Mesoamerica

By the early sixteenth century, when the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan was among the largest cities in the world, Mesoamerica’s urban tradition was over 2000 years old (Figure 5). Prehispanic cities took different forms and varied significantly in size. Most archaeologists place the beginnings of urban life and development of state organization during the Late or Terminal Formative/ Preclassic with the formation of civilizations in both the highlands and lowlands.

Teotihuacan

By the end of the Late Formative at 300 BC or slightly thereafter during the Early Terminal Formative (300-100 BC), two urban regional centers dominated the Basin of Mexico in the central highlands - Cuicuilco in the southwest and Teotihuacan in the northeast - each head of a state system. About 100 BC, Teotihuacan grew explosively as most of the

Figure 6 Teotihuacan looking down the Street of the Dead.

Figure 5 Schematic map of Mesoamerica showing locations of early cities.

Basin’s population relocated to the city. Volcanic eruptions destroyed Cuicuilco and its immediate hinterlands leaving Teotihuacan as the sole power in the basin until CE 650/750. It became the most influential city in Classic period Mesoamerica.

The city expanded to 100 000-125 000 people and covered 20 km2 by CE 300. In prehispanic Mesoamerica, only Tenochtitlan in the early fifteenth century was larger. Following the aggregation of the basin’s population at Teotihuacan, its rulers undertook a massive reorganization of the city structured around a cruciform plan. Monumental buildings were constructed along a main north-south artery (Figure 6). A one-story apartment compound became the standard residential unit that housed related families, each with their own apartment.

Although many farmers lived at Teotihuacan, craft specialization expanded as the city became a major commercial center. Teotihuacan was a primate city whose size, military, politicoeconomic, and ideological importance inhibited the development of rival centers. By the mid-500s, however, the city had increasing economic and political difficulties in its hinterlands, and around CE 650 or 750 major temples and other public buildings at Teotihuacan were burned and figures smashed. The collapse of Teotihuacan marked the start of the Postclassic city-state systems, and, although greatly reduced in size and influence, Teotihuacan became an Epiclassic (CE 650-950) city-state center.

Monte Albain

In the Valley of Oaxaca in the southern highlands of Mexico, the city of Monte Albiin became the political and cultural center of the early Zapotec state. Toward the end of the Middle Formative (about 500 BC), Monte Albiin was founded for defensive and ideological reasons atop a cluster of hills in the center of the valley. To some archaeologists, the establishment of Monte Albiin signals the political unification of the valley and beginnings of state organization. An alternative interpretation posits that a chief from the northwest Etla branch of the valley moved his capital to Monte Albiin and subsequently unified the valley in the Terminal Formative (200BC-CE 300).

Located on the main plaza are the famous Dan-zantes that date to 350-200 BC. This gallery of 300 life-size carved stone monuments depicts slain individuals, probably war captives attesting to the importance of warfare in regional politics and in the founding and growth of the city. At the end of the Late Formative or during the Terminal Formative, a 2 km long defensive wall was built on the northern and western slopes of the city as Monte Albiin forcibly extended its control into surrounding regions.

Monte Alban reached its maximum size of 17 00030 000 people during the Classic period (CE 200-700). Monumental temples and a palace were added to the main plaza, along with stelae depicting Monte Alban’s rulers. In contrast to the broad main avenue of Teoti-huacan, the main plaza at Monte Albiin was designed to restrict access.

As the urban population grew, people created terraces on the hillslopes where they built their houses. Many commoners who lived at Monte Albiin were farmers who traveled down the hill to farm their fields. Some craft specialists might have resided together in barrios.

Most construction in the main plaza stopped by c. CE 700, and the city’s population shrank. With Monte Albiin’s decline as a regional political capital, other centers expanded. Small kingdoms, city-states, or cacicazgos, each with a central town or City, became the dominant political form in the Postclassic (see Americas, Central: Postclassic Cultures of Mesoamerica).

Lowland Maya

Rainforests provided the setting for the development of Maya civilization in southern Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, western Honduras and El Salvador. During the Middle Preclassic (900-300 BC), large chiefdom centers developed in parts of both the Maya lowlands and highlands. The Late Preclassic saw the emergence of the earliest cities in the central lowlands at El Mirador, Nakbe, Cerros, and Tikal, and the establishment of the essential elements of Maya kingship and Great Tradition. El Mirador is the largest-known early city in the lowlands, with two acropoli of temples, palaces, and plazas connected by a causeway and hundreds of residential platforms scattered over 16 km2. Toward the end of the Late Preclassic (300 BC-CE 250), El Mirador, Nakbe, and Cerros were mostly or completely abandoned, perhaps due to local overpopulation, conflict, and/or eruption of the Ilopango volcano c. CE 250.

Lowland Maya civilization of the Classic period (CE 250-800) consisted of a network of kingdoms cross-cut by a broadly shared elite culture. Some kingdoms grew larger than others through alliances and conquests but none formed a stable regional/ territorial state.

Maya centers varied from a few thousand to populations in the tens of thousands, reaching c. 60 000 people at Tikal. Maya cities were ritual-regal or courtly centers of royalty and elites. Masonry temples, palaces, ball courts, and the funerary monuments of ancestral rulers were arranged around large open plazas (Figure 7). Stone stelae with depictions of rulers, hieroglyphic writing, and dates proclaimed important events in the lives of divine kings. Major plaza groups were separated from each other within a city and connected by causeways. Cities grew by accretion with little indication of overall planning.

Scattered between the plaza complexes were household groups of farmers and craft specialists and lesser nobles. Maya cities were not tightly bounded. Settlement became increasingly dispersed away from the urban core with gardens and fields between house clusters.

Beginning in the ninth century, major cities in the southern lowlands were abandoned, their hinterlands experienced marked population reductions, and kingship collapsed. Cities in the northern lowlands, however, experienced their apogee during the Terminal Classic (CE 800-1000). One view sees the ninth-century abandonment as a pan-lowland collapse.

Figure 7 Tikal Temple 1.

Others disagree and point to some centers whose occupation continued into the Postclassic. Agricultural degradation from over-intensification, intensified warfare, and elite competition, and a rejection of the institution and ideology of Maya kingship contributed to the collapse of most southern cities.