The excavation, from 2015 onward, of the great skull rack that colonial and modern writers had known only from sixteenth-century description. It matters twice over. It settles that the tzompantli was a real structure rather than a literary one, and it shows the assemblage was not confined to captured warriors, since women and children are present in it. It settles nothing at all about the totals given in the conquest narratives, because the excavation stops where the standing buildings begin.
Facts
Debunked
Reported Figure136,000 skulls, the figure given for the great skull rack of Tenochtitlan by Andres de Tapia, who came with Cortes. 3Tradition: Spanish conquest narrative Sourced to the subject's own accountAndres de Tapia, a member of Hernan Cortes's own company, reported an extremely large count of skulls at the Aztec skull rack in his Relacion de algunas cosas de las que acaecieron al muy ilustre senor don Hernando Cortes, composed decades after the conquest and printed in 1539, a figure still sometimes quoted as though it measured the rack's actual capacity. The Huei Tzompantli excavations, conducted by Mexico's Instituto Nacional de Antropologia e Historia from 2015, recovered the rack's actual skull count directly from the ground, and no modern archaeological treatment uses Tapia's figure as a measurement, rejected on both textual and physical grounds: Tapia wrote in a conquest narrative whose genre purpose was to justify the Spanish campaign to the crown, not to record an inventory, and the excavated physical evidence does not support a total of that size. The method is source-critical comparison of a colonial narrative genre against physical archaeological recovery of the same structure. The figure is preserved here because the history of the number is itself the subject: an accusation of mass sacrifice made by the people who had just destroyed the city has outlived every attempt to check it against the ground truth now available. Disputed
Point in DisputeThat the skull rack held the heads of captured enemy warriors. 2Tradition: Colonial Spanish sources Mexico's Instituto Nacional de Antropologia e Historia, through its Programa de Arqueologia Urbana, excavated the Huei Tzompantli, the great Aztec skull rack, at the Templo Mayor precinct in Mexico City beginning in 2015, recovering a large assemblage of human skulls modified for display on the rack's timber framework. The Spanish colonial chronicles describe the rack's population as prisoners of war, but the excavated assemblage includes women and children alongside adult men, a demographic mix the colonial picture does not accommodate. The method is osteological and archaeological, examining the recovered skulls for age, sex and modification pattern and comparing that profile against the documentary account rather than assuming the chronicles describe the whole population correctly. What the wider population represents beyond captured male combatants is genuinely argued over, candidates including war captives of both sexes taken from settled communities, people rendered in tribute, and slaves purchased for sacrifice, and the excavation team has not closed the question as the work continues. Method
InvestigatorsInstituto Nacional de Antropologia e Historia, Programa de Arqueologia Urbana 1 Evidence
State of the QuestionExcavation is confined to what can be reached beneath the buildings above, so every published count is of a partial exposure and is expected to rise. 1 Basis of the EvidenceThe skulls are mortared into a circular structure and pierced at the temples in rows, so the deposit is architectural rather than a scatter and can be read as a single constructed assemblage. 2Tradition: Mexica (Aztec) Open Questions
Reported FigureThe total number of individuals held in the great skull rack of Tenochtitlan is not established. 2 This is not a disagreement between scholars. The structure runs beneath standing colonial buildings on Calle Guatemala and only the reachable portion has been exposed; every published count is a count of that portion and has risen with each season. Nobody has proposed a total, because nobody has seen the whole structure. See the open question recorded against this study. Learn More
A Skull Rack Beneath a Colonial Street
Sixteenth-century writers described a huei tzompantli, a great rack of skulls, standing in the ceremonial precinct of Tenochtitlan, the crania threaded on horizontal poles through holes cut at the temples. For four centuries this was known only from those descriptions, and descriptions of that kind, written by men who had come to conquer the place, are exactly what a careful reader discounts.
From 2015 the Programa de Arqueologia Urbana, working on Calle Guatemala a short distance from the Templo Mayor, found it. The excavation exposed rows of skulls pierced at both temples, consistent with the described rack, and beside them a circular structure in which skulls had been set into mortar to build a tower. The skulls in the tower face inward, which means they were mortared as construction material rather than displayed, and that had not been described by anybody.
Two things follow immediately. The tzompantli was a real structure of the kind reported, which is a point for the descriptive content of the colonial accounts. And the assemblage is not what the accounts imply it was. The dominant colonial picture is of captured enemy warriors; the excavated skulls include women and children in numbers that no reading of that picture accommodates. The structure records something wider than the disposal of prisoners of war, and what exactly is a question the excavators have not closed.
Why the Total Is Still an Open Question
The number attached to this structure in popular writing comes from Andres de Tapia, who came to Mexico with Cortes and put the skull rack at 136,000. It is worth being exact about what that figure is. It is a number in a narrative written by a participant in the conquest, in a genre whose business was to account for what the campaign had done and why it had been right. Modern scholarship does not treat it as a count of anything.
What the excavation offers instead is a partial exposure. The structure runs beneath standing colonial buildings, and the archaeologists work in the space the city leaves them. The published counts, which are in the hundreds, are counts of the portion that has been reached, and they have risen with each season of work. Nobody has proposed a total for the whole structure, because nobody can see the whole structure.
That is a genuine gap rather than a disagreement, and it is recorded here as one. There is no scholarly camp arguing for a figure against another camp arguing for a different figure; there is an incomplete excavation and an honest silence. What would close it is full exposure of the structure, which would require access under the buildings above it, and a minimum-number-of-individuals count taken across the complete assemblage rather than across the reachable part of it. Until then the correct answer to how many people are in the great skull rack of Tenochtitlan is that it is not known.
Cross-Tradition Connections
Associated With
2015, Years The Huei Tzompantli Excavation, a field investigation, is dated here from 2015. The great skull rack of Tenochtitlan, found beneath standing colonial buildings on Calle Guatemala in the Centro Historico of Mexico City.
Studied
The great skull rack lies a short distance from the temple, on Calle Guatemala, and is excavated under the same institute.
Sources
Open Questions (1 open question)
How many individuals are held in the great skull rack of Tenochtitlan?
The structure runs under standing colonial buildings on Calle Guatemala in the Centro Historico of Mexico City, and only the portion reachable around them has been exposed. Every published count is a count of that partial exposure and has risen with each season of work. No scholar has proposed a total, so this is a gap rather than a disagreement. The sixteenth-century figures are narrative rather than counts and cannot stand in for one.
What would resolve this Full exposure of the structure, which would require access beneath the buildings above it, together with a minimum-number-of-individuals count taken across the complete assemblage rather than across the reachable part. Short of that, a defensible estimate would need the geometry of the excavated portion projected onto the full plan of the rack, published with its assumptions.
Archaeology and bioarchaeology, with urban heritage engineering for access beneath protected colonial buildings.Instituto Nacional de Antropologia e Historia, Programa de Arqueologia Urbana: the Huei Tzompantli excavations at the Templo Mayor
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