Urbanization and Religion in Ancient Central Mexico by David M. Carballo;

Author:David M. Carballo;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: OUP Premium
Published: 2015-02-15T00:00:00+00:00

Sacred Waters

Mountains and caves were closely associated with water: the first through precipitation patterns and montane springs and streams; the second as potentially damp places and as portals to the watery underworld. Tlalocan, the domain of Tlaloc, was viewed by the Mexica as a hollow mountain filled with water and analogized to an overturned olla (Sahagún 1963:Chapter 12). Just as many central Mexican urban centers referenced mountains or hills through their names (i.e., Xochitecatl, hill of flowers) or hieroglyphic toponyms, others referenced water. Locations discussed thus far include examples in Nahuatl such as Tollan (place of reeds), Cholollan (place of gushing water), Amalucan (place found beside the water), Apizaco (place of thin waters), and Tlapacoyan (washing place), and in Spanish, such as La Laguna (the pond). The cases reviewed in Chapter 3 make it clear that proximity to water—whether in the form of lakes, ponds, marshes, rivers, or springs—was prioritized in the choice of settlement, and that some portion of the variability observed in settlement size correlates with the natural productivity and cultural management of water resources. These resources were culturally elaborated as central features of the sacred landscape, often becoming a focal point at early urban centers for the construction of monuments, shrines, effigies, or were decorated with parietal art.

One example is the major concentration of carved stelae and petroglyphs at Tlalancaleca located to the east of the site, near a now largely dry spring named Ameyal de Tlalancaleca (Figure 3.10). Another comes from Amalucan, where the major mound cluster covers part of the terminus of the earlier canal network (Figure 3.7). Not only does this network provide a counterexample to models of hydraulically based cultural evolution (Fowler 1987), it also suggests that this point on the landscape was culturally meaningful, and some of that meaning likely derived from the inhabitants’ relationship with their source of water. Springs at the foot of Cerro Amalucan, near the epicenter of Cuicuilco, and just west of Xochitecatl’s residential zone of Nativitas (Figure 3.6) would have all been symbolically potent natural features, as was the case later at Teotihuacan and Cholula.

A contemporary example of the sacredness of such features comes from Nativitas, where the spring that once brought fresh water to greater Xochitecatl now feeds a fountain of waters believed to be curative by the over one million pilgrims who journey annually to the site (Salas Quintanal 2012). The spring became sacred to Mexican Christendom following the apparition of the archangel Michael to the native convert Diego Lázaro in 1631 in an episode not unlike the more famed apparition of the Virgin of Guadalupe to Juan Diego. Festivities associated with San Miguel del Milagro last a week at the end of September, during the transition from the rainy season to the dry season, but the most important day is September 29. On this day the sun rises over the Malinche volcano, which likely would also have been appreciated by the prehispanic occupants of Xochitecatl and perhaps associated with a water/fertility goddess, as was the case during the Postclassic with Matlacueye (Serra Puche 2005; Serra Puche et al.

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