Neighborhood Center

Starting in 2019, the project began investigating the southern neighborhood center of the Tlajinga district.  Research focuses on how public and semi-public spaces of the neighborhood center functioned to tie communities together and mediate social interactions. Within Teotihuacan, these centers include multifunctional architectural complexes that served civic-ceremonial purposes and may have housed intermediate elites in addition to hosting ritual activities.

Excavations at platform complexes of the southern neighborhood center—Complexes 2 and 4 of S4W1—revealed patios surrounded by structures with elaborate construction techniques, including lime-plastered floors and walls adorned with mural paintings and sculptural elements. Chemical residue analyses of floor surfaces suggest diverse uses: early occupation phases combining residential and ritual functions, with later phases more consistent with civic-ceremonial use, as indicated by low signatures of cooking activities and the presence of ritual artifacts like incense burners and caches containing spondylus-shell and iron-ore beads and ritual paraphernalia.

Mural art uncovered in the platform complexes features rich iconography including birds, butterflies, four-petaled flowers, water and fire motifs, feathered eyes, and symbols associated with warfare and the afterlife. Such imagery is consistent with broader Teotihuacan cosmology and political symbolism, emphasizing themes of sacred warfare, preciousness, and transformation. The decoration and spatial organization indicate the neighborhood center was a focal point for community activities, socialization, and possibly military training, reflecting the role of district elites in maintaining social cohesion and public rituals that integrated the district’s population.

The interdisciplinary approach combining excavation, geophysical surveys, artifact analysis, and chemical floor residue studies provides a better understanding of the diverse social functions of spaces within Tlajinga’s neighborhood center. It highlights how Teotihuacan’s urban periphery featured complex social infrastructure with specialized buildings that were both accessible to the community and symbolically connected to the broader metropolis. Neighborhood centers distributed civic-ceremonial architecture throughout the city, providing social infrastructure at the level of districts for the large urban population.