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The City State in Central Mexico at the Time of the Spanish Conquest*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 February 2009

Extract

When the Spaniards first reached Mexico, one of the things which most impressed them was the existence of cities as large and as architecturally magnificent as any they had known in Europe. The growth and development of urban life has been examined in detail elsewhere, and for present purposes it is sufficient to note that, in areas where the techniques of intensive agriculture encouraged large nucleated settlements, the basic pattern of town life was established during the first millennium B.C.

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Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1972

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References

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12 William, T. Sanders, ‘The Population of the Teotihuacán Valley, the Basin of Mexico and the Central Mexican Symbiotic Region in the Sixteenth Century’, in The Natural Environment, Contemporary Occupation and 16th Century Population of the Valley: Vol. 1 of the Final Report of the Teotihuacán Valley Project (The Pennsylvania State University, 1970, Occasional Paper in Anthropology no. 3), p. 443.Google Scholar

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14 ‘The Colonial Plan of Cholula’, p. 215.

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17 William, T. Sanders, The Cultural Ecology of the Teotihuacán Valley (The Pennsylvania State University, Dept. of Sociology and Anthropology, 1965), pp. 7685. Compared with the Classic-period city, Aztec Teotihuacán was much reduced in size and status. Its exact size is hard to assess, for it is partly covered by the modern pueblo.Google Scholar

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25 Personal communication from Edward E. Calnek, who stresses that the figure is highly tentative. It is, however, based on a fairly precise knowledge of the boundaries of the Aztec city and of the nature and distribution of houselots within it. See Calnek, , ‘Settlement Pattern and Chinampa Agriculture at Tenochtitlán’, American Antiquity, 37, 1 (1972), 104–15.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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54 For a fuller discussion of private landholding see Friedrich, Katz, Situación Social y Económica de los Aztecas durante los siglos XV y XVI (Universidad Autónoma de México, Serie de Cultura Náhuatl, Monograíca Num. 8, 1966)Google Scholar and Paul, Kirchhoff, ‘Land tenure in ancient Mexico’, Revista Mexicana de Estudios Antropológicos, 14 (19541955), 351–61.Google Scholar

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58 The Codex Osuna gives a total of 60–70 calpullis, but the extra ones are estancias outside the city proper.

59 Sanders, , ‘Settlement Patterns in Central Mexico’, p. 24.Google Scholar

60 Personal communication from Edward, E. Calnck. I am also grateful for his comments on the tax data contained in Codex Osuna.Google Scholar

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62 The evidence for the status of craftsmen is summarized, with references, in Katz, , Situación Social y Económica tie los Azzecas, pp. 4755.Google Scholar

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74 Ibid., pp. 40, 478 n. 59.

75 Ibid., p. 45.

76 Ibid., fig. 3.

77 Compare Ibid., fig. 2.

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84 Jeffrey, R. Parsons, ‘Teotihuacán, Mexico, and its impact on Regional Demography’, Science, 162 (1968), 872–7. The same phenomenon has been noted in the Ixtapalapa Peninsula. See Blanton, ‘Prehispanic Adaptation in the Ixtapalapa Region’.Google Scholar

85 Blanton, , op. cit.Google ScholarJeffrey, R. Parsons, ‘An Archaeological Evaluation of the Codice XolotlAmerican Antiquity, 35, 4 (1970), 435–40.Google Scholar

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88 Abstracted from MacNeish, , ‘The Evolution of Community Patterns in the Tehuacán Valley’, p. 87.Google Scholar

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96 The Aztecs Under Spanish Rule, fig. 2.

97 ‘Ethnohistory and Archaeology: Post-Conquest Aztec Sites’ and El Valle de Teotihuacan:cerámica y patrones de asentamiento, 1520–1969’, Boletín dcl Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia, 41 (September 1970), 15–23.