George L. Cowgill

This paper summarizes some accomplishments of the Teotihuacan Mapping Project, with particular attention to issues of accuracy and validity. I then describe experiences and lessons learned in creating electronic files derived from Mapping Project field records and collections. I sketch questions about the city and state of Teotihuacan that loom especially large in my own thinking. Finally, I list some specific field projects at Teotihuacan that I think should be given high priority, as well as opportunities with curated materials, records, and electronic files.

After a century or so of slow decline, major civic-ceremonial structures in the city of Teotihuacan were burned and desecrated, probably arounda.d. 600/650, at least some residential structures were abandoned, and the Teotihuacan state collapsed. Few features of Teotihuacan material culture survive in the Basin of Mexico in the ensuing Epiclassic period, which lasted from approximatelya.d. 600/650––800/850. Ceramic and other lines of evidence suggest a sizable in-migration of peoples from western Mexico. These newcomers may have arrived in time to add to internal stresses responsible for bringing about Teotihuacan's collapse, arrived later to take advantage of that collapse, or both. Whatever the case, interactions with Teotihuacan survivors were complex and still poorly understood. Descendants of Teotihuacanos probably soon adopted new cultural identities, making them untraceable in the archaeological record, except possibly by biological markers.

This paper presents initial findings from longer-term transdisciplinary research concerning the social dynamics of urban neighbourhoods. It examines the spatial clustering of ethnicity and class in neighbourhoods over urban history, from Bronze Age Mesopotamia to contemporary cities. Fourteen distinct drivers of social clustering are identified, grouped under the headers of macro-structural forces, the state, local regimes and institutions, and bottom–up processes. The operation of these processes is examined through three historical and three archaeological case studies of clustering. It is concluded that: clustering is a common, but not universal, attribute of cities; there is much variation in clustering patterns, both within and between cities and urban traditions; and, consideration of a wide variety of drivers is required to understand historical and modern residential dynamics.

At Antiquity's invitation the author offers this account of recent research and current objectives at the famous ancient Mesoamerican city of Teotihuacan. After a century of investigation, archaeologists are beginning to see something of the composition and preoccupations of one of America's first urban societies, and how it began, flourished and ended.