Postclassic Urbanism at Calixtlahuaca: Reconstructing the Unpublished Excavations of José García Payón

Grant-Funded Activities

The research described here was carried out between June 26 and August 10, 2002, in the towns of Toluca, Tenango, and Calixtlahuaca in the Toluca Valley of central México. I was assisted by graduate students Jennifer Wharton (University at Albany, SUNY) and Melissa McCarron (Yale University), and by Toluca high-school student Myrna Antonio Aguirre.

Objective 1. To locate unpublished notes, catalogs and other documents from García Payón’s fieldwork at Calixtlahuaca.

My research was directed at finding four types of document or information:

1. The original notes, or related materials, that Mario Colín found and gave to Manrique. I searched extensively in the Archivo Histórico del Estado de México with the assistance of the director of the archive and several historians with experience working in the archive, and I consulted with historians familiar with other historical archives in Toluca, with no luck.

2. The lost volume of illustrations. I sought advice from several historians who had known Mario Colín and were familiar with his materials and archives. I looked for the material at the press in México City where the book series was printed and in the Mario Colín archive in the Biblioteca Nacional in México City, to no avail.

3. Material documenting the history of the Calixtlahuaca artifact collection. I was more successful in this area; I was able to trace the history of the collections from the 1930s to the present. This information is presented in Smith et al. (n.d.).

4. Notes with the García Payón Archive in Veracruz. Discussion with Arqlgo. Omar Ruiz Gordillo, who knows this collection well, indicates that the material from García Payón’s work in the state of México duplicates material in the Archivo Técnico of INAH in México City (which I had already examined in 2001).

Objective 2. To identify and study collections of artifacts from Calixtlahuaca.

A major collection of artifacts from García Payón’s excavations is preserved at the Museo de Antropología in Toluca, under the control of the Instituto Mexiquense de Cultura. This collection consists of over 1,200 ceramic vessels plus nearly 1,000 other objects, from large stone sculptures to jade beads. The bulk of these objects were from offerings, most of which were associated with burials. The collection is well cataloged and well maintained by the Instituto Mexiquense de Cultura, whose staff made their databases, expertise, and assistance available in numerous ways. Unfortunately, there are no records on the proveniences of the objects within Calixtlahuaca. With the help of my student assistants, we accomplished the following tasks: (1) Classified and recorded attributes on all ceramic vessels; (2) Taken one or more digital photographs of each vessel; (3) Classified and studied briefly all remaining objects except for stone sculpture. We have not had time to completely study the collection of stone sculptures, which numbers 271 objects. Previously published Calixtlahuaca sculptures are good examples of the Aztec sculptural style (Umberger 1996). Most of this major collection of Postclassic sculptures remains unpublished and unstudied, however. An article describing the Calixtlahuaca artifact collection (Smith, et al. n.d.) will appear in the journal Expresión Antropológica.

Objective 3. To reconstruct the excavations of García Payón as fully as possible.

My study of the Calixtlahuaca artifact collection has illuminated a number of aspects of García Payón’s fieldwork beyond what is contained in the publications on the site, but it will be difficult to adequately reconstruct his excavations unless some of the missing documentation turns up in the future. One preliminary hypothesis is that García Payón’s proposed chronology of the site is incorrect. Instead of a continuous occupation spanning the Classic period through the Spanish conquest, the materials in the collections point to two episodes of offerings, probably suggesting two episodes of occupation at the site: Classic period and Late Postclassic period.

Objective 4. To study Postclassic ceramics from other sites in the Toluca Valley.

We completed study of most of the Calixtlahuaca collections within four weeks. We next processed a collection of 100 Postclassic ceramic vessels from the site of Calimaya (south of Toluca). I also classified collections of several hundred Postclassic vessels each from the sites of San Miguel Ixtapan (Rodríguez G. and García S. 1996) and Huamango (Piña Chán 1981) using the notes and photographs of the Instituto Mexiquense de Cultura.

We then worked on the collection of nearly 1,000 Postclassic ceramic vessels from the Epiclassic monumental center of Teotenango at the southern end of the Valley. The vessels are from intrusive Postclassic burials. Excavated by Román Piña Chán (1975), the Postclassic vessels have been described and discussed (Tommasi de Magrelli 1978; Vargas Pacheco 1975), but have never been the subject of a complete and systematic analysis. They are well cataloged and stored in the site museum run by the Instituto Mexiquense de Cultura. We also found that numerous ceramic vessels, stone sculptures, and other materials from Calixtlahuaca are currently curated at this museum. In total, we classified nearly 3,000 Postclassic ceramic vessels from Calixtlahuaca, Teotenango, and other sites in the Toluca Valley.

Objective 5. To generate hypotheses and make plans for future fieldwork at Calixtlahuaca.

This research has already generated many ideas and hypotheses for future exploration. Database work and quantitative analyses are currently in progress, and some of the results will be presented in a paper later in 2003 (Smith and Wharton 2003). As these analyses proceed, I will develop the data and results into more formal hypotheses and guidelines for my planned excavations at Calixtlahuaca in 2004 or 2005.

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