| Cerro Portezuelo was an important archaeological site in the southeastern part of the semi-arid Basin of Mexico, about 2240 meters (7500 feet) above sea level, near Mexico City. It is now nearly destroyed by urban growth, but significant excavations were carried out by a UCLA team led by George Brainerd in the 1950s, when the site was in good condition. Brainerd died suddenly in 1956, and only a little further field work was carried out after that, mainly by Frederic Hicks, who had been actively involved in the field work as a graduate student, and by Henry Nicholson, hired at UCLA to fill Brainerd’s faculty position. A large part of the ceramics and other materials were stored at UCLA, with the understanding that they would be more fully studied and returned to the Mexican Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia. In the 1960s Hicks and Nicholson drafted excavation reports and classified and tabulated materials, but most of their work remains unpublished. Barbara Branstetter made some compositional studies as a dissertation project. Hicks has recently found time to return to his data analyses.
Funding & Collaborations
In 2005, with support from the National Science Foundation, the Nelson Rockefeller Center for the Social Sciences and the Claire Garber Goodman Fund of Dartmouth College, and the School of Human Evolution and Social Change of Arizona State University, Dr. George L. Cowgill (ASU), and Dr. Deborah Nichols (Dartmouth), began a collaborative project to complete an adequate study of the materials and field records, making use of current knowledge of Central Mexican materials, methods of data analysis, and unresolved historical and theoretical issues. They are principally assisted by SHESC graduate students Destiny Crider and Sarah Clayton, with important contributions from Hicks and specialist consultants William Parry of Hunter College (obsidian), Martin Biskowski of California State Sacramento (ground stone), Hector Neff of California State Long Beach (Neutron Activation Analysis), Wendy Teeter, curator, Fowler Museum, UCLA (faunal materials), Christopher Garraty
of Statistical Research, Inc. (Aztec ceramics), Michael Spence and Christine White of the University of Western Ontario (skeletal analysis and stable isotopes of bones and teeth), and Janet Montoya of ASU (ceramic figurines). Several undergraduates from ASU and
Dartmouth have also provided valuable assistance.
Acknowledgment
This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grants No. 0514187 (Dartmouth College), 0513979 (Arizona State University) and 0504015 (Missouri University Research Reactor).
Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.
Additional support has been provided by the Claire Garber Goodman Fund, Dartmouth College, Rockefeller Center Urban Studies Grant, Dartmouth College, the School of Human Evoluation and Social Change, Arizona State University, the Archaeological Research Institute, Arizona State University and the Fowler Museum UCLA.
Ceramic Analysis
In August 2005 most of the materials at UCLA were moved to ASU by Crider and Clayton. Our ceramic analyses are adding much new data, enabling comparisons with current data for all periods from nearby sites and making it possible to relate the categories used by Hicks in his earlier studies to recent categories and categories we are developing. Over 800 pottery specimens have been sent to the University of Missouri Research Reactor (MURR) for instrumental neutron activation analysis (INAA). The results will be analyzed by Neff to determine compositional group affiliations, drawing on MURR’s large Basin of Mexico database, from which several subregional groups have been established in previous work.
Recent Updates
See the abstracts for 2008 SAA Symposium on Cerro Portezuelo >
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Introduction to Cerro Portezuelo
Occupation at Cerro Portezuelo began by AD 1 (earlier than had been thought) and continued into Early Colonial times in the 1500s. This long record makes the site highly strategic for study of a number of issues.
Cerro Portezuelo is about 40 kilometers south of the immense city of Teotihuacan, which dominated the entire Basin of Mexico and was highly influential beyond that, from before AD 150 until its collapse in the 600s. Cerro Portezuelo was one of a few Teotihuacan Period major regional centers within the Basin. Teotihuacan has been intensively studied over the past century, but relatively little work has been done on these regional centers, so Cerro Portezuelo offers an unusual opportunity to learn about how Teotihuacan and one of its regional centers related to one another (it is likely that different centers had somewhat different relations).
Some Research Questions
Questions we address include (1) did Cerro Portezuelo obtain many materials from
Teotihuacan or largely produce its own? (2) how tightly does it conform to Teotihuacan decorative and technological styles? (3) did local artisans have the full range of skills as seen at Teotihuacan or were they less sophisticated? (4) how does the wealth gradient compare with Teotihuacan —was there a much lower proportion of elites? (5) does it look highly administered politically and/or economically or relatively autonomous?
Other much-debated issues concern the transition following the collapse of the
Teotihuacan state. Was there a high degree of continuity in culture and population or was there considerable cultural discontinuity and possibly even sizable migrations of newcomers into Central Mexico? Surprisingly different interpretations of data from
Teotihuacan itself are hotly debated, and, in any case, it is important to note that regional centers appear to have had different experiences. In the 1950s Cerro Portezuelo seemed to provide evidence of a gradual transition, but we are reassessing this in the light of more recent knowledge.
A related issue is that of response and reformulation following collapse of the
Teotihuacan state. It seems likely that the immediate result was political and economic fragmentation ca. AD 650-800, and then (ca. AD 800-1000/1100) building larger polities with centers just outside the Basin, at Tula to the northwest and Cholula to the southeast. How did Cerro Portezuelo and other sites within the Basin relate to these new influences? Cerro Portezuelo grew into a much larger settlement than before and may have been capital of an independent polity in the early part of this period.
We are pursuing such questions further for another period of apparent political fragmentation, ca. AD 1000-1300, and then increasing growth of larger states, leading to the Aztec Empire. Cerro Portezuelo lay on the boundary of the Acolhua and Chalca confederations and had a more substantial occupation in the Middle and Late Postclassic than previously recognized, and continued to be occupied into the Early Colonial period. The fact that occupation runs through the entire Postclassic allows us to look at changing political and economic relations among city-state centers, the larger regional states centered on Tula and, and the expanding Aztec Empire during the last century before the Spanish Conquest.
Other Impacts
We are creating an electronic database to make our data and research results widely available. Our project contributes to archaeological cooperation between the US and Mexico. We are providing graduate and undergraduate students an opportunity to be active participants in research and to learn at first hand methods of artifact analysis that are essential for future investigations in Central Mexico.
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