THE TARASCAN EMPIRE

in the Mesoamerican Ecumene

Eduardo Williams, PhD 1

1
Work in progress, not for citation. Chapter VII of the book Ancient West Mexico: Archaeology and Culture History. © Eduardo
Williams (18/6/2019). Cover illustration adapted from La relación de Michoacán (Alcalá 2008).
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Introduction

This chapter consists of three parts: (1) a summary discussion of the Tarascan Empire in
the Protohistoric period (ca. AD 1450-1530), including the main cultural, political,
religious and economic aspects of the Tarascan culture; (2) the Lake Cuitzeo Basin as a
key economic area of the Tarascan Empire; and, (3) trade, tribute and transportation of
strategic resources within Tarascan Empire. This chapter, like the rest of the book,
follows a comparative perspective that relies on archaeological, ethnohistorical, and
ethnographic information from the Mesoamerican ecumene and beyond.
During the Late Postclassic period, Mesoamerica was a culture area
characterized by expanding empires and warring peoples, such as the Aztecs in central
Mexico and the Tarascans in the west. According to Susan Evans (2004a), during the
Late Postclassic, or ‘the period from AD 1200 to 1520, much of Mesoamerica was
transformed into a set of polities whose actions came to be defined by their relations
with the Mexica Aztecs of Tenochtitlan’ (p. 446). We saw earlier that the Postclassic
period had as its predecessor the transitional Epiclassic period, characterized by the
decline of Classic elite Mesoamerican civilization. Teotihuacan’s power and influence
had ceased centuries earlier, and the rise of the militaristic states took place in the Early
Postclassic period (ca. AD 900-1200) (p. 426). We see on the Mesoamerican stage
around AD 1200 several cultural groups ‘migrating from one part of Mesoamerica to
another who were, generally, not nomadic hunter-foragers… Most migrants were,
rather, displaced farmers-artisans, accustomed to life in or near communities that had
ruling elites supported by the tributes of the commoners’, and also with ‘markets for
local distribution of goods. These features are common to complex societies such as
advanced chiefdoms and states’ (p. 427). This ‘diaspora’ consisted in part of people
who were displaced from the northern margins of the ecumene because of the increasing
aridity. Some of them were returning to their ancestral homeland after having migrated
north in search of a living space when the climatic conditions allowed agriculture to
thrive, according to Pedro Armillas’ (1964) theory of fluctuation of the northern
Mesoamerican frontier.
Ross Hassig (2008) states that ‘during the Early Postclassic… the Toltecs seized
control of the earlier trade network and significantly extended it, ultimately stretching it
as far south as Costa Rica and north into the desert, perhaps as far as the southwestern
United States’ and covering parts of West Mexico. Like other Mesoamerican states and
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empires, ‘the Toltecs were less a military than a trading empire that operated through
merchant enclaves and settlements instead of colonizing outlying areas. But military
power protected their merchants, and dispatching large forces was eased by
Mesoamerica’s increased population and growing agricultural productivity.’ Hassig
goes on to affirm that ‘there is no evidence’ that the Toltec Empire ‘contracted before it
collapsed. Rather, it disintegrated from within as the capital was abandoned in AD
1179. The cause, in part, was the influx of barbarian groups (Chichimecs) who…
imperiled Tollan’s trade links, raising the costs of maintaining its far-flung economic
empire’ (p. 284).
Evans (2004a), meanwhile, wrote that in the Postclassic period throughout
Mesoamerica ‘small independent polities were founded or… reestablished… These
were often city-states, encompassing an urbanized community and its surrounding
hinterland with farming villages. In any region, these small states would resemble each
other, exploiting the same kinds of resources and having the same kinds of political and
social organization’ (p. 428). Most of these political systems had a ruling dynasty, and
several elite families formed a privileged class with an influence that went beyond the
political boundaries of their realms.
It is within this cultural scenario that West Mexican chiefdoms and states rose to
power in one of the major (but also one of the less well-known) regions of pre-Hispanic
Mesoamerica during the Postclassic period. The Tarascans were unique in West Mexico
in that they formed a state and eventually an empire that was able to face off their Aztec
neighbors to the east.
The Tarascan Empire in the Protohistoric Period (ca. AD 1450-1530)
At the beginning of the 16th century, broad extensions of West Mexico were under the
political aegis of the Tarascan Empire, known as Irechecua Tzintzuntzani, the second-
most powerful empire in Mesoamerica after the Aztec Triple Alliance (Pollard 1993,
2009). In 1522, the king (called irecha, or cazonci) ruled an area of over 75,000 km2
that encompassed the greater part of the current state of Michoacán and portions of the
neighboring states of Jalisco, Guanajuato, Colima and Guerrero (Pollard 1993: Map 12).
During the Protohistoric period, the Tarascan state may have been the most strongly-
centralized polity in Mesoamerica; indeed, the Tarascan kingdom is an example of state
formation that shared some characteristics with ancient complex societies; namely, a
high degree of centralization of power and economic activities, and a rapid expansion.
However, its process of state formation cannot be understood outside its historical and
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ecological contexts (Pollard 1993:181). The core geopolitical area of the Tarascan
Empire was in the Lake Pátzcuaro Basin, where more than 90 communities were located
with a combined population of between 60,000 and 105,000 inhabitants (Pollard
2003a).
The natural setting where the Tarascans have developed their culture during
thousands of years is a remarkable one. According to Guevara (1989), the landscape in
Michoacán is one of the most abrupt in Mexico. It has high elevations and deep
depressions, the reason for this being that Michoacán is at the meeting ground for five
of the great physiographic units of Mexico (Figure 1). The main physiographic regions
of our state are as follows: (1) the Valleys and Wetlands; (2) the Central Sierra; (3) the
Hot Lands; (4) the Southern Sierra Madre: and, (5) the Coastal Region (p. 10).
Michoacán is certainly a land of bounty. González (1991) has written that from the
perspective of geography and ecology, Michoacán can be considered a microcosm
comprising many, if not all, of the regions found within Mesoamerica, a veritable
‘sample book’ for the whole of Mexico (González 1991). According to González
(1991), to travel across Michoacán is equivalent to making the proverbial tour de
monde, since Michoacán has all kinds of topography, including mountains, forests,
lakes, valleys, and rivers, where one finds ‘all climates, plants and animals’ (p. 15)
(Figure 2). González (1991) breaks down the different regions of the Michoacán
landscape into nine areas, following geographic and cultural criteria: (1) Zamora
Lowlands; (2) Morelia Region; (3) Purépecha Plateau; (4) Thousand Peaks; (5)
Balconies; (6) Balsas Depression; (7) Tepalcatepec Hot Lands; (8) Southern Sierra
Madre; and, (9) Playa Azul (González 1991: map on page 14). I have already mentioned
that Michoacán means ‘land of fish’, a very apt name given to this part of West Mexico
by the Aztec. This is explained if we take a look to the map of lakes and rivers (Figure
3) which dominated the landscape for thousands of years, and are still present today—
albeit in a much-diminished condition.
Coming back to our story, we know that at a certain point around the year 1440,
the Tarascans took the first steps towards the institutionalization of military conquests
and the development of a tributary state (Pollard 1995), which entailed creating an
administrative bureaucracy and dispatching members of the nobility to the newly-
conquered territories. In the following decades, the state undertook a military expansion
through which the ruling elite conquered and annexed the central part of Michoacán
(Pollard 2003a, 2009).
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By the 16th century, the Tarascan state had achieved a high level of political
centralization and an almost absolute control over its territory. The central
administration of the state was localized at Tzintzuntzan, the capital city, where the king
had his court, dispensed justice, and received emissaries from outside his territories. The
court included members of the Tarascan nobility in a series of hierarchically-organized
offices. Under this royal court was an extended bureaucracy staffed by members of the
nobility and plebeians (Pollard 2003 a).
The Tarascan ‘nation’ was divided into two major groups: on the one hand, the
‘nobility’, which consisted of two interrelated families that belonged to the royal lineage
and, on the other, the common people. Within the nobility there were several strata:
civil administrators, various groups of artisans, and probably a group of professional
merchants as well (Beltrán 1982). At the summit of the Tarascan social structure was
the irecha, or king, with his court. According to the Relación de Michoacán (Alcalá
2008), when a cacique (chieftain) died in one of the towns of the province, his brothers
and other relatives came to see the cazonci and brought him the dead lord’s golden lip
plug, ear flares, bracelets and turquoise necklaces, which were the insignia of lords, and
the cazonci had given them to the lord upon creating him cacique (Figure 4). They
brought the said jewels and put them together with the cazonci’s jewels, and the cazonci
said: ‘Poor man, he is dead. This is what the gods wanted’ (p. 205). After this the
cazonci gave the new cacique a new golden lip plug, ear flares and bracelets, and told
him: ‘Take this as a badge of honor, so that you will wear it’ (p. 205). Meanwhile the
corpse of the dead ruler was disposed of in a funeral pyre.
The royal palace was the center of activity and focus of the tributary networks
and redistribution systems (Figure 5). The nobility seems to have been divided into two
segments: those who served in the irecha’s court, and the administrators of the tributary
system (p. 79).
In second place in terms of importance came the ‘captain general for wars’ who
organized the irecha’s military campaigns, and was followed in third place by the main
priest or petámuti, who had a very high status in Tarascan society (Figure 6) (pp. 84-
85). Since the palace was the center of the kingdom’s fiscal activities, the office of the
ocambecha, or general tax collector, was also particularly significant. This official
supervised the taxes paid by each barrio (i.e. quarter or ward). In addition to the
officials named above, there were four preeminent lords –possibly relatives of the
irecha– who managed the kingdom, which was divided into four provinces. The royal
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court included other lords, called achaecha, who often accompanied the irecha, and may
have been his direct relatives, although their function within the government is not
clear. Another group was formed by the guanguairecha, or warriors. Finally, the
caracha capacha were caciques or local chieftains named by the king to govern towns
within the Tarascan territory. Their main function was to make sure that all subjects
paid their taxes on time (pp. 86-88).
Demographic pressure may have been one of the motives that help explain the
expansion of the Tarascan Empire, since the population of the Tarascan territory during
the Protohistoric period far exceeded the carrying capacity of the Lake Pátzcuaro Basin,
so food had to be imported through the tribute system. The desire to obtain a wide range
of rare or exotic resources was another factor that lay behind the state’s expansion.
Among these goods were salt, copper, gold, silver, cinnabar, chalchihuites (green
stones), honey, wax, cacao, cotton, feathers, skins, axin (insects of the species
Coccus axin, used as ingredient in cosmetics, dyes and similar uses), vegetable fats and
gums, and resins (such as copal). All these goods were found in the conquered
territories (Smith 1996:139).
According to Pollard (1993), by 1350 the lineage of Taríacuri, the first king of
the Tarascans, was in control of the largest and riches parts of the Lake Pátzcuaro Basin,
including the cities of Tzintzuntzan (Figures 7 and 8), Ihuatzio, and Pátzcuaro, while
Taríacuri’s allies dominated Urichu, Erongaríacuaro, and Pechátaro. Taríacuri and his
cohorts began to execute a series of military campaigns within and outside the Lake
Pátzcuaro Basin (p. 88).
One of the most important sites in the Tarascan realm is the ceremonial center of
Ihuatzio (Figure 9). Ihuatzio is located near the center of the Lake Pátzcuaro Basin, and
was constructed around the early 14th century. The north section of this zone consists of
two rectangular pyramid platforms (Figure 10) facing east over a large enclosed plaza
and the ball court, called querétaro (p. 152). The religious functions of the center were
concentrated in a large zone enclosed within high walls (Figure 11). The stone walls
and major structures are generally aligned to the cardinal directions, with the principal
axis running north-south (Figure 12).
Administrative control was performed through a series of ruling centers, each
one with several dependent communities, like Pátzcuaro (Figure 13). These
administrative centers reported directly to the palace at Tzintzuntzan, and each one had
several towns, villages and dispersed hamlets under its control (Pollard 1993). The
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administrative hierarchy was divided into five levels. The power of the central dynasty
was directly linked to the chieftains in each one of the minor administration centers, and
direct control of decision-making could reach down even to the hamlet level (Pollard
2003 a).
As the territory under the direct control of the state increased in extension, the
political and economic success of the Tarascans during the Protohistoric period came to
depend more and more on the successful integration of several communities, which was
necessary to ensure the efficient economic exploitation of towns and natural resources,
and to protect the integrity of the state’s borders. In the core area (the Lake Pátzcuaro
Basin), local chiefs handled the centralized administration directly, and this region
seems to have been under the direct control of the political capital. Around this core was
an ‘assimilation area’ that in terms of government reveals an entirely different political
situation from the center. Many basic resources required to forge the identity of the elite
came from this outer area, including tropical fruits, cacao, cotton, copal, jaguar skins,
tropical bird feathers, gold, silver, copper and tin. This zone was absorbed through state
expansion in the 15th century, and became increasingly strategic for the maintenance of
Tarascan elite society (Pollard 2003 a).
There were several channels in the Tarascan Empire (Figure 14) that facilitated
the circulation of goods and services, though under constant state supervision (Pollard
2000). These mechanisms included long-distance traders, the tribute system, and
various customs through which the royal dynasty assigned aquatic and land resources to
certain members of the population. In addition, there were local and regional markets
(Figures 15 and 16) that apparently supplied many kinds of goods to large territories,
some located beyond the limits of the state itself (p. 77).
The important role of tribute in the economy of pre-Hispanic states such as the
Tarascan or the Aztec Empires cannot be exaggerated, especially during the
Protohistoric period. Eric Wolf (1982) has described three basic modes of production,
which he classifies as capitalist, tributary, and kinship-based (p. 76). In discussing the
tributary mode of production, which best represents the situation in Mesoamerica on the
eve of the Spanish Conquest, he pointed out that in the 15th century the world’s primary
agricultural areas were under the control of states whose existence was based on the
extraction of surplus production from primary producers by political rulers or military
leaders. At the apex of the system was a ruling elite that received the surplus, controlled
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the strategic aspects of the production process –irrigation systems, for instance– and
wielded some means of coercion, such as an army (p. 80).
In discussing the Aztec political economy, Pedro Carrasco (1978) wrote that in
ancient Mesoamerica the political aspect of economic organization was very important,
based as it was on a highly-developed tribute system, huge royal warehouses, great
state-organized public works, and public lands owned by the king or some similar social
or political entity. Thus, the key aspect of economic organization in ancient Mexico was
the fact that it was directed and regulated by a political organ. The economy was based
on a structure of domination defined by the existence of two main strata: the nobility, or
ruling class, that controlled the material means of production, and the commoners, a
working class politically- and economically-dependent on the nobility. In Carrasco’s
perspective on ancient political economy, the fundamental means of production –land
and labor– were both firmly under the control of the political organ (pp. 15, 23-24).
The way in which many archaic states were organized in order to make tribute
extraction more efficient was by forming empires. Following Robert McC. Adams, by
‘empire’ we mean a particular kind of state system whose main objective is to channel
resources from subject polities to a ruling class that derives its authority from the
exercise of military power. One distinctive feature of empires is their attempt to
monopolize the flow of goods over extensive regions through economic strategies –such
as the control of markets– or the use of force (Adams 1979:59, cited in Hodge 1996).
While the main concern of such empires was territorial expansion, assuring
internal control and protecting their borders were also key aspects that entailed
maintaining a full-time army, as well as fortifications to guarantee the integrity of their
territories (Hassig 1985) by repelling foreign aggressions (p. 90). However, the
Mesoamerican states that existed in the Postclassic period did not have such formal,
full-time armies, 2 and did not occupy all the lands under their dominion. In this regard,
they were similar to the Roman Empire, which did not fortify or protect the total extent
of its territories but, rather, formed a core area of direct control (called the ‘territorial
empire’) that was surrounded by zones of diplomatic control characterized by an interior
area composed of ‘client states’, and an exterior one made up of ‘client tribes’. Roman
troops functioned as a campaign army, always available to respond to threats, more than

2
Aztec warriors are not considered professional soldiers, since they were not engaged in this activity full-time. Whenever necessary,
the ‘army’ was formed from among the common people. This lack of a full-time military force made it difficult for the capital of the
empire to impose its political directives on the conquered territories and made centralization virtually impossible (Hassig 1985:90-
91).
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as an occupying force tied down to the land. Hence, this empire was based more on
political than territorial control (p. 92). Like the Roman Empire, the Aztecs did not have
to constantly deploy their army in the conquered territories, since the threat of its force
was usually more than enough to insure the obedience of the client states (p. 93).
The Aztec imperial system was based more on political influence and dominion
than on strict territorial control. This fact is explained in part by the limitations of
Mesoamerican technology. The polities of this cultural area had no efficient means of
transportation and so were limited in terms of the space from which they could
efficiently extract tribute; a circumstance that decreased the economic benefits of
incorporating extensive regions. The Aztecs thus opted to exercise a hegemonic rather
than territorial form of control, and this produced an imperial mechanism with unique
characteristics (Hassig 1988). As a result, this hegemonic empire was more like an
alliance of states than a monolithic institution constructed to obtain tribute from
conquered peoples (p. 17, 26). The Tarascan Empire probably followed a similar
strategy.
Among the Aztecs, territorial control over conquered lands was achieved with
different degrees of intensity and through various means (Smith and Berdan 1996). The
result was not a uniform or monolithic entity, but a complex web of political, social and
economic relationships forged through several strategies, which included the following:
(1) political strategies that were used by the state to strengthen its power and control the
empire’s core area (for instance, forging alliances with neighboring states); (2)
economic strategies designed primarily to procure riches for the state, and exemplified
most clearly by the development of tribute systems; (3) border strategies in which, on
the one hand, client states in strategic provinces helped repel attacks by the empire’s
enemies by creating ‘buffer’ zones and, on the other, the state created and maintained
fortresses along its borders; and, (4) what we might call an ‘elitist’ strategy based on
establishing a network of local elites that linked virtually the entire empire, purposefully
developed and promoted by the state and members of the elite who benefited from such
relationships (pp. 1, 8).
To better understand the nature of the Aztec and Tarascan states during the
Protohistoric period in Mesoamerica, it may be helpful to briefly highlight certain
contrasts with another vast empire that existed around the same time: the Inca state
based in Peru, since it did not share many basic aspects or important features of the
formers’ imperial structures. The Incas constructed a territorial empire in which land
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and labor were the two main sources of wealth. Local communities were incorporated
into the imperial state, which levied taxes on several wealth-producing resources
(Patterson 1991). The Inca state expropriated some of the croplands, pastures and herds
that had belonged to its subject communities and placed them at the disposal of the
nobility. Finally, whole communities were relocated in order to satisfy the strategic and
economic needs of state authorities. Clearly, the objective of the Inca Empire’s
domination strategies was to deprive subject communities of their means of production
(pp. 99-101). To achieve this goal, the empire relied on a full-time army with
professional soldiers, unlike the situation in Mesoamerica (Patterson 1987:119).
As an example of this process we can mention the fact that much of the
workforce living in Cuzco, the Inca capital, consisted of mitimaes, people from other
regions who were transported en masse to the Cuzco Valley (Davies 2010). These
forced migrants formed part of the labor force, and also tended the Inca Emperor’s vast
herds. In reality a form of social engineering, the mitimae system played a vital role in
the process of conquest, as it helped pacify newly-acquired lands by removing
troublesome residents and replacing them with loyal vassals (pp. 235-236). This level of
centralized control and social planning over conquered territories was never seen in
ancient Mesoamerica.
In the following section, I discuss one aspect of the Tarascan state’s
development as a true member of the Mesoamerican cultural tradition: the processes of
urban life at Tzintzuntzan, the capital of the Tarascan Empire.

Pre-Hispanic Urbanization at Tzintzuntzan

Few studies have been undertaken to explore the character and nature of pre-Hispanic
urban life at the Tarascan capital, in marked contrast to other urban centers in
Mesoamerica that have received much more attention from scholars, notably such
central Mexican sites as Teotihuacan (Millon 1981), Tula (Mastache et al. 2002; Healan
2012) and Tenochtitlan (Smith 1998, 2016). The fact that central Mexican cities are
better-known than their counterparts in other areas of Mesoamerica has contributed to
the creation of a prejudice in the minds of some people, who see urban sites like
Teotihuacan, Tula, and Tenochtitlan –with their peculiar regional traditions and their
fundamentally commercial nature– as the model of what a Mesoamerican city should
be. This is unfortunate, because they are not, in fact, representative of other pre-
Hispanic Mesoamerican cities (Marcus 1983:196).
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Like most ancient capitals (Marcus 2009), Tzintzuntzan offered its residents and
visitors ‘a wide range of services and opportunities, some of which occurred there and
nowhere else. Capitals could host unique events such as the inauguration of rulers, the
dedication of state temples, and special festivities that only took place in royal palaces,
plazas, and private courts’. In these capital cities, ‘individual households varied in their
access to local and imported items, but most items fell along a continuum from
relatively scarce to quite abundant rather than present/absent’ (p. 257).
Sanders and Webster (1988) define cities as settlements that have three main
characteristics: (1) a large population; (2) a dense, nucleated population; and, (3)
marked internal heterogeneity. Secondary attributes would include secularism,
anonymity and mobility (upward as well as spatial). Heterogeneity refers to a wide
variety of ways of life produced by differences in access to political power, wealth, and
group affiliation, as well as to the different economic status and roles found among the
population (p. 521). Data derived from recent archaeological and ethnohistorical
research seem to indicate that Tzintzuntzan amply meets the requirements to be
considered as an urban center of great magnitude and complexity (Gorenstein and
Pollard 1983; Pollard 1993; Castro Leal 1986).
Pre-industrial cities like Tzintzuntzan have been defined as ‘central places’
where several activities are concentrated, which may be political-administrative,
economic, or merely ceremonial or ritual in nature. These central places are
permanently occupied by people whose activities differ from those of the population at
large, and who exercise an unusually great degree of power in decision-making in ritual,
political, or economic affairs (Sanders and Webster 1988). Three functional types of
urban centers (i.e., royal-ritual city, administrative city, and mercantile city) are found
in pre-industrial societies (p. 523). Generally speaking, Tzintzuntzan functioned as an
administrative city and probably also as a royal-ritual one, as will be discussed in
greater detail below. Sanders and Webster (1988) define an administrative city as one
whose principal function is political in nature. Administrative cities are the capitals of
states or administrative centers within political systems that consist of multiple urban
centers. These cities are extensive and complex, and the political systems they serve are
large, bureaucratically-structured and highly-centralized. Administrative cities serve as
the place of residence not only for the ruling family and the hereditary aristocracy, but
also for a multitude of officials and their families, together with a professional military
class, all of whom are supported by taxes extracted from the rural communities in the
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territory under the city’s political control. The city’s internal organization is highly
stratified.
George Cowgill’s (1992) discussion of social differentiation at Teotihuacan is
relevant for our understanding of the nature of social relations in all Mesoamerican
cities, including Tzintzuntzan. Cowgill observes that ‘not all important social
distinctions in ancient Mesoamerica… can be characterized adequately by means of a
single one-dimensional scale from low to high… The task of understanding is even
harder for archaeologists’ (p. 206). First, we should understand that ‘membership in a
particular class… is characterized by eligibility or ineligibility to hold certain offices,
follow certain occupations, or display a certain lifestyle’ (p. 206).
Most members of the different classes may well have had distinct lifestyles,
especially if sumptuary laws were enforced by the state. Cowgill holds that ‘it may
become possible to identify such styles… archaeologically —by differences in
residences, locations of residences, household furnishings, and household refuse’ (p.
206).
Cowgill believes that ‘holding a particular office and/or following a particular
occupation is related to the way society was organized. What were the recognized
offices and the hierarchy or hierarchies of office? To what extent were priestly, military,
administrative, judicial and other offices distinct?’ (p. 207). Offices may be
distinguished by the archaeologist ‘by differences in dress, regalia, and other signs or
symbols of office. These may accompany officeholders after death as grave goods, and
they are often shown in art… Also, offices that are distinct may be exercised in certain
types of structures (e.g. temples, palaces, courts of law)’ (p. 207).
Diverse occupations, in fact, can be recognized in the archaeological record
because they usually ‘leave behind relatively abundant amounts of distinctive and
imperishable tools or discarded by-products’ (p. 207).
A third variable to look for ‘is simply generalized wealth. Archaeologists have
found this easiest to deal with. One can characterize burials or refuse associated with
particular structures or neighborhoods in terms of some reasonable assumptions about
the cost or ‘preciousness’ of various categories of objects.’ Finally, ‘graves and
structures themselves can be characterized according to their size, quality, and location’
(p. 207).
The kind of analysis presented by Cowgill above has seldom been attempted in
West Mexico. In this regard, Pollard’s work at Tzintzuntzan is remarkable because she
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has followed a holistic approach that integrates archaeological, ethnohistorical,

ethnographic and geographical perspectives (Pollard 1993, 2000, 2011, 2016).
Thanks to this interdisciplinary approach, Pollard was able to understand how
pre-Hispanic Tzintzuntzan flourished on the margins of Lake Pátzcuaro. The lands
occupied by the city in the Protohistoric period were located in two environmental
zones: the lake margins and the low hillsides. According to Pollard (1993), the area
covered by the Pre-Hispanic city was at least 6.74 km2, and its population may have
been between 25,000 and 35,000 inhabitants, with a density of 4,452 people per km2 in
the residential areas (Pollard 1993:31-33). Pollard (1993) has identified three distinct
urban categories within Tzintzuntzan: (1) residential areas; (2) manufacturing areas;
and, (3) public areas. What follows is a brief discussion of each of these zones.
Residential Areas. These were identified archaeologically by the presence of lithic and
ceramic material, which suggested activities linked to food preparation, serving and
storage. Type I residential areas were interpreted as plebeian barrios inhabited by the
city’s low-status people.
Research in other areas of Mesoamerica has produced comparative data useful
for understanding Tarascan urbanism. At Copilco and Cuexcomate (two provincial
Aztec sites in the state of Morelos), for instance, houses were small (with a mean area of
15 m2) and built of adobe brick walls supported on stone foundations. Every house
contained a variety of incense burners and small ceramic figurines for domestic rituals
(Smith 1997:60-61). These houses may have been similar to Tarascan plebeian
dwellings.
Type II residential areas appear to be associated with Tzintzuntzan’s highest-
ranking social group, including the cazonci (king) and his family. Tarascan royal
palaces may not have been very different from Aztec ones. In Aztec royal courts there
was a daily convergence of hundreds of people, including visitors and residents, the
king’s family members, courtiers and servants. The Aztec palace, or tecpan, combined
administrative, residential and courtly functions, as well as activities linked to
government, hospitality, ritual and everyday work (Evans 2001, 2004b).
At Tzintzuntzan, Type III residential areas were interpreted as areas of
intermediate status, although this does not represent a ‘middle class’ in the modern
sense of the term. Rather, they represent the lower end of the higher status group in the
city’s social structure.
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Finally, another urban area (type IV) could have been inhabited by a non-
Tarascan ethnic group resident in Tzintzuntzan (probably Otomi or Matlatzinca)
(Pollard 1993:34-42). In fact, it would not be surprising to discover that Tzintzuntzan
had a large population of people from other parts of Mesoamerica as permanent
residents, as this was customary in many Mesoamerican cities. In Teotihuacan, for
instance, Manzanilla (2012) describes a ‘city of many faces, the most important of
which is that of being an exception in Mesoamerica. [Teotihuacan was] an inclusive
corporate society… its multiethnic character embedded deep in its structure,
Teotihuacan did not resemble any other contemporary site in Mesoamerica’ (p. 55).
Teotihuacan had different sectors ‘where foreign ethnic groups were based… The
Oaxaca Barrio, the Merchant’s Barrio housing people from the Gulf Coast, and the
Michoacán sector… were all set in the periphery of the city, where people coming from
other regions first settled’ (p. 57).
At the basis of Teotihuacan society there were corporate groups who occupied
multi-family residential apartment compounds. These compounds shared a common
activity, although the resident families could worship a distinct deity from their
neighbors. Each barrio had a ‘coordination center’ around which there were multi-
family residential compounds. There may have been 22 barrio centers throughout the
ancient city, perhaps spread in four districts. One of these barrio centers is known as
Teopancazco, discussed in Chapter V. Several of the individuals found at Teopancazco
by Manzanilla’s (2019) archaeological excavations had migrated to the city thanks to
the caravans organized from each barrio center, coming from regions that had trade
links with the Teotihuacan merchants. These caravans came from as far afield as
Veracruz (p. 30).
Archaeological remains of habitation areas are very poor in Tzintzuntzan, except
for constructions known as ‘palaces’, which correspond to the dwellings of the ruling
elite (Acosta 1939). Because the archaeological remains are so scarce, we must turn to
ethnohistorical sources such as the Relación de Michoacán (Alcalá 2008), in order to
understand the different types of dwellings used by the Tarascans. These consisted of
the following: (a) palaces: relatively large houses with several rooms and a portico; (b)
one-room houses divided into several subtypes according to the roofing material; (c)
ranchos, small, circular huts built of reeds or other plants where men would spend the
night while out hunting in the hills; (d) trojes, one-room, circular constructions used for
 14

storage; and, finally, (e) the houses of the high priests, which had only one large room
and a door divided by painted and sculpted wooden posts (Castro Leal 1986:64-66).
Because of the scarce evidence of house constructions and households among
the Tarascans, we have to seek comparative information from outside Michoacán.
Kristin de Lucia (2017) has conducted excavations of pre-Hispanic houses in the Basin
of Mexico. She holds that ‘many of the activities of daily life take place within or
around houses. So it is here, at the household level, that we can explore how the
practices of ordinary Aztecs intersected with the macro-levels of social, political, and
economic organization. Because Aztec studies have focused so extensively on the study
of the elites—their temples, palaces, and monuments—the study of households offers us
a window into the lives of the less visible but vast majority of the population: the
commoners’ (p. 247).
Households provided the basic structure for most activities: agricultural,
subsistence, craft, ritual, and commercial, and also served as the fundamental social
unit. We can use the physical remains of houses and the archaeological remains of the
activities that took place within them to reconstruct the organization of the ancient
social units. This allows us to study the daily practices that were part and parcel of the
cultural use of domestic space. The study of Aztec households relies on a rich
ethnohistoric data set, in addition to well-preserved archaeological remains. Although
most houses in the Aztec capital are covered over by modern-day Mexico City,
household archaeology conducted in the surrounding regions of the Basin of Mexico
has been instrumental to understanding the lives of Aztec commoners (p. 247).
Among the Aztecs, as in other Mesoamerican cultures, ‘craft-production
activities typically took place within domestic contexts rather than within specialized
workshops. In the city-state of Otumba, for example… [there is] evidence of household-
based craft production’ (p. 254). This included domestic workshops that manufactured
or processed the following items: ‘Obsidian cores and blades, lapidary items, ground-
stone objects, figurines, censers, and spindle whorls. Craft-producing workshops tended
to be aggregated in barrios or wards with other households producing similar goods’ (p.
254).
Another example discussed by de Lucia is Xaltocan, an island community in the
northern Basin of Mexico, whose ‘inhabitants were involved in the extraction and
processing of lake resources… Archaeological excavations discovered activity areas as
well as production activities, including the processing of fish along with other activities
 15

associated with lake exploitation like weaving tule mats, making bone tools, and
producing pottery vessels. These households can be characterized as multicrafting
workshops producing goods that could be sold at the marketplace’ (p. 254).
Manufacturing Zones. Three types of lithic workshops were discovered at
Tzintzuntzan (Pollard 1993). Type 1 was dedicated to producing tools, primarily blades.
There, artisans made basic, generalized tools that were modified and utilized in
residential areas. Type 2 lithic workshops produced rough obsidian blades, flakes and
artifacts of unknown use with notches or points, earspools, lip plugs, cylinders and
discs. Finally, Type 3 lithic workshops contained large obsidian scrapers, though the
absence of evidence of obsidian-processing suggests that these tools were made
elsewhere. The tasks performed at these sites may have included the preparation of
skins, woodworking and maguey-scraping to prepare pulque, among others (Pollard and
Vogel 1994). In addition to the manufacturing zones mentioned above, there must have
been many more work areas associated with other crafts such as basketry, carpentry,
hide-processing, textile-elaboration, pottery making, and so on. These workshops,
however, may not have left archaeological traces, or are yet to be found.
Hirth et al. (2019) report the excavation of an obsidian workshop in the Tlajinga
district of Teotihuacan. They discuss the lithic technology and examine the
archaeological contexts in terms of what they tell us about in situ obsidian craft activity.
Hirth et al. arrived at the conclusion that the compound they studied was a locus of
large-scale obsidian craft production during the Classic period, one of many workshops
that existed in ancient Teotihuacan. This example is certainly useful for analogy aimed
at the interpretation of Tarascan lithic industries.
Public Zones. The principal public zone in Tzintzuntzan was the main platform or
central plaza. In the center of this platform we find six stone constructions, known as
yácatas (Figure 17), which were dedicated to the religious cult. In addition to this
enormous plaza, there are four sites designated as secondary public areas, which
functioned as local religious centers (Pollard 1993). On a far greater scale, the sacred
precinct at Tenochtitlan (Figure 18) was a place for congregation and religious
observance, with a similar function to that of the main plaza and the yácatas at
Tzintzuntzan in a pattern of urban planning common to many Mesoamerican cities.
No area of Tzintzuntzan seems to have functioned solely in a political or
administrative context. The buildings known as casas del rey (king’s houses) served a
political purpose, but also functioned as residences for the king and the royal court, in
 16

addition to incorporating political and religious functions, as well as certain

manufacturing activities. Other public areas mentioned in the Relación de Michoacán
(Alcalá 2008) include the casa de águilas (eagles’ house, probably reserved for
warriors), a jail, a zoo, storage facilities for grain, cotton blankets –used as a unit of
exchange throughout Mesoamerica– and other tribute goods, ball court, baths, a market
and burial grounds.
Among the Aztecs, royal ‘pleasure parks’ were reserved for the elite. They
included enclosed gardens and zoos with all kinds of plants and animals, as well as
special facilities for ball games or gambling and for playing many different board
games. Other special places included facilities for observing astronomical phenomena
and for performing poetry, music and dance (Evans 2000). In these respects, both
Aztecs and Tarascans followed a common Mesoamerican urban tradition.
The only sectors within Tzintzuntzan that appear to have been deliberately
planned are the political and religious areas. Judging by the few archaeological
investigations and the ethnohistorical information in the Relación de Michoacán and
maps from the colonial period, Tzintzuntzan shows planning for individual structures
and for some activity areas, though not for the city as a whole (Pollard 1993:45-54).
According to Marcus (1983), the simplest formal dichotomy in the study of pre-
industrial cities is that between planned and unplanned cities. The former usually have
rectangular components, straight streets that form grid patterns and repetitive units of
some standardized dimensions. The best example of a planned city in Mesoamerica is,
of course, Teotihuacan, with its straight avenues, geometric proportions and well-
organized habitation compounds (Millon 1981).
Unplanned cities, such as Tzintzuntzan, frequently show a lack of formality and
are characterized by a radial growth pattern, as opposed to the axial pattern
characteristic of planned urban centers. Many Mesoamerican cities combined both of
these features, as they had a planned ‘inner city’, or center, where the secular and
religious public structures are found, and an unplanned ‘outer city’, or periphery, that
reflected random growth in residential areas (Marcus 1983:196). Examples of this type
of city are common in the Maya area, where sites like Copán are divided into two basic
components: a densely-settled urban core (within a radius of ca. 1 km from the center of
the main group of buildings) that holds most of the elite residential compounds, and a
rural or non-urban sector where population density decreases progressively as one
moves away from the center. There is nothing to suggest the existence of a grid plan for
 17

the city of Copán, where all the sites and barrios show a random distribution (Fash
1991:155-156).
There is, however, ample evidence for the existence of barrios in Tzintzuntzan
during the Protohistoric period. These units probably played a role in regulating
marriage, as well as serving as locales for ceremonial and religious activities.
Tzintzuntzan had 15 barrios in 1593, each one with its own chapel. In 1945, local
informants could remember 13 of these and pinpoint the location of 11. Unfortunately,
it has not been possible to locate the barrios at this pre-Hispanic settlement because
there has been some confusion during the last centuries concerning their original names
and locations (Pollard 1993:59).
Tzintzuntzan had at least 15 endogamic territorial units with ceremonial
functions, while artisans and other specialists were located in separate barrios.
According to the Relación de Michoacán, there was a secondary level of territorial
clustering within the pre-Hispanic city, a subdivision of the barrio that consisted of 25
households and was used for tax-collection purposes, collective participation in public
works and the realization of censuses (Pollard 1993:59-60).
Many Mesoamerican cities were divided into quarters or barrios. Tenochtitlan,
for instance, was divided in four sectors, which were subdivided in tlaxillacallis, or
barrios, which had the same names as the units known as calpullis. The latter term
refers to corporate social groups whose members shared the same occupation and
belonged to a common ritual circle. In the Aztec capital, each barrio was subdivided
into house groups for administrative purposes (Calnek 1976:296-297). In contrast, there
is no evidence for calpullis or similar groups at Tzintzuntzan.
Several centuries earlier, Tenochtitlan-style barrios had apparently existed in
Teotihuacan as well, where they may have formed corporate entities that functioned as
important administrative units of state control and for the organization of local activities
(Millon 1981:210). Around the same period as Teotihuacan (early Classic, before ca.
AD 750), the city of Monte Albán, in Oaxaca, had 15 territorial subdivisions, including
the central plaza and its neighboring areas. In most of these areas there is evidence of
craft production, including manufacturing sites where the following goods were
produced: grinding stones (manos and metates), ceramic objects and stone axes, as well
as artifacts made of shell, obsidian, quartz and flint. Market areas have also been
identified at Monte Albán, as well as ritual spaces and other areas where large groups of
people would have congregated (Blanton et al. 1981:95).
 18

One final example of differences in residential structures that followed

variations in wealth and access to power and privilege in pre-Hispanic urban contexts
comes from the city of Xochicalco Hirth (2009a) during the Epiclassic period (ca. 750-
900). Here Kenneth Hirth (2009b) distinguished several types of residential structures:
‘large courtyard residences representing the highest level of elite housing… houses
constructed on… wide terraces’ and ‘cluster residences consisting of groups of
structures built on the slopes between major terraces’. This last category defined by
Hirth pertains to ‘compact residences representing the small isolated domestic structures
of the poorest individuals’ (Hirth 2009b:47).
One important discovery made by Hirth at Xochicalco was that ‘residential
compounds…were organized and operated as corporate entities… Evidence for
corporate behavior is found in shared architectural space, the organization of work,
indications of social differentiation, and integration of the residence under a single
household head’ (p. 49). Although this arrangement was not necessarily present in
Tzintzuntzan or other cities during the Protohistoric period, this notion of ‘corporate
entities’ is certainly worthy of analysis in the context of pre-Hispanic urbanism in all
areas of Mesoamerica.
Returning to Tzintzuntzan, we see that according to Pollard, political and
religious functions were important for the city’s growth, but economic activity was
embedded in other systems, or was peripheral to the basic power structure. Religious
and political centers were centrally-located, well-demarcated and of relatively large size
with a high degree of planning in their structures, elements and areas. Commercial and
manufacturing areas, on the other hand, were peripheral and dispersed, apparently with
no planning. In summary, Tzintzuntzan’s initial growth seems to have been generated
by political rather than economic factors, in marked contrast to other Mesoamerican
urban centers, such as Teotihuacan or Tenochtitlan (Pollard 1993:62).
It has been said that the Tarascan state did not wholly take part in the
Mesoamerican urban tradition (Pollard 1980:677), since Tzintzuntzan was its only truly
urban center. This state was characterized by a complex and overlapping network of
specialized ‘central places’, a situation that should be taken into account in attempts to
compare Tarascan sites with other expressions of the Mesoamerican urban tradition.
At one level, each city is unique and shows characteristics that must be
explained according to specific variables, in keeping with its own environmental and
cultural setting. At another level, however, we must compare and generalize, and we
 19

can do this in a productive way as long as we bear in mind the fundamental processes
that affect urban development in different sociocultural contexts (Sanders and Webster
1988:544-545). Finally, sociologist Louis Wright’s words should help us understand the
enormous degree of variability within the urban tradition present in different
Mesoamerican regions, including ancient Michoacán: ‘Each city, like any other object
of nature, is, in a sense, unique’ (Wright 1983:195, cited by Sanders and Webster 1988).
The ‘centralist’ attitude adopted by many archaeologists working in
Mesoamerica usually holds that only in Central Mexico and points south did true
Mesoamerican civilization flourish. They wrongly believe that the Mesoamerican urban
tradition was unknown in the western expanses of Mesoamerica, an area regarded by
many archaeologists as a cultural backwater compared to the achievements visible in
Teotihuacan, Oaxaca, the Gulf Coast and, most of all, the Maya area.
Many years after Pollard’s original fieldwork at Tzintzuntzan, Christopher
Stawski (2011) applied new analytical methods and techniques in an attempt to resolve
many questions concerning the use of space and, in general, the urban characteristics of
this pre-Hispanic city. Stawski holds that Tzintzuntzan ‘was an important urban center
that showed a high degree of division into residential zones, but at the same time
showed a low level of urban planning’ (Figure 19). In his research, Stawski discovered
that ‘some patterns emerge to highlight the economic, social, political and religious
behavior of certain social classes within this ancient city’ (p. 53), concluding with the
observation that by studying the relationships between ceramic remains at the site and
the social status of its ancient occupants, he was able to develop a more detailed concept
of the use of space in Tzintzuntzan in relation to social classes. He also succeeded in
considering the implications of the overlap of political, religious, and economic
phenomena in the context of the Tarascan state. Clearly, the Tarascan political system
had a high level of insertion into the religious and ritual aspects of society (p. 64).
Thanks to the work of Dominique Michelet (1998) and his associates, we know
that Tzintzuntzan was not the only example in Michoacán of a large settlement divided
into barrios. This characteristic is also present at Las Milpillas, a Late Postclassic site in
the malpaís area of the Lake Zacapu Basin. Based on the survey of the Las Milpillas site
and on general observations of other sites in the region, the occupation of the area
during the period in question seems to have consisted of a habitat that was in part
nucleated and disperse at the same time. The surveyed zone of Las Milpillas had an
average density of 718 dwellings per square kilometer. Like most settlements of the
 20

period, Las Milpillas had clear features of internal organization: causeways, footpaths,
ramps and stairways connecting one building unit to another (p. 49).
Michelet was able to detect several discrete groups or barrios (Figure 20) at Las
Milpillas, each one located around a plaza which is dominated by a pyramidal structure
or yácata. Near the latter structures Michelet usually found one or more big ‘houses’
which may have had a public function, as well as one or more altars. Based on these
findings, Michelet proposed the existence of clusters of buildings that constituted a link
between individual structures and the general group (i.e. settlement), that is to say
neighborhoods or barrios.
Another study of the urban nature of Tzintzuntzan and its role as capital of a
sprawling empire was conducted by Ben Nelson (2004), who examined the role of
‘palaces’ in West Mexico as indicators of social complexity. According to this author,
‘the definition of palaces is inextricably linked with the nature of political power, which
is variably constituted according to local traditions, so that palaces and other elite-
related architecture must be understood in local terms’ (p. 59). In other words, elite
residences in West Mexico are not necessarily identical to their counterparts elsewhere
in Mesoamerica, but adhere to a local tradition with a particular ‘flavor.’ Nevertheless,
they follow in the Mesoamerican tradition by being associated with special architectural
features, such as elaborate ball-game courts, like the ones at Los Guachimontones,
Teuchitlán, Jalisco (e.g. Weigand and Weigand 2005).
Nelson holds that ‘palaces are the residences of the principal power holders in
stratified polities. The occupants are not merely of high status, but are first-order
nobility; the existence of palaces is part of what distinguishes the residents materially
from mere members of a privileged class’ (p. 59). In his view, ‘palaces are durable
statements of social and economic order and about the place of particular occupants in
that order. Built to actively reinforce such distinctions, palaces are overtly more
elaborate in materials and size than other residences, have a different internal spatial
syntax than commoners’ residences, and are often embellished with religious or
cosmological symbols’ (p. 60).
In his discussion of Tarascan palaces, Nelson first states that pre-Hispanic
Tarascan society was ‘politically integrated as a state; scholars have long considered
their dominion to constitute an empire. Their metallurgy and other technological and
aesthetic achievements paralleled, if not exceeded, those of Central Mexico. On the
 21

basis of these characteristics, one might predict strongly hierarchical and individualizing
rulership, which is in fact what the [historical] documents suggest’ (p. 73).
The existence in the Tarascan domain of both individual-centered rulership and
of palaces before the Spanish invasion is already attested archaeologically. The
archaeological evidence includes ‘a richly appointed grave with a central individual and
sacrificed retainers,’ as well as ‘a structure known as Palace B… [which] consists of a
complex arrangement of contiguous rooms’ (p. 73).
Because West Mexico was part of the Mesoamerican ecumene, we should be
able to look at other areas of Mesoamerica for examples to shed light on the subject of
Tarascan urbanism, including its nature and material manifestations, among many other
aspects. According to Michael Smith (2016), ‘Mesoamerican cities… exhibit several
fundamental principles of urban planning… First, most cities had a standard set of civic
buildings: temple-pyramids, smaller shrines, ball courts, and royal palaces.’ In
adherence to the Mesoamerican canon, ‘these buildings were arranged carefully around
formal rectangular plazas... most of the civic architecture was concentrated in an
epicenter, and large cities often had smaller, subsidiary ceremonial zones.’ One last
characteristic common to most Mesoamerican urban arrangements was that ‘commoners
and lower-ranking elites built their houses in neighborhoods around the epicenter
without planning or direction from the king or central administration. In most
Mesoamerican cities, residential density was low (compared to Old World cities)
because major areas were dedicated to cultivation as gardens or infields’ (p. 1).
In both Tarascan and Aztec cities, artisans were indispensable members of
society. Smith (1998) states that ‘in a complex society like that of the Aztecs, the
producers of goods played an important role. Work was heavily specialized, and a
relatively small group of people was relied upon to manufacture most of the goods that
people used in their homes, temples, and workplaces’ (p. 85). Smith distinguishes two
types of craft industries among the Aztecs and other groups in central Mexico (and
elsewhere in Mesoamerica): utilitarian and luxury. ‘The nature and organization of work
in each of these sectors had very different implications for the lives of both producers
and consumers. Utilitarian goods such as sandals or pottery vessels were produced by
part-time artisans, who worked in their homes and sold in the marketplace’ (p. 85). On
the other hand, ‘luxury items such as gold jewelry or stone sculptures were fashioned in
the workshops’ pertaining to ‘full-time artists who worked directly for elite patrons’ (p.
85).
 22

One of the crafts that interest us here is pottery production (Williams 2017).
According to Smith (1998), ‘Aztec kitchens were equipped with a variety of pottery
vessels for cooking, preparing, and serving food. Each family probably had one or two
painted water jars; several flat tortilla griddles (comalli); cooking pots of various shapes
and sizes for beans, sauces, and other foods; a pot to soak maize in’ (p. 89). The typical
Aztec kitchen pottery assemblage (Figure 21) also included ‘a rough-bottom tripod
grinding dish for chilies and tomatoes; a salt jar; and various plates, bowls, and cups for
meals. In addition to kitchenware, pottery was used for religious items (figurines and
incense burners) and tools (spindle whorls and special bowls to support the spindle
during the spinning of cotton thread)’ (p. 89). In special occasions, such as weddings, a
particular ceramic assemblage was used (Figure 22).
Also relevant for the present study is Dan Healan’s (2014) discussion of
families, households and their material manifestations in Postclassic Mesoamerica. This
discussion sheds light indirectly on the Tarascan urban tradition and the many activities
that were usually performed in households. Healan says that ‘the most basic unit of
domestic organization consists of at least one but usually a group of individuals who
“live together”, that is, eat, sleep, store property, and perform basic living tasks and
functions in close, intimate proximity. Most such groups consist of families, although it
is probably better not to assume this a priori, especially when dealing with
archaeological situations’ (p. 67). According to Healan, however, the word ‘family’ as
we normally use it ‘is an ambiguous term that subsumes nuclear and variants of
supranuclear entities… Despite these shortcomings… “family”, in reality a nuclear
family,’ is used in Healan’s study ‘to refer to the most basic unit of domestic
organization.’ Healan ends with the following statement: ‘Although clearly a basic
social entity, the family is an economic entity as well, typically the minimal unit of
production, distribution, and consumption that exists within a community’ (p. 67).
After this overview of Tarascan culture, in the following section I will discuss
the Lake Cuitzeo Basin as an example of a ‘Key Economic Area’ in the Tarascan
Empire.
 23

Figure 1. Michoacán is noted for its rich and varied geographic-ecological

contexts. The main natural regions are as follows (from top to bottom): Valleys
and Wetlands; Central Sierra; Hot Lands; Southern Sierra Madre: and, Coastal
Region (adapted from Guevara 1989: Figure on p. 11).

Figure 2. The different regions of the Michoacán landscape are subdivided into
nine areas (from top to bottom): Zamora Lowlands; Morelia Region; Purépecha
Plateau; Thousand Peaks; Balconies; Balsas Depression; Tepalcatepec Hot
Lands; Southern Sierra Madre; and, Playa Azul (adapted from González: Figure
on p. 14).
 24

Figure 3. Michoacán was given its name by the Aztecs. Meaning ‘land of fish’,
this name is appropriate because of the abundant aquatic environments found in
this part of West Mexico, such as lakes, rivers, streams, springs, marshlands,
wetlands, and many others (adapted from Guevara 1989: figure on p. 24).

Figure 4. When a cacique (chieftain) died in one of the towns of the province, the
cazonci gave the new cacique a new golden lip plug, ear flares and bracelets (top left),
in the presence of the petámuti or high priest (center, with spear). Meanwhile the corpse
of the dead ruler was disposed of in a funeral pyre (bottom right) (after Alcalá 2008: p.
204).
 25

Figure 5. Although the royal palace at Tzintzuntzan was destroyed after the Spanish
conquest, there are a few remains of buildings in the archaeological site that could
pertain to the royal accommodations from the Protohistoric period (photo by Eduardo
Williams).

Figure 6. The petámuti or high priest was a member of the Tarascan elite. His
paraphernalia included a decorated gourd on his back and bronze tweezers with spirals
on his chest, as well as a spear, according to the Relación de Michoacán (after Boehm
2004: figure on cover).
 26

Figure 7. Tzintzuntzan’s main plaza rests atop a huge man-made platform. The yácatas
can be partially seen on top of the platform (photo by Eduardo Williams).

Figure 8. The yácata is a diagnostic architectural form used by the Tarascans during the
Protohistoric period, like this example from Tzintzuntzan (photo by Eduardo Williams).
 27

Figure 9. Ihuatzio is a major archaeological site in the Lake Pátzcuaro Basin, not far
from Tzintzuntzan (photo by Eduardo Williams).

Figure 10. Ihuatzio is located near the center of the Lake Pátzcuaro Basin. It was
constructed around the early 14th century. Tarascan architecture from the Protohistoric
period can be seen at Ihuatzio, like these twin pyramids (photo by Eduardo Williams).
 28

Figure 11. The religious functions performed at Ihuatzio were concentrated in a large
zone enclosed within high walls (photo by Eduardo Williams).

Figure 12. Topographic map of Ihuatzio’s main area, made in 1937 by Aquiles Rivera.
It shows the main features of the site core (adapted from Mediateca INAH).
https://mediateca.inah.gob.mx/islandora_74/islandora/object/mapa%3A234
 29

Figure 13. Some remains of pre-Hispanic elite structures can still be seen underneath
the modern city of Pátzcuaro, near Tzintzuntzan, the former Tarascan capital (photo by
Eduardo Williams).

Figure 14. The extent of the area covered by the Tarascan Empire was quite vast,
corresponding to the modern state of Michoacán and adjoining areas of Jalisco, Colima,
Guanajuato, and Guerrero (adapted from Pollard 1993: Map 1.2).
 30

Figure 15. The Relación de Michoacán shows a scene in the market of Asajo, a
Tarascan town near Tzintzuntzan (adapred from Alcalá 2008: figure on p. 93).

Figure 16. This modern Tarascan market at Pátzcuaro still follows some of the old
traditional customs, such as barter and payment in kind (photo by Teddy Williams).
 31

Figure 17. Reconstruction drawing of the yácatas at Tzintzuntzan, the main religious
constructions in the Tarascan capital (adapted from Marquina 1990: Figure 74).

Figure 18. The Great Temple precinct of Tenochtitlan, the Aztec capital (after Marquina
1990: Plate 55, detail).
 32

Figure 19. Archaeological survey of Tzintzuntzan has identified public zones, such as
plazas and religious structures, and residential zones pertaining respectively to the
plebeians, the high elite and the lower elite. The dashed line indicates the limits of the
survey area (adapted from Stawski 2011: Figure 3).
 33

Figure 20. The Postclassic site of Las Milpillas, in the malpaís area of the Lake Zacapu
Basin, was divided into quarters or barrios, each one with its own plaza, elite
structure(s) and altar (adapted from Michelet 1998: Figure 3).

Figure 21. Domestic scene taken from the Aztec Codex Mendoza. It shows two women
working in the kitchen, with part of the household assemblage. Left center: metate
(quern) and mano (handstone) used for grinding maize into dough for tortillas; upper
right: molcajete (grater bowl) used for grinding tomato, chili and other ingredients for
making sauce; middle right: comal (griddle) on top of three hearth stones; bottom right:
pottery jar, and bottom left: two tortillas (adapted from Ross 1984: figure on p. 82).
 34

Figure 22. Domestic scene taken from the Aztec Codex Mendoza. It shows a wedding,
in which the couple appear at top, sitting on a tule mat or petate, with their garments
tied together as a sign of union. Below are a basket with tamales, a tripod bowl with
meat (turkey?), and a jar and bowl with pulque (adapted from Ross 1984: figure on p.
87).

The Lake Cuitzeo Basin: A Key Economic Area of the Tarascan Empire
The Lake Cuitzeo Basin before the Spanish conquest was a key economic area for the
Tarascan Empire, since it had an excess of natural resources and key commodities, such
as obsidian, salt, and many aquatic species of plants and animals. Also, near Lake
Cuitzeo there are deposits of copper, silver, tin, and other minerals (Williams 2009 b).
This basin is part of the Lerma River region, which has been blessed with forests, rivers,
swamps, lakes and fertile land in abundance (Weigand and Williams 1999). The key
economic area concept was first developed by Chinese historian Ch’ao-Ting Chi in his
book Key Economic Areas in Chinese History. First published in 1936, this book is still
in print, attesting to its great value (Chi 2019). In the case of Mesoamerican
archaeology, Ángel Palerm, Eric Wolf, and others followed a similar approach—based
on cultural ecology—in their study of the Basin of Mexico, as discussed in the
introduction of this book.
In his study of Chinese history, Chi (2019) stated that ‘the concept of the Key
Economic Area throws light on every fundamental problem in Chinese history. It
emphasizes the local and regional character of Chinese economy… It was… held
 35

together by military and bureaucratic domination through the… control of the Key
Economic Area’ (pp. xii-xiii). Chi also points out the following:
The existence of the Key Economic Area motivated the geographical
differentiation in the land system and methods of taxation, and accentuated the
natural tendency toward uneven development of the different regions. It also
affected the distribution of merchant capital and created varied conditions for its
development… [and] differences in the social characteristics and power of the
local ruling groups, differences in the degree of exploitation, and differences in
the conditions of the life and work of the peasants, the overwhelming majority of
the population (p. xiii).

Phil Weigand (1985) used Chi’s ideas, as well as those of Palerm, Wolf, and
Sanders, among others, to define the lake district of central-southern Jalisco as a ‘key
economic area’. We have seen in previous chapters that the Teuchitlán tradition first
developed in this area during the Formative and Classic periods. According to Weigand
(1985), ‘the highland lake system of Jalisco is preserved today as only fragments of the
original whole—several natural lakes… have been drained for their bottom lands’ (p.
54). These lake basins in pre-Hispanic times ‘supported rich biotic communities of
reeds, birds, reptiles, amphibians, fish, and insects’ (p. 55). The wide lacustrine deposits
‘supplied amazingly rich soils for agriculture… These soils are heavily mixed with fine
volcanic ash, and hence retain both moisture and fertility for long periods… Good to
excellent soils for agriculture abound in these basins. Rainfall… averages around 1000
mm per year… Strategic resources were quantitatively and qualitatively superior in the
general area’ (p. 55).
Weigand tells us that the first Spanish to see the lake area were very impressed
with its natural resources. The region ‘sits astride… an east-west alignment of high-
quality obsidian flows, and a north-south alignment of copper deposits… The
concentration of rare resources in and very near the lake zone thus must be [an]
explanator in evaluating the region’s differential cultural development’ p. 56).
The following copper minerals are found in this region: ‘malachite, azurite,
chrysocolla, and native copper. Other metals and crystals are abundant: nugget gold,
native silver, galena, hematite, pyrite, optical-quality quartz, and opal’ (p. 56). Salt was
widely available within the Atoyac Lake Basin, and almost the entire Sayula-Atoyac
Basin today is ringed with abandoned salt and saltpeter processing sites.
 36

In the following pages I will discuss the production and exchange in the
Protohistoric period (ca. AD 1450-1530) of several natural resources in the Lake
Cuitzeo Basin, which were very important for the economy of this part of the ecumene
in the pre-Hispanic era. The role of the study area is analyzed from an archaeological
and ethnohistorical perspective in order to understand the importance of the Lake
Cuitzeo Basin in the economy and culture of the ancient Tarascan state. Lastly, an
ethnoarchaeological investigation into the aquatic lifeway (fishing, hunting, gathering
and manufacture) and related subsistence activities, such as salt making, is aimed at
discovering the tool assemblage and cultural landscapes linked to these activities in the
distant past (Williams 2014a, 2014b, 2014c, 2015, 2018).
The goal of this research is to shed light on little-known aspects of the pre-
Hispanic subsistence strategies in this part of Michoacán. This is an indispensable
enterprise, since according to Brigitte Boehm (2006): ‘Regrettably, there have been few
historical and archaeological studies about the use of natural resources for production
and subsistence, and those that could account for the impact of production activities in
the environment of the [Lerma River] region are almost non-existent. Consequently,
there is too little information to paint a panorama barely illustrative of the landscapes
that existed before the arrival of the Spaniards’ (p. 202).
Strategic Resources
According to Weigand et al. (1977), ‘there were many types of rare resources for the
Mesoamericans: basic or important rare resources (those items necessary for primary
exploitation of the environment) such as obsidian and, later… copper; and luxury rare
resources (those items culturally identified as status markers) such as jade, turquoise,
gold, silver, feathers, etc. Rare resource provinces are those areas where these items…
are found naturally’ (p. 15). Weigand (1982, 1983; Williams and Weigand 2004)
defined the concept of ‘strategic resources’ as the most basic and imponderable goods
available to sociocultural entities. In the case of pre-Hispanic Mesoamerica these goods
included the following (among many others): obsidian, salt, metals (gold, silver, copper,
tin, etcetera), flint, kaolin, and fertile land. Apart from water itself, there are many
aquatic species (fish, birds, reptiles, edible insects and algae, and plants like tule or
rushes and carrizo or reeds) that can also be included in the list of strategic resources.
According to Jeffrey Parsons (1996), the non-agricultural resources of the Basin of
Mexico (i.e. lakes Texcoco, Xaltocan, and Zumpango), ‘particularly salt and edible
insects (and perhaps algae), were so energetically and economically important As to
 37

attract large numbers of people engaged full-time in their extraction, processing, and
distribution during the Middle and Late Postclassic. Such attraction would necessarily
have been significant in sociopolitical terms’ (p. 442). Parsons argues that ‘the [lake]
bed and swampy shore land… should be considered in much the same way as
agricultural land when we attempt to evaluate prehispanic productive potential and
carrying capacity in the Basin of Mexico’ (p. 442).
However, Parsons ‘does not deny the primary importance of agriculture in
prehispanic domestic and political economy: rather, [he] suggests that the
nonagricultural resources… attained such a high level of importance after Early
Postclassic times that overall productivity, exchange, and consumption in the Basin of
Mexico… cannot be understood without considering their contribution’ (p. 442).
In addition to strategic resources, Weigand (1982, 1993) mentions scarce or
luxury goods, which are mostly destined to function as status or identity markers within
and between social systems, or as exchange goods—even as ‘currency’ in some cases.
The most obvious examples are shells, turquoise, jade, gold, silver, feathers, fine
textiles, elaborate ceramics, and so on. Weigand (1982, 1993) points out that in some
cases there is an overlap between the two categories mentioned above, strategic and
luxury goods. In most cases luxury goods did not have a primary role in the exploitation
of the physical environment; their use was connected with designating social position,
marking social distance, and distinguishing the holders of political power from the rest
of the people. Although the procurement of items of both categories was used politically
to establish or reinforce social position, the management of strategic goods was carried
out for the common good of the whole sociocultural entity. In contrast, the management
of luxury goods served the interests of specific sectors of society, since their use was
restricted to the elite sector of chiefdoms and states (Williams and Weigand 2004).
The social nature of the exchange of goods pertaining to each of the two
categories mentioned above will be fundamentally different in its cultural, social, and
material manifestations. Therefore, it is necessary for us to analyze the specific social
and economic context in which the procurement and trade of goods took part. The
contexts are not equivalent in all levels of social contact; the management of strategic
resources requires much social and technological investment in order to procure scarce
goods of the required quality and quantity, otherwise the social system will stop
functioning efficiently (Weigand 1993; Williams and Weigand 2004).
 38

The main structure (though not the only one) by which the Mesoamerican
ecumene was held together consisted of trade, exchange, and tribute of scarce resources,
be it strategic or luxury in nature (Blanton et al. 1981; Smith and Berdan 2003; Hassig
1985; Hirth 2016). In the context of macro-economic considerations, the exchange of
rare resources is expressed in two intertwined levels of interaction: ‘trade structure’ and
‘trade networks’. The generalized and perdurable aspect is known as trade structure,
and pertains to items (either strategic or luxury) that are so indispensable, in a practical
or status level, that they must keep flowing regardless of the political or economic
configurations existing in a particular point in time. Obsidian and salt are examples of
strategic resources that had to keep constantly moving from one place to another in
order to insure the prosperity of the polities within the ecumene. Meanwhile, turquoise
is an example of a scarce or luxury good that traveled from one end of the ecumene to
the other in order to satisfy the need of political elites to display their status and fulfill
their religious obligations (Weigand 1995). Notwithstanding what might happen to one
or several of the social players involved, these goods simply had to keep flowing,
because of their intrinsic value in the total social system.
The trade structure consists of a series of cross-cutting trade networks that
operate under specific conditions. They are quite vulnerable to changes in the
composition of their participants (Williams and Weigand 2004:17).
Strategic Resources in the Lake Cuitzeo Basin. The Lake Cuitzeo Basin before the
Spanish conquest was under the political aegis of the Tarascan Empire, which was one
of the most powerful empires in the whole of Mesoamerica, as we saw earlier in this
book. The great ecological and geographic diversity in Michoacán, like that of the rest
of Mesoamerica, made it imperative to have exchange systems since early times,
because few areas had all the elements indispensable for subsistence. The greatest
ecological contrasts in Mesoamerica were those between the cold highlands and the hot,
tropical lowlands (Sanders and Price 1968). Both trade and the imposition of tribute by
means of war functioned in Mesoamerica as mechanisms for the exchange of people,
information, and goods between one region and another, in the context of dynamic and
ever-shifting borders between different polities (Blanton et al. 1981). The most
important mechanisms for the exchange of rare or strategic resources were the market,
long-distance trade networks, and gift-giving, as well as the payment of taxes to the
state authorities.
 39

The ecological background of the Lake Cuitzeo Basin was briefly discussed in
Chapter III (see Williams 2014a, 2014b, 2014c for a detailed discussion). The general
archaeological background of the area of the Bajío encompassing the Lake Cuitzeo
Basin and its environs has been discussed in previous chapters. In the following
paragraphs I will discuss one of the most important sites so far excavated in the basin,
called Huandacareo, which may have been the local outpost of the Tarascan Empire in
the Protohistoric period.
Macías Goytia (1990) excavated the archaeological site of Huandacareo in the
1980s (Figure 23). The site is located atop a natural rise to which were added retention
walls and fills to create a large and even surface. Monumental constructions are spread
throughout an area of some two hectares, measuring 200 m on the east-west axis—
parallel to the shore of Lake Cuitzeo—and 100 m on the north-south axis.
Several mounds were excavated at the site. Of the first one (called M-1), only
the remains of the lower body and parts of the upper body were available for
reconstruction. The shape of the original construction is similar to the traditional yácata,
combining a round and a square shape. Apparently this building had a temple at the top,
but the only evidence found in the excavation was a floor made of burnt mud, with no
traces of foundations, walls, post holes or any other feature that would help to
reconstruct the shape of the temple.
A second mound (M-2) is bigger than the one described above, and was found in
a better state of conservation (Figure 24). The body of M-2 consists of two rectangular
stepped platforms, with a slight slope. The first platform is a low banquette (45 cm
high), while the upper platform is 1.72 m high. On the top of this mound there is a
rectangular temple with its door facing a stairway. The main façade of the temple was
built with finely worked stone blocks, in particular the stones forming the frame of the
door. The excavators found a layer of 20-25 cm of rubble at the top of the building, with
the remains of a floor made of burned clay with traces of the wattle-and-daub walls. The
floor of the temple consisted of a 4 cm-thick layer of polished, highly compact clay. An
interesting discovery consisted of eight small cylindrical pits in the floor, which may be
the post holes that supported the original structure made of wood and reeds, with a
thatch roof (Figure 25). On the north side of the temple’s entrance there is a small
platform that may have been used as an outside altar. A third mound (called M-3) was
excavated by Macías Goytia, but it was found in a much more deplorable state of
conservation than the ones described above, having been practically destroyed by
 40

looters. Of the original building only a stairway remains, together with a few carved
rocks that covered the structure. In this area of the site, called Platform 1, the excavators
found a large area of burials, consisting of seven tombs constructed with finely-worked
stone blocks.
In addition to the architecture, the excavators were able to find several pre-
Hispanic materials that represent different aspects of the culture of the former
inhabitants of Huandacareo: pottery, shell, bone, stone, obsidian, metal, and fibers.
Most of these materials show unquestionably diagnostic traits of Tarascan culture. The
pottery assemblage, for example, was called the ‘Huandacareo Complex’ by Macías
Goytia and includes tripod bowls (Figure 26 a); jars with spout and stirrup handle; clay
pipes, presumably for smoking tobacco (Figure 26 b); and pipe fragments (Figure 26
c). Also present in the Huandacareo pottery assemblage are shoe-shaped pots decorated
with negative paint; miniature bowls; bowls with ‘al fresco’ decoration;
anthropomorphic figurines, and spindle whorls, among other types of diagnostic
Tarascan items. Also noted by Macías Goytia are many worked potsherds with round
silhouette and two notches, which have been identified as fishnet sinkers. Elite Tarascan
ceramics like the ones from Huancadareo have been reported from Copándaro, a site in
the Lake Cuitzeo Basin (Figure 27).
The materials excavated at Huandacareo also included numerous items made of
shell, such as round necklace beads, long pendants, perforated shells, anthropomorphic
figurines, and unmodified conch shells (Macías Goytia 1990). Many, if not all, of these
items were found in elite contexts, primarily burials. Items made of bone were also
present, such as small (18 cm long) needle-like objects of unknown use with elaborate
carved designs decorating one end (Figure 28). The latter were part of a rich offering in
the main tomb (Number 2) of the Patio of Tombs, whose occupant must have enjoyed a
high social status.
Stone artifacts were also plentiful, for instance querns and pestles, vessels made
of fine-grained green stone, and jadeite beads found inside some of the skulls,
suggesting that they were put in the mouth of the deceased, perhaps during the burial
rites. Obsidian artifacts were found in abundance, since the Lake Cuitzeo area has some
of the prime deposits of this mineral in the whole of Mesoamerica. The following items
were made of this volcanic glass: tools like prismatic blades, scrapers, awls; and
ornaments like tubular ear flares, and lip plugs, sometimes decorated with small
incrustations of turquoise or jade. Other items reported from Huandacareo are small
 41

plaques made of jade or turquoise which were used to manufacture mosaics. Beads
made of rock crystal and green stone were commonly used to make necklaces and other
decorations.
Copper and bronze tools and ornaments were found in many burials at
Huandacareo. Among the ornaments we can mention necklaces with copper beads and
seashells; a brooch with two bird heads and two bells dangling from each head; bells
and pins with bells; a tubular ring with bells all around; and tweezers with spirals
(Figure 29). Meanwhile, the functional tools consisted of tweezers, awls, an adze
(Figure 30), and copper points of unknown use.
Huandacareo was an important town from the perspective not only of politics
and economy, but also of ritual. This explains the high number of burials found at the
site; ninety interments were discovered by the excavators. Many of the burials were
found in well-constructed tombs that contained numerous grave goods (Figure 31),
while others were direct burials (Figure 32) with no tomb or other construction to hold
them. Seven areas of the settlement were preferred for the location of burials: (1) the
outer limits of the ceremonial center, around the retention walls of platforms and plazas;
(2) Platform 2; (3) North Plaza; (4) East Plaza; (5) Patio of Tombs; (6) Esplanade of
Mound 3; and, (7) The ‘area of sacrifices’ or Pit 1. Some elite tombs were quite
elaborate, consisting of a rectangular feature made of stones, while others were similar
to shaft tombs (Figure 33).

All the information mentioned above leaves no doubt about the fact that
Huandacareo was a major Tarascan elite center. Its strategic location within the Lake
Cuitzeo Basin would suggest that its main purpose was to function as an administrative
center of the Tarascan Empire, as suggested by Williams (2009 b). If indeed this was
the case, we may assume that Huandacareo collected tribute from all over the region
and sent it to the empire’s capital, Tzintzuntzan, to enrich the imperial coffers. Taxes
consisted of many strategic resources needed by the Tarascans: obsidian, salt, lime, and
metals (copper, bronze, tin, gold, and silver), among many other goods that were
abundant in the Cuitzeo region or its environs. In fact, the Lake Cuitzeo Basin was one
of the richest provinces of the Tarascan Empire. What follows is a short discussion of
the major strategic resources exploited in the basin during the Protohistoric period.
 42

Obsidian. This was one of the most critical resources in pre-Hispanic Mesoamerica, and
Michoacán had many sources of special quality (Darras 1994, 2008; Esparza 2004;
Healan 1997, 2004, 2005, 2011). Obsidian is a volcanic glass that was used to make
numerous cutting implements such as knives, blades, adzes, etcetera. Obsidian was also
used for making many items that were indispensable for warfare and hunting, such as
arrow heads and lance points, and also ornaments such as lip plugs, ear flares, and many
others (Figure 34). The obsidian from the sources of Ucareo and Zinapécuaro (Figure
35) was in much demand by the Tarascan Empire, because of its high quality and the
location of the sources near the Lake Pátzcuaro Basin (Pollard and Vogel 1994).
Obsidian from the Ucareo and Zinapécuaro sources was known throughout
Mesoamerica. It has been found in archaeological contexts widely distributed in time
and space. According to Healan (2004), obsidian from the sources named above seems
to have been an important component of the lithic assemblages in the Basin of Mexico,
the Oaxaca Valley and San Lorenzo, Veracruz, where it usually appears as prismatic
blades since the Formative period (ca. 900 BC). Later, obsidian from the Lake Cuitzeo
Basin retained its status as an outstanding commodity in central Mexico and Oaxaca, as
well as in the Maya Lowlands (although in smaller amounts). During the Late Classic
(ca. AD 700-900) and Epiclassic (ca. AD 900-1000) periods, the obsidian sources under
discussion seem to have been the primary providers for Xochicalco, Tula, and many
sites in the Basin of Mexico, as well as the Oaxaca coast and northern Yucatán,
including Isla Cerritos and Chichén Itzá. During the Early Postclassic (ca. AD 900-
1200), most of the obsidian used in Tula came from Lake Cuitzeo (Healan 1997, 2004).

Healan (2004) writes that most of the obsidian extracted at Ucareo and
Zinapécuaro (cores and blades) was not consumed locally, but rather it was exported to
Tzintzuntzan (Pollard and Vogel 1994), and maybe also to other sites in the Tarascan
nuclear area. It is interesting to note that there is a lack of diagnostic Tarascan pottery in
and around the sites of obsidian extraction. This is surprising, especially considering the
ethnohistorical and archaeological data indicating a high level of utilization,
exploitation, and perhaps even political control of the area by the Tarascan state during
the Protohistoric period. This fact could be an indication that the Tarascans were able to
exploit strategic resources through the imposition of tribute demands on local
populations, without having to invest much energy on guarding or colonizing the
region.
 43

Salt. Common salt, or sodium chloride, is an indispensable element for human and
animal life all over the world (Multhaulf 1978). Because there was an uneven
distribution of salt deposits on the landscape, salt was a strategic resource for social
development, as well as a reason for conflict or for establishing alliances among peoples
and states (Andrews 1983). As we have seen in previous pages, major salt deposits like
the Lake Sayula Basin were targets for Tarascan imperial expansion, and the same was
true for the Lake Cuitzeo Basin (Williams 1999, 2015, 2018). In the eastern end of the
Lake Cuitzeo Basin there are natural deposits of high-quality salt (Figures 36 and 37),
as well as thermal springs with a high mineral content. The town of Araró, located in
the eastern portion of the basin, has been famous for its salt since the 16th century.
During the Colonial period salt from Araró was paid as tribute and it was being
transported to several parts of Mexico, to be used in the silver mines or for human
consumption. A 16th-century source known as Anónimo de visitas (or ‘Manuscrito
2800’), in the National Library of Madrid, states that Araró was near a lake with
plentiful fish and salt deposits, while the town of Zinapécuaro periodically paid as
tribute 500 hanegas of maize and 30 loads of salt (Escobar 1998:214).

In the mid-16th century there were at least two major producers of salt in the
area under discussion: Araró and Chocándiro, while other towns (Acámbaro,
Zinapécuaro, Huango and Puruándiro), which were not as close to the lake, could easily
obtain salt, because their subject towns were inside the basin (Escobar 1998). We know
that Araró and Zinapécuaro constituted a single unit for tax purposes before 1535; they
had an obligation to deliver periodically to their Spanish encomendero 3 30 tamemes 4 of
salt and 30 fish (Escobar 1998). The Relaciones geográficas also refer to the importance
of Araró as a producer of salt in the 16th century. The Relaciones mention that the
Spanish bought the salt they needed in Araró (Relación de la provincia de Acámbaro
[1570]; Acuña 1987:88-89). The town of Chocándiro is mentioned in the Relación de
Cuiseo de la Laguna, written in 1579 (Acuña 1987:88-89).

An archaeological survey conducted by the author (Williams 2005) in the area of

Araró where the saltworks are located showed the existence of several major pre-
Hispanic sites. One of these is called Tierras Blancas, consisting of a huge artificial

3
The encomendero was a person who was in charge of the encomienda, a Spanish colonial administrative entity consisting of a
piece of land and its local native population.
4
Tameme or tlameme was an Indian porter, who usually carried a burden of some 30-40 kg.
 44

platform with great retention walls and many foundations visible from the surface, as
well as an abundance of archaeological materials like pottery and obsidian. This site is
located on top of a natural prominence, which is bordered on one side by a gully.
Tierras Blancas is located in a strategic position for guarding the access to the salt
producing sites. Another ancient site is located on top of a hill that dominates the whole
area; this is a large site with many terraces where the archaeological material is very
abundant, and there are many mounds on the surface. Throughout a large area where
many abandoned saltworks are located, we found plentiful archaeological evidence on
the surface, primarily fragments of pottery and obsidian, which suggest an abundant
occupation of the area in ancient times (Figure 38). These sites and others found during
the survey of the area of saltworks represent a context for salt production and trade
during the pre-Hispanic era (the pottery we found on the surface pertains to the Late
Formative, Classic, and Postclassic periods).

Metals. The Tarascan Empire was able to conquer ever-larger territories in search of
strategic resources like copper (Figure 39 a); silver (Figure 39 b); tin (Figure 39 c) and
gold, as well as objects made with these metals. These riches entered the royal coffers
as booty of wars of conquest, or as tribute paid by towns subject to the Tarascan
Empire. Gold jewelry functioned as insignia of social status and also for public ritual, as
it was linked to those who held political power (Pollard 1987:750).

One of the areas with greater abundance of natural copper deposits runs along
the border between the states of Michoacán and Mexico, at some 50 km west of Lake
Cuitzeo (Hosler 1994: Figure 2.1), and the distribution of silver deposits is very similar
to copper deposits(Hosler 1994: Figure 2.2), while tin deposits also appear east of the
basin, in the northeastern corner of the state of Michoacán (Hosler 1994: Figure 2.3).

Although finds of metal objects in archaeological context have been extremely

rare in the Lake Cuitzeo Basin, we have seen that excavations at Huandacareo unearthed
a large assemblage of metal objects (Franco and Macías 1994). Clearly, metal objects
were very important for the Tarascan elite living in Huandacareo. According to Franco
and Macías, the collection of metal artifacts excavated in Huandacareo consists of 132
items, of which 115 were catalogued as ‘ornaments’ and 17 as tools or weapons. Most
of them were found associated with burials. According to Franco and Macías, because
of the context where the metal objects were found, it is clear that all pieces had a ritual
 45

meaning or were sumptuary objects for the ruling elite. The majority of objects were
made of copper, and only a few of bronze (pp. 162, 171).

The inventory of metal artifacts from Huandacareo includes the following: 16

tweezers; 30 rings; 58 bells; five pendants; one pin; three points (apparently they
originally were at the end of the petamuti’s ritual stick); four beads; three awls; 13
needles, and one axe (p. 162). This assemblage of metal objects speaks to the wealth
and power of the ruling Tarascan elite at Huandacareo.

Agriculture and aquatic resources. Although we do not have detailed information

about pre-Hispanic agricultural techniques in the Lake Cuitzeo Basin, we can assume
that agriculture was developed to a high standard, judging by the high number of
settlements reported in the early Colonial period. Matías de Escobar (1970, cited by
Macías Goytia 1998) wrote in the 18th century that Lake Cuitzeo measured over 20
leagues in circumference, and the entire lake margins were occupied by towns. So much
people lived in the area from Cuitzeo to Huandacareo, a distance of over two leagues,
that ‘in ancient times it was all one street… today, because of the pestilences it appears
to be vacant’ but the abundant ruins ‘tell us what it was in antiquity… today the soil is
tilled where before many buildings were admired’ (pp. 40-41, 356). 5

In several lake basins of West Mexico, near the Lake Cuitzeo Basin, there is
evidence of intensive agriculture similar to the chinampas or ‘raised fields’ known in
other parts of Mesoamerica. We have discussed in previous chapters the irrigation
features at Lake Magdalena, Jalisco, and the Lake Zacapu Basin (although the latter are
not unquestionably pre-Hispanic in origin). Archaeological evidence of intensive
agriculture has been found in Lake Pátzcuaro (Fisher et al. 1999) and Chapala (Weigand
and Weigand 1996:296). It would not be surprising if Lake Cuitzeo also had systems of
intensive agriculture in pre-Hispanic times, like the canals and ridges found northeast of
Morelia, in the zone that was marsh at the time of contact with the Spaniards, and then
was drained (with canals) in the early Colonial period (Pollard, personal
communication, 21 May 2019).

In addition to agriculture, several aspects of the aquatic lifeway (fishing,

hunting, gathering and manufacture) have received little attention from archaeologists in

5
Author’s translation; for the original Spanish version see Williams (2009b: p. 295).
 46

the Lake Cuitzeo Basin. The investigation conducted by Parsons (2006; Parsons and
Morett 2005) at Lake Texcoco is relevant for our understanding of the role of aquatic
resources in Mesoamerica, including Lake Cuitzeo. According to Parsons (2006), in
many aquatic environments in Mesoamerica there were sophisticated systems of
exploitation of non-agricultural resources, like fish, reptiles, batrachians, birds,
mammals, and edible plants. They all had high protein content, while plants such as tule
and carrizo reeds were invaluable for making a wide range of products, from baskets to
house roofs.

Nowadays fishing is still important for the daily livelihood of many residents of
the Lake Cuitzeo Basin, although the catches have been in steady decline for many
years (Williams 2014b: Figure 3). According to Patricia Ávila (1999), ‘fishing is
important for the region, since in the Lake Cuitzeo region there are more than one
thousand families who depend on this activity’ (p. 184). The following are among the
fish species caught in the lake: charal (Chirostoma jordani, C. bartoni, C. compresum),
carpa (Cyprinus carpio), and mojarra (Goodea atripinnis). Frogs are caught as well, and
their contribution to the local diet was important in the past. All these species are taken
to consumers in Morelia, Mexico City, Toluca, and Guadalajara (p. 184).

In the sixteenth century the Relación de Cuiseo de la Laguna (Acuña 1987)

mentions the following species of fish:

This lake has a kind of fish, as big as the small finger of the hand, called charao
in their tongue [i.e. charal], a fish most appreciated among them. They catch
great quantities and [people] come from other provinces at a distance of 40 and
50 leagues to procure it, and they bring cotton and cacao, which is a currency
they use in this land… They also bring many [native] fruits, and they prefer fish
to pesos. This fish is cured under the sun… it is measured by fanegas, because it
is too small. There is another fish in this lake, called by the natives curengari,
which is as big as sardines… and salted, they [are better] than those from Spain.
Of these kinds of fish the natives take great amounts, and bring it to the markets,
where people come to buy from many parts, where they are highly appreciated
(p. 85). 6

6
Author’s translation. For the original Spanish version see Williams 2009 b: p. 296).
 47

Pre-Hispanic fishers in Lake Cuitzeo and other lakes in Michoacán used worked
potsherds as fishnet sinkers. These artifacts are very abundant on the shores of Lake
Cuitzeo (Figure 40).

Hunting and gathering were no less important than fishing in the study area.
Ávila (1999) mentions that Lake Cuitzeo has a rich natural life in terms of plants and
wildlife. In the lake and adjoining rivers and canals there are 13 species of fish,
belonging to five families, both native and introduced to the area in recent times. There
are 24 native species of large-size birds in the region of the Morelia-Queréndaro Valley,
and 140 species of smaller birds are grouped into 36 families. Among the large-sized
birds there are some that come from far away, like the diver that travels from Canada
every year, and has been traditionally used as food by the population of the Lake
Cuitzeo Basin (p. 186). There are historical records from as early as the 16th century
that mention the abundance of aquatic birds in the area under discussion (Acuña 1987).
According to the Relaciones geográficas: ‘In the lake during the month of December
there are such quantities of royal ducks, cercetas [a kind of palmipede], egrets and
alcatraces [pelicans], that they have no number. The natives enter [the lake] at night in
their canoes, with small lamps, to catch the said birds which approach the light and the
natives kill them with bow and arrow’ (p. 87). The same source also mentions that ‘they
kill so many birds [and] they bring to the markets such a quantity that it is frightful.
What they kill the most is ducks’ (p. 87). The birds mentioned by the Relaciones
include quails ‘like the ones from Spain’, crows, thrushes, doves, and hawks, while
mammal species included hares, deer and wolves (Relación de Cuiseo de la Laguna;
Acuña 1987).

There is information about the taxes paid in the 16th century by several
communities of the basin to the colonial authorities. As would be expected, aquatic
resources are prominent in these records, primarily fish (Figure 41). Other important
aquatic resources, still used today, are plants like tule (Figure 42) and carrizo (Figure
43). A good example of the extant data for the early Colonial period—which may
reflect the pre-Hispanic situation—is the Tasación del bachiller Juan Antonio de
Ortega, written in 1528, and published by Benedict Warren (1989). Here it is stated that
the lord of Yuririapúndaro would supply to his master ‘in the mines’ every twenty days
 48

220 loads of victuals, ten loads of fish and six loads of salt. The lord of Chocándiro
meanwhile would provide 100 loads of supplies delivered to the mines, six loads of chili
pepper, six loads of salt and two loads of fish (pp. 417-418).

The abundance and variety of resources of many different kinds in the Lake
Cuitzeo Basin is attested to by an early account known as Libro de las tasaciones de
pueblos de la Nueva España, siglo XVI, published by Francisco González de Cossío
(1952). Here we read that

Araró and Zinapécuaro in the province of Michoacán are taxed with making the
sementeras [tilled land] of maize, chili and beans… And of the said
sementeras… they shall give every 20 days 100 tamemes of half an hanega, and
forty loads of beans and twenty loads of chili and 200 bowls and 200 pairs of
sandals and thirty tamemes of salt and thirty of fish. And all the [things] stated
above shall be taken by the Indians to the mines of La Trinidad [Sultepec,
Estado de México]… In addition to the above they shall provide for their own
sustenance and that of their calpixque [overseer] every day two chickens and 12
quails, two rabbits, and during fish days the necessary fish, and 12 eggs and
tamales for their servants, grass and firewood, and every 50 days 50 shirts and
50 [wild] cat skins (p. 49). 7

The extant information about pre-Hispanic subsistence in other lake basins in

West Mexico is very useful as a source of analogy to complement the data on Lake
Cuitzeo. At Lake Pátzcuaro, for instance, Pollard (1993) reports that the range of food
used by the Tarascans ‘included more than 14 genera of domesticated plants, four
genera of local fish, various local waterfowl, small mammals, deer, domestic turkey,
several wild plants, condiments (cacao, honey)’ (p. 109). Among the wild plants
gathered in the Lake Pátzcuaro Basin we can mention amaranth (Chenopodium spp.)
and berries, while the animals that were hunted for food included the following:
waterfowl, rabbits, hares, small mammals, rodents and peccary, among others. The
annual catch of fish was quite significant at Lake Pátzcuaro; it has been calculated by
Gorenstein and Pollard (1983) at 4,732,800 kg (pp. 170-171), while the total
productivity of meat (deer, rabbit, duck, and turkey) was around 328, 412 or 488,412 kg
per year (pp. 177-179).
7
Author’s translation; for original Spanish version see Williams (2009b:297).
 49

Before the Spanish conquest the bird population in the Lake Pátzcuaro Basin
numbered at least 8,000 birds, mainly ducks, which could have produced 16,000 kg of
meat per year (p. 178). Hunting waterfowl was still widely practiced here until about 60
years ago, primarily around the end of October, when a communal hunt called kuirisi
atakua was celebrated among many lakeshore towns (see discussion in Williams 2014b:
95; also Argueta 2008: 102-104).

The unparalleled role played by aquatic resources in many Mesoamerican

societies has been pointed out by Parsons (1996) in the following words:

I have come to believe that certain non-agricultural resources may… have to be

factored, much more systematically than they have been, into our thinking about
the linkages between production, demography, and organizational complexity in
Mesoamerica. Part of my concern with non-agricultural resources relates to the
absence in indigenous Mesoamerica of a domestic grazing animal: this meant that
Mesoamerica was the only one of the world’s ancient primary civilizations in
which herding could not be developed in order to extend productive landscapes
into regions that were agriculturally marginal. We might thus expect to see a
whole series of unusually well developed efforts to exploit non-agricultural
resources in Mesoamerica (p. 439).

Discussion

In order to fully appreciate the role of Huandacareo and the rest of the Lake Cuitzeo
Basin in the cultural development of Michoacán during pre-Hispanic times, as well as in
the political economy of the Tarascan Empire, particularly in the Protohistoric period,
we have to understand that, according to Algaze (1993), many pristine civilizations
expanded by placing core outposts at key junctions of their surrounding periphery. The
use of outposts by different civilizations is explained by three interconnected factors
shared by many early states: (1) the expanding economies of increasingly urbanized
polities required regular and direct access to nonlocal resources; (2) for their own
political ends elites in less‐advanced surrounding communities would have been willing
to grant such access to core or ‘imperial’ societies; and, (3) transportation constraints
common to all pre-modern societies meant that the most efficient way to channel
regular exchanges (i.e. tribute) between distant geographic areas and differentially
 50

structured societies was by means of strategically positioned core outposts serving as

collection points for tribute levied on a wide region, and as distribution nodes for
prestige goods manufactured in the core area.

We have mentioned that during the Protohistoric period the Lake Cuitzeo Basin
was firmly under the domination of the Tarascan Empire, with Huandacareo as the most
likely candidate for the empire’s outpost in this strategic region. The way in which the
Tarascans organized the political and territorial expansion of their empire has been
described by Pollard (2003a) thus:

The Tarascan state… is renowned for its high degree of political centralization
and relatively unchallenged control of its territory… These characteristics can be
related to the emergence by the Late Postclassic… of a social system with a fully
Tarascan identity, produced by the conscious subordination and replacement of
local ethnic-linguistic status as the basis for social or political power. Despite
clear indications of earlier ethnic heterogeneity in central Michoacán in the
Middle Postclasssic period… by the sixteenth century the Tarascan realm was
self-identifying, and being identified by others as solely Tarascan…
Administrative control was accomplished by the creation of a series of centers,
each with a number of dependent communities [Figure 44]. The administrative
centers of these units reported directly to the palace in Tzintzuntzan. They in
turn contained dependent villages and dispersed hamlets… Thus the
administrative hierarchy contained up to five levels (pp.80-82).

The expansion of the Tarsacan Empire to different areas within West Mexico
sought to insure the supply and to control the trade of strategic resources such as cacao,
animal skins, seashells, tropical bird feathers, turquoise, peyote, salt, rock crystal,
serpentine, amber, pyrite, jadeite, gold, silver, copal, green and red obsidian, and slaves
(Pollard 2003b, 1993:119). As discussed earlier, the strategic goods that the Tarascans
wanted to extract from the Lake Cuitzeo Basin and its environs were primarily obsidian,
salt, lime, and metals such as copper, silver, and tin. Another example of imperial
expansion from the Tarascan heartland to other regions of West Mexico involved the
Sayula Basin, which had one of the most abundant deposits of high-quality salt in
Mesoamerica, in addition to many other resources, including copper (Valdez et al.
1996).
 51

Turquoise and other green stones were at the top of the list of outstanding
sumptuary goods reserved for the Mesoamerican elites. These stones had to be brought
from the northern regions of the ecumene, so trade in this commodity was a complex
enterprise. Weigand (1995) has suggested that mining activities such as the exploration,
exploitation, and procurement of rare resources were part of the most critical aspects in
the formation of a trade structure in ancient Mesoamerica. A major find of turquoise
items at the site of Tres Cerritos in the Lake Cuitzeo Basin (Macías Goytia 1998) should
be interpreted as evidence of complex systems of trade and transportation that brought
these and other elite goods from the northern confines of the ecumene, traversing
thousands of kilometers to reach the Tarascan region.

According to Weigand et al. (1977), ‘as civilizations expand, the demand for
rare resources becomes more systematized. Systematic demands are concomitant with
systematic acquisition techniques. Mesoamerica… certainly had such demands, and
sections of the [ecumene] must have become heavy consumers of exotic produce’ (p.
15). The areas where rare resources were found ‘eventually became so heavily exploited
by Mesoamericans that province formation and/or colonization was finally reached in
some cases’ (p. 15). The basic model proposed by Weigand et al. is of a trade system
‘in which the rare resource provinces play an active role side by side with the more
complex centers of civilization and consumption’ (p. 23). In these authors’ view, many
cultures in rare resource areas ‘have an economic/political interrelationship with zones
that trade for their produce. Since economics and politics are seldom separable, there is
an implicit direction required for such relationships—cultural influences from centers of
consumption into rare resource zones and en ecological network of systematized
demand, exploitation, trade, manufacture, distribution, and increased demand’ (p. 23).

The ‘global economy’ of the Mesoamerican ecumene was based primarily on the
exchange of goods that were deemed precious by the general population. The flow of
luxury goods was charged with political and economic implications. However, this flow
cannot be interpreted solely in terms of a desire to consume exotic goods. Rather,
luxury goods frequently played an important role in the accumulation and sustaining of
power by the elites, through the controlled distribution of status symbols (Blanton and
Feinman 1984:676). In the case of the Tarascan Empire (Pollard 2004), goods and
services circulated through markets, the tributary network, long-distance merchants, and
 52

the official exchange of gifts between elites. These goods included agricultural fields,
forests, and mines, among others (pp. 130-131).

The elite of the Tarascan capital (and other towns) depended for its survival on
the products paid as tribute by the subject towns in different regions of the empire. As
stated above, among the most crucial goods were those that could not be procured in the
Lake Pátzcuaro Basin, which were utilized by most Tarascan households during the
Protohistoric period (Pollard 1993:113). They were likewise used by the elite to signal
its privileged social position. The abundant deposits of obsidian, salt, and metals in the
Lake Cuitzeo Basin or its environs made this region a key economic area for the
Tarascan Empire (Williams 2009a, 2009b, 2014a, 2014b, 2014c, 2015, 2018).

Another example from Imperial China comes from the writings of Ch’ao-Ting
Chi (2019), and is illuminating for our discussion of trade and empires in the
Mesoamerican ecumene. In his definition of key economic areas, Chi has stated that
‘the larger unit of political administration, equivalent to the modern “province”, has
existed since the Han dynasty (206 BC to AD 221)… the provincial unit, as such, has
continued almost unchanged from very early times. These provincial groupings…
were… combined into geographical regions, according to major topographical
divisions, and through economic factors’ (p. 4). The growth of trade in China, not
unlike the case of Mesoamerica, ‘never reached a level which would enable it to
overcome the localism and narrow exclusiveness of an agricultural economy’. The
Chinese regional groupings ‘were highly self-sustaining and independent of each other’
(p. 4). According to Chi, ‘the unity of centralization of state power in China could only
mean the control of an economic area where agricultural productivity and facilities of
transport would make possible the supply of a grain tribute so predominantly superior to
that of other areas that any group which controlled this area had the key to the conquest
and unity of all China. It is areas of this kind which must be designated as the Key
Economic Areas’ (p. 5).

Returning to Mesoamerica, we see that Gasco and Berdan (2003) refer to the
existence of ‘international trade centers’ in several parts of the ecumene. Gasco and
Berdan write that ‘the primary focal points for the extensive long-distance exchange…
were the numerous international trade centers’. They were ‘highly commercialized
centers serving primarily economic purposes’ (p. 109). Huandacareo and its immediate
 53

hinterland in the Lake Cuitzeo Basin would probably be a good example of this
socioeconomic formation in Protohistoric Michoacán.

To conclude this section, I would like to stress the point that the Lake Cuitzeo
Basin through the centuries played an outstanding role for the cultural and economic
development not just of the peoples who lived in its immediate area, but also for several
regions within the Mesoamerican ecumene, through the production and exchange of a
considerable amount and variety of strategic goods. The list of key commodities
includes not just mineral resources, but also aquatic resources (flora and fauna). This
privileged area became the target of Tarascan expansion, until it joined the roster of
provinces that were paying tribute to the cazonci. No less important was the role of the
Lake Cuitzeo Basin as a place where many different cultures and ethnic groups
encountered each other. According to Healan and Hernández (1999), ‘we know that
during the Protohistoric period… northwest Michoacán and southeastern Guanajuato
were characterized by a very high cultural diversity with the presence of Matlatzinca,
Mazahua, Otomí, Pame, Guamaré, and other groups; this may be an indication of the
importance of this region as a route of communication’ (p. 133). This region also
functioned as a natural corridor where many sumptuary goods, such as turquoise,
circulated. In fact, during the Postclassic period one of the major trade routes for this
prized green stone ran very near the basin, if it did not cross it (Weigand 1995: Figure
2).

In this section I have presented a general outline of the role played by a region of
ancient Michoacán in the cultural and economic development of the Tarascan Empire.
Much remains to be done in terms of fieldwork and ethnohistorical study before we can
know in detail the ancient history of the Lake Cuitzeo Basin. In the following section I
address the subject of trade, tribute, and transportation of strategic goods within the
Tarascan Empire. This will shed light on and broaden the discussion about the
procurement and utilization of many indispensable necessities throughout the Tarascan
kingdom and other regions of the ecumene.
 54

Figure 23. Map of Huandacareo, a major Tarascan site in the Lake Cuitzeo Basin.
Huandacareo could have been an outpost of the Tarascan Empire in this key economic
area (adapted from Macías Goytia 1990: Figure 3).

Figure 24. Frontal view of Structure M-2, a temple excavated at Huandacareo (after
Macías Goytia 1990: Figure 14).
 55

Figure 25. Hypothetical reconstruction of Structure M-2, showing the upper section of
the temple building (adapted from Macías Goytia 1990: figure on p. 50).

(a)
 56

(b) (c)

Figure 26. Diagnostic Tarascan pottery found at Huandacareo: (a) tripod bowl; (b) pipes
probably used for smoking tobacco; (c) pipe fragments (after Macías Goytia 1990:
figure on cover; photos 38, 47, and 48).

Figure 27. Tarascan elite pottery found at Copándaro, in the Lake Cuitzeo Basin: tripod
bowls and jar with spout and handle. These items are virtually identical to the ceramic
assemblage excavated at Huandacareo (after Macías Goytia 1994: Figure 1).
 57

Figure 28. These small (18 cm long) needle-like objects of unknown use with elaborate
carved designs decorating one end (shown in detail here) were part of a rich tomb
offering whose occupant must have enjoyed a high social status (after Macías Goytia
1990: Figure 67).

Figure 29. Bronze tweezers with spiral decorations, like these two items found at
Huandacareo, were part of the adornments used by members of the Tarascan elite, such
as the petámuti or senior priest (after Macías Goytia 1990: Figures 86 and 87).
 58

Figure 30. Bronze tools like this adze excavated at Huandacareo were probably used for
tasks like cutting wood or similar materials (after Macías Goytia 1990: Figure 90).

Figure 31. Excavations at Huandacareo revealed several elite burials like this tomb with
Tarascan elite ceramics deposited as offerings (adapted from Macías Goytia 1990:
Figure 20).
 59

Figure 32. Human burials found in Huandacareo’s ‘sacrificial area’ in front of Mound
Two (partial view, adapted from Macías Goytia 1990: Figure 22) (scale in meters).

Figure 33. Tomb 37, located in the East Plaza of Huandacareo, is unusual because of its
composite silhouette, similar to a shaft tomb. This tomb held a burial with rich offerings
(pottery, seashells, obsidian, and turquoise) (adapted from Macías Goytia 1990: Figure
25).
 60

Figure 34. Fine obsidian was used for making many items of adornment reserved for the
Tarascan elite such as ear flares (left), and lip plugs (right), like these examples with
turquoise incrustations (after Boehm 1994).

Figure 35. Obsidian from the sources of Ucareo and Zinapécuaro (Lake Cuitzeo Basin)
was in much demand by the Tarascan Empire, because of its high quality and the
location of the deposits near the Tarascan capital (adapted from Healan 2004: Figure 2).
 61

Figure 36. Map of Lake Cuitzeo indicating the major salt-producing towns in the 16th
century (triangles), some archaeological sites (squares), and modern towns (circles)
(map by Eduardo Williams).

Figure 37. Saltmaker working in Simirao, one of the principal salt-producing sites in the
Lake Cuitzeo Basin. He is collecting salty earth using the guancoche, a Tarascan sack
made of ixtle (maguey fiber) (photo by Eduardo Williams).
 62

Figure 38. An archaeological survey conducted by the author in the area of Araró,
where many abandoned saltworks are located, discovered the existence of several major
pre-Hispanic sites (map by Eduardo Williams).

(a) (b)
 63

(c)
Figure 39. The Tarascan Empire was able to conquer ever-larger territories in search of
strategic resources like copper (a); silver (b); tin (c) and gold, as well as objects made
with these metals (adapted from Hosler 1994: Figures 2.1, 2.2, and 2.3).

Figure 40. Worked potsherds probably used as fishnet sinkers by pre-Hispanic fishers in
the Lake Cuitzeo Basin (photo by Eduardo Williams).
 64

Figure 41. This fishnet of pre-Hispanic design is still used by fishers at Lake Cuitzeo
(photo by Eduardo Williams).

Figure 42. After the tule stalks are cut in the lake they are taken to the shore by canoe
(photo by Eduardo Williams).
 65

Figure 43. Carrizo stalks are used for making baskets in many towns around Lake
Cuitzeo. Here the artisan is using stone artifacts (hammer and anvil) similar to the pre-
Hispanic tools known from many areas of Mesoamerica (photo by Eduardo Williams).

Figure 44. Map of Tarascan territory with the known administrative units of the empire
(note the Lake Cuitzeo Basin and the site of Huandacareo in the upper right corner)
(adapted from Pollard 2003a: Figure 13.2).
 66

Trade, Tribute and Transportation within the Tarascan Empire

In order to understand the patterns of trade, tribute and transportation of rare goods and
strategic resources within the Tarascan Empire, we must recall that the Lake Pátzcuaro
Basin, the core area of the empire (Pollard 1993), lacked natural sources of ‘salt,
obsidian, chert, and lime, all products used by most households in the Protohistoric
period; it also lacked a wide range of goods utilized by the elite… The core of the
Tarascan state in 1520 was not a viable economic unit. It existed, even thrived, only by
the exchange of goods and services in regional and supra-regional patterns’ (p. 113).
This fact transformed the scarce gods mentioned below into strategic resources that the
state had to procure outside its immediate area, and then transport them to the most
heavily-populated zones. Also, it was necessary to regulate consumption and ensure
steady and uninterrupted supplies.
In this section we discuss three of the most important mechanisms for the
exchange of several scarce or strategic resources: the market, long-distance trade, and
the tribute system. West Mexico was an integral part of Mesoamerica, so the study of
the production and exchange of scarce goods and strategic resources must be framed
within the cultural and historical context of this ancient ecumene (Williams 1994a,
2004b). The great ecological and geographic diversity found in Mesoamerica made
trade and exchange between regions an indispensable part of life from very early times,
for virtually no single area had, or could produce, all the elements necessary for
subsistence. The most drastic contrast was between the ecological conditions in the cold
highlands and the warm lowlands and coastal areas (Sanders and Price 1968). Both
trade and the extraction of tribute through military means functioned from early times in
Mesoamerica as mechanisms for the exchange of people, information and cultural goods
between regions, in a context of ill-defined borders that separated multiple social
systems (Blanton et al. 1981:60).
The Market. Many historical sources from the 16th century seem to suggest the
existence of specific market days and other means of regulating trade in Tarascan
communities of the Protohistoric period, although marketplaces per se are rarely
mentioned. It is highly likely that there was a market system which integrated most of
the communities in the Lake Pátzcuaro Basin, including the city of Tzintzuntzan.
According to the Relación de Michoacán, there was a palace official who was entrusted
with overseeing all markets, and was responsible for acquiring sumptuary goods for the
king, such as fine feathers and gold (Beltrán 1982:163).
 67

The economic networks in the Lake Pátzcuaro Basin were defined by the
presence of markets, like two that are mentioned in the Relación de Michoacán:
Tzintzuntzan and Pareo. The Relación also mentions markets in Uruapan, Naranjan and
Asajo. The first two were quite distant from the basin, so they affected the lake area’s
trade networks only peripherally. Asajo, in contrast, was located on the northwest
margin of the basin, and incorporated several lakeside settlements in its orbit of
influence (Gorenstein and Pollard 1983:38-40).
The most important source of information on Tarascan economic networks in the
Protohistoric period is the aforementioned Relación de Michoacán (written around
1540; see Alcalá 2008). Although this book contains relatively few references to
markets, when it is consulted in conjunction with the Relaciones geográficas of 1579-
1581 (see Acuña 1987) it becomes possible to identify and locate the marketplaces
mentioned above. In fact, the Relación de Michoacán includes an illustration of the
Asajo market that reminds us of many modern regional markets (see Figure 12 above).
Information as to the size of Tarascan markets is almost entirely lacking, as is data on
the role of the government in their functioning and control. We can assume, however,
that the market in Tzintzuntzan must have contained both manufactured and elite goods
linked to the numerous artisans who lived in that capital city (Gorenstein and Pollard
1983:98).
It has been argued that the scarce mention of markets in the ethnohistorical
literature and the scanty archaeological evidence of marketplaces mean that these were
not as important for the economic structure of Tzintzuntzan as they were in
contemporaneous centers in the Central Highlands (Pollard 1980:682). But
marketplaces are notoriously difficult to identify in Mesoamerican archaeological sites
because exchange relationships are generally invisible in the archaeological record
(Hirth 2009).
However, it is highly likely that in the lake Pátzcuaro Basin many goods and
services did indeed flow through markets. The following is a list of some of the trade
goods found in Tarascan markets, according to historical sources: maize, beans, chili
peppers, amaranth, fruits from the region, ducks, feathers from local birds, fish, cotton,
cloth, clothing, slaves, prepared food, and domestic services. Several goods that were
used by the general population but were not available locally must also have been
imported through regional market networks. These included black and red obsidian,
flint, jasper, agate, opal, lime and salt, all of which have been identified as market
 68

imports because they do not appear in tribute lists (Gorenstein and Pollard 1983:100-
101).
According to Hassig (1985), the regional market played a very important role in
the Mesoamerican economy, as there one could find merchandise both exotic and
commonplace. Regional markets had a more significant position in the economic
hierarchy than local or ordinary ones located in the head towns, and some achieved such
a prominent role that they became famous for selling one product in particular (p. 110).
A recent study of Mesoamerican markets by Feinman and Garraty (2010) may
provide perspectives that will allow us to better understand trade and exchange among
the Tarascan people. In the case of the Aztecs, for instance, we know that the Tlatelolco
market was always full of people who frequented it because of the wide range of
products, both local and exotic in origin, available there. Tlatelolco was at the apex of a
hierarchical market network where several currencies circulated, including copper axes,
fine textiles, and cacao beans.
The issue of commercial diversity in the context of the Mesoamerican ecumene
has been explored by Hirth (2013), who tells us that ‘by the time of the Spanish
conquest, most areas of Mesoamerica were linked by a vibrant system of marketplaces
that operated largely through the initiative of individual households with minimal elite
involvement’. Hirth’s archaeological and ethnohistorical research in Central Mexico
and other cultural areas has shown that ‘the economy was based on a rich array of
small-scale producer-vendors, artisans, and retail vendors operating at the household
level… Mesoamerica developed a complex market system and a significant degree of
interregional exchange’ (Hirth 2013:85).
The Marketplace was without a doubt the institution that enabled the Aztec
economy to grow to the size and complexity described by Hirth (2016). In his
discussion of the Aztec marketplace, Hirth points out that ‘Mesoamerican Marketplaces
were large by European standards, and probably were both more numerous and held
more regularly. The Tlatelolco marketplace (Figure 45) had 60,000 daily attendees, and
was the largest market that the Spanish invaders had ever seen’ (p. 289).
According to Hirth, ‘the reason that pre-Hispanic markets were so large is that
retail shops were very rare or nonexistent in Mesoamerica. Apart from its great size, the
Tlatelolco market impressed the Spaniards because of its internal organization; it was
highly centralized and this fact allowed for more efficient supervision’ (p. 289).
 69

Thanks to the extant historical records, we know that the Aztecs ‘had food,
utilitarian goods, and wealth goods in separate sectors within the same marketplace…
All of the goods available in Aztec society would have been sold in the Tlatelolco
marketplace except perhaps for some of the specialty items that carried the emperor’s
emblematic design’ (p. 290).
We know of as many as 29 ‘major market centers… from the Late Postclassic
Basin of Mexico… they were spaced an average 16 km from their closest neighboring
marketplace… on average this would place towns distributed across the landscape
within 8 km from the nearest provisioning marketplace… this represents a round trip
distance that could easily be traversed on foot in a single day’ (p. 290).
In his discussion of economic distribution, Hassig (1985) analyzed ‘the way
markets interacted to facilitate the flow of goods into and out of major centers. To a
large extent Tenochtitlan’s economic life was structured by formalized exchange, both
marketing and long-distance trade’ (p. 67). Before Tenochtitlan became a dominant
political center, the ‘patterns of exchange within the Valley of Mexico were affected by
ethnic and political divisions’ (p. 71). As suggested by Hassig’s ethnohistorical
research, ‘many goods not produced locally were fed into the Valley and exchanged
within it—notably cotton, obsidian, and cacao. Other goods were produced or processed
for regional consumption within the valley. Specialization was the result of unequal
availability of certain goods, such as salt’ (Figure 46), which was extracted from the
lakes in the Basin of Mexico, and lime from the northern area of the valley (p. 73). In
Hassig’s opinion, ‘the basic pattern of commodity production and distribution…
appears to have been fairly localized… This is consistent with a marketing pattern in
which the lowest-level, or primary, markets were periodic within a five-day cycle and
focused on the secondary markets of their respective cabeceras’ (p. 73).
Although there was some level of regional exchange, ‘it was not pervasive in the
economy and seems to have resulted primarily from resource specialization. In short,
the pre-Aztec marketing patterns appear to have been solar systems (Figure 47) in
which markets were oriented around single centers, creating simple two-level
hierarchies’ (p. 73).
Markets were supplied of products by many local farmers, fishers, and artisans,
in fact some of the artisans worked inside the marketplace, for instance obsidian
knappers (Hirth 2009), but many of the goods on offer in the marketplace came from
 70

distant regions, thanks to the efficient methods of transportation mentioned in the next
section.
Blanton (2013) has said that ‘it is time to rethink how we understand markets in
relation to sociocultural evolution… To counter… the limitations inherent in traditional
economic theory that views market transactions from the perspective of highly rational
and individualized economic actors, thus “disembedding” market behavior from social
ties and institutions’ (p. 24). Blanton sees ‘the ideal market participant’ as ‘a cooperator
whose actions, shaped by institutions and organizational structures, engender greater
levels of trust necessary for effective market function’ (p. 23).
Hirth and Pillsbury (2013), meanwhile, have shed new light on the issue of
merchants, markets, and exchange in Mesoamerica. They tell us that ‘commercial
activity can be found in the actions of the full- and part-time merchants who moved
goods to earn their livelihoods’, while ‘household-to-household exchange networks
organized around barter and gift-giving [were] designed to even out resource
irregularities and to reinforce social relationships’ (p. 4). Hirth and Pillsbury hold that
in the marketplace ‘all segments of society came together to trade and convert surpluses
into alternative goods’. In this unique place, ‘economic motives blended with social
interactions, and all economic institutions –from the household to the palace–
converged’ (p. 4).
Hirth and Pillsbury suggest the existence of a ‘dual economic structure’ in
ancient Mesoamerica that included both domestic and institutional sectors. On the one
hand, ‘the domestic economy is centered on the household and comprises the array of
activities that households engage in to provision themselves with the resources needed
for demographic and social reproduction… the domestic economy often emphasizes
self-sufficiency as a general strategy over market dependency’ (p. 4). The institutional
economy, on the other hand, ‘refers to the production or mobilization of the resources
needed to cover the costs of maintaining these organizations and their social services’
and usually ‘includes the political economy and all other social, religious, and economic
organizations that operate above the level of the household’ (pp. 4-5).
We have seen that in Mesoamerican markets, including Michoacán, barter was
the usual form of commercial interaction, but we also have some information that can
help us understand the use of currencies among the peoples of central Mexico (and
elsewhere) at the arrival of the Spaniards. In his discussion of the Aztec pochtecayotl, or
‘the art of trading’, Ángel M. Garibay (1995) tells us that Ahuitzotl, the Aztec king,
 71

gave the pochteca a certain amount of small mantles, so they would trade with them (p.
175). It is clear to Garibay that these mantles had the status of currency for buying
things, not just for barter. They were items with a symbolic value, not unlike the bills or
bank notes we use today, whose value is not derived from their intrinsic worth, but for
what they represent (p. 176).
It is well known that for many years after the Conquest cacao beans were used as
a form of currency, although it is difficult to know the equivalence between cacao and
the coins used by the Spaniards in the early Colonial period. Garibay notes, for instance,
that ‘one hundred cacao beans [was] the price of a canoe’ (p. 178).
Meanwhile, Berdan (2003) holds that the use of currency expanded during the
Postclassic, since there was a growing need for facilitating the growing volumes of
exchange. Numerous objects became standardized means of exchange (an important
function of money), such as the oft-cited cacao beans and cotton mantles, as well as
copper and bronze axes; copper bells; bird-feather shafts filled with gold dust; salt; red
shells; and precious stones, usually green (p. 94).
Long-Distance Trade. The exchange of goods transported over long distances was one
of the most important economic activities for Mesoamerican states. The ethnohistorical
sources dealing with the Aztecs allow us to see how during the Late Postclassic period
this commercial activity contributed to the prosperity of Tenochtitlan. In that city’s
marketplace one could find exotic goods brought from all over Mesoamerica mainly by
long-distance Aztec traders known as pochteca, who operated both inside Aztec
territories and beyond their borders (Figure 48). This activity was closely linked with
imperialism, and sumptuary goods played a fundamental sociopolitical role in that
society (Smith 1990). The exchange of sumptuary goods among Postclassic elites had
an integrating function, as it fostered interregional communication and social and
political stratification (pp. 153-163). The pochteca often traveled beyond the confines of
the Aztec empire (Hassig 1988), and were sometimes used as spies by the state, so they
had to disguise their identity: ‘Much of the merchant’s intelligence gathering was
incidental to their primary trading functions, but they were sometimes given intelligence
duties to perform for the state. On at least some occasions… the merchants disguised
themselves as natives of other areas… because if they had been discovered, they would
have been killed’ (pp. 49-50).
The disguised merchants received the name of naualoztomeca (Figure 49),
according to Sahagún (cited in Hirth 2016). Hirth tells us that this name was acquired
 72

through the pochteca’s ‘exploits in the highland area of Zinacantan, Chiapas… where
they were forbidden to trade by the local population. Zinacantan was an important trade
center where highland merchants obtained goods from the Maya area… including salt,
feathers, animal skins, and amber’ (p. 210).

According to Nichols (2013), ‘the pochteca could amass considerable wealth.

They were accorded certain privileges, but unlike Aztec nobles who routinely displayed
their wealth [the] pochteca were prohibited from doing so in public’. These rich
merchants ‘were expected to appear humble except on particular public occasions…
The pochteca were a close-knit group… ranking within the guild distinguished between
principal merchants, vanguard merchants, disguised merchants, spying merchants, slave
dealers, and slave bathers’ (pp. 55-56).
The archaeological information on Aztec trade with several areas of
Mesoamerica discussed by Smith (1990) suggests the existence of merchants and
market systems that functioned as mechanisms for the dispersion of luxury Aztec
pottery and many other commodities. Those trade networks reached far and wide,
including territories under the control of enemies, or peoples never conquered by the
Aztec Triple Alliance. 8 These archaeological finds point towards a commercial activity
that was independent of state control (p. 165).
The pochteca were in charge of transporting goods from the far ends of the
Aztec empire, including a whole range of high-status items, as well as scarce and
strategic goods, among which we know of the following: richly decorated capes and
skirts, tropical bird feathers, gold objects, necklaces, ear flares, obsidian blades and
knives, seashells, coral, needles (made of copper, shell or bone), animal skins, herbs and
dyes, slaves and, finally, fine jewelry made of jade, jadeite and turquoise (Smith
1998:123). According to the Codex Mendoza, every year a total of 10 masks and five
objects made of turquoise arrived at the Aztec capital, paid as tribute by several
provinces of the empire (Smith 1998: Table 7.2; see also Ross 1984:53, 56, 58, 59, 61
on turquoise beads).
Citing Sahagún (1961), Hirth (2016) has stated that the specialized long-distance
merchant, the oft-cited pochteca, ‘was identified as an oztomecatl or “vanguard
merchant”’ (p. 188). According to Hirth, three features mark the unique activities of all
vanguard merchants: (1) they were commercial specialists who engaged in trade on a
8
A political union formed around 1428 between three Aztec city-states: Tenochtitlan, Texcoco and Tlacopan.
 73

full-time basis, and the bulk of their income came from their individual entrepreneurial
activities. (2) The risks of long-distance trade required collaboration between several
merchants, and this resulted in the fact that most vanguard merchants resided in
internally stratified corporate communities that provided assistance to all their members.
(3) When the pochteca engaged in long-distance trade, they were involved in the
procurement of wealth goods such as jade, turquoise, feathers, and elaborate textiles.
These items were regarded as social markers of elite status and they constituted a
tremendous source of wealth for the merchants engaged in their trade (p. 189).
Carballo (2013) tells us that, long before the Aztecs, in ancient Teotihuacan
many trade items such as obsidian, lime, and cotton were traded to and from far-away
places, while pottery ‘was not conducive to long-distance trade since it was bulky and
fragile and since most people could find suitable potting clay close to home’ (p. 128).
The ceramic type known as Thin Orange, ‘produced in southern Puebla, is one of the
best studied and most widely distributed ceramic types from Mesoamerica… the ware
became standardized due to the volume of demand from Teotihuacan and its economic
networks’. Pots pertaining to this type ‘were reserved for ritual consumption events,
passed along as heirlooms, and taken out of circulation by mortuary rites and limited
accidental breakage’. In many Central-Mexican sites, ‘locals engaged in trade relations
with wider networks involving southern Puebla and Teotihuacan. Thin Orange wares
are found as far away as Honduras’. This custom would demonstrate ‘that their social
value as an index of contacts with Central Mexico –and likely Teotihuacan in
particular– outweighed the challenges inherent in moving vessels long distances’ (p.
128). The idea that Thin Orange vessels, especially small ones, were traded far and
wide, is bolstered by a collection of stacked annular-based Thin Orange bowls shown
by Carballo (2013: Figure 5.13), who suggests that this way of arranging the pots
facilitated transport (pp. 129-130).
On the topic of bulk transportation of ceramic goods, Hirshman and Stawski
(2013) discuss how pots were carried by porters from one side of the Tarascan area to
the other during the Protohistoric period. They calculate that if a ‘small’ ceramic bowl
weighed 300 grams, then a 23-kg burden would contain over 70 vessels, while a 90 kg
load would contain 300 vessels. Conversely, if a ‘larger’ ceramic bowl weighed 600
grams, a 23-kg load could contain 38 such vessels, while a 90-kg load might contain
well over 100. ‘Assuming the minimal weight of 23 kg carried by professional porters,
the numbers illustrate that a worthwhile load of finished ceramic vessels could be easily
 74

carried to market, whether by a professional porter, the potter, or one of their relatives’
(p. 12).
Because of the oft-cited lack of beasts of burden, as well as vehicles or paved
roads, water transport became the most efficient means of travel and cargo
transportation in the Lake Pátzcuaro Basin. In the 16th century, two types of canoes
plied the waters of this and other lakes (Figure 50), ‘small canoes for exploiting the
marsh and aquatic resources available to individual communities, and large transport
canoes’ (p. 16). According to Hirshman and Stawski, ‘canoe traffic would increase the
transportation options available to potters, though they may have had to weigh a fare
against their potential market profit, or sold their pots to a lake-traveling middleman. In
addition, Tarascan[s]… may have used canoes to transport finished pots’ and different
materials used as temper in pottery, as well as firewood, among many raw materials
indispensable for the potter’s craft (p. 16).
In addition to canoe travel, transportation to market by foot was possible for
household producers in the Lake Pátzcuaro Basin during the 16th century. Almost all
communities in the basin could reach a market in four hours; therefore, most households
could carry finished pottery vessels and other goods to-and-from a central marketplace
(p. 17).
Hirshman and Stawski show how efficient transportation was in the Lake
Pátzcuaro Basin, because of its small size and the capacity of potting households to
control the transportation of their own wares to market: ‘One porter –most likely the
potter, a member of the potting household, or another relative– could certainly carry to
market and sell in one day a load of ceramics that would represent an identifiable
portion of a household’s production’ (p. 19).
These authors further argue (2013) that their analysis of transportation within the
Tarascan core area suggests that the Tarascan state did not attempt to exert control over,
or interfere with, ceramic production and transportation. In their view this gives us an
alternate and far more nuanced view of the state’s political economy, decision-making
and state agency.
Among the Tarascans, long-distance merchants sponsored by the state
constituted an institutional mechanism through which goods flowed towards the
imperial capital. The royal house employed these merchants to procure scarce goods,
some of which could only be found in the remote reaches of the empire, or even outside
its territorial boundaries (Pollard 1993:119). Among the sumptuary goods carried by
 75

such Tarascan merchants we can mention: cacao, animal skins, seashells, tropical bird
feathers, turquoise, peyote, rock crystal, serpentine, amber, pyrite, jadeite, gold, silver,
copal, green and red obsidian, and slaves (Pollard 2003a, 1993:119). The more distant
the sources of a given product, the fewer its distribution channels and, in all likelihood,
the more restricted its use. The function of these sumptuary imports was, at least to
some extent, to mark and maintain status differences between members of the elite and
the rest of society (Pollard 2003a).
Those long-distance traders often travelled to the limits of Tarascan territory,
including Zacatula on the Pacific coast and Taximaroa on the border with the Aztecs,
their mortal enemies, but there is no evidence that they crossed those borders while
pursuing their commercial enterprises (Pollard 2000:171). It is well known that trade
networks and routes were quite extensive throughout Mesoamerica during the
Postclassic period. The pochteca, for instance, routinely journeyed from Central Mexico
to Guatemala in the south and Chaco Canyon (New Mexico) 9 in the north (Hassig
1985:116), so it should come as no surprise that Tarascan traders also traversed
extensive territories, as discussed below (see also Williams and Weigand 2004;
Williams 2004b).
However, not all long-distance trade was sanctioned by the state. Indeed, there
was a high level of exchange of products between hamlets inhabited by fishers near the
coast and highland towns, particularly in Tierra Caliente (i.e., the Hotlands of the
Tepalcatepec River Basin). Although it is not clear just how or where this exchange
took place, historical sources do not mention any kind of state intervention in this
informal trade (Beltrán 1982:165).
The Lienzo de Jucutacato is an especially important source of information on
long-distance trade among the Tarascans during the Protohistoric period and shortly
thereafter (Roskamp 2001). This Lienzo shows the main communication routes between
the Tierra Caliente of Michoacán and the capital of the Tarascan state. In pre-Hispanic
times, the Tierra Caliente was highly esteemed for its richness in natural resources, such
as gold, silver, copper, salt, precious feathers, cacao and cotton. Copper minerals were
especially plentiful near the Tepalcatepec and Balsas Rivers (Roskamp 2001). In the
mid-15th century, independent chiefdoms in the Balsas River area were gradually
incorporated into the Tarascan Empire. At the same time, the Aztecs were showing

9
There is no ethnohistorical evidence of the presence of Aztec traders in the southwestern United States, though it has been
postulated tentatively based on archaeological remains (Reyman 1978).
 76

great interest in the area, and around 1476-1477 penetrated into Tarascan territory as far
as the environs of the present-day city of Morelia, where they were defeated and forced
to retreat (Roskamp 2003:64-65).
As mentioned previously, transportation costs in Mesoamerica were relatively
high, and that made it difficult to develop a macro-regional food economy, like the ones
that existed in Europe and China (Blanton et al. 1981). In central Mexico, the tlamemes
(Figure 51) carried all sorts of merchandise from one place to another. We do not know
the exact weight of the loads they usually bore, but in the 16th century Bernal Díaz del
Castillo wrote that a tlameme carried around two arrobas (ca. 23 kg) over a distance of
five leagues (21-28 km) before being relieved of his burden (see Hassig 1985:28-32).
However, such figures must be evaluated with caution, since there is a great deal of
variation in both the size of the loads and the distances traversed recorded in documents
from that period, especially according to the type of terrain (mountains, gullies, jungle,
forest, desert, etcetera), climatic conditions, and other factors that could hinder the
porters’ progress (Hassig 1985:33).
Lawrence Feldman coined the phrase ‘tumpline economy’ to refer to the
transport of goods in Mesoamerica, because it was based on land portage on the backs
of human bearers; a practice that subsisted in parts of Mesoamerica until the early 20th
century. According to Feldman (1985), the weight of the merchandise rested on the
shoulders of porters who used a mecapal (i.e. tumpline, a 3-inch-wide leather strap) to
carry great loads over a distance of two or three leagues along well-defined routes. The
strap, which went around the porter’s forehead, was attached to a net or similar
container made of palm fibre or reeds that hung from his head and was supported on his
back.
The tlamemes of the pre-Hispanic period formed a low-status occupational
stratum that worked as professional, organized bearers with established norms for the
types and weights of loads, periodic rests and burdens appropriate to the distance and
conditions of the roads. They carried elite goods, such as cacao and gold, but also
everyday items like maize and cotton (Hassig 1985:39).
The distance travelled and load weights were inversely proportional. Though
very heavy burdens may have been transported in pre-Hispanic times, this did not
necessarily mean greater efficiency, since more porters would have been required to
cover the same distance (Hassig 1985). Robert Drennan (1984a) calculated that a load
of 20 kg brought maximum efficiency, though burdens of up to 50 kg are mentioned for
 77

some areas of Mesoamerica. The loads carried by the tlamemes of the Aztec pochteca
were not very heavy. Drennan (1984a) suggests an average weight of 30 kg taken over a
distance of 36 km. According to this author, transport costs in the middle Formative and
Classic periods (ca. 500 BC-AD 1000) meant that transporting food could not have
been the primary reason for using tlameme labour; rather, the goods that moved over
long distances on the backs of those porters were elite products, luxury items, or objects
of ritual importance, as well as strategic resources, such as obsidian. Indeed, Drennan
(1984b:39) argues that if maize were carried over such long distances, the porter would
have had to consume more energy than the very food he was carrying contained!
The Tribute System. The Tarascan state’s tribute network was the most important
institution for obtaining wealth. Through it, tribute flowed from all corners of the
empire to the royal coffers in Tzintzuntzan. According to Pollard (1993), this network
was centralized, hierarchically organized, and primarily a political institution. The
goods that circulated in the form of tribute traversed several levels before finally
reaching the capital (p. 116).
Tribute goods went from producers dispersed throughout the kingdom to
medium-sized collection centres (called cabeceras or head towns in 16th-century
documents), before eventually arriving in Tzintzuntzan (Beltrán 1982). Some of those
goods, especially obsidian artifacts, fine ceramics and metal objects (copper, bronze,
silver and gold), were later commercialized through markets, or redistributed in
different directions, but most tribute was consumed by the ruling class. Likely
exceptions were textiles and food, which were distributed during important ritual
occasions (pp. 161-162).
The tribute system proved to be an excellent mechanism for integrating several
geographic regions and different ecological niches, especially the hot lowlands with the
temperate highlands (Beltrán 1982). Because the system was designed to permit the
circulation of elite goods, it led to the accumulation of wealth by the ruling stratum of
society; though the ceremonial obligations and political control exercised by the
authorities over the distribution of this wealth considerably limited the possibility that a
minority might become rich at the expense of the common people solely through the
tribute system (pp. 162-163).
According to Pollard (2003a), apart from the tribute networks there were other
institutional channels through which goods and services flowed: namely, long-distance
merchants, the state’s own agricultural lands and mines, and gift exchange. However,
 78

taxes, paid both in kind and services, were the most important source of revenue for the
political economy and provided the principal support for the state apparatus. It is clear
that the tribute system was totally controlled by the ruling dynasty, which utilized an
extensive bureaucracy to manage tax collection and assure timely compliance of all
obligations. The goods most frequently found in 16th-century tribute rolls include
maize, cotton cloth and clothes, slaves, victims for sacrifice, domestic services, metal
objects, weapons, tropical fruits, cacao, raw cotton, gourds, animal skins, tropical bird
feathers, gold, silver, copper, salt, beans, chili peppers, rabbits, turkeys, honey, wine
from the maguey plant (Agave sp.), feathers from local bird species, and clay vessels
(Pollard 2003a).
The fact is that the ultimate objective of military conquest was to widen the field
for gathering tribute (Beltrán 1982). This system was organized as a pyramid, with
Tzintzuntzan at the top and various cabeceras directly beneath it. The caciques
(chieftains) were obliged to collect tribute from their respective subject towns and send
it to the capital in a timely fashion. This was supervised by the ocambecha or tax
collector. Artisans and merchants paid tribute in kind from their respective crafts or
products, and were exempt from providing services, except in times of extreme need
(pp. 154-156).
In central Mexico during the late Postclassic, as in other areas of Mesoamerica,
including Michoacán, tribute was influenced by several factors: (1) the antiquity of
conquest and the distance from the capital, with the nearer provinces obliged to pay
largely in food and clothing; (2) the availability of the required goods, since tribute was
usually paid in products that were readily available in each province; and, (3) resistance
to conquest or rebellion, for if a town resisted or attempted to escape from this yoke, its
taxes would be increased as punishment. Usually, the tribute districts closer to the
capital paid with large amounts of bulky but often low-value goods, while more distant
regions provided elite products that were of great value, but in low volumes (Hassig
1985).
In order to comprehend the nature of the Mesoamerican tribute system, we must
first understand the logic of warfare in this cultural area, since war was the primary
mechanism that sustained the flow of goods towards the capitals of different empires.
As noted above, military conquest was not designed to gain absolute control over
extensive territories, but only firm control of political centers, since once a head town
was subdued all its dependent territories automatically became subject lands as well.
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This allowed tribute to be gathered from a broad region simply by conquering the
regional ruling center, often with no need to modify local power structures (Hassig
1985:103).
Hassig (1985) has stated that ‘the actual functioning of the Aztec tribute system
may be analyzed at the imperial level and at the provincial level. At the imperial level
the Aztecs… drew tribute from 38 provinces… At the provincial level, goods were
directed from sujetos to dependent cabeceras, and from there to provincial centers. The
officials in charge of the tribute system were the calpixqueh, either imperial or local’ (p.
105). The system had a pyramid-like structure (Figure 52) and relied ‘on a local
official… to collect tribute goods at the local, or calpolli, level and take them to the
regional center. There the calpixqueh transferred them to the provincial center, where
imperial calpixqueh supervised their delivery to Tenochtitlan’ (p. 106).
Another important contribution to this general subject is that of Smith (2015),
who explores the nature of Aztec political economy, including tribute and other
mechanisms by which the state appropriated the wealth and labor of the people. Smith
sees the Aztec political system as formed by hundreds of city-states integrated by a
common culture. These states were ruled by a king or tlatoani, aided by a council of
outstanding nobles. According to Smith, Aztec society had two social classes: on the
one hand a hereditary nobility who handled the government of the state and controlled
all the farmland, and on the other hand were the plebeians. In both classes there was
some internal gradation regarding personal wealth, access to power, and other social
attributes. Regarding the flow of fiscal revenue for the elites, Smith says that the Aztecs
had a true system of taxation. In Smith’s view, unlike tribute, taxes are usually
recurrent, predictable, routine, and are based on statutory obligations (pp. 71, 72). In
this regard, the Aztec document known as Codex Mendoza (Figure 53) is of primary
importance for understanding the tributary system of this empire. 10
Although the situation in the Tarascan Empire was not necessarily the same as
the Aztec case mentioned above, the latter should provide examples for establishing
analogies that are applicable to most Mesoamerican states.

10
The page of Codex Mendoza shown in Figure 53 includes the names of the tributary towns (left column) and the items paid
periodically to the Aztec Empire (from top row to bottom): two necklaces of chalchihuitl (green stones, probably turquoise); 2,400
handfuls of rich colored feathers; two lots of 80 whole skins of the bird shown; 1,600 handfuls of rich feathers; two lip plugs made
of amber set in gold; 40 jaguar skins; 200 loads of cacao beans; 800 tecomates (cups for drinking chocolate); and, two large pieces
of clean amber.
 80

Figure 45. Aztec market, showing many of the goods available to customers: feathers,
pottery, cloth, fine stones, and grains (after Sahagún’s Florentine Codex; adapted from
Hirth 2016: Figure 3.2).

Figure 46. Salt was a strategic resource in Mesoamerica. The Aztecs extracted salt from
the lakes in the Basin of Mexico, and it was sold by specialized vendors in the markets
(after Sahagún’s Florentine Codex; adapted from Hirth 2016: Figure 6.2).
 81

Figure 47. In the ‘solar system’ model of exchange, the central town, or cabecera,
exchanges goods with each subject town or sujeto, but there is no direct trade between
the sujetos or with other marketing systems (adapted from Hassig 1985: figure 4.3).

Figure 48. Aztec noble (right) with two pochteca merchants and their trade goods:
textiles, gold objects, obsidian lip plugs and ear flares, among others. (According
Sahagún’s Florentine Codex; adapted from Hirth 2013: Figure 4.2).
 82

Figure 49. Two pochteca merchants meet a lord on the road. Note the quetzal feathers at
lower right. These feathers were among the most cherished of trade goods in
Mesoamerica (after Sahagún’s Historia de las cosas de Nueva España, adapted from
Hirth and Pillsbury 2013: image on cover).

Figure 50. Canoes were an important means of transportation in the Tarascan area. In
this scene from Lake Pátzcuaro (early 20th century) we see a long canoe loaded with
rolled-up reed mats (petates). In the background are many smaller canoes used for
fishing on the lake (photo courtesy of: Centro de Cooperación Regional para la
Educación de Adultos en América Latina y el Caribe, CREFAL, Pátzcuaro,
Michoacán).
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Figure 51. These Aztec porters, or tlamemes, carried heavy loads from one end to the
other of the empire’s vast territory (after Sahagún’s Florentine Codex; adapted from
Hirth 2013: Figure 4.1).

Figure 52. The Aztec tribute system was organized like a pyramid, with Tenochtitlan at
the top, followed by provincial centers, cabeceras (head towns) and sujetos (smaller
subject communities) (adapted from Hassig 1985: Figure 5.3).
 84

Circulation of Rare and Strategic Resources within the Tarascan Empire

This section deals with the circulation of several scarce or strategic goods within the
Tarascan territory for which we have archaeological information, and in some cases
historical sources as well. These goods are obsidian, common salt (sodium chloride)
metals (primarily copper), and turquoise. 11 The objective is to reconstruct at least in part
the distributive system, whether commercial or tributary, through which these
indispensable goods could have flowed from production centers to the state capital.
Obsidian. Technology in Mesoamerica faced a whole series of limiting factors in
comparison to that of the Old World. The main handicaps we must take into account are
the absence of beasts of burden, and the non-existence of the technological complex
derived from iron smelting. Thus, it could be said that Mesoamerica never achieved a
level of development beyond that of the Neolithic period of the Old World (cfr. Clark
1977), in which rocks such as obsidian functioned as raw material for all kinds of tools:
axes, knives, blades, projectile points, etcetera. One activity that was sponsored by the
state and required huge amounts of obsidian objects was the manufacture of weapons
for warfare. In all cases in which obsidian is mentioned as part of the tribute received by
the Aztec Empire, it is pointed out that it was used for making several kinds of arms,
mainly the macuahuitl (Figure 54), a sword-like implement made of wood with sharp
obsidian blades inserted on both edges (Healan 1993:460), and a lance with obsidian
blades on one end (Figure 55).
While on the topic of obsidian, it is important to note that part of the Tarascan
territory is an eminently volcanic region, so there is an abundance of geological
products of igneous activity, like obsidian (Figure 56). From very early times, the
inhabitants of Mesoamerica discovered the virtues of this mineral, and Michoacán was
no exception (Healan 1994, 2011). However, not all obsidian was of the same quality,
so there were systems and routes of exchange among several regions within and beyond
the area we now know as Michoacán. For instance, obsidian from the deposits near the
present-day towns of Ucareo and Zinapécuaro in northwestern Michoacán has been
identified in archaeological contexts widely dispersed in space and time (see previous
section).
Unfortunately, information on the mechanisms through which obsidian travelled
over such great distances is scanty, though Pollard has suggested the following scenario
11
There are no natural turquoise deposits in the area ruled by the Tarascan Empire; in fact, the main deposits are in the
Southwestern United States. But we have included this mineral because its long-distance trade was probably influenced –if not
regulated– by the Tarascans, since the main trade routes crossed the core area of the Tarascan Empire (Weigand 1995).
 85

based on the distribution of obsidian artifacts and debitage (i.e. small fragments
produced by knapping), as well as ethnohistorical accounts: that the obsidian obtained
inside the empire was distributed through regional market systems, while the mineral
that arrived from outside the Tarascan territory was acquired by long-distance
merchants, probably under direct state control (Pollard et al. 2001:292).
Although the obsidian deposits at Ucareo and Zinapécuaro were inside the area
that was under the direct control of Tzintzuntzan’s royal dynasty, very little Tarascan
ceramic material has been found in the area of obsidian extraction. According to Healan
(2004), this coincides with ethnohistorical information that mentions the existence of a
relatively small number of Tarascans in this particular region at the time of the Spanish
conquest. Healan believes that this situation may reflect the ability of the Tarascan
Empire to exploit this resource by levying taxes –a practice characteristic of hegemonic
empires– which would have obviated any need for large contingents of Tarascans in the
producing sites (Healan 2004, 1997).
In addition to the obsidian deposits at Ucareo-Zinapécuaro, there were others of
equal importance, such as those at Zináparo-Varal in the northwestern Tarascan area
(Darras 1994). According to Pollard and Vogel (1994), the use of these quarries seems
to reflect both the regularization of markets and specialization in obsidian distribution.
The Tarascan capital and sites on the eastern frontier obtained grey-black obsidian from
Ucareo-Zinapécuaro, while other regions in the empire obtained theirs from Zináparo-
Varal. This fact could mean that most of the obsidian produced in the region discussed
here moved through distinct trade districts that may have covered areas beyond the
territorial limits of the state. This was possible thanks to market patterns, not to tribute
or long-distance merchants. On the other hand, unlike the grey-black variety, green
obsidian may have been acquired by long-distance traders using intermediaries, or by
other merchants who gathered stones from many sources (Pollard and Vogel 1994:171-
173).
According to Healan (2011), although it is often argued that control over
obsidian sources played an important role in the political economy of many
Mesoamerican societies, there is in fact little evidence in the archaeological literature of
restricted access to obsidian sources. Apparently, the most convincing indicator of
monopolistic control of a source in West Mexico comes from Teuchitlán and its
obsidian quarries at La Mora, Jalisco (Weigand et al. 2004). However, we should bear
in mind that this obsidian is found in contemporary sites in such a way that suggests it
 86

was obtained directly from the source itself, rather than from Teuchitlán workshops
(Healan 2011:200).
In her study of obsidian artifacts from the Lake Zacapu Basin and other areas of
the Lerma River region, Darras (2008) found that the obsidian industry experienced
great changes between the Late Classic (ca. AD 600-900) and the Late Postclassic (ca.
AD 1200-1450). These changes transformed several aspects the blade production
industry, such as the strategies for procuring raw materials, the organization of
manufacture, and the distribution and consumption of the finished artifacts. The
obsidian workers of the Zináparo and Varal sources developed a new percussion blade
technology during the Epiclassic (ca. AD 900) and Early Postclassic (ca. AD 900-1200)
periods. These new blades were marketed throughout the region, while prismatic blades
were nor very common and were moved via long-distance trade networks.
During the Middle Postclassic period (ca. AD 1200) a sophisticated prismatic
blade technology (Figure 57) was developed in the Lake Zacapu region, replacing the
previous production system, and eventually became a very common type of artifact.
Darras shows the mechanisms by which blade production was organized in this part of
the Tarascan area. Darras suggests that technological changes, including modifications
in the organization of production, can be linked to the structure of the social and
political systems where the changes took place.
We have seen in previous chapters of this book that the Lerma River Basin and
the Zacapu Basin were densely populated during the Classic period, while the Lake
Pátzcuaro Basin and the rest of the Tarascan cultural area was covered by many
settlements in the Postclassic. These populations required huge amounts of obsidian,
and the area studied by Darras (among others) was important in supplying the demand.
Salt. I have mentioned repeatedly the lack of domestic animals in pre-Hispanic
Mesoamerica similar to the cows, sheep, goats, and pigs introduced by the Spaniards in
the 16th century, and that Mesoamerica was the only primary civilization in the ancient
world in which cattle-raising could not be utilized to extend productive landscapes to
agriculturally marginal areas (Diamond 1999; Parsons 2006; Weigand 2000). This also
meant that common salt (sodium chloride) had to be added to the diet to ensure a proper
nutrition (Williams 2015, 2018).
The importance of salt through history can be understood if we take a look at the
role played by sodium chloride in human physiology and nutrition. Salt is essential for
nutrition and for most physiological processes in all animals, including humans. This
 87

chemical compound is present in all tissues and fluids of the human body. Sodium
chloride is ingested by all living creatures and in humans the amount and concentration
in the body must be kept within well-defined limits, a process that relies on a wide
variety of coordinated physiological mechanisms that control the concentration and
expulsion of salt so that the amount which is eliminated daily corresponds exactly to the
intake through food or other means (Dauphinee 1960:382).
Many people with vegetarian diets suffer from a lack of sodium chloride. In
India, for example, the lack of this chemical compound makes for a higher number of
deaths in times of epidemics or famine, while in parts of Equatorial Africa some human
groups are weakened by salt deprivation (Bergier 1982:11).
Salt became a strategic resource in Mesoamerica, including the Tarascan
Empire, because it was indispensable not just as part of the nutrition, but for many other
uses as well, such as preserving fish and as mordant for fixing dyes in the textile
industry (Parsons 2001). Huge amounts of salt were consumed by these and other
economic activities.
The flow of strategic and scarce goods from the subject provinces to the imperial
core was assured by the king, or cazonci, through a geopolitical strategy that kept
conquered communities under the obligation to pay tribute, and the lines of
communication with the capital open at all times. This strategy explains how the
Tarascan state became one of the most powerful empires during the Late Postclassic,
rivalling even the Aztecs. The procurement of salt and other strategic resources, as well
as their distribution, the military control over source areas and the extraction of tribute,
were all critical aspects of the economic and social life of the Tarascans and other
Mesoamerican polities.
Today saltpeter and tequesquite 12 are gathered on the margins of Lake Cuitzeo
(see the discussion in the previous section). The former is used as a complement to
cattle feed, while the latter is taken by muleteers to tierra caliente (the Hot Lands of the
Tepelcatepec River Basin) in Michoacán, where it is exchanged for fruit and
cascalote. 13 Lime is another important mineral extracted from the lake bed. Processed

12
Natural salt used in Mexico as a food seasoning since pre-Hispanic times, it is composed primarily of bicarbonate of soda and
common salt (sodium chloride).
13
A leguminous plant (Caesalpinia coriaria) from southern Mexico, whose gum and seeds are used to produce tannins for
processing animal skins.
 88

in kilns and used to make nixtamal, 14 it is sold almost exclusively within the Lake
Cuitzeo Basin (Corona Nuñez 1946:43).
We have seen earlier in this book that during the Classic period, the Lerma River
drainage had a dense population living in settlements based on agriculture. Between ca.
AD 600 and 850 we see a rapid expansion of the network of dispersed settlements that
eventually covered the entire region. There may have been larger towns with elite
populations, market sites, and religious centers, but the dispersed settlement pattern and
the existence of many villages and hamlets may well suggest a social organization with
a relatively decentralized power structure (Faugère-Kalfon 1996:130).
Between the ninth and 13th centuries the first defensive sites appeared, and the
population became more densely packed through a process that accelerated during the
early Postclassic (Faugère-Kalfon 1996:133, 142).
There were many settlements –urban centers, ceremonial sites, towns, and
hamlets– in this area, and they must have needed huge amounts of salt for their
subsistence. The main salt sources in the Lerma River region are clustered almost
entirely in the Lake Cuitzeo Basin (see the maps published by Mendizábal 1928; Valdez
et al. 1996b: Figure 4; Ewald 1997: Map 14). Therefore, salt-producing sites were a
crucial factor for the economic, political, and military strategies of the societies of the
Bajío and its hinterland from the Formative and Classic periods onwards. In the
Protohistoric period, the Tarascan Empire had a strong presence in the Lake Cuitzeo
Basin as it sought to control the obsidian and salt deposits that were a source of wealth
for the empire (Cfr. Williams 2009b).
Another area of interest for the study of salt production in Michoacán is the
Pacific coast. In ancient times, the coast of West Mexico was very important as a
provider of salt to inland populations (Williams 2015, 2018). From pre-Hispanic times
until some 60 years ago, the stretch of the coast of Michoacán and Colima from
Cuyutlán in the north to Maruata in the south (Figure 58) was a veritable salt
emporium, with countless sites, large and small, where salt was produced (Figure 59).
At the end of the 19th century, the year-round population of the salt-making area
in coastal Colima, next to the area mentioned above, was not even 50 individuals, but
around the 16th century and later, during the salt-making season as many as five
thousand people congregated at the salt making sites here. To the salt makers coming

14
Processed maize; after boiling the kernels and eliminating their outer skin, it is ground to make flour for tortilla and tamale
preparation.
 89

from throughout the region of Colima were added muleteers and merchants, mostly
from Michoacán and Nueva Galicia (i.e. present-day Jalisco) (Reyes 1995:149).
According to a local informant, around 1925 salt was the ‘white gold’ of the
Michoacán-Colima coast. During the salt-making season, La Placita (the main salt-
producing community in the Michoacán coast) had a temporary market where
merchants came from many distant places and it was possible to find the following
products, among many other trade items: pottery wares from Patamban; steel knifes
from Sayula; machetes from Coalcomán; sweets from Colima; sombreros (hats) from
Sahuayo; huaraches (sandals) from Pihuamo; blankets and jorongos (an outer garment
made of wool) from Tapalpa; bedspreads from San Juan Parangaricutirimícuaro
(Paricutín, or San Juan de las Colchas). Also linked to the economic boom generated by
salt was a modest cantina in La Placita where one could have a few drinks and find a
lady for the night (Méndez Acevedo 1999).
An informant from Maquilí told the author that the salt produced in Coalcomán
was exchanged for maize, beans and tomatoes, among many other goods. The
saltmakers had no need for money, because everything could be paid for with salt, even
pistols. Muleteers used to come from Tepalcatepec, Apatzingán and Uruapan leading as
many as 60 mules each. There was a camino real (High Road) from Los Reyes and
Peribán to Pueblo Nuevo. The muleteers brought their own food for the trip to
Coalcomán, which took three days. In addition to salt, they also traded bananas and
coconuts.
Some of the muleteers bought and sold salt, which they would store in a nearby
town. People still come to La Placita from Coalcomán, Apatzingán and the cattle-
raising area in the hills between Jalisco and Michoacán to buy salt, which is a very
important ingredient in cheese-making. People came to get salt from a wide region, in
exchange for several products: maize, beans, brown sugar, soap, cheese, chickpeas,
potatoes, mangoes, bananas, mamey, prunes, onions, sugar, firewood, and so on. One
measure of beans or prunes, for example, was worth the same as one measure of salt.
In regions bordering on the study area (Colima to the north and Guerrero to the
south), muleteers carried salt over vast distances until they were replaced by the railroad
some 70 years ago. In Guerrero, for example, as recently as 1939 Nahuas from the
Balsas Valley marketed salt from the Costa Chica as itinerant sellers. For generations
they combined salt-trading in the dry season with agriculture during the rainy season
(June-to-October). To obtain salt, the Nahuas formed caravans of 20 to 25 burros or
 90

mules driven by 10 to 12 men. The trek from the Balsas Valley to the coast was about
150 km over mountainous terrain and required several days of travel. Coastal
informants spoke of the constant arrival and departure of mule-trains consisting of
hundreds of pack animals from different highland towns (Good 1995:8-10).
In the Michoacán coast, during the colonial period and well into the 19th
century, muleteers were among the most important pillars of the economy; also in the
rest of Michoacán, as in many other areas of Mexico. The Michoacán muleteers set out
from Zamora, Purépero and Cotija to travel to central and northern Mexico, as well as
Jalisco, Guanajuato, Veracruz and Tabasco (Sánchez 1984:41, 47).
During the 16th century in Colima, the encomenderos and corregidores relied
almost exclusively on tlamemes to transport salt; a practice that continued into the early
17th century. Carriers took salt to several places, some of them quite distant from the
coast of Colima, such as Mexico City. Eventually, the Viceroy of New Spain tried to
forbid the use of tlamemes, but what really ended this inhumane practice was the
scarcity of Indians due to famine and epidemics, as well as the increasing necessity to
move ever greater volumes of salt and to do so more expeditiously (Reyes 1998:152).
Although the coastal area of south-western Michoacán was never fully
incorporated into the Tarascan Empire (Pollard 1993: Map 8.1; Beltrán 1982), salt
produced there surely found its way –together with many other goods, among them
precious seashells– into the Tarascan heartland in the Lake Pátzcuaro Basin.
According to the Relación de la Provincia de Motines [1580], in the 16th
century there was a well-established trade route from the province of Motines to
Pátzcuaro. This trail went by way of Uruapan, covering a distance of 37 or 38 leagues.
It was relatively straight, but traversed hilly terrain and crossed many gorges. There was
another route that went by way of Peribán, Santa Ana and San Pedro, which crossed
over easier terrain, with a length of 40 leagues (Acuña 1987:179; see Williams 2015:
Figure 80). In colonial times, a road network connected the coast to Pátzcuaro, from
Coahuayana to Zacatula through the coastal area, and from there to Uruapan and then
Pátzcuaro. Many of those roads had existed since pre-Hispanic times (Espejel 1992:
Maps 3, 4).
As I argue elsewhere (Williams 2010, 2015, 2018, 2019), the northwest coast of
Michoacán and adjoining areas of coastal Colima produced great amounts of salt. Based
on the production figures reported by informants for the pre-1950 period, the whole of
the coast must have produced hundreds of tons of salt, which was traded with, people
 91

from an extensive region. In the pre-Hispanic period, at least part of the production may
have been paid as tribute to the Tarascan Empire.
Because salt is usually not preserved in the archaeological record, it is easier to
study salt making techniques and the artifacts and features related to these techniques,
than it is to explore the routes followed by the salt merchants. Following an
ethnoarchaeological and ethnohistorical perspective, the present author was able to
identify the main production sites in the Lake Cuitzeo Basin and the coast of Michoacán
and Colima (Williams 2010, 2015, 2018), as well as the areas covered by the salt traders
in the past throughout these two regions. This information is very valuable to figure out
the role played by sodium chloride and other critical goods in the expansion of the
Tarascan Empire.
Metals. Metallurgy probably appeared in Western Mexico before it did in other areas of
Mesoamerica, going back to the Late Classic (between ca. AD 600 and 800; Hosler
1998:321, 1994a:263). Metal objects (copper, bronze, gold, and silver) were
fundamental items for communicating the symbolism of social and political power, as
well as indicators of membership in the elite stratum of society (Figure 60). Metal
objects were often sacred and indispensable for the performance of religious
ceremonies. They were also elements of wealth that could be stored and transported
(Pollard 1987). Control over the production, distribution and consumption of metal
artifacts, both utilitarian (needles, awls, tweezers, axes, burins, fishhooks, etcetera) and
ornamental (bells, beads, earrings, rings, and pins, among others), was strategic for the
ruling elites, as it fostered the centralization of power (p. 741).
Great quantities of gold, silver and copper objects were stored in the royal
palace. In fact, most metal objects were held in the city of Tzintzuntzan and other royal
treasuries in the Lake Pátzcuaro Basin. Metal objects (both finished items and ingots)
arrived at the royal coffers through several channels: (1) gifts given to the king by
foreign visitors; (2) objects acquired by long-distance merchants acting in the name of
the state; (3) gold, silver or copper ingots, or finished items, paid as tribute to chieftains
(who would then send part to the capital); (4) the direct flow of copper ingots from
state-controlled mines to royal storerooms; and, finally, (5) some metal objects may
have circulated through market networks, both local and regional (pp. 744-745).
Most of the gold and silver that reached the Lake Pátzcuaro Basin did so through
the tribute system. This material came from distant regions: the southwestern frontier
 92

and the far western areas of the empire; the Tepalcatepec and Balsas river basins; and
perhaps small amounts of silver from the Lake Cuitzeo Basin (p. 747).
Elsewhere in Mesoamerica, we see that several authors have suggested that most
of the ornaments made of gold that the Spaniards found in the Basin of Mexico had
been imported from the Mixtec area, or had been made by Mixtec goldsmiths working
in Tenochtitlan and Azcapotzalco (e.g. Solís and Velasco 2002). Timothy King (2015)
has refuted this notion. He believes that by the end of the 15th century the Triple
Alliance had witnessed the development of a large-scale metalworking tradition (Figure
61), primarily gold, with multi-ethnic characteristics and a high level of skill. These
artisans produced thousands of gold ornaments each year (Figures 62), interacted with
other artisans from Mesoamerica (Figures 63), and exported a considerable number of
items to other parts of the empire (p. 313). King calculates that the Triple Alliance
received between 323 and 392 kg of gold dust or ingots each year from the provinces
mentioned in the Codex Mendoza, together with 84 lip-plugs made of amber or rock
crystal mounted on gold, as well as various adornments of gold (p. 316). King arrived at
the conclusion that the expansion of the community of goldsmiths in Aztec urban
centers was encouraged after the inception of the Triple Alliance, and continued to grow
until the Spanish Conquest. This growth was encouraged in part by a system of royal
patronage that used presents of luxury crafts in order to bolster military alliances, to
strengthen the links between city-states, and thus was able to keep the political control
of the empire (p. 316).
Another study that underlines the outstanding role of metalwork (especially
gold) in Aztec society comes from Leonardo López Luján and his associates (López
Luján et al. 2015). These authors describe a unique archaeological find: the burial of an
Aztec goldsmith that turned up in the excavations of the Mexico City underground
transit system (Metro). These human remains were found together with an unusual
offering: two fragments of fossilized wood, and two heavy lip-plugs of metal, as well
as raw materials, tools and products associated with metalwork; fragments of malachite;
one thick and one thin copper bar, which may have served as sources of pure metal, or
as blanks (p. 56). López Luján et al. arrived at the following conclusion: ‘In the context
of central-Mexican archaeology, [this] burial… is exceptional. Its offerings include
objects linked with lapidary and metal work… The person buried with these objects was
an old male, whose skeleton shows the scars [sic] of constant physical strain demanded
by the artisan’s occupation. Judging by the burial offerings, he would have enjoyed a
 93

high status during his life, the status reserved for someone who knew the secrets of a
highly specialized trade’ (p. 57).
Returning to Michoacán, we see that ethnohistorical information from the
Relación de Michoacán and the Relaciones geográficas, among other sources, indicates
that some mining activities, as well as the smelting and production of metal objects,
were undertaken by full-time specialists under direct state supervision. The production
of ingots from molten ore took place in smelting centres in the Sierra Madre del Sur and
the Balsas River drainage system (Guerrero), among other areas (Hosler 2004); while
some manufacture of metal objects occurred in the Tarascan capital, probably at
installations located inside the cazonci’s palace (Pollard et al. 2001:295).
Very little archaeological attention has been paid to surveying the general area
of metal production in Michoacán in order to locate mines where the metal was
extracted, or workshops where it was processed in ancient times. In the mid-1980s,
Dora Grimberg (1995) did conduct a survey of part of the Balsas River Basin in search
of the copper mines mentioned in the Lienzo de Jucutacato (cfr. Roskamp 1998, 2001)
and in some Spanish documents from the 16th century found in the Archivo General de
Indias in Seville, Spain. According to Grimberg (1995), Tarascan miners lived at the
foot of the hills where the mines were located. Their main activity was agriculture, and
they would look for copper only when the state demanded it, later sending the metal to
the capital in the form of ingots of standardized shape, which were first collected by the
ocambecha and carried to Xiuhquilan (Jicalan), where metalsmiths transformed them
into tools that eventually ended up in Tzintzuntzan (p. 262).
The Tarascan state regarded political control of the main metal-producing areas
of West Mexico as a strategic priority; so it is no coincidence that the two areas with the
most abundant gold and silver deposits (at the southeast and western ends of the empire,
respectively) were located on the empire’s military frontiers (Pollard 1987:750). The
analysis of metal artifacts found in archaeological excavations performed in Atoyac, in
the Lake Sayula Basin, suggests that the copper sources used there were found in Jalisco
and Michoacán. However, we do not know where the artefacts were actually made, nor
who made them, because no evidence of the metallurgical process (slag, kilns, etcetera)
has yet been found at Atoyac. Some metal objects, particularly Tarascan-style tweezers,
were probably made in Michoacán, but no workshops have been found (Hosler
1998:325).
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Many objects made of copper or copper alloys found in archaeological sites in

central, southern and eastern Mesoamerica were probably produced in West Mexico
(Hosler 1998:319); these include, for instance, the metal artifacts found in many
Huastec centres in Tamaulipas, at Aztec sites in the state of Morelos, and other
examples in Oaxaca and the Soconusco region of Chiapas. These objects were made
primarily with minerals from West Mexico, and it is very likely that they were forged
by metalsmiths from West Mexico as well, prior to being exported to other areas of
Mesoamerica (Hosler 1998:326). During Period II of Western Mexican metallurgy (ca.
AD 1200-1521), certain technological features were diffused to other regions of
Mesoamerica, including artifacts, knowledge of metallurgical processes, and raw
materials. Some artifacts found outside Western Mexico suggest that the main articles
being exported were status markers or ritual objects, especially bells manufactured
using the so-called “wire” technology (Figure 64). Those objects were made by artisans
in the Michoacán highlands and adjacent areas of northern Guerrero, and were
transported from there to a wide area that spanned the modern-day states of Morelos,
Tamaulipas, Oaxaca, Chiapas, Tabasco and Yucatán, and extended as far south as
Belize and Honduras. The extant documentary and archaeological information suggests
that artifacts made of tin-bronze were distributed through the tribute and market systems
of both Tarascans and Aztecs, while other ethnic groups (e.g. Otomí, Matlatzinca) may
have functioned as commercial intermediaries (Hosler 1994a:197, 223; Pollard 2003a).
Recent research by Blanca Maldonado (2011, 2018) about the possible presence
of a domestic metal industry in the Tarascan territory suggests that the nature and
degree of involvement and control of the state over metal production may have changed
considerably over time and from one area of the empire to another. The predominant
economic strategy appears to have been based on intermittent production, at least for
some stages of the manufacture of copper objects.
Turquoise. In his seminal study of turquoise production and trade in Mesoamerica,
Weigand (1995) suggested that the exploration, exploitation and procurement of
minerals were part of the organizational postulates of the formation of the commercial
structure of ancient Mesoamerica (Figure 65). During the Postclassic period, turquoise
overtook the other green stone coveted by Mesoamericans –jade– in terms of levels of
consumption, popularity and economic importance (p. 115). The mining complex at
Chalchihuites, Zacatecas, probably began activities during the Early Classic period
(Canutillo phase, ca. AD 200-500), and reached its apogee around the Late Classic (Alta
 95

Vista and Vesuvio phases, ca. AD 500-800). It was the traders from Chalchihuites who
gave further impetus to the systematic acquisition of greenstone during the Classic
period. In addition to extracting it themselves, they monopolized the production from
other areas with the goal of exchanging it outside their territory 15 (pp. 118-120).
Although a few turquoise objects dating to the 6th century have been found in
Chaco Canyon, New Mexico, evidence is scarce before the 10th century AD, and the
mining boom took place between 1350 or 1375 and 1600. The mines at Cerrillos, New
Mexico, are the best documented ones (Mathien 2001:103-104).
But turquoise was more than just a valuable possession, for in pre-Hispanic
times it became a symbol of status and nobility. Turquoise is quite abundant in many
archaeological finds in Mesoamerica, though there are no natural deposits of this rock in
this cultural area. In fact, the largest deposits are found in the Southwestern United
States and adjacent areas of northern Mexico. That there was a formal and highly-
structured trade in turquoise between these regions and nuclear Mesoamerica is
reflected in the fact that over a million pieces of this stone have been found by
archaeological projects in the Southwest and Mesoamerica. Thanks to nuclear activation
analysis, we know that many of the ones found in Mexico came from specific mines in
New Mexico, Arizona and Nevada (Harbottle and Weigand 1992:78-79).
The earliest find of this green gem is dated at around AD 600, but it was not
until the Late Classic (ca. AD 700-900) and Early Postclassic (ca. AD 900-1200) that
the use of turquoise became generalized throughout Mesoamerica. A large proportion of
this turquoise came from Cerrillos, New Mexico, although there were other sources as
well. Chaco Canyon seems to have controlled its distribution in an almost monopolistic
way. Eventually, the peoples of the Southwest began to send finished objects made of
turquoise to Mesoamerica instead of the uncut stone in bulk form; providing the first
evidence of the structural integration of the Southwest into the commercial system of
Mesoamerica (Harbottle and Weigand 1992:80-81).
Around AD 600, miners at Chalchihuites, Zacatecas, were extracting an almost
endless variety of minerals, including malachite, azurite, flint or chert, cinnabar,
hematite, and probably native copper. Around one hundred years later, evidence appears
of large-scale turquoise work arising in the area of Cerrillos, New Mexico, as mentioned
above. At that time, the inhabitants of Alta Vista (Zacatecas) began to import large
15
There are no turquoise deposits in the Chalchihuites area; the miners from this region exploited malachite and azurite. The
knowledge thus gained may have enabled those experienced miners to obtain turquoise from further north, thus initiating a
procurement system (Phil Weigand, pers. comm.).
 96

quantities of rough turquoise, also from Cerrillos. In fact, workshops where these
objects were manufactured have been found in Alta Vista, including the largest ones in
all of Mesoamerica dedicated to working this valuable green stone. Part of the
production remained at the site, while the rest was sent to the great urban centres of the
Classic period: Teotihuacan and Cholula, among others (Harbottle and Weigand 1992:
80).
Turquoise consumption continued to increase in importance in both
Mesoamerica and the Southwest through the 13th century AD. In order to satisfy the
growing demand, additional sources were opened and new trading sites appeared,
foremost among them Casas Grandes, Chihuahua. During the Late Postclassic, the
Tarascan Empire exerted control over the trade routes running along the Pacific coastal
plain. Although the Tarascans may not have been directly involved in the turquoise
trade, we know that this and other green stones were highly valued by their elite.
Moreover, other polities may have imposed their own conditions to allow the flow of
trade to run through their territories (Harbottle and Weigand 1992:80). 16
The distance between the northern periphery of Mesoamerica and its central
areas is considerable, but part of the journey may have been made by water using rivers,
lakes or following the coastline. A second route surely ran inland, following the eastern
flanks of the Sierra Madre Occidental through scarcely-populated areas with no natural
barriers (see discussion in Chapter VI). In the Jalisco highlands and the Lerma River
watershed, there were independent polities that would have been powerful enough to
hinder progress along such trade routes. The merchants who took turquoise from
northern to central Mexico may have exchanged it for a broad range of products, though
archaeological evidence for this is not abundant. One trade element that has been
preserved in the archaeological record consists of seashells from the Gulf of Mexico;
many of which have been found in archaeological sites in the Southwest (Harbottle and
Weigand 1992:82-84). Other goods obtained in exchange for turquoise were marine
shells from the Pacific Ocean and the Gulf of California, parrot and macaw feathers
from the coast of the Gulf of Mexico, cotton, and copper bells made in Western Mexico.
Exchange of these sumptuary or scarce goods may have been controlled by regional
caciques or chieftains (Plog 1997:24, 113). The main stimulus for this extensive trade
originated in the demand for green stones, but once the trade routes were open other

16
For instance, turquoise from Cerrillos has been found in Guasave (Sinaloa), Ixtlán del Río (Nayarit), Zacoalco, and Las Cuevas
(Jalisco) (Weigand 1995:124).
 97

minerals were exported to the south, including garnet and peridotite. Eventually, other
trade goods were added to the list: bison skins, salt, and perhaps slaves or war captives
(Riley 1995:114).
Linda Cordell (1984) states that there may have been a migration of people from
Mexico to the Southwest, an argument she bases on a series of shared cultural traits that
included ‘a well-developed ceramic complex, clay figurines, cremations, a sophisticated
and lengthy canal system, excavated wells, trough metates, turquoise mosaics, and a
well-developed shell industry’ (p. 162). To this list we should add ball courts,
ceremonial platforms, worked copper (presumably from Western Mexico), and shells
from the Gulf of Mexico (Riley 2005). Although the idea of large-scale migration is
open to debate, it may explain the similarities between these two regions and the
development of their closely-knit trade networks.
Although Pollard (2003b) points out that there is no direct archaeological
evidence to support the idea that the Tarascan state exerted control over the turquoise
trade, the truth is that this stone was coveted by the Tarascan elite. One example of this
is the find in Tres Cerritos –the site in the Lake Cuitzeo Basin discussed earlier– of an
elite tomb 17 that contained a veritable treasure trove of turquoise objects, including 43
plaques of irregular shape which may have been part of a mosaic since a yellowish paste
that functioned as glue still adhered to them. Other items of green stone found in this
tomb are 86 beads of different sizes and shapes, most of them round, and a highly-
polished, thin plaque in the shape of a half-moon with two perforations that was surely
part of a pectoral. The list of green stone items found there includes three trapezoidal
plaques with a perforation at one end, and two moon-shaped plaques (Macías Goytia
1998:176).
Turquoise has also been found in elite burials at Urichu, an important pre-
Hispanic site in the Lake Pátzcuaro Basin (Pollard and Cahue 1999: Figure 10, p. 273).
Finally, the Museo Michoacano (Morelia, Michoacán) has several pre-Hispanic objects
(sadly with no known archaeological context) made of green stone: necklaces, beads
and pectorals, all showing a high level of workmanship. Items like these were reserved
for the highest stratum of Tarascan society (see illustrations in Boehm [editor]
1994:194, 209, 215).

17
The tombs at Tres Cerritos appear to have been utilized more than once, since they show a mixture of Teotihuacan and Tarascan
cultural materials; therefore, the turquoise found there could pre-date considerably the Tarascan occupation of this site.
 98

Green stones like jadeite, diorite, serpentine, and turquoise were the most
important gemstones in Mesoamerica. Jade was the most highly-valued stone among the
Olmecs of the Formative period, and was equally prized by later cultures. Green stones
always had a privileged and outstanding role as, for instance, part of funerary
ceremonies or in the dedication of ritually or politically important buildings. The color
of turquoise was symbolically equated with vegetation and water and so became a
metaphor for life and fertility. The Aztec symbol called chalchihuitl (the name given to
green stones in Nahuatl) stood for something precious. It is no coincidence that, like
green quetzal feathers and jade, the most highly-valued stone among the Aztecs and
other cultures of the Postclassic period was also green (Pasztory 1983:250).
Among the Aztecs, three kinds of turquoise were recognized according to
characteristics such as color, sheen and texture. The most sought-after variety was
called teoxiuitle, which was assumed to be constantly smoking. Regarded as belonging
to the gods, it was reserved for making objects associated with the cult of one deity or
another. A second kind of green stone, called xiuhtomolli, was used to make beads;
while a third kind of stone of a green-white color known as xiuhtomoltetl, was believed
to have medicinal properties. Turquoise was considered precious not just because it was
rare, but also because it was identified with rain deities such as Tlaloc and his consort,
Chalchiuhtlicue. Finally, the blue-green color of turquoise evoked for some
Mesoamericans the blue of the water and the sky (Shelton 1988:21-22).
During the Postclassic period, turquoise became not just a status symbol, but
also an indispensable preciosity for the ideological reproduction and legitimization of
the state. Therefore, it was among the Tarascan state’s strategic interests to ensure a
constant flow of turquoise towards the royal coffers. Although this imperial power may
not have monopolized the trade routes, it must have exerted some control, however
indirectly.
Among the Aztecs there were specialized jewelers who made masks and other
precious objects. Apart from turquoise and other green stones, they required many other
raw materials, such as pyrite, flint, lignite or jet (a form of coal), gold, pigments,
gemstones (rubies, emeralds, garnets), shell, wood and fibres, resins such as copal,
beeswax, and glue (McEwan et al. 2006:27-37).
Agustín Melgar Tisoc (2014) studied several assemblages of green stones
excavated in the Aztec Great Temple (Figure 66), including turquoise (Figure 67).
Melgar Tisoc discovered that the Aztecs deposited ‘thousands of turquoise items in
 99

different offerings in the [various] construction stages within this building between
1325 and 1520. Most of them are incrustations [of tesserae] forming complex mosaics,
such as disks and ornaments pertaining to certain deities’ (p. 1). Thanks to the
compositional analyses performed on the stones, Melgar Tisoc ‘was able to ascertain
that most of the pieces were turquoise from northwest Mexico and the United States
Southwest’ (p. 1). As for the style of manufacture, it appears that there are three
technological styles: one linked to the Mixtecs, one with an apparent origin outside of
Mesoamerica, and one showing the techniques of the Aztec imperial style.
In this discussion of strategic resources I have included just a handful of
examples, for lack of space. Many more goods could be mentioned, such as cacao,
cotton, fine feathers, and tobacco. Recent research by Lieto et al. (2019), based on the
chemical study of residues in Tarascan pots, suggests that the spouted vessels associated
with the Postclassic Tarascan elite (Figure 68) may have been used for drinking
chocolate. Pollard (2016) wrote that ‘one of the most representative expressions of the
Late Postclasic ceramic tradition are the spouted… vessels, usually decorated with
complex polychrome designs… Based on… chemical studies, spouted vessels had been
related to the consumption of a cacao drink by the detection of biomarkers of cacao,
theobromine and caffeine, absorbed into the clay walls of the vessels’ (p 164). 18
Meanwhile, cotton and maguey-fiber weaving is attested to by an assemblage of
spindle whorls discovered by Pollard (2016) in the Lake Pátzcuaro Basin (Figure 69).
Pollard wrote about this find: ‘The spindle whorl [was] used for spinning cotton
thread… cotton is a plant that cannot grow in the highlands of the Pátzcuaro Basin...
However… raw cotton appears as an article of tribute from at least ten communities
named in the Relaciones Geográficas de Michoacán... Cotton yarn [used] to produce
fabric needed both a spindle and a spindle whorl’, and ‘it is the small whorls and bone
batons appearing archaeologically that document local production of cotton fabric’ (p.
169).
Although little-known, the manufacture of ritual objects with fine feathers was a
well-established industry in many parts of Mesoamerica, including West Mexico (Olay
2004). While archaeological information of feather work is scanty, there are some
ethnohistorical records, such as Sahagún’s Florentine Codex and ethnographic

18
Coe and Coe (1996:46) report fine Maya ceramic vessels with painted decorations and glyphs denoting the word for cacao in
ancient Maya (kakaw). This glyph is common in Maya elite cylindrical vases, so Coe and Coe believe that the vases were used for
cacao production and consumption among the elite. Laboratory analysis discovered traces of teobromina and caffeine, cacao’s
signature markers. Centuries later, the Aztec pochteca were involved in the cacao trade, and were avid consumers of chocolate (p.
74).
 100

information (Mapelli 1993) that could shed light on this aspect of Mesoamerican
culture, including West Mexico (Figure 70).
As for tobacco, it was probably reserved for ritual use, but it may have been as
addictive in the past as it is today, judging by the abundance of pipes and pipe
fragments found in Michoacán (Figure 71) and throughout West Mexico. Tobacco
(Nicotiana sp., called andumucua in Tarascan) appears in 16th-century historical
accounts in Michoacán (e.g. Relación de Cuiseo de la Laguna; Acuña 1987: 87-88),
which speaks to its use in the area. Pollard (2016) affirms that ‘according to the
documentary record concerning the tobacco smoked in the pipes, tobacco has been
cultivated in the lowlands of the Pacific coast [of Michoacán] and the Balsas Basin… It
was used both for the production of smoke to communicate with their patron deity
Curicaueri… and as an herb to cure disease’ (p. 167).
In this section I have discussed archaeological, ethnohistorical and ethnographic
information from several areas of Mesoamerica and beyond, in order to understand the
role played by scarce and strategic resources in the economy of the Tarascan Empire
and other states, such as the Aztecs, during the Protohistoric period. As we have seen,
there was a vast system of trade and tribute networks that were under the control of the
political structure of several Mesoamerican polities. This political-economic system
allowed these polities to thrive through a symbiotic relationship whereby each region
made up for what it lacked by interacting with others in neighboring, or far-off, places.
In this way, relationships of co-dependence were established among contrasting, but
simultaneously complementary, ecological niches; for instance between the humid
lowlands and the semi-arid highlands. What remains to be explained are the
mechanisms through which such long-distance contacts were developed between the
core area of the Tarascan state in the Lake Pátzcuaro Basin and the periphery of the
empire.
 101

Figure 53. The Codex Mendoza, written after the Spanish conquest of the Aztecs,
presents an inventory of the items received as tribute by the Aztec Empire in the pre-
Hispanic period (adapted from Ross 1984: p. 61).

Figure 54. The Aztec macuáhuitl was a fearsome weapon: a wooden club with razor-
sharp obsidian blades on two sides (after Pastrana 2007: Figure 24).
 102

Figure 55. Aztec warriors in full regalia, with lances tipped with obsidian blades
(adapted from Ross 1984: Figure on p. 105).

(a)
 103

(b)

Figure 56. Obsidian artifacts from Michoacán: (a) blades and round object (it could be a
‘blank’ For making a lip-plug or ear-flare); and, (b) obsidian knife (Museo Michoacano,
Morelia, Mich.).

(a) (b)

Figure 57. Obsidian core of conical shape (a), and projectile-points (b) from the Lake
Zacapu region (adapted from Darras 2008: Figures 6 and 7).
 104

Figure 58. Map of the coast of Michoacán, showing the salt-making sites (triangles),
archaeological sites (squares), and modern towns (circles) (map by Eduardo Williams).

Fig. 59. Saltmaker working at La Placita, on the coast of Michoacán. This was the main
salt-producing community in the region until the saltworks were abandoned around
2010 (photo by Eduardo Williams, 2000).
 105

Figure 60. Pre-Hispanic tweezers probably accociated with the Tarascan culture. The
one on the bottom left, with lateral spirals, is identical to the one carried by the petámuti
or Tarascan priest on the chest (adapted from Hosler 1994: Figure 5.6).

Figure 61. Aztec goldsmiths in their workshop (according to Sahagún’s Florentine

Codex, adapted from Hirth 2016: Figure 5.8).
 106

Figure 62. Gold bell found in offering 34 inside the Huitzilopochtli shrine of the Aztec
Great Temple (Mexico City). Height: 2.7 cm (after Bonifaz and Robles 1981: Figure
40).

Figure 63. The Mixtec smiths were highly skilled artisans, as shown in this ornament
(two views) from La Chinantilla, Oaxaca, representing a skull with two bells attached
(adapted from Covarrubias 1957: Figure 137).
 107

Figure 64. Bells manufactured with ‘wire’ technology, found in Michoacán and Jalisco
(adapted from Hosler 1994b: Figure 5.2).

Figure 65. Aztec ritual mask, made of wood covered with thousands of finely-crafted
turquoise tesserae (eyes and teeth of shell). © Trustees of the British Museum;
reproduced with permission.
 108

Figure 66. Greenstone mask with shell and obsidian incrustations, found in Chamber II
of the Aztec Great Temple (Mexico City). Provenience: Mezcala, Guerrero; height: 21.6
cm (after Bonifaz and Robles 1981: Figure 85).

Figure 67. Aztec necklace made of gold, mother-of-pearl and greenstone. The individual
pieces are figures of fish, frogs, snails, serpent heads and rattlesnake tails, as well as
human heads. There is a total of 188 pieces. Found in Chamber II of the Aztec Great
Temple (Mexico City). Diameter: 60 cm (after Bonifaz and Robles 1981: Figure 51).
 109

Figure 68. Spouted vessel from an elite burial at Urichu, in the Lake Pátzcuaro Basin.
This kind of pot may have been used for drinking chocolate in Michoacán during the
Protohistoric period (courtesy of Helen Pollard).

Figure 69. Spindle whorls from Urichu, in the Lake Pátzcuaro Basin. Big whorls were
used to spin maguey fiber (upper right), while small ones spun cotton fiber (courtesy of
Helen Pollard).
 110

Figure 70. Reproduction of an Aztec chimalli, or ritual feather shield, manufactured

with traditional techniques by Guillermo Olay (photograph courtesy of Ángeles Olay).

Figure 71. Pipe fragments from Urichu, in the Lake Pátzcuaro Basin. Tobacco
production is reported in several historical sources from Michoacán, and pipes like these
attest to the popularity of smoking in the Postclassic period (courtesy of Helen Pollard).
 111

Final Remarks
This chapter takes up the narrative about Postclassic West Mexico where Chapter VI
left off. Chapter VII concentrates on the Tarascan Empire in the Mesoamerican
ecumene. First I discuss several aspects of the empire, such as the social structure and
political organization, noting that the Tarascans were the only culture in West Mexico
that achieved the level of complexity we associate with the state.
In Mesoamerican archaeology, the state as a political entity has been regarded as
exclusive to the central and southern regions of the ecumene. It was not until recent
years that archaeologists began to investigate the Tarascans from the perspective of
state-level sociopolitical organization. One of the problems is that the concept of ‘state’
may have different meanings for different authors. Elman Service (1975) wrote a
discussion about ancient complex societies that may shed some light on the problem of
defining states in Mesoamerica. According to Service, when we study ‘primitive states
and archaic civilizations’, we are dealing fundamentally with the evolution of a
bureaucracy with theocratic authority, which is also responsible for creating and
managing the economic sphere of society. Even in the earliest and simplest examples,
the political power organized the economy, not the other way around. In many early
complex societies (i.e. states of their immediate precursors) there was a system of
redistribution and assignation, not an acquisitive system that required personal wealth to
gain individual power (p. xiii).
The discussion of urbanism at Tzintzuntzan, the capital of the Tarascan state in
this chapter, is based primarily on of Pollard’s work of many years, both archaeological
fieldwork and ethnohistorical research. Although Pollard says that Tzintzuntzan was the
only site within the Tarascan region that is a truly urban center, there are other examples
of large-scale architecture and nucleated settlement, both in the Lake Pátzcuaro Basin
(i.e. Ihuatzio) and in the Lake Zacapu Basin (Las Milpillas). What is needed is more
fieldwork to understand in a more complete and thorough way the features of the
Tarascan mode of urbanism, and how it differs from the rest of Mesoamerica. To this
end, the present discussion includes many examples from other cultures, primarily the
Aztecs. Another aspect of Tarascan culture that is discussed here is the political
economy, from marketplaces to long-distance trade and the tribute system.
In the second section of this chapter, I discuss the Lake Cuitzeo Basin, which is
defined as a ‘key economic area’ based on the precepts first laid out by Phil Weigand,
who based his interpretations about the Teuchitlan tradition’s economic structure on
 112

Ch’ao-Ting Chi’s work on Chinese prehistory. We saw in this chapter that the Lake
Cuitzeo Basin and its environs had many key resources that were absent in the Tarascan
core area around Lake Pátzcuaro: obsidian, salt, metals (copper, tin, silver, and gold),
and lime, to name the most important ones. In order to control the procurement of these
resources, the Tarsacan Empire relied on the site of Huandacareo, which may have been
the imperial outpost in this region. Another reason for the Tarascan interests in this lake
basin was its location in the Lerma River region, an important resource area and a route
for communication to a wide region of West Mexico.
The third and last section of this chapter deals with the circulation of rare and
strategic resources (the oft-mentioned obsidian, salt, metals, turquoise, cacao, cotton,
feathers, tobacco, etcetera), in the context of the Tarascan political economy. In his
discussion of Mesoamerican economy, Hirth (2016) says that the economy of this
ecumene ‘is often described either in functional terms or from the perspective of its
political economy. The functional perspective views economic behavior in terms of the
production, distribution, and consumption of resources… This approach sorts economic
behavior into the key activities that individuals use to support themselves socially and to
reproduce themselves biologically’ (p. 20). In contrast to the above viewpoint, Hirth
mentions that
…the political economy perspective is more interested in how the production
and mobilization of resources contributed to the development and support of
complex social stratification. Scholars following this approach have focused on
the structure of tribute systems, the operation of market systems, and
organization of long-distance trade… Although this provides insight into the
creation and maintenance of specific political institutions, it does not provide a
comprehensive view of the organization and integration of economic behavior.
What is needed is an approach that incorporates functional components of the
economy with a holistic discussion of its scale, organizational omplexity, and
segmental specialization and integration (p. 20).

In the topic of political economy, Hassig (1985) presents a discussion about the
Aztec Empire, which in his opinion is comparable to the Roman Empire. The Roman
Empire ‘was one of hegemonic expansionism. The [Romans] did not fortify and man
the frontier. Rather, beyond their nuclear zone of direct control (the territorial empire)
lay two zones of diplomatic control, an inner one composed of client states and an outer
 113

one composed of client tribes’ (pp. 92-93). In a hegemonic empire, the client states
‘actively supplied auxiliary troops and provided peripheral security… Roman troops
were deployed as a field army, available to meet threats rather than being tied to
territorial defense’ (p. 93). In this case the empire ‘was one of political rather than
territorial control, buttressed by the threat rather than the presence of Roman military
might, thus achieving great economy of force’ (p. 93).
In such a system as the Aztec Empire, ‘a standing army, garrisons, and
fortifications take on a different significance from that in a territorial empire… Aztec
expansion was neither continuous nor smooth but punctuated by revolts and
reconquest… However, the Aztecs did engage in successful imperial expansion, and
there was at least some internal cohesion’ (pp. 93-94). The Aztec model of imperialism
may help us to understand how the Tarascans managed to control their own empire.
The last section of Chapter VII deals with circulation of strategic resources
within the confines of the Tarascan Empire. For the sake of brevity, I will mention just
one resource: salt. Because salt was easily available in the Lake Cuitzeo Basin, one
could think that the Tarascans in Tzintzuntzan would not be interested in obtaining this
product from the Pacific Ocean coast. However, the coastal area of Michoacán was
within the range of the long-distance porters (a distance of some 280 km via the modern
highway). As I explain elsewhere (Williams 2018), the salt from Lake Cuitzeo is
yellow-colored and rather coarse, while the salt from the coast is fine and white. Also,
each one had a particular chemical composition. Salt production in Michoacán was
geared to the needs of local communities, so in most cases small-scale production may
have been sufficient. However, there was also a brisk long-distance trade with the far-
away provinces of the Tarascan Empire. This should not be seen as a contradiction, for
a similar situation has been reported in other areas of Mesoamerica, such as the Yucatán
Peninsula. This was really a matter of social classes and salt quality. The white salt from
the coast may have been reserved for the elites, while the salts of lesser quality may
have been produced on a local level to satisfy the needs of the common people
(McKinnon and Kepecs 1989:523). This idea is supported by the fact that not all
saltworks produced salt with the same characteristics; compare the information
presented in Williams 2015: Tables 4 and 6.
This chapter gives an insight into the workings of the Tarascan Empire from the
perspective of archaeological and ethnohistorical data from Michoacán and other
regions and cultures of Mesoamerica, especially the Aztec Empire. Much remains to be
 114

learned about this subject, and the discussion presented here should be regarded as a
first step, rather than the final word, about a fascinating aspect of West Mexican history
in the context of the Mesoamerican ecumene.

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available at: www.famsi.org/research/williams

2005 Una pizca de sal: nuevos datos acerca de la producción salinera en la cuenca de
Cuitzeo, Michoacán. In El antiguo occidente de México: nuevas perspectivas
sobre el pasado prehispánico, edited by Eduardo Williams, Phil C. Weigand,
Lorenza Lopez, and David C. Grove El Colegio de Michoacán, Zamora.

2009a The Exploitation of Aquatic Resources at Lake Cuitzeo, Michoacán, Mexico: An

Ethnoarchaeological Study. Latin American Antiquity 20 (4), pp. 607-627.
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2009b Producción e intercambio de recursos estratégicos en la cuenca de Cuitzeo,

Michoacán, durante el periodo Protohistórico. In Las sociedades complejas del
Occidente de México en el mundo mesoamericano: homenaje al Dr. Phil C.
Weigand, edited by Eduardo Williams, Lorenza López, and Rodrigo Esparza. El
Colegio de Michoacán, Zamora.

2010 Salt Production and Trade in Ancient Mesoamerica. In Pre-Columbian

Foodways: Interdisciplinary Approaches to Food, Culture, and Markets in
Ancient Mesoamerica, edited by John E. Staller and Michael D. Carrasco.
Springer Science and Business Media, New York.

2014a Water Folk: Reconstructing an Ancient Aquatic Lifeway in Michoacán, Western

Mexico. British Archaeological Reports. BAR International Series 2617.
Archaeopress, Oxford (123 pp.)

2014b La gente del agua: etnoarqueología del modo de vida lacustre en Michoacán. El
Colegio de Michoacán, Zamora (416 pp.)

2014c Reconstructing an Ancient Aquatic Lifeway in the Lake Cuitzeo Basin,

Michoacán, Mexico. Ancient Mesoamerica 25(1), pp. 49-67.

2015 The Salt of the Earth: Ethnoarchaeology of Salt Production in Michoacán,

Western Mexico. British Archaeological Reports. BAR International Series
2725. Archaeopress, Oxford (154 pp.)

2017 Tarascan Pottery Production in Michoacán, Mexico: An Ethnoarchaeological

Perspective. Archaeopress, Oxford (190 pp.)

2018 La sal de la tierra: etnoarqueología de la producción salinera en el occidente de

México. (Second Edition). El Colegio de Michoacán and Fideicomiso Teixidor,
Zamora and Mexico City.

2019 Elaboración de sal con técnicas tradicionales en la costa de Michoacán:

perspectiva etnoarqueológica. Arqueología Mexicana (in press).

Williams, Eduardo, and Phil C. Weigand

2004 Introducción. In Bienes estratégicos en el occidente de México: Producción e
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Wolf, Eric
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