The Legacy of Deborah Nichols to Understanding the Formative to Classic Transition and Beyond in the Teotihuacan Valley

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Papers in Honor of Deborah L. Nichols" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Over her distinguished career, exceptional in both service and scholarship, Deb Nichols made enduring contributions to the archaeology of three major eras of precolonial central Mexico—the Formative, Classic, and Postclassic periods. Her research within the Teotihuacan Valley in particular spanned the transition to early villages, the intensification of agriculture through canal irrigation in Classic period Teotihuacan, and the Aztec period craft and trade center of Otumba. In this paper I engage with some of these aspects of Deb’s legacy to central Mexican archaeology with a particular focus on early Teotihuacan and processes of urban growth that saw formerly more rural areas develop into urban districts at Tlajinga and other parts of the city’s periphery. I discuss the transition from agricultural fields to residential zones and the eventual replacement of earlier housing with apartment compounds and elevated platform complexes.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 90th Annual Meeting, Denver, CO (2025)   •
• Papers in Honor of Deborah L. Nichols

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 50006