The Enduring Toltecs

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(Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory, 2017)

Tula, Hidalgo was an important early Postclassic city that dominated much of central Mexico, as well as adjacent regions to its north and west. For many decades, Tula was thought to be the city that early colonial documents referred to as “Tollan,” or “place of the reeds.” It is clear that the Aztec Empire, a later civilization that dominated a much larger area, revered Tollan and connected themselves to the city and its people, the Toltecs, in various ways. Recent research has questioned whether Tula was indeed the Tollan that the Aztecs revered; instead, “Tollan” may have been a concept that referred to all of the great civilizations that preceded the Aztecs. These two perspectives, which I frame as the “single Tollan/many Tollans” debate, have important consequences for our understanding of the early Postclassic period as well as colonial configurations of power.

“The Enduring Toltecs” argues that to understand the Aztecs’ relationships with their past, and the colonial consequences of those relationships, it is important to shift away from questions of truth. Instead, I concentrate on historical narratives and the social, material, and biological effects that they produced. I identify the ways that the Tollan narrative morphed over time in tandem with the Aztecs’ rising power, showing that it was not sufficient for Aztec historical claims to be produced discursively; they also had to be manifested in the material world.

 

Image credit: LatinAmericanStudies.org