Xochicalco: The Hilltop City After Teotihuacan's Fall

Xochicalco was a fortified hilltop city in Morelos, central Mexico, that flourished from about AD 650 to 900, after the great city of Teotihuacan lost its power. Its Temple of the Feathered Serpent, solar observatory and defensive terraces reflect a turbulent age of competing city-states. Xochicalco became an important centre of trade, religion and calendar knowledge before it was burned and abandoned around 900.

A new age after Teotihuacan

For centuries Teotihuacan dominated central Mexico. Around AD 550–650 its central precinct was burned and its influence collapsed. The following period, roughly 650–900, is known as the Epiclassic. It saw the rise of several regional powers, among them Xochicalco, Cacaxtla in Tlaxcala, Cholula and, later, Tula.

These new cities competed for land, trade routes and prestige. Many were built in defensible locations, and their art often shows warfare and contacts with distant regions, including the Maya area and the Gulf Coast. Xochicalco was one of the most successful of these states.

A fortified hilltop city

Xochicalco was built on a series of hills, the highest of which was levelled and terraced to carry the main ceremonial buildings. Workers reshaped the slopes into broad terraces, retaining walls and platforms that held houses, workshops and temples.

The city was protected by ditches, ramparts and walls, with controlled entrances and causeways. The design made it difficult for enemies to approach the centre. At its height the city may have held around 10,000–15,000 people, though estimates vary, and it controlled much of western Morelos.

At the top of the hill lay the Acropolis, probably the residence of the ruling elite, and the Main Plaza with temples. Lower down were ballcourts, three in all, a large market area, steam baths and residential neighbourhoods.

The Temple of the Feathered Serpent

The best-known building is the Temple of the Feathered Serpent, a low pyramid platform in the Main Plaza. Its sloping lower walls carry reliefs of large feathered serpents, whose undulating bodies frame seated figures wearing elaborate headdresses. Above, on the vertical panels, are further seated figures, warriors and calendar glyphs.

The seated figures show features in a style reminiscent of Maya art, while the feathered serpents recall the Temple of the Feathered Serpent at Teotihuacan. One relief shows a figure apparently pulling one date sign towards another with a rope. Some scholars interpret this as a record of a gathering of priests or lords who met to correlate or adjust the calendar. This “calendar congress” idea is attractive but remains debated.

The reliefs were originally covered with painted plaster, and traces of red pigment survive. The temple was partly restored by Leopoldo Batres in 1909–1910. Feathered serpent imagery here may be an early form of the cult of the deity later known in central Mexico as Quetzalcoatl.

The observatory

On the northern side of the hill is an artificial cave carved into the rock, with a narrow hexagonal shaft rising to the surface. Between about late April and mid-August, when the sun passes near the zenith, sunlight shines down the shaft and projects onto the cave floor around midday.

The two days when the sun is exactly overhead, around 14–15 May and 28–29 July at this latitude, may have been especially important. Many scholars think the cave helped priests track the solar year and fix the agricultural and ritual calendar. Similar shafts are known at other Mesoamerican sites, including Monte Albán. Today visitors can enter the cave and watch the effect during the months when it occurs.

Life in the city

Houses at Xochicalco were built on terraces along the slopes, grouped around small patios. Residents farmed the valleys below, but water was scarce in the long dry season, so the city depended on cisterns and reservoirs that stored rainwater collected from plazas and roofs.

A long paved causeway, lined with round stone altars, climbed towards the centre and served as the main ceremonial approach. The city’s three ballcourts show the importance of the Mesoamerican ballgame, played with a heavy rubber ball. Their I-shaped plan resembles later courts at Tula and Chichen Itza, and stone rings set into the walls served as goals. Steam baths, known in Nahuatl as temazcalli, were used for cleansing and healing.

Trade, crafts and the stelae

Xochicalco was a centre of craft production and trade. Workshops produced obsidian blades, and the city imported goods such as greenstone, shell and fine pottery. Studies of obsidian workshops by Kenneth Hirth showed that much of this craft work took place inside ordinary households rather than in large state-run workshops, with families producing blades for exchange in the city’s market. Its position allowed it to control routes linking the Valley of Mexico with Guerrero and the Pacific coast.

In 1961 the Mexican archaeologist César Sáenz found three carved stelae buried in a temple known as Structure A. Painted and carved with calendar glyphs and images of deities, they had been deliberately broken and interred, perhaps in a ritual of termination. They are among the finest examples of Epiclassic sculpture.

Destruction and abandonment

Around 900 Xochicalco suffered a violent end. Excavations have found evidence of burning in the Acropolis and other important buildings, and the city was largely abandoned soon afterwards. Who destroyed it is unknown. Excavators found that sculptures and monuments had been broken and that the main buildings were burned at about the same time. Some archaeologists suggest that the city’s own people rose against their rulers, perhaps under the strain of constant warfare and of maintaining a fortified hilltop city; others point to rival states expanding into Morelos.

After Xochicalco’s fall, Tula became the dominant power in central Mexico. Xochicalco was never again a major city, though later Nahua peoples knew of the ruins and gave them their Nahuatl name.

Rediscovery and research

The Mexican priest and scholar José Antonio Alzate published a description of the ruins in 1791, as a supplement to his Gaceta de Literatura de México, one of the first scholarly accounts of a Mesoamerican site. The naturalist Alexander von Humboldt later wrote about it based on Alzate’s work. Batres restored the Temple of the Feathered Serpent in the early 20th century, and Eduardo Noguera and César Sáenz excavated in the mid-20th century.

From the 1970s Kenneth Hirth surveyed the city and its surroundings, and in the 1990s Norberto González Crespo led a major project of excavation and restoration, which included building a site museum. UNESCO listed Xochicalco as a World Heritage Site in 1999.

Timeline

• c. 550–650: Teotihuacan’s centre is burned and its power declines.
• c. 650: Xochicalco rises as a fortified regional capital.
• c. 700–900: Height of the city; construction of the Temple of the Feathered Serpent.
• c. 900: The Acropolis is burned and the city is abandoned.
• 1791: José Antonio Alzate publishes a description of the ruins.
• 1909–1910: Leopoldo Batres restores the Temple of the Feathered Serpent.
• 1961: César Sáenz discovers the Xochicalco stelae.
• 1999: Inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List.

Why it matters

Xochicalco shows how central Mexico reorganised after the fall of Teotihuacan, with new, heavily defended cities competing for power and trade. Its art blended styles from across Mesoamerica, and its feathered serpent imagery and calendar knowledge helped pass older traditions on to the Toltecs and, ultimately, the Aztecs.