The Palace of Xalla in Teotihuacan: A Possible Seat of Power in the Ancient Metropolis

This collection contains the abstracts of the papers presented in the session entitled "The Palace of Xalla in Teotihuacan: A Possible Seat of Power in the Ancient Metropolis" at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

The Xalla palace is located 235 m to the north of the Pyramid of the Sun. Since 1997, it has been under research by my “Teotihuacan: Elite and Rulership: Excavations at Xalla and Teopancazco Project.” This multifunctional palace may have been one of the seats of power for ancient Teotihuacan: it has an unusually large size in the context of the city, with a surface of approximately 55,000 m2. Also, it is not located along the Street of the Dead, but 235 m east from this avenue, providing a sense of privacy; it is isolated by a double wall about 3 m wide that would have allowed watchmen to walk around it. This symposium will deal with the first results of the extensive excavations by Linda R. Manzanilla from 2000 to 2020; the possible functional sectors; and the results of different analyses: archaeomagnetic and radiocarbon dating; lapidary objects, pigments, mica, marine shells, worked bone, faunal remains, figurines, and ancient DNA.