EXCAVATION OF A SITE AT SANTIAGO AHUITZOTLA, 

 D. F. MEXICO 



By Alfred M. Tozzer 



INTRODUCTION 



Since the days of the Spanish occupation, the vicinity of Mexico 

 City has naturally been a rich field for the antiquities of pre-Colum- 

 bian times. Mexico City, the ancient Tenochtitlan, has yielded a 

 large variety of remains, from the well-known Calendar Stone to 

 thousands of minor objects appearing wherever any extended excava- 

 tions have been carried on. Outside of the city proper an immense 

 number of objects has come to light. These consist of small clay 

 heads, figurines, and pottery of various varieties, with a relatively 

 small number of stone objects. One of the richest fields for these 

 relics is northwest of the city and west of the suburb of Atzcapo- 

 tzalco. This is at present a center for the brick-making industry, 

 and it is owing principally to the excavations necessary in taking 

 out the adobe that there has appeared a very large number of ob- 

 jects from this locality. Among the first to undertake careful exca- 

 vations here was the International School under the successive 

 directorships of Professors Seler and Boas, Dr. Engerrand, and the 

 author. The most important archeological problem for the past 

 years has been the investigation of the various strata in this area 

 as showing the succession of cultures which have been called, respec- 

 tively, the Archaic {tijyo de 7no7itana and tipo de cerro), Toltec ^ (pre- 

 Aztec or Teotihuacan), and Aztec. The importance of this study 

 upon the general archeological ]iroblems of Mexico and the greater 

 part of Middle America can not be overestimated.^ 



1 It has seemed best to the author to employ the much-abused term " Toltec " to 

 designate the culture preceding that of the Aztec in the Valley of Mexico, that culture 

 to which are due the structures at San Juan Teotihuacan. 



2 See Boas. '• Summary of the worlj of the International School of American Archeolofry 

 and Ethnology in Mexico," Amer. Anthrop., n. s. vol. 17, pp. 384—395, 1915 ; Tozzer, 

 Report of the Director of the International School of American Archeology for 1913 — 

 1914, Amer. Anthrop., n. s. vol. 17, pp. 391-395, 1915. 



It is with some surprise that we learn that Seler in his last published papers on 

 Mexico (" Die Teotiuacan-Kultur des Hochlandes von Mexico " in his Gesammelte 

 Abhandlungen zur Amerikanischen Sprach- und Alterthumskunde, vol. 5, Berlin, 1915, 

 p. 409) refuses to accept fully the theory that people of the Archaic culture lived in 

 the Valley of Mexico. He thinks that the archaic remains were washed into the valley 

 from the surrounding mountains. The fact that archaic specimens have been found with 



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