Aztec City-State Capitals
Subtitle
Ancient Cities of the New World
The Aztecs ruled much of Mexico from the thirteenth century until the Spanish conquest in 1521. Outside of the imperial capital of Tenochtitlan, various urban centers ruled the numerous city-states that covered the central Mexican landscape.
"Aztec City-State Capitals" is the first work to focus attention outside Tenochtitlan, revealing these dozens of smaller cities to have been the central hubs of political, economic and religious life, integral to the grand infrastructure of the Aztec empire.
Focusing on building styles, urban townscapes, layouts and designs, Michael Smith combines two archaeological approaches: monumental (excavations of pyramids, palaces and public buildings) and social (excavations of houses, workshops and fields). As a result, he is able to integrate the urban-built environment and the lives of the Aztec peoples as reconstructed from excavations.
Smith demonstrates the ways in which these city-state capitals were different from Tenochtitlan and convincingly argues that urban design is the direct result of decisions made by political leaders to legitimize their own power and political roles in the states of the Aztec empire.
Bio
Michael E. Smith, a professor in the School of Human Evolution and Social Change at ASU, is an archaeologist with two research themes: the Aztecs, Teotihuacan and other societies in ancient central Mexico; and comparative urbanism. He has directed fieldwork projects at numerous sites in the provinces of the Aztec empire in central Mexico.
Praise for this book
Brings together scattered data not easily available elsewhere on the Aztec city-states apart from Tenochtitlan. Smith presents a convincing argument that these capitals are cities with significant political and ideological urban functions.
Edward B. Sisson University of Mississippi
