Cacaxtla and Xochicalco: the Epiclassic cities of central Mexico

Cacaxtla stood on a natural platform, the Gran Basamento, 200 m long and 25 m high, near the southern border of the modern state of Tlaxcala. It was the capital of the Olmeca-Xicalanca, a people thought to have come from the Gulf coast, and with the nearby ceremonial centre of Xochitecatl it prospered in about 650–900, probably controlling trade routes through the region with no more than 10,000 inhabitants. Its palace murals, rediscovered in 1975 and unusually well preserved, include the Battle Mural, painted before 700: a scene nearly 26 m long in which one group of warriors defeats another, identified as Maya by their profiles and shaped skulls. Other paintings show a bird-man and a jaguar-man, perhaps ruler-priests, combining the imagery of the highlands and of the Maya.

Xochicalco, on an artificially levelled hill in western Morelos, became in the Epiclassic period a city of 10,000–20,000 people by different estimates, and nearly all its standing buildings date from this time. The reliefs of its Temple of the Feathered Serpent combine Teotihuacan and Maya features and show seated figures and the towns that apparently paid tribute to the city; there are also three ballcourts and a cave adapted as an observatory. According to some accounts the city was founded by Olmeca-Xicalanca traders from Campeche. Around 900 it was burned and quickly abandoned; its ruins have been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1999.

Cacaxtla’s ascendancy also ended around 900, and by 1000 the city was deserted. The Maya elements at both sites probably point to close contacts between central Mexico and the Maya world in the same centuries in which the Classic Maya kingdoms declined.