RITUAL DIVERSITY AND SOCIAL IDENTITIES: A STUDY OF MORTUARY BEHAVIORS AT TEOTIHUACAN

Summary

The research presented here confronts the issue of ritual variation and its role in

structuring the social dynamics of ancient Teotihuacan, a state that dominated central

Mexico during the first half-millennium A.D. Most of Teotihuacan’s urban population

lived in apartment compounds located across the city, but the nature of these co-residing groups is not well understood. Even less is known about how subordinate settlements beyond the city limits were organized and to what degree they identified socially with urban Teotihuacan. Because ritual practices are salient in the negotiation of social identities related to gender, age, ethnicity, social status, and religious affiliation, they are an important focus of archaeological research.

This project involved a comparative investigation of mortuary practices at four

distinctive residential locales: the urban compounds of Tlajinga 33, La Ventilla 3, and

Tlailotlacan 6, and the rural settlement of Axotlan, 35 km west of Teotihuacan. The ritual and social organization of each of these residential groups was explored through a detailed investigation of the mortuary treatments of individuals of varying sex and age. The groups were then compared on a larger scale to gain a more comprehensive understanding of the social topography of Teotihuacan society. Results indicate that Teotihuacan’s residential groups were socially delineated in part through the perpetuation of distinctive ritual practices and associated materials. At the level of the state, Teotihuacan exhibited a great deal of outward uniformity in material culture. However, it concomitantly comprised a highly heterogeneous population whose members did not engage in uniform ritual conventions. This has important implications for understanding how ancient states succeeded, politically, in the face of persistent qualitative differences between the official transcript of state-level ceremony and the reality of domestic ritual. Moreover, intrasocietal variation in ritual practices and associated ideologies may reflect sources of social tension that ultimately contributed to the dissolution of the Teotihuacan state.

Keywords

Temporal Coverage

Calendar Date: -100 to 650

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