Communities without a State: An Archaeology of Everyday Life after Teotihuacan’s Decline in Central Mexico

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Room 206 Ingraham Hall - 1155 Observatory Drive, Madison, WI 53706. Register for Zoom option.

About the presentation: Around the turn of the first millennium CE, Teotihuacan emerged in central Mexico as the first centralized state to politically dominate the surrounding region. It prospered until the 500s CE, when its capital was largely abandoned and its governing institutions dissolved. Teotihuacan’s decline marked the beginning of a decentralized period viewed primarily in terms of crisis and instability. However, this was also a time of innovation and resilience, as people formed new communities and adopted novel practices and institutions. Some of these communities persisted for centuries, yet little is known about how they were organized or what life was like for their inhabitants. In this talk, I discuss field research focusing on everyday life and community-making at Chicoloapan, a settlement that flourished in the absence of a state. Drawing from the results of excavation, remote sensing, and artifact analysis, I consider the activities of local residents and their interactions at a community scale. I give particular attention to the role of ritual in shaping social relations and promoting cohesion during a time of transformative growth.

About the presenter: Dr. Sarah Clayton is an archaeologist interested in the development, social structure, and decline of the world’s earliest urban states. In particular, she studies the interactions between urban and rural sectors of society and the ways in which the evolution of cities transformed surrounding landscapes and ways of life. She is an active field researcher in central Mexico, where she investigates the regional organization and cultural legacy of Teotihuacan, one of the earliest complex states and the largest city of its time in the western hemisphere. Migration, identity, and ethnogenesis are major themes of her work, much of which explores the salience of social diversity in processes of state formation and dissolution.

She holds PhD from Arizona State University’s School of Human Evolution and Social Change.