Aztec Ceremonial Landscapes

7. The Sacred Landscape of Aztec Calendar Festivals: Myth, Nature, and Society

7 The Sacred Landscape ofAztec Calendar Festivals: Myth, Nature, and Society Johanna Broda The interdisciplinary study ofpre-Hispanic Mesoamerica, combining ethnohistory, archaeology, archaeoastronomy, art history, and history of religions, has been a particularly fruitful field of research in the Valley of Mexico, historic heartland of the Triple Alliance and seat of numerous important city-states with distinctive ethnic affiliations and ancient cultural roots in the past. The peculiariry ofthis geographical zone is that it was the main (or at least one of the principal) political and cultural centers of Mesoamerica, with a historical continuity extending from Preclassic times. It is to be expected that we should find here an extreme complexiry in the relations among settlements, natural features, alignments, interactions, and symbolic forms - "a grand design" derived from an ancient tradition. These circumstances are enhanced even more by the fact that for no other region of pre-Hispanic Mesoamerica does there exist such an abundance of historical sources (from Indian codices and annals to Spanish and mestizo chronicles, from colonial archival and published documentation to contemporary fieldwork accounts and modern bibliography in general) (see Figures 7.1-7.4). Thus, it is possible effectively to combine the study of pre-Hispanic society and religion with historical accounts written by different ethnic groups ofthe Valley (that refer to the ways in which these Nahua groups conceived of their geographic and cultural space, their "ritual landscape," that is, their own ideological interpretation of this space). On the other hand, this historical documentation on pre-Hispanic The Sacred Landscape 75 ................",,,..,..,,, ,, , ........ '.., . G,;;--'~) , (::. ' ~i~ .:~::: \ Figure 7.1. The Valley of Mexico with Aztec-Period Communities (from Parsons 1971:4). society can be confronted with the exploration of archaeological sites and archaeoastronomical alignments. I propose to combine the study of important natural features in the Basin (mainly mountains or water resources) that were used as sacred 76 Johanna Broda Figure 7.2. The Valley of Mexico on the Eve of the Spanish Conquest (from Plano &conJtrucriuo tk 14 &gi6n tk Tmochtirlan by L. Gonzilez Aparicio, 1973). places (sanctuaries) with the study ofthe principal towns and their history. In this reconstruction of the Aztec vision of place, I propose to examine the archaeoastronomical alignments that may exist between the natural features connected to shrines and human settlements, taking into account the geographical and ecological setting and the former vegetation of these The Sacred Landscape 77 Figure 7.3. The Basin of Mexico: lale Horizon (from Sanders, P2lsons & Sandey, 1979, Map 18). 78 Johanna Broda _ .....Figure 7.4. The Basin of Mexico with its Major Centers ofAlignments Including Settlements as weIl as Mountains, According to F. lichy. The system of alignments is derived from a supposed pre-Hispanic division of the circle into 80 units of 4.5" (from TIchy 1983. Fig. 4). places. This is the outline of a tathet wide project for the future. In this chapter I want to synthesize some of the tesearch done so far. and concentrate on the analysis of the relation between myth, nature, and society in a series of specific Aztec calendrical festivals. The different sections ofthis chapter may seem to be rather wide apart; however, I hope to show that both strands of investigation cross-nurture one another. Th, Samd Landscap, 1. ARCHAEOASTRONOMICAL FIELDWORK IN THE BASIN OF MEXICO: THE MOUNTAIN CULT AND SITE ALIGNMENTS 79 One ofthe basic propositious of this study is that the mountain cult was a fundamental aspect of pre-Hispanic cosmovision and religion. I recognized this circumstance after analyzing the cosmovision implied in the offerings that were buried in the constructive phases of the Templo Mayor (Broda 1982, 1987a, 1987b). The mountain cult was intimately connected to the cult of rain. water, and the eanh and is one ofthe oldest elements ofpre-Hispanic religion, the roots ofwhich go back to Preclassic times. The important observational elements that pre-Hispanic religion contained included not only the observation of the annual course of the sun and of cenain planets and constellations, but this study should be extended to the notions of geography. climate. and the observation of nature in a wider sense (Broda 1989 and in press). This analysis can be concretely undenaken in the case ofmountain worship by relating archaeological . ethnohistorical. and ethnographic records (Broda. in press). Authors that have contributed to the study ofthis subject in central Mexico are Charnay (1973): Lorenzo (1957): Townsend (1982): Ponce de Leon (1983); Iwaniszewski (198Gb); Montero...