Housing and Society at Teotihuacan

Summary

Housing at Teotihuacan took several forms, including apartment compounds, nonroyal palaces, residential quarters within civic structures, and perishable houses. I describe several approaches and methods that have been, or could be, applied to the analysis Teotihuacan housing. These include quantitative measures of wealth inequality using the Gini index; typological analysis of the forms of rooms, spaces, and compounds; measures of architectural standardization; distributions of surface artifacts collected by the Teotihuacan Mapping Project; and a more productive use of empirical theory and concepts of space, planning, and layout. As a unique form of urban housing in world history, the apartment compounds (and other residences of Teotihuacan) have much to teach scholars about urban life and society in the ancient city.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 81st Annual Meeting, Orlando, FL (2016)   •
• The Rise and Decline of Teotihuacan: Urbanism, Daily Life, and Regional Relations through Time

Keywords

Spatial Coverage