EXPLORING AN ANCIENT FACTORY TOWN

Archaeologist "Deborah Nichols and three undergraduates have spent several months probing a lost Mexican manufacturing and distribution center that predates the Aztec Empire. The 400-acre site is in the farming town of Otumba, about 30 miles northeast of Mexico City. Nichols and her students have found thousands of objects, including one of the highest concentrations of spindle whorls used for spinning cactus fibers —that have been recorded anywhere in the Aztec Empire. "We found more and larger workshops than were previously thought to be there," states Nichols.

Her group's findings suggest that Otumba continued in this role even after the rise of the Aztec Empire. Towns that were closer to the empire's capital of Tenochtitlan now Mexico City-shifted their economic focus to food production for the cap- capital. "The workings of the Aztec Empire are even more complex than previously thought," says Nichols. This summer the archeologist, who received funds from the National Science Foundation, Dartmouth's Goodman Fund and the class of 1962, will analyze the artifacts in a lab. She is confident that the finds will give the world a fresh look at one of its most formidable civilizations.

One of Dartmouth's researching teachers, Deborah Nichols leads a quest to uncover lost Mexico.