[Aztlan] Teotihuacan: Peaceful theocracy or warrior cult

[Archaeology Institute]

David and Fiona Gray <davefiona at yahoo.com> writes:
>I was talking to this guy the other day who was of the opinion that Teotihuacan's early history was that of a peaceful theocracy. I was always of the opinion that Teo  societal structure was based  around a warrior cult. Can any one shed some light
>on what type of  society Teo had in its early history from 100 ad -300 ad approx. Thanx.


The early works of the cultural ecologists, e.g., Sanders, Parsons, and Santley, and more recent works by site archaeologists Ruben Cabrera, Saburo Sugiyama, and many, many others, makes clear the martial and militaristic dimensions of Teotihuacan
statecraft.  The mass burial and execution of war captives, enemy combatants, and other persons of interest in Teotihuacan's earliest monuments (Temple of Quetzalcoatl, Pyramid of the Moon, etc) serves to acknowledge that any argument for a
theocratic structuring of Teotihuacan beginnings must take into account the sources and affinities of such sacrificial interments and related martial arts and instruments of terror.  A growing acceptance of the militaristic and predatory role of
Teotihuacan in the Maya region, predicated on the breakthrough interpretation or translation of Maya writings on the topic, in turn lends itself to the very early, and particularly violent and predatory nature of the Teotihuacan state.  Not
surprisingly, therefore, the decline of Teotihuacan in turn coincides with the escalation of warfare, the proliferation of hillforts and acropolis centers, and other related defensive and offensive installations throughout the circum-Basin regions
of Mesoamerica...particularly along the Teotihuacan Corridor to the east (Tlaxcala-Puebla) where site destruction, mass burials of men, women, and children, and the proliferation of technologies of terror abound for the late Classic.

	Ironically, the prevalence of revisionist and denial movement diatribes about the peaceful nature of American Indian communities flies in the face of centuries of scholarship and more recent anthropological and archaeological evidence that
effectively correlates the emergence of state level complexity with the dynamics of organized violence...including, but not limited to the mobilization of warrior sodalities, the emergence of standing armies, the destruction or abandonment of
outliers and competing polities, the wholesale displacement or elimination of ethnic and regional traditions, and the depopulation and or other resettlement of the hinterlands or shatter zones circumscribing the emerging state.  Teotihuacan's
greatness, therefore, may well lie in its longstanding ability to maintain a system of predatory statecraft predicated on the co-option of existing trade networks and resources, and the tandem development of militaristic and commercial strategies
and infrastructure that make clear that the "flag follows trade," and the mobilization of violence and the deployment of coercive force, both anticipates the rise of the state, and serves to define those variables that ultimately come to define even
the most noble creations of the human condition.

Best Regards,

Ruben G. Mendoza, Ph.D., Director
Institute for Archaeological Science, Technology and Visualization
Social and Behavioral Sciences
California State University Monterey Bay
100 Campus Center
Seaside, California 93955-8001

Email: archaeology.csumb at gmail.edu
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