The Tunnels in Teotihuacan: Geology and Technology to Extract Tezontle

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.

This paper aims to review how the Teotihuacanos took advantage of the available geological resources for the construction of the city. The study of the geological characteristics of the Teotihuacan Valley has revealed that what we presently observe is the consequence of the long-term volcanic activity produced in several steps. First, a high-pressure escape of magma shaped mounds of volcanic scoria that later were covered by a thick layer of yellowish tuff that made invisible the previous activity. To take advantage of the geological resources, Teotihuacanos developed a strategy that first used the soil layer. Then they excavated and passed through the tuff layer to reach the underlaying scoria and made tunnels to extract and use this light but resistant material. Scoria (tezontle) was widely used to cover the main pyramids with large blocks, but also with middle size blocks they raised the nucleus of the walls of the apartment compounds and finally, as grinded tezontle was mixed with mud to prepare the mortar to plaster the walls and floors of the city buildings. The large quantities of materials used to build the city left behind deep scars in the terrain forming large depressions and many tunnels underground.

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): 37766.0