Linda R. Manzanilla – författare

Like modern-day New York City, the ancient city of Teotihuacan in Central Mexico was built by a flood of immigrants who created a complex and diverse urban landscape. The city benefited from the knowledge, technical expertise, and experience that foreigners brought. The neighborhoods also competed with each other in displaying the finest crafts, the rarest raw materials, and the most lavish sumptuary goods.

This detailed volume looks at 116 formal burials in Teopancazco, a powerful neighborhood that controlled the distribution of foreign raw materials from Teotihuacan toward Nautla in Veracruz. Applying sophisticated bioarchaeological analyses of stable and strontium isotopes, trace elements, funerary patterns, and ancient DNA, this holistic study identifies the population’s age and sex profiles, paleopathologies, paleodiet, provenance, and facial approximations. What emerges is a detailed portrait of a multiethnic group working and interacting in one of the largest urban sites in the preindustrial world.

The ability to accumulate and store large amounts of goods is a key feature of complex societies in ancient times. Storage strategies reflect the broader economic and political organization of a society and changes in the development of control mechanisms in both administrative and non-administrative—often kinship based—sectors. This is the first volume to examine storage practices in ancient complex societies from a comparative perspective. This volume includes 14 original papers by leading archaeologists from four continents which compare storage systems in three key regions with lengthy traditions of complexity: the ancient Near East, Mesoamerica, and Andes. Storage in Ancient Complex Societies demonstrates the importance of understanding storage for the study of cultural evolution.

The ability to accumulate and store large amounts of goods is a key feature of complex societies in ancient times. Storage strategies reflect the broader economic and political organization of a society and changes in the development of control mechanisms in both administrative and non-administrative—often kinship based—sectors. This is the first volume to examine storage practices in ancient complex societies from a comparative perspective. This volume includes 14 original papers by leading archaeologists from four continents which compare storage systems in three key regions with lengthy traditions of complexity: the ancient Near East, Mesoamerica, and Andes. Storage in Ancient Complex Societies demonstrates the importance of understanding storage for the study of cultural evolution.