Beyond Teotihuacan: The Decline of Teotihuacan's Sociopolitical System

Summary

This is an abstract from the "What Happened after the Fall of Teotihuacan?" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Toward the end of the sixth century AD, a great fire destroyed the ceremonial center of Teotihuacan, capital of the largest urban development in Mesoamerica. This event was the culmination of a long process of disintegration of Teotihuacan’s macroregional system, a process that began during the ancient city’s apogee. This presentation will reflect on the stimulus that regions outside the Basin of Mexico received by participating in Teotihuacan’s economic and political system. This situation would have led to the sociopolitical complexity of these regions and eventually their independence from the larger system, with the consequent weakening of the center. The simultaneous apogee of several sites, at the time that the Teotihuacan Valley began to experience unfavorable changes, is evidence of a concatenated phenomena. A long-term macroregional perspective allows contextualizing the decline of the iconic city, which, despite its collapse, remained the largest settlement in the Basin of Mexico during the years to follow.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 89th Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA (2024)   •
• What Happened after the Fall of Teotihuacan?

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 37952.0