Urbanism and Monte Alban architecture (Oaxaca)
Nelly M. Robles Garc?a
The time had finally come to receive the new Sun. During the wait of 52 years, there had been a lot of deaths, wars, births and periods of peace but, above all, it had been a time to do civil and religious works in the capital city of the Beniz?a.
At the end of the year 100 AD, the work had advanced considerably in the religious, political and cultural capital, now considered the heart of the empire.
The Observatory was already functioning and the movements of the stars and constellations were traced; this was the only way to precisely outline the Grand Plaza and the buildings that they would later build. The Observatory had a double function, as the stones on its fa?ade told the stories of the conquests carried out by the Beniz?a soldiers. This also fulfilled the need to announce the feats of their armies to their enemies and the population at large.
At that time, the Grand Plaza was almost totally leveled and there was a lot of activity; some men cut stone while others carried earth and soil in big baskets and still others leveled the hundreds of square meters of the Plaza. Scientists worked on the design of the new buildings that would later surround the plaza; this work had to be completed by the next Sun.
The noblemen?s residences and temples were among those buildings of that era. Towards the north, one could see the incipient Temple of Agriculture, a great rock and earth platform, whose fa?ade was decorated with an enormous serpent. Further on, there was the Temple of the Two Doors with its austere stucco slabs.
In this same section, there were many noblemen?s and wise men?s residences, like the sumptuous adobe and stone house belonging to one of the main lords who was in charge of directing the leveling works in the Grand Plaza. The residence was very beautiful, with its portico of four columns in the center of the patio; the walls, floors and stairs were covered in stucco that was made from a mixture of lime and the nopal cactus fluid. The roofs were made of straw tightly knit to keep out the cold winds.
On the eastern side, the was a lachi (tlachtli game area( gueya), where warriors recreated the ritual of movement (ollin) with a ball that helped them preserve life and win wars. This rite was so important that five more areas or courts were being built.
In the center of the plaza, there was a pond of water that was needed for all construction work and for worshiping Cocijo. As they were in the middle of the transition of the old Sun to the new, a priest made an offering of a jade mask of the Bat god in this pond.
However the plans were to make the city bigger and more beautiful; therefore the new Sun demanded organization to build big structures like temples, palaces, residences and roads. But to achieve this, the Beniz?a needed leaders with characters of steel to conquer other villages and towns and obtain the necessary tributes.
Using workers that came from all local areas and those gained from conquered villages, the Beniz?a set themselves the task of building the center of the city, Under the supervision of the wise priests, who were also architects, hundreds of artisans and thousands of workers got to work; they, of course, had permission from the gods to proceed. There were also plans to add on to the existing buildings that had served during the old Sun, and so they knocked down some walls and built new ones and filled in the spaces between the buildings in a process of renovation.
The Beniz?a had planned to create a majestic city, second only to Teotihuacan, the great city on the High Central Plain from which came religious, artistic and political influences.
The biggest and most beautiful buildings were designed on large pyramidal platforms and they all had a staircase in the middle, up which only the priests and those performing in the ceremonies could go. These stone buildings comprised a square patio closed off in the middle and were surrounded by three of four rooms.
The temples were dedicated to different deities, and ceremonies in honor of the gods took place in them concurrently. The priests carried out other ceremonies alone, which decided the destiny of the city in the presence of the gods. Other buildings were used for initiation rites and marriages.
Some were very complex, as in reality, they consisted of groups of buildings integrated on a large platform, in the center of which there was a temple, a closed patio and a special worship room where they placed their offerings.
The building d?cor was adapted from
stone slabson the Teotihucan buildings. This was a long frame that went from the sides of the central staircases to the limits of the sloping walls; but then the Zapotecs came up with a d?cor that was more complex than that in Teotihucan. They doubled it and over imposed two cornices on the vertical wall. This slab of stone served as a frame on which to place different decorative motifs, all in stucco, like the solar discs that appear in sequence on the walls of the tlachtli building, like the jaguars seen on other temples on the northern side, like the serpent motifs that abound in the city, or like some jewels as seen on a building on the northern side of the Grand Plaza, where the emissaries from Teotihuacan, who had come to advise the Beniz?a, spent time. In fact, some Zapotec artisans had gone to Teotihuacan and lived there for several years in a spirit of collaboration with the great Teotihuacan rulers.
The finish on all parts of the buildings was made of a thin layer of stucco, as though it were the buildings? skin. The best artists were brought to the city to provide the finishing touches like flowers and butterflies floating in the sky, or simply ochre-colored bands that marked the way to be taken by the priests on the floor of the Grand Plaza.
This grand plaza was conceived to fulfill certain functions in which many people would participate; thousands of persons from different villages and towns would come to join in the ceremonies that took place there. The Plaza had four access roads. From early in the day, one could see the people go up and make their offerings to the city so that they could take part in the ceremonies.
On other occasions the Plaza was used as a market place where merchants came from all over to barter their products with the Zapotecs, but also to hear the news from other places. The Beniz?a had achieved their objective of making the Plaza the heart of their culture.
Other buildings of importance were the nobles? palaces. The noblemen lived in stone houses built on small platforms. These houses also had a square patio in the center, several surrounding rooms and, invariably, a tomb below the patio floor to be used every time a member of the family died, thus ensuring that the dead continued to be present among the living.
Other constructions that required organization were the hydraulic works that dealt with the supply of water to the city. Given the droughts that often occurred in the valley, there was a need to build a source of water supply like the small dams on the north and south sides of the plaza and on the sides of the hills, where they took advantage of the slope and the streams to make the necessary dikes.
However the problem of the rainwater in the Grand Plaza was something else. It was well known that Cocijo sometimes concentrated his discharge of rain on the heart of the city, and so they had to build tunnels under the platforms to remove the water to the south and southeastern sides of the Plaza, a project that required very detailed calculations. Drainage canals were also built under the palace and temple platforms for the same purpose.
The common people did not live in the Grand Plaza. Their humble abodes were located on the sides of the hills and they were always associated with the tilling of the land. Each family looked after its own plot of land. They sowed and harvested it for their own consumption and for that of the city. The houses were rustic, made of plaited cane and covered in mud and lime, the so called bajareque.
The houses usually were linked to some small temple or plaza to form the neighborhoods of the city.; Bani B?a had at least four neighborhoods, whose inhabitants were directly involved with the arduous task of building them. But the neighborhoods were not autonomous, as they depended on the ordinances of the high priest. They delivered tributes as requested, and the dwellers worked together on the construction of houses and also on collective works that were part of the communal system of working.
Artisans also lived in the neighborhoods; there were construction workers, stucco plasterers, painters, stone carvers, potters, jewelers and knitters among many other specialists. The best potters came from the Atzompa neighborhood that had real masters in the art of molding clay; artisans came from other neighborhoods to decorate the buildings and houses; the lime ovens were in Xoxocotl?n where the materials, starting with the large rocks, were processed. The best shell jewelers came from Ejutla.
At it peak, the city had about 25,000 inhabitants; it was a large city that ruled the destinies of those who lived in the Oaxaca area, and so an effective system of government was required. Given that the Beniz?a were destined to reign supreme over the other towns and villages, they adopted a strict form of government that was based on a ruling authoritarian sector, supported by a powerful army.
This sector was comprised of priests who were also wise men, witch doctors and prophets and the populace believed blindly in what they said and ordered, given that they were demi gods. The army was given the charge of expanding their territories beyond the Valley of Oaxaca to the coast, the sierra and the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, as it was vital that they received tributes, their only source of food, water, clothes and other provisions that provided comfort to the city?s rulers.
The warlike nature of the Zapotecs throughout their history made the construction of defensive walls necessary in a later era. This task was carried out by the population at large and their prisoners. This wall was made to defend them from attacks by other groups like the Mixes and the Mixtecs in the surrounding regions, The wall went right through the temples on the south side without any regard for the beauty of the place.
This city has been a lesson in life and in communion with the gods, as during the course of several Suns, the Beniz?a, with the consent of the gods, had achieved their objective of building the heart of their empire.
Source: Pasajes de la Historia # 3 Monte Alb?n y los zapotecos
http://www.mexicodesconocido.com.mx/english/historia/prehispanica/detalle.cfm?idsec=1&idsub=2&idpag=589
