More than 1,500 years ago, Teotihuacan was one of the largest cities in the world. Today, it is a premier archaeological site that remains a powerful symbol of Mexico’s precolonial heritage. This edited volume commemorating the 500th anniversary of the fall of Tenochtitlan highlights the remarkable finds of Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia’s Proyecto Templo Mayor (PTM) excavations, directed by Leonardo López Luján, and guided by archaeologists, art historians, ethnohistorians, and conservators from Mexico and the United States.
This volume presents new excavation results; analyses of architecture, sculpture, offerings, ceramics and other artifacts; and analyses of written records that refine our understanding of this ancient Mesoamerican empire, including a chapter by the late revered scholar of Byzantine art and architecture, Robert G. Ousterhout, who reflects on how Tenochtitlan compares to the political and religious center of Constantinople.
Since excavations began in 1978 at the city’s ceremonial center, Templo Mayor, archaeologists have continued to make incredible finds. One of the PTM’s major contributions has been to establish a chronology of the physical changes in the Sacred Precinct and sync them with the interests and achievements of successive Mexica monarchs, enabling correspondences between historic epochs and phases of architectural expansion, monument construction, and ritual deposits. The PTM applies cutting edge technologies like stable isotope and DNA analyses, organic residue analysis of ceramics, and LiDAR to create a digital topographic plan for the core of Tenochtitlan.
Less sophisticated but equally exciting is the new understanding of the roles of post-conquest Indigenous elites emerging through research of the historical archive, especially sources written in Nahuatl. We are finding that the Templo Mayor was nearly always in a constant process of renovation and expansion and largely dismantled by the Spanish and their Indigenous allies, who built their city on its foundations, figuratively and literally, following the ancient urban plan. This richly illustrated volume, with its numerous color plates, is a valuable addition to Teotihuacan literature.
