Teotihuacan's Tlajinga district is a cluster of neighborhoods on the southern periphery of the city best known for earlier investigations at Compound 33:S3W1. New research includes excavations at two other apartment compounds and along the southern extension of the Street of the Dead. Excavation contexts, major finds, chronology, and preliminary interpretations are the subject of this article. We highlight evidence attesting to a major obsidian-blade workshop at Compound 17:S3E1, offerings, and other features at that compound and Compound 18:S3E1, and the tempo and processes of urbanization viewed through well-recorded stratigraphic sequences of the compounds and the Street of the Dead. We conclude that significant occupation began in the Miccaotli phase, but it was not until some point in the Early Tlamimilolpa phase that the dominant housing type became apartment compounds; the continuation of the axis of Street of the Dead in the district was accomplished by excavating in the volcanic tuft substrate (tepetate) and could have been undertaken by the inhabitants of the district themselves; and the presence of items such as a sculpted stone face, marine shell, and polychrome pottery demonstrates that commoners at Teotihuacan enjoyed some access to finer items within the interregional economy.
The Formative-period site of Altica in the Patlachique Range poses many methodological problems when designing an excavation strategy. Three millennia of erosion, twentieth-century chisel plowing, and modern reforestation efforts have destroyed or disturbed most surface architecture above the local tepetate bedrock. As such, in the early stages of the Altica Project, the primary concern was the detection and identification of subsurface features, especially deep pits as found at other Formative sites. Although Altica is located at the top of a low, flat ridge, strong localized rain frequently flooded the terraces of interest for days, making it impossible to detect subsurface features using the most common prospection techniques. Because of these practical and taphonomic limitations, we relied on magnetic gradient prospection. This technique had never been applied to an early village site in the Basin of Mexico. This paper presents the methods used, discusses various difficulties encountered during prospection, applies interprets the results of the magnetic gradient study using results from excavation and aerial multispectral remote sensing. We discuss how the method might be applied to similar Formative sites to remotely detect indicators of anthropogenic activity, including subsurface features.
House size provides a comparative measure of household wealth that enables archaeologists to track global trends in inequality across a range of sedentary societies. Such approaches hold particular promise for Maya archaeology given its long history of settlement pattern research and recent applications of lidar to map large areas surrounding ancient Maya cities. Estimating dwelling size, however, is not a trivial exercise. This paper addresses potential confounds associated with geometric-based estimates (volume and area) and compares traditional house size-based measures of wealth with other estimates of house size and quality of life (QOL) indicators. Settlement pattern data from the Upper Usumacinta Confluence Zone (UUCZ), recently collected by the Proyecto Arquelógico Altar de Sacrificios, combined with previously published excavation data provide a robust dataset to evaluate alternative measures of wealthbeyond house size.
RESUMENEstudios geofísicos, técnicas de sensores remotos y realización de mapas topográficos con GPS diferencial y vehículos aéreos no tripulados (VANT) han proporcionado una mejor comprensión de la organización espacial de los conjuntos departamentales y barrios en Teotihuacán. Nuestras investigaciones demuestran que en contraste con el mapa producido por el Teotihuacan Mapping Project (TMP) (Millon et al. 1973), el distrito de Tlanjinga es más rectangular y está más formalmente organizado, mientras que los conjuntos individuales tienen formas más irregulares, como lo había mostrado la excavación de Tlajinga 33 (Widmer y Storey 1993). Esto difiere de los nítidos cuadrados y rectángulos interpretados por las reconstrucciones arquitectónicas del TMP. El estudio de las imágenes satelitales mostró manchas blanquecinas en el terreno que parecen corresponder con áreas elevadas del mismo y con la desintegración de los aplanados de cal, destruidos por el tiempo y el trabajo agrícola. También verificamos la continuación del trazo de la Calzada de los Muertos que cruza este distrito mediante la modificación del relieve ocasionada por la excavación realizada en la toba volcánica subyacente (tepetate).
The Teotihuacan Valley has witnessed the rise and fall of various civilizations since it was first inhabited by sedentary societies 3,500 years ago. Given its location in a semi‐arid environment, Teotihuacan has featured prominently in debates about the role of water and water management in the development of sedentism, culture, primary states, and large, complex societies. While many previous discussions tended to echo Wittfogel's “hydraulic hypothesis,” focusing on the ability of an elite few to monopolize water resources, we instead turn to a growing corpus of research showing varied water management strategies through time potentially resulting in distinct patterns of social organization. In this palimpsest landscape hydraulic and agricultural strategies were constrained not merely by present environmental conditions, but also by very real and material legacies of previous behavior. We discuss the state of research regarding these adaptations (and social responses) to water scarcity from the Early‐to‐Middle Formative Period (1250–650 B.C.) through the independence of Mexico (A.D. 1810), noting how previous fundamental assumptions about agriculture and hydraulic management in the Teotihuacan Valley have led to a significant number of neglected concepts and potential adaptations. If we are to address the current destruction of the Teotihuacan Valley's ecological and cultural resources in response to national development and climate change, a historical‐ecological perspective is necessary to disentangle the relevant processes that have shaped the landscape—and the cultures residing within it—to this day. This article is categorized under: Science of Water > Water and Environmental Change Human Water > Water as Imagined and Represented Engineering Water > Planning Water
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.
hi@scite.ai
10624 S. Eastern Ave., Ste. A-614
Henderson, NV 89052, USA
Copyright © 2024 scite LLC. All rights reserved.
Made with 💙 for researchers
Part of the Research Solutions Family.