INVESTIGATING TEOTIHUACAN THROUGHTMPSURFACE COLLECTIONS AND OBSERVATIONS

Abstract

AbstractIn the 1960s, the Teotihuacan Mapping Project (TMP) focused an ambitious, multiyear survey program on the pre-Columbian urban center of Teotihuacan. In addition to creating a highly detailed map, the TMP made systematic records of surface remains and collected nearly one million artifacts from roughly 5,000 provenience tracts. Taken together, the spatial, descriptive, and artifactual data collected by the TMP still constitutes one of the most extensive and most detailed records in existence for any ancient city. This paper characterizes and provides an update on TMP surface observations, particularly as they exist in digital format. Several analytical case studies illustrate substantive ways in which these data have been used in the decades since the TMP survey to investigate the culture and history of ancient Teotihuacan. The utility of extensive surface survey data for investigating key urban organizational elements such as neighborhoods and social districts is briefly considered, along with the growing importance of the TMP collections and records as increasingly large parts of Teotihuacan are lost to urban sprawl and destructive agricultural practices.