The Early Classic period in Mesoamerica has been characterized by the appearance of Teotihuacan-related material culture throughout the region. Teotihuacan, known for its monumental architecture and dense settlement, became an urban center around 100 BC and a regional state over the next few centuries, dominating much of the Basin of Mexico and beyond until its collapse around AD 650. Teotihuacan and Early Classic Mesoamerica explores the complex nature of Teotihuacan’s interactions with other regions from both central and peripheral vantage points. The volume offers a multiscalar view of power and identity, showing that the spread of Teotihuacan-related material culture may have resulted from direct and indirect state administration, colonization, emulation by local groups, economic transactions, single-event elite interactions, and various kinds of social and political alliances. The contributors explore questions concerning who interacted with whom; what kinds of materials and ideas were exchanged; what role interregional interactions played in the creation, transformation, and contestation of power and identity within the city and among local polities; and how interactions on different scales were articulated. The answers to these questions reveal an Early Classic Mesoamerican world engaged in complex economic exchanges, multidirectional movements of goods and ideas, and a range of material patterns that require local, regional, and macroregional contextualization. Focusing on the intersecting themes of identity and power, Teotihuacan and Early Classic Mesoamerica makes a strong contribution to the understanding of the role of this important metropolis in the Early Classic history of the region. The volume will be of interest to scholars and graduate students of Mesoamerican archaeology, the archaeology of interaction, and the archaeology of identity. Contributors: Sarah C. Clayton, Fiorella Fenoglio Limón, Agapi Filini, Julie Gazzola, Sergio Gómez-Chávez, Haley Holt Mehta, Carmen Pérez, Patricia Plunket, Juan Carlos Saint Charles Zetina, Yoko Sugiura, Gabriela Uruñuela, Gustavo Jaimes Vences

The contributors to this volume present extensive new evidence from archaeology, iconography, and epigraphy to offer a more nuanced understanding of the interaction between the Early Classic Maya and Teotihuacan. Winner, Choice Outstanding Academic Book, 2005 Since the 1930s, archaeologists have uncovered startling evidence of interaction between the Early Classic Maya and the great empire of Teotihuacan in Central Mexico. Yet the exact nature of the relationship between these two ancient Mesoamerican civilizations remains to be fully deciphered. Many scholars have assumed that Teotihuacan colonized the Maya region and dominated the political or economic systems of certain key centers—perhaps even giving rise to state-level political organizations. Others argue that Early Classic rulers merely traded with Teotihuacan and skillfully manipulated its imported exotic goods and symbol sets to increase their prestige. Moving beyond these traditional assumptions, the contributors to this volume present extensive new evidence from archaeology, iconography, and epigraphy to offer a more nuanced understanding of the interaction between the Early Classic Maya and Teotihuacan. Investigating a range of Maya sites, including Kaminaljuyu, Copán, Tikal, Altun Ha, and Oxkintok, they demonstrate that the influence of Teotihuacan on the Maya varied in nature and duration from site to site, requiring a range of models to explain the patterns of interaction. Moreover, they show that the interaction was bidirectional and discuss how the Maya in turn influenced Teotihuacan.

First comprehensive English-language book on the largest city in the Americas before the 1400s. Teotihuacan is a UNESCO world heritage site, located in highland central Mexico, about twenty-five miles from Mexico City, visited by millions of tourists every year. The book begins with Cuicuilco, a predecessor that arose around 400 BCE, then traces Teotihuacan from its founding in approximately 150 BCE to its collapse around 600 CE. It describes the city's immense pyramids and other elite structures. It also discusses the dwellings and daily lives of commoners, including men, women, and children, and the craft activities of artisans. George L. Cowgill discusses politics, economics, technology, art, religion, and possible reasons for Teotihuacan's rise and fall. Long before the Aztecs and 800 miles from Classic Maya centers, Teotihuacan was part of a broad Mesoamerican tradition but had a distinctive personality that invites comparison with other states and empires of the ancient world.

An up-to-date overview of Mesoamerican cultures from early prehistoric times through the fall of the Aztec Empire, Prehistoric Mesoamerica, Third Edition will be useful and appealing to readers interested in Mesoamerican art, society, politics, and intellectual achievement.

In this lively survey, Guy D. Middleton critically examines our ideas about collapse - how we explain it and how we have constructed potentially misleading myths around collapses - showing how and why collapse of societies was a much more complex phenomenon than is often admitted.

This is the first application of the comparative approach of world-systems analysis in Mesoamerican archaeology.

Northeast of modern-day Mexico City stand the remnants of one of the world's largest preindustrial cities, Teotihuacan. Monumental in scale, Teotihuacan is organized along a three-mile-long thoroughfare, the Avenue of the Dead, that leads up to the massive Pyramid of the Moon. Lining the avenue are numerous plazas and temples, which indicate that the city once housed a large population that engaged in complex rituals and ceremonies. Although scholars have studied Teotihuacan for over a century, the precise nature of its religious and political life has remained unclear, in part because no one has yet deciphered the glyphs that may explain much about the city's organization and belief systems. In this groundbreaking book, Annabeth Headrick analyzes Teotihuacan's art and architecture, in the light of archaeological data and Mesoamerican ethnography, to propose a new model for the city's social and political organization. Challenging the view that Teotihuacan was a peaceful city in which disparate groups united in an ideology of solidarity, Headrick instead identifies three social groups that competed for political power—rulers, kin-based groups led by influential lineage heads, and military orders that each had their own animal insignia. Her findings provide the most complete evidence to date that Teotihuacan had powerful rulers who allied with the military to maintain their authority in the face of challenges by the lineage heads. Headrick's analysis also underscores the importance of warfare in Teotihuacan society and clarifies significant aspects of its ritual life, including shamanism and an annual tree-raising ceremony that commemorated the Mesoamerican creation story.

For more than a millennium the great Mesoamerican city of Teotihuacan (c. 150 B.C.E. - 750 C.E.) has been imagined and reimagined by a host of subsequent cultures, including our own. Mesoamerica's Classic Heritage engages the subject of the unity and diversity of pre-Hispanic Mesoamerica by focusing on the classic heritage of this ancient city. This new volume is the product of several years of research by members of Princeton University's Moses Mesoamerican Archive and Research Project and Mexico's Proyecto Teotihuacán. Offering a variety of disciplinary perspectives - including the history of religions, anthropology, archaeology, and art history - and a wealth of new data, Mesoamerica's Classic Heritage examines Teotihuacan's rippling influence across Mesoamerican time and space, including important patterns of continuity and change, and its relationships, both historical and symbolic, with Tenochtitlan, Cholula, and various Maya communities. The contributors to Mesoamerica's Classic Heritage offer a wide range of individual interpretations, but they agree that Teotihuacan, more than any other pre-Hispanic center, was a paradigmatic source that formed the art and architecture, cosmology and ritual life, and conceptions of urbanism and political authority for significant parts of the Mesoamerican world. This great city achieved the prestige of being the site of the creation of the cosmos and of effective social and political space in Mesoamerica through its capacity to symbolize, perform, and export its imperial authority. These essays reveal the different ways in which Teotihuacan's classic heritage both fed and fed on the dynamic interactivity of the entire area. Whether or not a paradigm shift in Mesoamerican studies is taking place, certainly a new contextual understanding of Teotihuacan and the diversities and unities of Mesoamerica is emerging in these pages.

A unique and wide-ranging introduction to the major prehispanic and colonial societies of Mexico and Central America, featuring new and revised material throughout Mesoamerican Archaeology: Theory and Practice, Second Edition, provides readers with a diverse and well-balanced view of the archaeology of the indigenous societies of Mexico and Central America, helping students better understand key concepts and engage with contemporary debates and issues within the field. The fully updated second edition incorporates contemporary research that reflects new approaches and trends in Mesoamerican archaeology. New and revised chapters from first-time and returning authors cover the archaeology of Mesoamerican cultural history, from the early Gulf Coast Olmec, to the Classic and Postclassic Maya, to the cultures of Oaxaca and Central Mexico before and after colonization. Presenting a wide range of approaches that illustrate political, socio-economic, and symbolic interpretations, this textbook: Encourages students to consider diverse ways of thinking about Mesoamerica: as a linguistic area, as a geographic region, and as a network of communities of practice Represents a wide spectrum of perspectives and approaches to Mesoamerican archaeology, including coverage of the Postclassic and Colonial periods Enables readers to think critically about how explanations of the past are produced, verified, and debated Includes accessible introductory material to ensure that students and non-specialists understand the chronological and geographic frameworks of the Mesoamerican tradition Discusses recent developments in the contemporary theory and practice of Mesoamerican archaeology Presents new and original research by a team of internationally recognized contributors Mesoamerican Archaeology: Theory and Practice, Second Edition, is ideal for use in undergraduate courses on the archaeology of Mexico and Central America, as well as for broader courses on the archaeology of the Americas.

Teotihuacan was a city of major importance in the Americas between 1 and 550 CE. As one of only two cities in the New World with a population over one hundred thousand, it developed a network of influence that stretched across Mesoamerica. The size of its urban core, the scale of its monumental architecture, and its singular apartment compounds made Teotihuacan unique among Mesoamerica's urban state societies. Teotihuacan: The World Beyond the City brings together specialists in art and archaeology to develop a synthetic overview of the urban, political, economic, and religious organization of a key power in Classic-period Mesoamerica. The book provides the first comparative discussion Teotihuacan's foreign policy with respect to the Central Mexican Highlands, Oaxaca, Veracruz, and the Maya Lowlands and Highlands. Contributors debate whether Teotihuacan's interactions were hegemonic, diplomatic, stylistic, or a combination of these or other social processes. The authors draw on recent investigations and discoveries to update models of Teotihuacan's history, in the process covering various questions about the nature of Teotihuacan's commercial relations, its political structure, its military relationships with outlying areas, the prestige of the city, and the worldview it espoused through both monumental architecture and portable media.