university of texas press the teotihuacan trinity the sociopolitical structure of an ancient mesoamerican city dec 2007

[...]... you into the web of the city of Teotihuacan The avenue does this by capitalizing on the natural environment that surrounds the city At the north end of the Teotihuacan Valley sits Cerro Gordo, an extinct volcano with a cleft at its summit The massive mountain imposes itself upon the landscape, and those who designed Teotihuacan recognized this and incorporated its bulk into the city planning They positioned... number of people within the city boundaries while still providing a measure of privacy was one of the great innovations of Teotihuacan housing Not coincidentally, during the period of apartment compound construction, there was a simultaneous increase in obsidian working at Teotihuacan and the appearance of the Teotihuacan state outside the Valley of Mexico This suggests that the manufacture and trade of. .. the teotihuacan trinity THIS PAGE INTENTIONALLY LEFT BLANK chapter 1 a p p r oa c h in g the city Whether it be a.d 400 or today in the twentyfirst century, the Avenue of the Dead profoundly overwhelms any visitor to the ancient Mexican city of Teotihuacan In an almost indescribable manner this broad street orchestrates the space around it, incorporating the visitor into the careful integration of architecture... altar and another ritual structure, testament to the various ceremonies that must have taken place here As in every public area at Teotihuacan, the feeling one has while standing in the Plaza of the Moon is that of being in an enormous space that is, nevertheless, enclosed The sense of vastness along the avenue must have been all the more potent before the rest of the city fell into ruin Many of Teotihuacan s... a factor of much importance in Teotihuacan art Arthur Miller best described the flat qualities of the Teotihuacan mural tradition A remarkable stylistic feature of Teotihuacan murals is the flatness of the images in the painting The motifs represented in any Teotihuacan mural are invariably shown in an attitude which emphasizes the two-dimensionality of the motif, i.e., the broadest aspect of it which... as obsidian working and other crafts grew more and more rapidly, and as more people came into the city Modern-day experiences of living in an urban setting offer insight into the realities of life at Teotihuacan Perhaps from continuity and not chance, houses in the Central Highlands today have some characteristics reminiscent of the Teotihuacan apartment compound Houses in Mexico City and the modern... conception 10 the teotihuac an trinit y of an individual ruler He argued that the structure may have served as the residence of the king and his immediate family and also as a monument to the office of the king, yet, ironically, the Feathered Serpent Pyramid inside the Ciudadela may have marked the decline of powerful individual rule at the site In the years following construction of the Feathered Serpent... sensation is much like the experience of entering a medieval cathedral where the halo of stained glass behind the altar moves the visitor from the back of a dark, deep building toward the light at the other end For the visitor walking figure 1 1 View looking north up the Avenue of the Dead towards the Moon Pyramid and Cerro Gordo, Teotihuacan up the avenue at Teotihuacan, the allure of Cerro Gordo is... king and warrior aristocracy above a farming people The Teotihuacan concept of the utopian city included the entire population living in the same type of dwellings all within view of the great pyramids (Pasztory 1992a:288) This model for a corporate ideology at Teotihuacan suggests that the Teotihuacanos avoided any emphasis on the individual The similarities of the individuals were emphasized, and their... and Red Square—it was both a symbol of the city and its vital functioning organ Clearly, the Avenue of the Dead figure 1 7 Map showing the location of Teotihuacan in central Mexico and its relationship to other important archaeological centers Drawing by Jenni Bongard was built to be the symbol of the city, a statement to visitors and its own inhabitants of what the city represented, its very identity . alt="" the teotihuacan trinity