Teotihuacan as a corporate organization in Classic Central Mexico: an anomaly in Mesoamerica

Linda Manzanilla - Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México 

Abstract: In the first centuries AD a huge planified settlement became one of the most outstanding urban experiments in Mesoamerica: Teotihuacan. This multiethnic city was mainly a crafts center, a place where people met and exchanged goods, where obsidian was monopolized. It was also a sacred center, the center of the four quarters.  Its organization is atypical in Mesoamerica: the strong stress in multiethnic relations, a corporate structure even within the domestic domain, and perhaps also in the co-rulership.  When the city was constructed, a stress in order may be seen. Nevertheless, within this corporate order, when seen in detail, the neighborhood structure reveals that exclusionary structures were present in the intermediate elites that administered the wards. This contradiction between two opposite structures: one in the city and state rulership, the other in the neighborhood heads, may have been a key issue in the collapse.

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