Multiethnicity and Migration at Teopancazco: Investigations of a Teotihuacan Neighborhood Center

Like modern-day New York City, the ancient city of Teotihuacan in Central Mexico was built by a flood of immigrants who created a complex and diverse urban landscape. The city benefited from the knowledge, technical expertise, and experience that foreigners brought. The neighborhoods also competed with each other in displaying the finest crafts, the rarest raw materials, and the most lavish sumptuary goods.

This detailed volume looks at 116 formal burials in Teopancazco, a powerful neighborhood that controlled the distribution of foreign raw materials from Teotihuacan toward Nautla in Veracruz. Applying sophisticated bioarchaeological analyses of stable and strontium isotopes, trace elements, funerary patterns, and ancient DNA, this holistic study identifies the population’s age and sex profiles, paleopathologies, paleodiet, provenance, and facial approximations. What emerges is a detailed portrait of a multiethnic group working and interacting in one of the largest urban sites in the preindustrial world.

Contributors: Luis Adrián Alvarado | Brenda A. Alvarez-Sandoval | María Isabel Casar-Aldrete | Edith Cienfuegos | Lilia Escorcia | José Ramón Gallego | Teodoro Hernández | Peter Horn | Becket Lailson | Linda R. Manzanilla | Gabriela Inés Mejía-Appel | Rafael Montiel | Pedro A. Morales-Puente | Francisco Javier Otero | Peter Schaaf | Gabriela Natalia Solís-Pichardo