Life after Teotihuacan: Everyday Practices and Community Formation at Chicoloapan, Mexico

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Central Mexico after Teotihuacan: Everyday Life and the (Re)Making of Epiclassic Communities" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

The Epiclassic period (550–850 CE) in central Mexico is widely viewed by archaeologists as a time of instability, violent conflict, and large-scale migration. The collapse of Teotihuacan left a fractious and decentralized sociopolitical landscape in its wake—a situation that contrasted starkly with the consolidated, macroregional system that the state had dominated. However, this tumultuous period was also marked by resilience and innovation as people reconfigured social and economic networks, adopted novel practices and institutions, and created new communities. Many of these communities, which were politically independent and relatively self-sufficient, persisted for multiple centuries. Everyday life within them has received little attention in comparison to broader transformations, such as shifting regional settlement patterns. In this paper, I examine the day-to-day practices of residents of Chicoloapan, an Epiclassic settlement in the southern Basin of Mexico, through the lens of domestic material culture (ceramics, lithics, and architecture). I consider the ways in which local foodways, domestic ritual, and forms of supra-household interaction contributed to the early formation and long-term maintenance of an autonomous community, under conditions of regional political instability.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 86th Annual Meeting, Online (2021)   •
• Central Mexico after Teotihuacan: Everyday Life and the (Re)Making of Epiclassic Communities

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 32758