Copyright by Virginia Walker King 2012 The Dissertation Committee for Virginia Walker King Certifies that this is the approved version of the following dissertation: Malinalco: An Expression of Mexica Political and Religious Dominance in a Subject Territory Committee: David Stuart, Supervisor Lori Diel, Co-Supervisor Julia Guernsey Athanasio Papalexandrou Enrique R. Rodriguez Malinalco: An Expression of Mexica Political and Religious Dominance in a Subject Territory by Virginia Walker King, B.A.; M.A. Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of The University of Texas at Austin in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy The University of Texas at Austin May 2012 Dedication Dedicated to the memory of Marie H. Walker. She was my mother, my best friend, my solace, and my home. I am grateful that my first 30 years overlapped with her last 30, and that even for a brief while this phenomenal, passionate, creative and wise woman loved me. Acknowledgements I am grateful to a number of people who have helped me as I researched and wrote this dissertation and throughout my graduate education. Michael Smith and Emily Umberger helped me make contacts in Mexico and gave me bibliographic information for vitally important and hard-to-find sources. In particular, they introduced me to Xavier Noguez, who took two days from his busy schedule to discuss Malinalco with me and to visit the site. Dr. Noguez‘s generosity and encyclopedic knowledge of the town of Malinalco elucidated the connections between the contemporary town and the archaeological site, and his gracious manners made me feel perfectly at home in Mexico. Michael Smith also introduced me to the archaeologist currently in charge of Malinalco, José Hernández Rivero. In a useful meeting, Hernández Rivero clarified various points about his excavations at Malinalco and provided me with copies of his regional publications, which were not available in the United States. Elise Smith at Millsaps College first introduced me to the Aztecs and to art history, and I grew tremendously as a writer and scholar under her tutelage. Her influence is especially evident in my teaching style, as I try to recreate the dynamic and engaging environment that characterized all of her courses. Debra Spivak was my frequent travel companion in Mexico and an enormous help in the early stages of this project. She was a wonderful resource as we visited archaeological sites and museums, exchanging impressions and ideas, and our discussions and travels helped me form and articulate many of my early ideas about Malinalco. v I would also like to thank the members of my dissertation support group, whose weekly meetings helped me formulate and meet writing goals. In particular, Elaine Schele was a tremendous source of logistical and emotional support and hard-won wisdom, and I am truly grateful to have come to know her. Nightly writing sessions with fellow group member, Elizabeth Reid, helped me finish several chapters without feeling completely isolated. Fellowships and grants from the College of Fine Arts at The University of Texas at Austin greatly facilitated my research, travel and writing. I am also grateful that UT‘s Mesoamerica Center allowed me to live at the Casa Herrera for a semester, providing me with the luxury of uninterrupted writing time in one of Latin America‘s most charming towns. Milady Casco and Rene Ozaeta made my time there not only productive, but also enormously enjoyable. Maureen Howell, our departmental graduate coordinator, has been a wonderful source of support since I first arrived in Austin. She manages us graduate students with grace, humor, and nearly superhuman organizational skills. Maureen is also enormously generous with her time and always ready to listen to stories of the trials of her charges. My conversations with her were not simply useful, but have been some of the most enjoyable talks I‘ve had in graduate school. I have been fortunate to have a wonderful dissertation committee. Julia Guernsey closely read my dissertation and helped direct my methodologies chapter. She has also been tremendously supportive, both emotionally and professionally, and I am glad to have had her on my team. Athanos Papalexandrou was consistently a voice of calm and reason, and his comments on my final dissertation draft were thorough and insightful. Through classes and independent studies, Enrique Rodriguez taught me how to conduct vi long term, large scale research, and how to begin consolidating my ideas into both my dissertation writing and grant applications. David Stuart, my dissertation co-director, provided a voice of sanity, reason and calm, and seems to never waver in his faith that all of his graduate students will write good theses and find good jobs. He was also generous with his personal resources, allowing me to borrow many books, providing me with scans of more than twenty pictographic codices, and allowing me to use his picture of Moctezuma II‘s portrait at Chapultepec. His knowledge of linguistics and pictographic writing systems helped me avoid many mistakes, and his encyclopedic knowledge of Mesoamerican scholarly literature helped direct my research. This dissertation would not have been possible without the diligent work of my co-director, Dr. Lori Diel. Lori closely read multiple drafts of every chapter and her comments and advice shape nearly every page of this text. She taught me how to use early colonial documents and introduced me to many primary source texts with which I had not been familiar. Through our conversations and her thorough comments on drafts, Lori taught me much about Aztec art history, the problems and benefits of colonial sources, and how to ―read‖ pictographic documents. She also drove to Austin on three occasions during the school year, taking time from her busy roster of teaching and writing to attend my various dissertation-related milestones. I am enormously grateful for her help, her wisdom, and her unflagging dedication to this project. Finally, I would like to thank Daniel King. He was endlessly patient, kind, forgiving and generous, and I am grateful that we are building a life together. vii Malinalco: An Expression of Mexica Political and Religious Dominance in a Subject Territory Virginia Walker King, Ph.D. The University of Texas at Austin, 2012 Supervisors: David Stuart and Lori Diel Near the edge of the Aztec empire, about sixty-eight miles from Mexico City- Tenochtitlan, the temple complex Malinalco (built 1501 – ca. 1519) comprises a tiny portion of an eponymous town and has the only known monolithic temple in Mesoamerica. The Mexica tlatoani Ahuitzotl (r. 1486-1502) commissioned the complex in 1501, and his successor Moctezuma II (r. 1502-1520) renewed the work order at least once. The site remained unfinished after the Spanish conquest of Tenochtitlan in 1521. The remarkable preservation of Structure I offers a unique view of a Mexica temple interior, and the eagle and jaguar seats carved within that temple led to the traditional interpretation of the site as a haven for eagle and jaguar warriors. In contrast, I contend that Malinalco‘s ceremonial center was a Mexica space for politico-religious rituals likely performed by the tlatoani or his proxies. My analysis of Malinalco‘s pre-Mexica history (Chapter 2) examines the mythical history of the Malinalca and their possible dual Mexica-Toltec heritage. Malinalco‘s now-lost mural of Toltec warriors situates the site within the larger corpus of Tula-inspired procession viii scenes, and links it iconographically to Tenochtitlan monuments that legitimated imperial power. Through a close analysis of early colonial texts and pictographic sources, I show that the eagle and jaguar seats in Structure I were not used by warriors, but rather were the purview of the tlatoque. An analysis of Malinalco‘s sacred landscape features demonstrates that the Mexica did not simply build a temple complex in the sacred space of a subject territory, but rather transformed the shape of a sacred mountain in declaration of a god-like imperial power. Finally, Malinalco‘s famous upright drum, often cited as proof that the site was for warriors, actually shows eagle and jaguar warriors weeping as they sing a war song, perhaps alluding to the martial sacrifices of the empire as it fought to preserve and expand its boundaries. I conclude that the Mexica designed Malinalco as a space for the performance of politico-religious regime-legitimating rituals, permanently declaring their dominance in their empire‘s hinterland. ix Table of Contents List of Figures ...................................................................................................... xiii List of Figures ...................................................................................................... xiii Introduction..............................................................................................................1 Chapter 1: Methodology and Sources ....................................................................10 The Archaeological Record ..........................................................................10 The Ethnohistoric Sources: Early Colonial Chronicles and Pictographic Texts ..............................................................................................................15 Art Works as Primary Sources ......................................................................26 Theoretical Framework .................................................................................30