Palaces and Power in the Americas: From Peru to the Northwest Coast

Chapter 10: Antecedents of the Aztec Palace: Palaces and Political Power in Classic and Postclassic Mexico

chapter 10 Antecedents of the Aztec Palace palaces and political power in classic and postclassic mexico Susan Toby Evans From Classic-period Teotihuacan to Tenochtitlán in A.D. 1521, the cities of the Basin of Mexico and adjacent Tula region centered on civic and ceremonial architecture, the focus of secular and spiritual power (Figure 10.1). Archaeologically, the architectural obtrusiveness of the temple-pyramid ensured its greater survivability after the demise or transformation of the city. In contrast, the palace, generally a one-story building on a relatively low platform , was less likely to leave a recognizable form beyond that of a large, low mound with artifacts pertaining to domestic functions and possibly of more luxurious forms than those of the average house mound. However, excavations at such structures clarify their size, and the number and layout of their rooms, and such features can help us establish a diagnostic architectural signature for the ruler’s official residence and administration building. This chapter uses the Aztec palace, a clear example of the congruence of form and function, to hypothesize about how Teotihuacan’s and Tula’s palaces looked and operated—and, by extension, how these states were administered. The Tecpan-Palace as Aztec Political Capitol The great Aztec tecpan-palaces of the Late Postclassic period are known to us from many descriptions by eyewitnesses, such as the informants of Juan Bautista de Pomar, Fray Bernardino do Sahagún, Diego Durán, and Fernando de Alva Ixtlilxochitl, and from several excavations of palace remains. The synthesis of these sources reveals a readily recognizable form: a large squarish building facing onto the community’s main plaza, with a capacious entry courtyard overlooked by a dais room across from the main entrance (Figure 10.2).These three elements—dais room, courtyard, and plaza—are in a sense analogous to the gradations of Aztec society and political administration in that the ruler, from his vantage point, directed the conduct of state business as negotiated and carried out by the nobles, who in turn organized the common people to fulfill their tribute commitments in goods and labor. Administration of the polity was one of the foremost functions that these 286 susan toby evans figure 10.1 Central Mexico map, showing the locations of Tenochtitlán, Teotihuacan , Tula, Acozac, Azcapotzalco, Texcoco, Chimalhuacan Atenco, Chiconautla, and Cihuatecpan palaces served; another was as the residence of the ruler and his family. A ruler’s ‘‘private’’ life is virtually nonexistent, of course, because his domestic arrangements and daily occupations bear heavily on the state of the body politic, particularly in an archaic agrarian state where the ruler was assumed to be the living embodiment of sacred forces. However, rulers are but human in many domestic ways and need private space to sleep, share intimate moments with their close companions, meditate, bathe, defecate, and so on. These everyday activities of the ruler must be supported by the ministrations of wives and retainers, who themselves need space to sleep, to take care of their daily needs, and to do the work of the palace. In the case of the Aztecs, the palace women, assisted by servants, produced important commodities antecedents of the aztec palace 287 such as heirs, feasts, and textiles.Therefore, the architectural signature of an Aztec administrative-residential palace included the messy backstage spaces where all manner of prep work was performed to ensure and subsidize the success of the ongoing political drama of the dais room and main courtyard. Thus the layout of the tecpan—main courtyard, dais room, suites of consultation, storage rooms, and habitation rooms—is a signature of Late Postclassic Central Mexican political administration, and all known cases, archaeological and ethnohistorical, conform to a similar pattern of plazacourtyard –dais room (Evans 2004).To understand the roots of Aztec political organization, we look to the palace architecture of the Aztecs’ predecessors in Central Mexico. Tula’s palace architecture expresses some of these key features. Reaching back to Teotihuacan, this form is far less readily recognizable .The distinctions between these palace layouts suggest a transformation figure 10.2 Nezahualcoyotl’s palace at Texcoco, as depicted in the Mapa Quinatzin (1959 [ca. 1542]) 288 susan toby evans in the nature of rulership from Classic-period Teotihuacan to the Postclassic , wherein the tecpan-palace provided the appropriate forum for the chief speaker, the tlatoani. The Aztec Tecpan as Political Forum After the Spanish Conquest of...