At their height, around 1500, the Aztecs controlled a large amount of territory in central Mexico. They grew their empire through military conquest. “According to their own histories, military power [was] the main advantage they had,” says Davide Domenici, an anthropology professor at the University of Bologna.
Scholars use a wide variety of sources to reconstruct Aztec warfare, including texts written by the Aztecs and Spanish, archaeological discoveries and experiments such as testing out the effects of different Aztec weapons.
Defining who exactly the Aztecs were can be complicated. The word ‘Aztec’ comes from the Nahuatl language and means ‘people from Aztlan’. David Carrasco, author of The Aztecs: A Very Short Introduction, describes Aztlan as the “revered place of origin of the various ethnic groups who eventually dominated central Mexico in the century before the arrival of Europeans.” Where exactly Aztlan is and whether it should be considered a real or mythical place is a source of debate among scholars.
The people whom we call Aztecs didn’t use that word to describe themselves. They would sometimes use words linked to various ethnic groups that they belonged to such as the Mexica who were based around the city of Tenochtitlán and became the most powerful Aztec group.
Scholars often use the term Aztec Empire to describe the entity that came to control much of central Mexico. At the heart of the Aztec Empire was the ‘Triple Alliance’ of the cities of Tenochtitlán, Tetzcoco and Tlacopa who, around 1428, agreed to work together to grow their influence and share the spoils of war. This happened after they overthrew the Tepanecs, who had been one of the most powerful groups in the region and had exercised power over Tenochtitlán
