What is a Neighborhood Apartment Complex?

　On my walking tour map, they are shown as blue squares. It is said that there were around 2,000 neighborhood apartment complexes, each measuring 43m square. Looking at the Teotihuacan Mapping Project map, this makes sense. However, it is believed that each neighborhood apartment community consisted of an average of nine buildings. As far as I know, only 13 of these have been properly excavated, even if only one building. This is about 6.5%. Below are some characteristics.

　1. Location...

　These are "apartment complexes" not in the city center, but in the "neighborhoods" of the city. They are generally more than 1 km away from the "Street of the Dead," and there are many of them on the outskirts of the city.

　2. Buildings...

　Neighborhood apartment complexes have multiple blocks (= buildings) that are on average 43m square, and each block is subdivided to accommodate around 50 people. Each block is surrounded by an exterior wall about 3m high and has one or two entrances. The blocks are separated by narrow corridors, with 5 to 10 blocks arranged neatly next to each other like square blocks or tiles. Together, the blocks form a community. Each block has its own role to play, and is divided into a temple (religion), a communal kitchen, a workshop, residences for superiors, and residences for subordinates.

　3. Residents...

　There are numerous graves in several nearby apartment buildings, primarily under the floors of the temple wings. Strontium isotopes indicate that most of the remains are not from Teotihuacan - they are immigrants.

　The grave goods are representative of cultures outside of Teotihuacan, including pottery brought from their hometowns or ceramics made in Teotihuacan to resemble them.

　すThe results show that people migrated from all over Mesoamerica. However, this does not mean that they came from the total number of buildings, which is approximately 2,000. Since an average of nine buildings make up one community, there are roughly 200 immigrant communities (2,000 divided by 9). It is thought that the number of places of origin of the residents who migrated to Teotihuacan did not exceed 200.

　There appears to have been some mobility within the migrants themselves: the limited strontium analysis indicates that some of the buried bodies were born in distant hometowns, spent their adult years in neighborhood apartment complexes in Teotihuacan, returned to their hometowns, and then later returned to Teotihuacan for their tombs.

　Did someone order the relocation? It is possible that the ruler of their hometown designated the relocating families in their contract with the Teotihuacan government, but no evidence remains to indicate such a forced relocation order. It is also possible that a family relocated because they saw no future in their home town. If there were many deaths and spaces became available in nearby apartment buildings, relatives remaining in their hometowns might have been contacted and recruited.

　Another example is the analysis of burials from the Merchant's Barrio, which reported that the proportion of men belonging to the Maya Petén region and the proportion of women belonging to Teotihuacan was high, suggesting that this may be an example of male artisan/traders from the Maya region mating with Teotihuacan women who worked in spinning.

　4. Relationships between neighboring apartment complexes...

　It seems that each neighbourhood's apartment complex produced different products, including pottery, ornaments, urns, incense burners, and obsidian crafts, with a wide range of quality, from items for domestic use to those for the local elite and for wider trade.

　The raw materials for the ornaments would have been imported through trade and transport links with the hometowns that were the roots of the neighborhoods: obsidian from sources, shellfish from the coast, jade, green stone, and green Quetzal feathers from the Petén lowlands, mica and rocks for coloring pottery from the Oaxaca Basin, and other materials from all over Mesoamerica that have yet to be confirmed by archaeology, all likely made their way into the workshops of the neighborhoods of this city.

　Furthermore, if workshops connected to the coast prepared shells and received jade from workshops in nearby apartment complexes with close ties to the Maya, they could have made even more luxurious chest ornaments. In pottery production, when someone invented the latest glaze materials and craft techniques, they would have shared their knowledge and techniques. Such horizontal connections between neighboring apartment complexes would have accelerated the improvement of the quality of Teotihuacan's products.

　In the tombs of distant city-states, including the Maya region, excellent tripod pottery that is clearly believed to be from Teotihuacan has been found as grave goods. It is believed that these items were either bartered with by a wide-area trading group from a specific neighborhood apartment complex in Teotihuacan, or were brought back as "valuable souvenirs" by elites from distant city-states on pilgrimages to the "highly coveted sacred city."

　5. Residents and the government...

　Burial rites are presumably based on those of their hometowns, but architectural design remains largely unchanged across the roughly 200 neighborhoods. It's likely that before 200 AD, the Teotihuacan government provided the immigrant community with building materials and labor, and forced them to adhere to the overall urban planning guidelines, rather than the haphazardly built clusters of houses.

　Similarly, it is assumed that conscription into the government army, and mobilization was mandatory for large-scale construction projects and city-wide religious ceremonies within those projects. In other words, the government appears to have decided that weddings, funerals, and other ceremonies within neighborhood apartment complexes should be in keeping with the local area, but that everything else should follow the overall city plan.

　As we will cover in our sightseeing walk, the style of the murals varies greatly from one neighborhood apartment complex to another, such as Tepantitla, Tetitla, and Atetelco. It is believed that skilled artists among the residents of the neighborhood inherited the painting techniques of their predecessors. It appears that there was no lending or borrowing of artists between neighboring apartment complexes.

　6. The trade group's escort and government forces...

　In response to the question of whether warriors existed even when there was no war, a paper on the Olmec culture made an interesting point. Obsidian workshops have been discovered at the ruins of San Lorenzo Tenochtitlan, the first large Olmec settlement, which lasted from 1500 BC to 900 BC. Products made there were mainly sold along the Gulf Coast of Mexico. This was probably the beginning of wide-area trade.

　Trading corps travel hundreds of kilometers carrying the treasure of obsidian processed goods. There must have been a high possibility of being attacked by bandits along the way. Since the only way to counter force is with force, an escort corps was needed in addition to the merchants. It is pointed out that these escorts would have turned into warriors.

　The society of Teotihuacan not only engaged in leisurely farming in the valley, but also controlled many large and small rural settlements in the Valley of Mexico. For example, Tula Chico, the predecessor of the Tula Grande ruins, which were built around 600 AD, was a large rural settlement, but it is reported to have been under Teotihuacan's influence. The same is true of the Huapalcalco and Calixtlahuaca ruins.

　It could be said that the forced importation of agricultural products from throughout the Valley of Mexico was what allowed the city to feed its 120,000 people, and that the vast amounts of food needed to produce profitable products in its workshops.

　Naturally, this required pressure. It is believed that the source of intimidation was not the guards from the nearby apartment complex, but the Teotihuacan government forces. Excavations have not revealed any areas that resemble permanent government military barracks, living quarters, or training facilities. These were likely temporary formations.

　Judging from the murals and pottery icons, there is no doubt that there were warriors carrying obsidian knives and shields. The question of how many soldiers there were in the force remains unclear. A rough calculation suggests that if 10 soldiers were mobilized from each of the nearby housing complexes (probably around 200) and the central temples/residences (probably around 20), (10 soldiers x 220 groups) a government force of 2,200 soldiers would have been formed. Then, once the expedition was over, the government army would have disbanded, and the warriors may have returned to their nearby apartment complexes.