Introduction: What Happened after the Fall of Teotihuacan?

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.

The fall of the metropolis of Teotihuacan with the 570 CE great fire in the core of the settlement shook Mesoamerica. Demographic displacements, balkanization into small polities, military competition between sites, were all events of the so-called Epiclassic. This symposium will review data from my interdisciplinary project “The Study of Tunnels and Caves in Teotihuacan” (1987-1996),” behind the Pyramid of the Sun. The four tunnels excavated extensively were used by Epiclassic and Postclassic individuals, who lived inside, left traces of domestic and craft activities, and a vast array of ritual contexts, most of which involved Coyotlatelco and Mazapa burials. The use of different geophysical techniques (magnetometry, electrical resistivity, gravimetry, and ground-penetrating radar) was an important aspect. Different radiocarbon dates were compared with obsidian-hydration data. Chemical analyses of activity areas in one of these tunnels provided one of the different perspectives involving the study of activity areas, together with polished tools and obsidian objects. The presence of a substantial Coyotlatelco occupation, the transition between Coyotlatelco/Mazapa, another definitely Mazapa, and one involving Aztec occupants, gives us one of the most complete set of dates, as well as archaeobotanical, archaeozoological, osteological, ceramic, lithics, and other archaeological materials from post-Teotihuacan times.

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?

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 37733.0