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Urbanization and Empire at the Aztec City of Calixtlahuaca (Toluca Valley, Mexico)

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Theme: 
Urban Societies

Description
This is an archaeological fieldwork project at the major important Aztec-period city of Calixtlahuaca. The $252,000 NSF grant covers a summer season of mapping and surface collections, an 8-month season of excavations of houses and terraces at the site, and a summer season of laboratory analyses. The overarching goals of the project are to extend knowledge of two key social processes in Aztec society: (1) urbanization and the nature of cities; (2) imperialism and the impacts of Aztec imperial expansion on provincial cities.

  

 

Publications: 

Smith, Michael E. (2003)
Postclassic Urbanism at Calixtlahuaca: Reconstructing the Unpublished Excavations of José García Payón. Report to the Foundation for the Advancement of Mesoamerican Studies, Inc. Posted on the internet at: http://www.famsi.org/reports/01024/.

Smith, Michael E., Jennifer Wharton, and Melissa McCarron (2003)
Las ofrendas de Calixtlahuaca. Expresión Antropológica 19:35-53.

Smith, Michael E. (2005)
Los materiales arqueológicos de Calixtlahuaca y la sociedad posclásica de Matlatzinco. Paper presented at the VII Coloquio Internacional sobre Otopames, El Colegio Mexiquense, Toluca, Mexico. 

Smith, Michael E., Juliana Novic, Peter C. Kroefges, and Angela Huster (2007)
A New Map of the Aztec-Period City of Calixtlahuaca in Central Mexico. Antiquity 81:"Project Gallery" online: http://www.antiquity.ac.uk/ProjGall/smith1/index.html. 

Tomaszewski, Brian M. (2006)
A Cost-Effective Approach to GPS/ArcGIS Integration for Archaeological Surveying. ArcUser Fall 2006.  http://www.esri.com/news/arcnews/fall06articles/a-cost-effective.html.

Umberger, Emily (2007)
Historia del arte e Imperio Azteca: la evidencia de las esculturas. Revista Española de Antropología Americana 37:165-202.

Team Members: 
  • Michael E. Smith (PI)
  • Lawrence B. Conyers, University of Colorado, Denver (participant)
  • Charles D. Frederick, University of Texas, Austin (participant)
  • Cynthia Heath-Smith, Arizona State University (participant)
  • Dorothy Hosler, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (participant)
  • Susan M. Norris, Fordham University (participant)
  • Brian Tomaszewski, Pennsylvania State University (participant)
  • Emily Umberger, Arizona State University (participant)
  • Juliana Novic, Arizona State University
  • Angela Huster, Arizona State University
  • Caitlin Guthrie, Arizona State University
  • Various unnamed graduate and undergraduate students from other universities in the U.S., Mexico, and Europe.
Funding Sources: 

National Science Foundation ($252,000)

Partnerships: 

Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia, Consejo de Arqueología (Mexico City, Mexico)
Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia, Centro INAH Estado de México (Toluca, Mexico)
Colegio Mexiquense (Toluca, Mexico)
Instituto Mexiquense de Cultura (Toluca, Mexico)