Towards an understanding of Aztec architecture and urban planning
Bibliographic record
Abstract
There exists a vast literature examining every aspect of Aztec culture. Despite this, few studies focus specifically on Aztec architecture and its implications for understanding broader aspects of Aztec cosmology. This dissertation contributes to our knowledge of Aztec society through an exploration of architectural and urban design principles that guided the building of their cities and ceremonial precincts. By examining ethnohistoric and archaeological sources, and drawing on evidence from several disciplines—art, astronomy, geography, geometry, mathematics and religion—I compile a body of information relevant to the study of Aztec architecture and urban planning. Cosmovision studies offer an understanding of ritual space and time; pictorial manuscripts contribute mathematical insights; analyses of monumental sculpture provide geometric knowledge; and high mountain archaeological research highlight the sacred landscape. The resulting information was then used in a set of archaeoastronomical analyses of seven pre-Aztec and Aztec architectural complexes. This approach builds on previous studies that have revealed the importance of astronomical considerations in Mesoamerican settlements. In order to analyse Aztec ceremonial architecture and urban planning from an archaeoastronomical perspective, I developed a methodology that allowed accurate analyses of the astronomical and topographic orientations of settlements and ceremonial architecture. This methodology integrates a wide range of digital applications including Google Earth, Google Maps, solar charting, topographic analysis, open-content collaborative, geo-location-oriented photo sharing applications as well as a custom-built geometric application. The results allow for a new understanding of: (1) the design principles of the Huey Teocalli, the unique Aztec double-temple architectural type found in almost all of their ceremonial centres, (2) the layout and design principles utilized in the construction of Tenochtitlan and Tlatelolco and, (3) the Aztec remodelling of Tenayuca, Santa Cecilia Acatitlan and Teopanzolco. These analyses are also extended to the antecedent cultures of the region, revealing new aspects of the urban design principles of Teotihuacan and Tula including an additional interpretation of the Tlaloc mural in Teotihuacan. The implications of this research extend beyond Aztec scholarship, providing a replicable methodology that can be applied to the archaeoastronomical analysis of ancient settlements and ceremonial structures anywhere in the world.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".