Teotihuacan and Early Classic Mesoamerica

Multiscalar Perspectives on Power, Identity, and Interregional Relations

Claudia García-Des Lauriers, Tatsuya Murakami, Claudia García-Des Lauriers, Tatsuya Murakami

• Publisher: University Press of Colorado
• Year: 2022
• Print ISBN: 9781646422203
• eBook ISBN: 9781646422210
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Archaeology
• Index: Social Sciences

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
 

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of Figures
• List of Tables
• Preface
• 1. Introduction: Teotihuacan and Early Classic Mesoamerica
• 2. Political Dynamics and Nonlocal Resources at Teotihuacan: Early Classic Interaction Viewed from the Metropolis
• 3. Interaction, Ethnicity, and Subsistence Strategies among the Minority Groups of the Ancient City of Teotihuacan
• 4. Beyond the City: A Regional Perspective on Teotihuacan’s Growth in the Basin of Mexico
• 5. Creolization and Ethnogenesis in Teotihuacan’s Hinterland: Zapo-Teotihuacanos at El Tesoro, Southern Hidalgo
• 6. The Cholula-Teotihuacan Relation Revisited
• 7. Identity, Material Culture, and Teotihuacan Hegemony in the Toluca Valley
• 8. Burning to Forget: Teotihuacan Ideology through Termination Rituals at El Rosario, Querétaro
• 9. Teotihuacan and West Mexico: Ritual, Exchange, and Interdependence
• 10. A Multiscalar View of Los Horcones, Chiapas: Intermediate Regions and Networks of Interaction during the Early Classic
• 11. A Ojo de Pájaro, A Ojo de Hormiga: Perspectives on Teotihuacan and Early Classic Interactions in Mesoamerica
• Index
• Contributors