Dating the Mapa Uppsala of Mexico-Tenochtitlan

The Mapa Uppsala is the earliest known map of sixteenth-century Mexico City that was painted by indigenous artists after the city’s takeover by Spanish forces. It is one of the few indigenous-produced documents about the city and its environs from this time period. While the traditional scholarly consensus has been that the map dates to c.1554, we derive evidence from an examination of the original map to argue for a creation date of c.1537–1541. This revised date, combined with the map’s high degree of topographical and chorographical precision, means that the map offers a snapshot of the city’s urban development and ecological changes at an earlier point in its history than has been acknowledged.