Archaeology

School of the Ancient Elite

A publication of the Archaeological Institute of America
By ROGER ATWOOD
Monday, June 09, 2014
In 1985, an earthquake measuring 8.1 on the Richter scale killed some 10,000 people and
destroyed or compromised thousands of buildings in Mexico City. Some of those buildings
happened to have been standing over Aztec civic and holy sites. More than two decades
later, after workers demolished a building rendered structurally unsound by the quake,
archaeologists dug down and found the ruins of an elite school near the Templo Mayor.
Known as the Calmcac, which in the Nahuatl language spoken by the Aztecs means
school, the complex was where Aztec nobility sent their children to be trained in war and
worship. The schools proximity to the Templo Mayor shows the elites concern for
educating young men for power, says Harvard historian David Carrasco. The emperor
Moctezuma II himself was a graduate.


(Courtesy Instituto Nacional de Antropologa e Historia, Programa de Arqueologa Urbana)
Spiral roof decoration
An enormous structure in antiquity, even larger than the Templo Mayor, the school
had a courtyard whose roof was adorned with a row of spiral ornaments
representing snails, which were associated with the rain god Tlaloc. Spanish
colonial-era drawings had suggested these adornments were small, even dainty,
decorative touches. But when archaeologists discovered them, the ornaments
actually stood a monumental eight feet tall and must have been visible from all
over Tenochtitlan. Of the seven found by archaeologist Ral Barrera, all had been
removed in antiquity from their rooftop perches and laid below a floor. By the time
the Spaniards arrived, they had been replaced with similar ornaments that the
Spaniards later destroyed, of which no traces have been found. Since their
rediscovery, the Calmcac roof ornaments have become one of the most
distinctive motifs of ancient Mexico. Excavation at the Calmcac proved difficult.
Eighteen feet beneath the city, the site continually flooded and had to have water
pumped out, a problem that speaks to the citys unusual geography. Tenochtitlan
was built on a group of marshy islands in the center of Lake Tezcoco. These were
gradually filled in with lines of tree trunks and soil using an ancient land-
reclamation technique similar to that employed in Tenochtitlans contemporary city,
Venice. As in Venice, canals crisscrossed the city. Archaeologists have found
traces of some of them, as well as a pier that jutted into the lake in antiquity. Lake
Tezcoco has been almost completely filled in over the centuries, but the soil
underneath the city remains porous and damp, like gelatin, says archaeologist
Eduardo Matos Moctezuma. Although the city has been gradually settling at a rate
of up to 20 feet per century into the lake bed, not so the Templo Mayor, which was
built on sturdy landfill. It is therefore sinking at a much slower pace, causing it to
gradually rise relative to its surroundings such that it will, eventually, regain the
150-foot height it had in antiquity.

Once the remains of the Calmcac were stabilized, archaeologists discovered walls and
wide staircases, some with ancient footprints still in their stucco surfaces. They also
uncovered dozens of artifacts that hint at student life in A.D. 1500, including well-worn
ceramic plates, a clay spoon, and flint and obsidian knives that probably had both practical
and ceremonial uses. PAU director Ral Barrera has excavated only a small corner of the
ancient school because most of it remains beneath busy Donceles Street and its taco
stands and cantinas. Digging any further would endanger those buildings foundations, he
explains, and then, instead of us excavating, someone would have to come excavate us.