Concise Oxford Dictionary of Archaeology (718 page)

 
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City-state in the northeastern part of the Basin of Mexico which rose to prominence after ad 100 and reached its peak in the early Classic Stage, ad 450–650. The first major excavations in the city were undertaken by Leopoldo Batres in 1905, since when there have been numerous excavations and surveys including work by Ignacio Bernal , René Millon , and William T Saunders .
The name Teotihuacán means ‘place of the gods’ in Nahuatl, and from its inception as an urban centre the site was planned and formally laid out. At the focus was a complex of ceremonial structures arranged along the Street of the Dead, including two massive pyramids, one dedicated to the sun, the other to the moon. A cave discovered under the Pyramid of the Sun in 1971 may have been important as a sacred place where communication with the underworld was possible and therefore the place around which the city grew up.
The city was probably controlled by ritual leaders who also had secular powers. These leaders occupied a series of palaces while the rest of the population lived in large apartment-like compounds set around courtyards.
By the mid first millennium
ad
, Teotihuacán covered an area of 20 square kilometres and had an estimated population of 125000–200000, making it the largest city in the pre-industrial world. It is estimated to have contained about 80 per cent of the inhabitants of the Valley of Mexico. Moreover, its size and importance made it powerful and influential among the emergent states of Mesoamerica during Formative and Classic times. The city's power and position were both created and supported by the fact that it lay on a major trade route, it had control over a major obsidian source, it was favourably located for the development of intensive agriculture, and it may have had important ritual or symbolic connections too. The influence exerted by Teotihuacán extended to the domination of other centres in the vicinity, at times culturally and stylistically through art and architectural styles, trade, and religious guidance, at other times through military domination. After ad 650 the population of Teotihuacán began to decline and by ad 750 the city had been destroyed. No satisfactory explanation for this collapse has been offered, although sacking by rival Chichimecs is one possibility.
[Sum.: R. F. Millon , 1967, Teotihuacán.
Scientific American
, 216(6), 38–48]

 
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A leguminous plant (Phaseolus acutifolius) with edible seeds in a long pod. Native of Mesoamerica. Domesticated from perhaps 3000 bc.

 
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Maya Lowland Phase covering the period ad 600–900, most easily recognized through the presence of polychrome vases.

 
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Stratigraphic dating method based on the fact that during volcanic eruptions ejected material (tephra) is spread in the atmosphere over a wide area before falling to ground as ash, cinders, or dust. This material is incorporated into archaeological deposits and natural accumulations such as peat bogs as a more or less discrete layer that can be identified and sampled. As a relative dating technique layers of tephra provide isochronous horizons that allow separate sequences of deposits to be linked. Since tephra from certain major eruptions of known age is also chemically distinctive absolute dates can be assigned to layers containing that particular kind of tephra. The best known volcanic eruption that provides a dating horizon for archaeological sites is probably Mount Vesuvius in ad 79 which covered Pompeii, Herculaneum, and many other settlements in central Italy.

 
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A Latin term used to describe a room of moderate moist heat lying between the
FRIGIDARIUM
and
CALDARIUM
.