INVESTIGATING TEOTIHUACAN THROUGHTMPSURFACE COLLECTIONS AND OBSERVATIONS

Abstract

In the 1960s, the Teotihuacan Mapping Project (TMP) focused an ambitious, multiyear survey program on the pre-Columbian urban center of Teotihuacan. In addition to creating a highly detailed map, the TMP made systematic records of surface remains and collected nearly one million artifacts from roughly 5,000 provenience tracts. Taken together, the spatial, descriptive, and artifactual data collected by the TMP still constitutes one of the most extensive and most detailed records in existence for any ancient city. This paper characterizes and provides an update on TMP surface observations, particularly as they exist in digital format. Several analytical case studies illustrate substantive ways in which these data have been used in the decades since the TMP survey to investigate the culture and history of ancient Teotihuacan. The utility of extensive surface survey data for investigating key urban organizational elements such as neighborhoods and social districts is briefly considered, along with the growing importance of the TMP collections and records as increasingly large parts of Teotihuacan are lost to urban sprawl and destructive agricultural practices.

Apartment Compounds, Households, and Population in the Ancient City of Teotihuacan, Mexico

“…5 percent of the population) and a much larger class of commoners (Olson and Smith 2016; Trigger 2003). Gradations of wealth or status within social classes are found in most premodern states, including Teotihuacan (Robertson 2001, 2015). Second, the size of the sample Millon drew on was far too small to reliably identify that number of ranked categories.…”

“…In spite of many decades of archaeological excavation and analysis at this site, the basic nature of the city's population and social groupings remain under debate. A major reason is that most investigations have tended to rely upon either an intensive reading of local-scale evidence, such as one or two excavated structures (Cabrera Castro and Gómez Chávez 2008; Daneels et al 1996; Gómez Chávez and Gazzola 2007; Manzanilla 1993, 2017a, 2017b; Ortega Cabrera and Archer Velasco 2014; Sánchez Alaniz 1991), or a broadscale analysis of surface information (Cowgill et al 1984; Millon 1973; Robertson 1999, 2015), with little integration between the two scales of analysis. Due to the unique urban residential structure of the site, interpretations of the social organization strongly benefit from the integration of multiple scales of analysis.…”

Documenting, disseminating and archiving data from the Teotihuacan Mapping Project

“…For example, our understanding of the scale of obsidian production in the city, which was briefly debated and then largely dropped (see Clark 1986; Spence 1987), can be improved with new studies on existing collections.

Figure 2.Recent work on the distribution of four wealth/status classes, as inferred from Teotihuacan Mapping Project ceramic data for the Miccaotli phase occupation (adapted from Robertson 2015: fig. 4).

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“…Recent work on the distribution of four wealth/status classes, as inferred from Teotihuacan Mapping Project ceramic data for the Miccaotli phase occupation (adapted from Robertson 2015: fig. 4).…”

The Teotihuacan Anomaly: The Historical Trajectory of Urban Design in Ancient Central Mexico

“…As the plan of Teotihuacan (Figure 4) clearly shows, virtually all structures in the city-residences and civic buildings-were oriented to the basic city grid. Thus all of the residential neighborhoods at Teotihuacan (Robertson, 2005(Robertson, , 2015 were carefully planned, unlike the situation at almost all other Mesoamerican cities (Smith, 2007).…”