Written by Dr. Michael E. Smith (Professor of Anthropology, University at Albany, State University of New York), this piece looks at excavations on an Aztec urban centre.

Extract:
"Yautepec was an Aztec urban center whose ruins today lie under the modern town of the same name in the Mexican state of Morelos. Three recent archaeological projects make Yautepec one of the most intensively-studied Aztec cities outside of the imperial capital Tenochtitlan. First, Hortensia de Vega Nova of the Centro INAH en Morelos (Instituto Nacional de Antropologia e Historia) has been excavating the royal palace at Yautepec. Second, I directed excavations of houses at Yautepec. Third, my students Lisa Cascio and Timothy Hare conducted a regional survey of settelement patterns in the Yautepec Valley. This web page describes some of the results of the first two projects. Much of the text is adapted from my book, The Aztecs (Blackwell Publishers, Oxford, 1996). All three projects are ongoing, and there is still much to be learned about Aztec Yautepec. The inhabitants of Yautepec were known as the Tlahuica, one of the regional ethnic groups of Aztec civilization."

Yautepec: an Aztec City