 I also want to invite you all to a reception that will follow our wonderful talk today. And to introduce our speaker, I would like to introduce Dr. Lisa Trevor from the Department of History of Art here at Berkeley. She joined us here after completing her PhD at Harvard in 2013. She is an expert on art, architecture, and ritual. So, thank you. I'm a senior researcher at the Museo de San Salvador and senior professor at the National School of Archaeology and History in Mexico City. Dr. López O'Conn holds doctorate and master's degrees from the University of Paris and the bachelor's degree from the National School of Archaeology and History in Mexico, all awarded with highest honors. He is the author or co-author of 13 academic books, including Vacasa de las Águilas and also Prenda's Atempo Mayor, M.H.B. as well as three books written with renowned historian Alfredo López Osteem, his father, among them El Pasado en Víchanal, Mexico's initials cast, which has appeared and accounted in 12 editions in Spanish. Since 1996, as well as in translation in Italian and French, twice in English and soon to be released in Romanian. It gives you a sense of the scope and the impact that he's researched. López O'Conn is also the author of a prodigious number of articles, essays, and catalogs, the ends are falling in far too numerous for me to even attempt to enumerate here, but I note that he's also the author of two children's books. He has been a visiting professor or invited researcher at institutions in Washington, Princeton, Paris, Guatemala, Jerome, Mexico City, in addition to directing the Temple Later Project and also serving as associated researcher to the Temple of the Moon Project at Teotihuacan. He's been a member of archaeological projects at many of his American and Maya sites including Yashirán, Kulapal, Galeritas, Shalom Keen. Personally, I first came to know Leonardo through our mutual interest in the history of American archaeology and in the ways that the Spanish bourbon excavations and Naples, Charles IV and 15 Naples, the best one to there, sites like Pompeii and Frequente, and how that the bourbon interest in Naples came to motivate and indeed shape antiquarian and archaeological interests in both Mexico and Peru in the 18th century. And I can tell you that he's a rare and generous scholar of many strengths, with depth and breadth of expertise across not just archaeology, but also history and art history. Tomorrow night, I want to point out, he will be delivering the keynote lecture at the young museum in San Francisco for the Association for Latin American Arts Triennial Conference, which is titled Art at Large, Public and Monumental Arts in the Americas. He joins us here today in Berkeley with his wife, archaeologist and conservator, Lamar Fidoen Edel, and we extend a warm welcome to her as well. Since 1999, Dr. Lopez O'Honest and the director of the Templomayor Project in downtown Mexico City within what was the imperial heart of the urban center of Aztec, Tenochtitl. This afternoon, he's going to share with us the latest discoveries from the Templomayor, featuring the most recent colossal stone sculpture that now takes its place among other famous models, Unearthed from below the surface of modern Mexico City. Please join me in welcoming Plain Orchid. Thank you very much, Lisa, for your kind words and everyone for coming today. It's a great honor and privilege for me to be here today, at this sacred place for researchers from all over the world. This is my first time here and I feel really honored. First of all, I would like to express my deepest gratitude to the University of California and especially to Professors Lori Welke, Lisa Trevor and Rosemary Joyce for their kind invitation and for giving me the opportunity to share with all of you the most recent archaeological discoveries in Mexico City. As well, I would like to thank the Association for Latin American Art for actively supporting this very short stay in California and my lecture for tomorrow at the Dijon Museum of San Francisco. I brought everything but my reading glasses, sorry about that. Important thing. The archaeology of Tenochtitlan is unlike that of any other city in the field of Mesoamerican studies. Constrained by circumstances, it faces the same types of challenges posed by the archaeology of Rome, Alexandria, Jerusalem and any settlement in the ancient world whose vestiges lie beneath a modern metropolis. To study the capital of the Aztec Empire, archaeologists most overcome the enormous barrier represented by Mexico City an obstacle that happens to be the second largest demographic concentration on the continent at the dawn of the 21st century. Based on even the most conservative estimates, the Latin American megalopolis... That's magic. Thank you very much. Based on even the most conservative estimates, the Latin American megalopolis has close to 20 million inhabitants. As a result, not only Tenochtitlan, but also almost all of the neighboring cities that once dotted the lecture are buried beneath tons of asphalt and concrete. However, the fundamental problem is not the unbridled growth of the city today but rather the particular features of its historic center. This area which was declared by a world heritage site by UNESCO shelters the monumental complex with the greatest artistic and historic wealth on the Americas. There are historic buildings of outstanding quality and a surprising diversity of styles including Baroque, Neoclassical, Arnouveau, Ardeco, Neocolonial and Eclectic stand side by side atop the ancient Aztec city. In such a context, the paradox is that any ambitious attempt to recover the material remains of Tenochtitlan and to reconstruct the history of its inhabitants implies sacrificing a fundamental part of the city's colonial heritage and that of the 19th and 20th centuries, thus denying the multicultural condition of today's Mexico. A proven way of saving structures that are obstacle for archaeologists is by means of underground explorations. However, work of this type is almost inconceivable in downtown Mexico City for two simple reasons. On the one hand, the subsoil of the ancient lake basin is extremely instable due to the fact it is composed of compressible clays. On the other hand, the subsoil is difficult to penetrate given the high water table and thick layers of asphalt and concrete crisscrossed by chaotic networks for drinking water, drainage and electricity. Furthermore, immediately under this layer are the oldest levels of the capital of New Spain which date to the period between 1521 and 1650. These layers are distinguished by an uncommon abundance of cultural elements that attest to the opulent lifestyle of the conquerors and their descendants. Walls and foundations of some chose palaces, tons of fragments of Chinese porcelain and Spanish and Italian majolica, as well as exorbitant quantities of botijas, pottery jars used to transport wine, vinegar, oil, olives and capers from far away Andalusia. These heavy consumption habits are understandable in a urban center that became the most bustling Spanish center overseas. Beneath the colonial layers lie the ruins of Atenos Titlán ravaged by the violent confrontations of 1521 and by the systematic raising of its buildings after the conquest. Logically, the opportunity to reach these levels have been few and far between. Repaving, hydraulic works, the installation of electrical plants and remaking foundations of buildings are among the rare occasions that archaeologists must take advantage of to bring miniscule fractions of the Aztec capital to light. This series of obstacles has meant that knowledge of Aztec civilization has progressed at the speed of an eyedropper when compared with what happens, for example, in the Maya area. Suffice it to say that after a century of archaeological work in the center of Mexico City, 0.3% of the five square miles that Atenos Titlán once covered during its maximum splendor has been excavated. In other words, we have only a few pieces of a gigantic puzzle that we know we will never be able to assemble completely. The history of archaeology of downtown Mexico City spawned more than two centuries. This intellectual adventure began at the end of the 18th century in the last years of the colonial domination when ideas from the enlightenment reached New Spain, innovative scientific humanistic ways of thought swiftly spread among the creoles, fueling the spirit of independence and bringing about a new vision of the pre-Hispanic past. The two most famous monoliths of Aztec art were discovered in this context. The date, 1790. The place, the Great Plaza, or Socalo. The circumstances work to level and lay cobblestones ordered by Visoror Revilla Jijedo. The first monument to come to light was the Cuatlique, the supreme image of the modern Earth. Thanks to the Visoros intervention, this exceptional piece was not destroyed, but rather was moved to the cloister of the university. This was the first step in establishing the National Archaeological Museum. Months later, they uncovered the celebrated Stone Stone, a magnificent disc that embodies as the conceptions of space and time. They inserted this monument into the western tower of the cathedral to be preserved for posterity. Fortunately, the two monoliths didn't go unnoticed by scientists in New Spain. Antonio de Leonigama, astronomer and expert of ancient documents, published meticulous descriptions, interpretations, and engravings of both monuments. With the 19th century, an era of political turbulence began. This included the struggle for independence, interminable wars between federalists and centralists, liberals and conservatives, and several foreign interventions. During these times of great turmoil, numerous monuments accidentally came to light. Unfortunately, almost all of them were looted and sent to foreign collections, although few ended up in the National Museum. A new period began in 1900 with the work of Leopoldo Vatres in the area behind the cathedral. This controversial figure was in charge of the salvage archaeology during the construction of a drainage system. For three months, he was able to recover the richest body of Aztec offerings we've ever seen. His excavation, records printed in a luxurious volume, chronologically listed his discoveries accompanied by studio photos of the pieces. In 1914, in the midst of the Mexican Revolution, Manuel Gami coordinated the new salvage project as a consequence of the demolition of a Cornolian building at the intersection of Seminario Guatemala streets. The main contribution of this project was the unexpected fine of the Templo Mayoral Great Temple, an event that overturned numerous hypotheses regarding the precise location of this pyramid. During the works, Gami used the stratigraphic techniques for the first time in Mexico City. New intensive salvage archaeology explorations took place in the center of the city between 1968 and 1969. The construction of lines one and two of the salvage system offered an uncommon opportunity to bring more vestiges of ancient Tenochtitlan to light. A 20-foot wide trench and several miles long revealed an amazing number of monumental sculptures, sumptuous offerings and buildings, including the round temple that can be seen today in the Pino Suarez Subway Station. However, the explorations of greatest importance in the sacred presence of Tenochtitlan had to wait until February 1978 when a group of workers from the electricity company accidentally came across a spectacular sculpture of the mongodas known as Coyochaque. Given the enormous scientific importance of this monolith and the surrounding area, the President of Mexico made the controversial decision, very controversial, to demolish 13 buildings that occupy an area of 2.5 acres in order to completely uncover the great pyramid of Tenochtitlan. Mexico's National Institute of Anthropology and History organized the long-term program of scientific research that became known as the Great Temple Project for this purpose. During 38 years, eight long field seasons have been carried out. The first three were coordinated by my mentor, Eduardo Matos Moctezuma, and I have been fortunate to oversee the last five. Among the most outstanding discoveries of our project are the vestiges of the Great Temple itself and 14 nearby buildings a considerable accumulation of sculptures and middle paintings as well as 206-bridge offerings. The offerings are deposits of gifts for the gods and they are generally cosmic models in miniature composed of enormous riches. Among them, we have found tens of thousands of jade, flint, obsidian, ceramic, turquoise, gold and copper artifacts which come from all corners of the Aztec Empire, in addition to earlier Teotihuacan and Olmic relics that were uncovered by the Aztecs in the ruins of the disvenerated civilizations. We should also mention human bone remains of dignitaries and sacrificed warriors as well as animals of more than 400 species from diverse habitats, high mountains, temperate forests, tropical rainforests, swamps and coastal areas. The principal results have been 500 publications and the opening in 1987 of the Great Temple Museum, the headquarters of the project and where eight galleries are devoted to exhibiting the archaeological materials from the excavations. To date, our different teams working downtown Mexico City have detected more than 30 religious buildings of the sacred present. Among them, we can mention the Great Temple at its small surrounding shrines, Calmeca or a school for the nobility was found below the building of the modern Spanish cultural center. The Sompantli or Palisade were the skulls of sacrificial victims where displayed was below a 19th century mansion, a place where a new chocolate museum will be inaugurated soon. The Teotlachco main ball court was detected in Guatemala Street just behind the metropolitan cathedral. The Hecateopan or Wayne God's Temple was buried on the cathedral hotel. We will have there a new restaurant and a bar with its own pyramid. So as you can imagine these recent archaeological discoveries have completed substantially our vision of the sacred present and have forced us to modify our model several times. Professor Trevor has invited me here to share with all of you two of the most spectacular finds made in downtown Mexico City during the last years. The first case that I like to tell you about dates back to 2003 when I was invited to Paris by the Mankind Museum to prepare a catalog of the rich collections of plastic art. My work consisted not only of analyzing archaeological objects but also visiting archives and libraries in search of ancient documents that explained the itinerary of these objects from Mexico to France. As often tends to be the case I came across writings and drawings that had nothing to do with my research but that were fundamental in understanding the origins of my field in Mexico City at the end of the colonial period. Among other things the documents that I discovered revealed that in the 18th century an enigmatic sculpture was exposed to passers by that intersection of the streets today known as Argentina and Justo Sierra. These documents describe the sculpture of a claw which was set into the corner of the Luis de Castilla mansion today occupied by the famous Perúa bookstore. You can see here the 18th century engraving of that claw with a solar disc and a serpent. All indications seem to point to the case similar to that of the Museum of Mexico City which has a feather serpent head set into the corner of the building as an architectural ornament. We should recall that when this air rock and neoclassic mansions were built it was no longer accustomed to destroy aster monolith that accidentally surfaced when foundations were dug. On the contrary, these sculptures began to be appreciated for their aesthetic qualities and their historical significance so they were used as decorative elements at corners as lintels in main entrances and in courtyards. Later I was able to corroborate that the sculpture supposedly in the form of a claw continued to remain in the same spot in 1823 when English traveller William Bullock reported it on a visit he made to Mexico that year. However, it is clear that the stone remained hidden when many of the city's streets were elevated to a higher level following floods in the 19th century. When I returned to Mexico, as you can imagine, I went straight to the Porúa bookstore with some friends to evaluate the viability of excavated the corner of the building. Suddenly among the stalls of street vendors we noticed a manhole dog in the 1950s by the phone company Telefonos de Mexico and we were afraid that the monument might have been destroyed at a time. To our surprise, by lifting the manhole cover, we saw that the sculpture was still there. All those surrounded by all sort of urban installations including a brick wall, optical fibers and phone electrical and traffic signal cables. It took 10 months to get all the necessary permits as a Mexican bureaucracy to break through the sidewalk, remove the cables do some archeological exploration and extract the sculpture. The monument was christened, the Porúa bookstore stone, however it wasn't the representation of a kloato, but a beryl cactus. One of a kind for its enormous dimensions as for the skill with which the botanical features of the flan were carved. As you know, this type of cactus is known in Mexico and the United States and modern in low caution. But I don't know why it has this name. This is a good example of Italian design. For the Aztecs the beryl cactus was one of the symbols of aerial lands and therefore of their northern origins. Soon after they abandoned the mythical land of Aslan and set out on their long journey to the promised land a key event took place. Eight individuals called Mimishkoa fell from the sky onto beryl cactus and mesquites. Let's see very well, I'm sorry. The Aztecs immediately obeyed the command of their patron God Wichiloposti to sacrifice the Mimishkoa strutting their hearts of the tourney plants to feed the sun. Then God told his followers they couldn't longer be called Aztecs but rather Mishikas and he granted them the tools to become conquerors. Based on these mythical accounts it can be suggested that Monolith found at the Porua bookstore evokes one of these early sacrificial bases so it could have served as a sacrificial base in Aztec rituals. This idea is not so far fetched if we take into account the fact that they recently discovered the stone is of the same height as the two sacrificial stones from stage two of the Great Temple. We turn now to the much more spectacular find that was made on October 2006. It took place right in front of the ruins of the Great Temple when a team of our urban archeology program explored a lot occupied by the building known as the Mayorasgo de Nava Chavez at the intersection of Argentina and Guatemala streets. On that memorable date a sculpture of a gigantic dimension was detected in Ciro. There the city government was building the foundations of a new ethnographic museum to display a rich collection of indigenous textiles and clothing. In an accident one of the workers had used his pickaxe in an area beyond the limits marked by the engineer supervising the work and suddenly a small part of the normal sculpture was exposed. Only the eastern side of the monolith was visible. In any event this part was enough to make a series of preliminary guesses. In the first place we realized that the monoliths were not as large as the concrete. They were just as large as the concrete and the concrete and the concrete were very large and large. The objects obtained this volcanic stone from several outcrops in the Chiquití with geological formation mainly from the deposits in Serre Otenaio. By the 15th century this hill was located virtually on the shores of Tenochtitlán. It was the task of obtaining and transporting the block of stone from which this monument was carved. Based on historical sources when the kings of Tenochtitlán decided to sculpt a new monolith for the sacred precinct they forced cities on the lake shore to contribute large numbers of laborers who had to work directly at the quarries. And a sort of sled on which large boulders could be moved. To the sound of singing, chanting and shouting they separated the blocks from the quarries and transported them by dancers, musicians and buffoons. In the second place it was clear that it was a rectangular slab. The monolith measured about 11 feet 9 inches from north to south and roughly 1 foot 3 inches in thickness. This meant that it was even larger than the sculpture of the moon god Skoljulsauki and the sun stone. Based on its rough dimensions and very density of the andesite we figured its weight was around 13 tons. To drag something of that magnitude from the source to the lake shore somewhere between 150 to 400 individuals would have been necessary. We could imagine that once they managed to haul the stone to the shore, the Aztecs built enormous balsa raft to float it to the center of their island city. In the third place we discovered that the upper surface of the monument was covered with that relief that followed a bilateral pattern. Several rectangular elements were visible in the middle of the stone and five round elements on each side, one of which was separated from the remaining four. The next day we reviewed a good part of the rich sculptural corpus of disabilization in the literature and we came to the conclusion that the central rectangles were shells decorating the female back insignia known as starry skirt. There were ten nails from two extended claws. This was exciting for us because it meant that it represented a nocturnal earth goddess. There were several candidates belonging to this group of deities generically known as the Simime. However the first five of these goddesses were not known in the form of barrel leaf sculpture while there is only one known as papalot sculpture of this type. On the other hand the corpus of Tlaltecutli reliefs contain 51 examples. Based on these factors we decided that the probability is pointed to Tlaltecutli as the deity represented on the new monolith. Tlaltecutli literally means lord of lady of the earth and as many other deities in the Aztec pantheon it presents a masculine or feminine side in the mythology and iconography. We seen cosmic cycles as an earth goddess takes on a double role. On the one hand she has generative functions both in the vegetation cycle and in the birth of human beings. She is the mother of man whom she feeds with plants sprouting from her reptilian body. On the other hand she is an insatiable deity devouring blood and corpses. In fact not only does she feed on ordinary creatures that dwell on the earth's surface and that she herself procreated but she also gobs down the soon itch afternoon regurgitating it at dawn. But let's return again to the excavation. Several weeks it went by and the archaeology team uncovered the monolith we were able to corroborate our iconographic identification we were correct this was a unique and very impressive representation of Claltecutli. This piece displays a frontal full length figure carved in low relief and his anatomy adheres to a strict bilateral symmetry. Her knees are bent and spread outward in a position that has been interpreted and that of a woman giving birth. It is work mentioning that this relief is partially covered with red, ochre, white, blue and black paint as it happens with all Aztec sculptures. The goddess has oversized extremities a distinctive feature is the claw in the right foot framing a calendric date showing the sign rabbit. This complex of attributes features well with Aztec sculptures representing the female personified manifestation of Claltecutli. Once the identity of the goddess was defined our next task was to delve into the monuments functions. Why was such an enormous sculpture placed in front of the great temple? In my view the key is taking into account where we were standing we were to the west of the pyramid on its central east west axis at the near the place where the building known as the Cuaucicalco the Cuaucicalco was located. In fact in this celebrated image of the sacred prison of the Nostitlan the Cuaucicalco appears right at the foot of the great temple according to Dominican friar Diego Durán and Aztec historian Fernando Alvarado Sosomoc the ashes of several Aztec kings were buried inside the Cuaucicalco the latter emphasized that the mortuary bundles of kings were placed on a great pyre at the foot of the great temple. The flames took hours to consume the king's body and a part of his luxurious offerings in a bonfire fed with the hearts and blood of slaves who were sacrificed for the occasion. The resulting ashes were collected and placed in urns and buried in the Cuaucicalco the Sosomoc stated that in 1481 the cremated bones the cremated remains of the Aztec king Azayacatl were deposited in the inn I quote the great hall of the Cuaucicalco he also added that five years later in 1486 the companions of the following king Tizoc were sacrificed in the hall of the stone Cuaucicalco and the ashes of this king were buried near the foot of the great temple and then in 1502 the spoils of King Awisot were buried not in the Cuaucicalco but rather I quote to the side of it. On the other hand the Florentine codex stated that the Aztecs of the neighboring city of Tlatelolco had the same custom of cremating the bodies of their kings in a place also known as Cuaucicalco the scene illustrated in this passage shows the body of the last lord on a huge part at the foot of the great temple of that city. These descriptions of the royal funeral rituals together with certain pictographs referring to the burial of corpses shed light on the enigmatic views of the Tlatelotli monolith in many codices mortuary bundles can be seen as at the moment they are consumed by an animal like Tlatelotli who opens her mouth wide to receive the death. In other codices this early deity swallows the dead son in the form of the deity Tlatitonatiu in other words the son that is near the earth. It is widely known that for the Aztecs the metaphor for a king's reign is the son's daily cycle. Therefore the death of the sovereign was equated to the arrival of darkness resulting from the settings on a dusk or else a solar eclipse. Assuming that our idea that the great monolith is a funerary monument, the next question would be which of the three kings buried inside the Guachicalco is the one related to the sculpture. The calendar dates carved near one of Tlatelotli's claw points to a whistle, the king of Tenoztitlan who expanded the frontiers to the part from the Terescan highlands to the modern day born with Guatemala. The date turn rabbit is a clincher and we should die in turn rabbit that corresponded to the Christian year of 1502. Once the salvage archaeology phase was concluded the importance of the discovery forced us to halt the construction of the ethnographic museum. In March of 2007 a small international team was organized. It was composed of archaeologists, conservators, biologists, geologists, and architects to conduct the seven field season of the Great Temple Project. One of the first task was to take samples of the monolith to identify the rock pigments and possible traces of blood fluids. Many of these analysis were undertaken here at the Getty Institute. We then conducted a geophysical study of the entire area. Thanks to the combined use of ground penetrating radar, a resistivity mirror, and a profiler we were able to detect a number of anomalies in the subsoil based on our studies we realized that there were several cavities in this area. On the basis of geophysical data we concluded that a huge stone box lied below the Atlantic Woodley Monolith. This could be a tomb or more probably a dedicatory offering buried there for consecrating the sculpture of the Earth Goddess. The next task was to formulate a detailed record of the monolith in its original position using a variety of techniques with our Japanese friend Saburo Sugiyama of Aichi Prefectural University we carried out topographical mapping of the area with a brand new total station. We also did a 3D terrestrial scan with our colleagues from the Italian University of Serrara using a Leica scanner we measured more than 30 million points generating images of the utmost precision like this one. Once we finished recording all the aspects of the monolith original location, we moved the four fragments of the sculptures in November 207 using a Lor Marm crane to raise each one of the pieces to street level. We then moved them to a fill lab next to the find spot to begin conservation work including cleaning and restoration. You can see here our temporality fill lab the monolith stayed there during a couple of years thanks to this very long conservation process the sculpture could recover its original colors. More recently we were able to move the four fragments once again in this occasion to the Great Temple Museum in order to exhibit them for the first time. Two cranes and a long platform truck were used for this purpose. This was in the context of the Temporary Exhibition Moctezuma as the ruler first shown at the British Museum and organized with our dear friend Colin McCoon. You will be able to enjoy this beautiful perspective of the restored sculpture in the very center of the Great Temple Museum. But let's come back to the dig. Since 2008 we have meticulously excavated the air below the spot where the sculpture was found. We have proceeded slowly using the scaffolding and several swings to avoid stepping on any of the archaeological remains. The fruit of this work has been the discovery of offering 126 a huge stone box under the Tlalticutli monolith. Okay. Sorry about that. Many technical problems for the same day. So you have here the four fragments of the sculpture and we removed them and we began our excavation layer by layer. It took almost one year, eight months, one year and we detected several small offering boxes and finally the offering 126 which is the biggest we have found until now. Okay. During the dedication of the monolith the Aztecs built this box and deposited 14,000 objects. The offering was mainly composed by enormous quantity of animals from the sea, the tropical rainforest and mountain regions as well as highly diverse artifacts crafted of flint, jade, obsidian, ceramic, wood and resin. You can see here our chief conservator recovering a small wooden mask representing a dead individual. There were also fire god images made of salt so fish's nauts found several sharks for example sacrificial knives and dollars starfish, many many starfish shark corals, wolves, pumas, jaguars and jars containing thousands of seeds not seeds for example chia and maize and beans and so on. Besides this huge ritual deposit we have discovered other 48 buried offerings in the same area. In total we have been able to recover until now more than 70,000 objects of all kinds. Another very interesting ritual deposit located just in front of the Tlaticutli monolith is offering 130. It contained 31 ladle sensors these ceramic ritual instruments similar to frying pans were used by the Aztecs to burn aromatic resins. Some of them have a beautiful handle simulating eagle claws or butterfly heads. South from the Tlaticutli Monolith offering 120 was detected a medium sized box containing among many things 12 golden eagles that attest to that taxidermic preparations. It had also rosate spombials. These eagles were represented solely by skeletal elements from the skull, wings, feet and tail lacking all the bones from the central portion of the body. Numerous signs of cutting were discovered on proximal ends of wings and feet bones and incisions on the skull to extract the brain matter. These remains show that the Aztec priests build the entire skin and its feather layer. We also finished excavating around the monolith. In the process we found a spectacular entrance to the west of the sculpture and right at the level of the plaza. It was framed by superimposed rectangular and the side blocks. In other words these entrance had the shape of an inverted steppe pyramid. Its silhouette reminds us of the moh which is also stepped of Tlaltecutli, the reptilian being located at the center of the universe who devours corpses in the Bodex Borgia. We dug inside the steppe portal and detected several intact plaster seals. Deposited between these plaster barriers there were six superimposed and very rich offerings. In this National Geographic Reconstruction you can see for example the location of one of them offering 125. This is another reconstruction showing precisely offering 125 and its three vertical layers. Its uppermost layer was composed by a pelt of a spider monkey and two complete skeletons of golden eagles, one male and one female. On the one hand the skeleton of the male eagle, this eagle had golden bells around its feet. It is distinguished by a visible deformity in the right wing. Digital X-rays indicate that this deformity was caused by a fracture. Although the fracture healed this bird was unable to fly which would have prevented it from hunting and feeding. Its bones however were robust and were the normal dimensions which suggest that it was kept in captivity and was cared for by expert hands. In this regard we should recall that within Moctezuma's palace there was a kind of zoo where eagles and many other birds were kept in cages. Franciscan friar Bernardino de Sagoen mentioned that at this zoo there were stewards who take care of all sorts of birds such as eagles, rosie, spunbills, parrots, scarlet macaws and pheasants. On the other hand the female eagle skeleton of this offering she had these copper bells around its feet contained on its sternum a concentration of highly fragmentary Moctezuma quail bones with green bone fracture patterns and homogenous coloring at the edges. We believe that these bones could have been part of a pellet. In other words the generally heterogeneous mass of undigested parts of a bird's food that is processed inside the gizzard and occasionally regurgitated in the case of this individual disclosive presence of quail might mean that this eagle before being buried had lived in captivity and was fed only quails. We continued excavating deeper and found an intermediate layer of marine animals and red snapper as red snapper fat puffer, clams, oyster, snails, corals, crayfish, crabs and sea urchins. The majority of these animals were brought from the Pacific Ocean. It is interesting to mention that we saw where all the chiefdom located in the Pacific coast from Guerrero to Guatemala marked in this map with yellow. I don't put this map, I'm sorry. This marine layer was covering the skeleton of a canine. Thanks to the DNA analysis we know that it was an old female of Mexican wolf. I have to remark that the she-wolf we found was an elegant one because she was wearing turquoise mosaic earplugs from northern Mexico. A jade necklace from Guatemala. A seashell belt from the Mexican Gulf Coast and a golden belt probably from Oaxaca. By the way, I received a few days ago this reconstruction of the wolf. That's what we think. That's what we think. More or less like that. I would like to end this talk with really good news. One year ago we finally detected the Cauchy Calco that is the cylindrical platform built by the Aztecs in front of the Great Temple. Over this building we found a huge slab made of pinkish andesite and after removing the huge slab we found a subterranean corridor leading to the very center of the building. This is the entrance of that corridor and as you can see here the corridor. We detected at the end of this corridor two closed entrances that could hide a couple of funerary chambers. These are those two entrances at the end but this is just a hypothesis. We will have the opportunity to test in a few months. We are going to resume our excavation and we are going to demolish these two walls in order to enter these two probable chambers. We took these pictures a few months ago. Thank you very much. All the Aztecs sculptures of the Greek and Roman sculpture were original painted. We have the used qualified porters, white, black, blue, bia blue, red and ochre. Unfortunately most of these porters when we find these sculptures are done in this case fortunately we found they made a very good state of conservation and after two years of this very careful restoration process the conservator the conservation team would recover and fix all these colours. We analysed them at the galley as well and we know that the Aztecs used as a binder for this pigment orchid a kind of blue made of orchid. If you visit now the Great Temple Museum you are going to see this sculpture with its original colours and this is beautiful. In the case of the Collochiauchy stone the circular monolith representing the moon goddess as I told you it was found in 1978 and a day after the discovery the president of Mexico received the news a new stone is there so he said I am going directly to the excavation spot so the workers of the electricity company watch the stone and the president to see everything very clean and when he arrived he saw the sculpture very clean but without the original colours that's sad but what we learned from this terrible experience and now fortunately the other stone the earth goddess concerns it has its original colours So we talked about your next project you are going to look so in terms of your brand how much longer do you think you will be doing excavations also what would you like to see in the next few years if you are an ideal player Yes well if we are as I told you our project began in 38 years so my ideal my ideal plan is to continue working for 38 more years but that's ideal Well we have a small team when I arrived to the Great Central project in 1980 I was 16 years old in that year we were 650 people beginning in the same small my big boss was professor de la comatose we were a lot and right now we have very small teams for example my team is only composed by 20 persons small teams working here and there under the national palace the cathedral all these hotels in the middle of the streets wherever we can dig we are there so we have this program of excavation and I assume that we will never stop in a few months right now they are building a new entrance to the archeological zone a big hole so by the reasons of security we can't live in the Oshikato area but the opening is programmed I think in two or three months they are going to open this new entrance so we will resume the excavation and the first thing we are going to do is to enter once again from the corridor and to unlock the new entrances in order to prove if we are right our hypothesis is that we were expecting to find a couple of small chambers not very deep because the Aztecs didn't build the big chambers as they might have did so maybe two small chambers and inside maybe a big offerings but in the very center which we are thinking in the very center maybe yours contained in ashes so what we are expecting to find are ashes of these three brothers Ashelyakati Sokyawiso not the remains of Motesuma because Motesuma died during the conquest and his body we don't know where they buried his body but certainly from there this is just a hypothesis and our information as you heard comes from the written sources the historical documents composed in the 16th century by his panels and by the Aztecs themselves thank you Given that you are digging an urban area and besides the permits what has been the reaction of the communities in the areas that you've excavated? Well the reaction is we are in the how do you say the spotlight we are in the very center of the capital all the media are there that's a nightmare and the people Mexicans are expecting always good news because this part also of archaeology has a political dimension of identity so if we have found our identity in the glorious past we are expecting good news so we have many people visiting our museums of archaeology and the Mexican government has always invested big money in these kind of projects because this contributes to the national pride this part of politics as well excuse me what's so fantastic about this monument and Montezuma Montes had that great publication about this is a combination of architecture topography and sculpture and a single iconographic thought you know on top of the mountain oil showcase rolled to the bottom just as it did in the mid and I just think it's absolutely fantastic has your understanding of the iconography changed at all over these years that you've been working there or has it just been reinforced by these new discoveries all Matos hypothesis are being always reinforced as you said for example two weeks ago we dug at the foot of the pyramid inside the platform of phase 6 and we found a very small offering really interesting because it had Montezuma Montes but most of them made of gold and some of them represented all the insignia for example the air drops and the nose drop of Koyol Shauky and we found representations of Koyol Shauky's weapons and representations of human hearts but all of them were destroyed intentionally destroyed by the press so we think this is reinforcing Eduardo's ideas because at the summit of the pyramid is the the shrine of the soldier who defeated his sister Koyol Shauky at the foot of the pyramid totally defeated she's there and this this is a remember this offering you remember in that myth and the scenarios of this of this myth is precisely the pyramid which is representing all this mythical place of the hill of serpents so this is really incredible and this is thanks all the people who work there have all these codices and the written sources and this is really, really useful for our interpretations when I work with, for example, with my friends I was who we amended the weapon this is before in time we are in the classic period and we don't have written sources they had a very simple writing system so we we understand just the of what we find because we don't have these written sources so it's a a paradise to work in the post-classic period where you have all these different kinds of information and you can you can construct that whole model of interpretation thanks to this to these different sources of data Thank you My question has to do with that I'm X-Base my discipline also but when I see things like that and I always think about the world of the sacred but especially when it appears in buildings that are state buildings and I wonder what's the relationship between the need, really need and simple use of religion for state purposes and how do you bridge that and how do you push it because they're killages especially what you said we don't have in our sources so how do we know did they really believe this or did they just use it We have several teams working in Mexico City and I work there in downtown Mexico City so I am in charge of this excavation of the sacred places there are other teams which are working in different parts of the city and they're in the rural areas and there are also these these offerings but these offerings are totally different because these are part of popular cause and these we have here the representation in the sacred presence of the Muslim of the state religion is completely different these are very, very rich deposits very complex and most of them are related to most of the offerings are cosmograms that means they are representations and miniature of the world, of the universe so for example the priest was put in the deepest most layer marine sand and sea shells and corals and so on fish, starfish or whatever representing these these how do you say how can I say that the underworld related to the fertility and to winter and then immediately in the middle layer they put for example crocodiles or turtles or cowards that means the animals related to the surface of the earth in the upper most levels they deposited for example eagles, human birds, herons all the animal related to the manly world to the heavens and when we did for example in the rural areas the offerings are related to the to agriculture for example we have many representations of the maize goddess from Iqoha or many many rand of jars that means the main instrument for making rain so that's what we find more humble offerings but really really interesting as well these offerings say that we are in the rural area so we can compare these two different ways the state cult and the popular cult one more question please go ahead one dollar each I'll pay you we'll be going to Mexico stage tomorrow for the class so aside from visiting like the central mayor do you have any places that you recommend to visit and then my other question is just do you ever worry that like uncovering some of these sites like the Josephs will be mad at you for discovering certain things yes well would you listen to the next question I'll give you after the talk my email I won't be there because I'm going directly to Rome but to have Rome not the wrong Italy but I'll give you my email I have several students they can show you that our excavation I would love to visit one more one more dollar each one and the other question yes obviously it's in a scientific level it's a big burden to excavate this very rich context because you know that's archaeology you can dig only only one time this deposit so we have to do it very very carefully for example the biggest excavation of the biggest offering took us more than two years because we have to record everything and when you know what archaeology is Mattis in 1900 when he dug all these offerings along the drainage system he used to excavate what offering when offering half an hour that was normal in those years and in the future they're going to do an offering maybe in ten years for those we have to do it very very carefully and and always we have for example I have a team of native sapoteurs and sometimes they dig flowers they want to burn copper this instance and there are many mestizo and these new age cults around the area where many people go there for example in very important days in order to perform rituals but they decide new religions most of these people they are not native Mexicans but they are mestizos as I am and they are not renewing these cults it's a very interesting mixture in an anthropological anthropological level and they are doing all these the ritual related to our excavation and some of them are mad at us because we are excavating and desecrating this space that's a very important phenomenon and it happens everywhere not here in the states I suppose it happens the same when the work is combined in archaeological science there are native not populations who are very interested but sometimes they are not very happy not to see you there not even their their origins and their cultures it's quite difficult actually my project in relation to the architecture of Mexico City it's templo mayor the site that I chose and I was just going to ask you if I don't know whenever you see these things come up like are you finding something like this huge beautiful slab do you ever feel like emotional or like what is your bodily like seeing something so grand in front of you sometimes I I the tears it has an emotional dimension it happens always with every kind of work but this is really interesting we are also a scientific thing working there but we have also emotions it is really exciting these emotions it happens during 30 seconds and after that we have to work many many days and but it's a beautiful work it's a killer work almost of you so it's it's a nice work but very well paid well thank you so much museum San Francisco with the double cleaning 38 311 at 6 the title is why not emotion because I'm inspired by Professor Rosaritois a new book on itineraries and I will talk about the monuments but not from Tenochtitlan but from how these monuments these big sculptures have to break I put some of the flyers for that talk in the atrium where we are now having a reception so perhaps a drink