed a complex sociopolitical organization and lived in well-organized and highly structured settlements centuries before the rise of the Tarascans. The results call into question the simplified and idealized vision of the origins of the Tarascans discussed in the Relación de Michoacán. This document describes how the Uacúsecha, which constituted the dominant Tarascan Eagle lineage , were nomadic hunter-gatherers who called themselves Chichimecs and came from the north. In a relatively short period, they managed to create a highly centralized government that dominated an extensive territory whose limits exceeded those of the modern state of Michoacán (Arnauld and Faugère-Kalfon 1998; Arnauld and Michelet 1991). At least since the mid-seventeenth century, the Lienzo de Jicalán had been kept in the town of Jucutácato, likely until the...