Introduction: mapping associations of Teotihuacan

How the gods had their beginning. . . cannot be known. This is plain: that there in Teotihuacan, they say, is the place, the time was when there still was darkness. There all the gods assembled and consulted among themselves who would bear upon his back the burden of rule, who would be the sun. . . But when the sun came to appear, then all [the gods] died there. Through them the sun was made to revive. None remained who did not die. . . And thus the ancient ones thought it (Sahagún 1953-1982[1547-1577], book 3:1)

Teotihuacan is exemplary of how pragmatic, goal driven practices relate to producing specific knowledge of the site through media. For Teotihuacan, maps, broadly conceived as the ‘depiction of spatial relationships’ (Black 2003:10), form a touchstone medium which have organized such knowledge from the earliest accounts of Sahagún’s ‘ancient ones’ to contemporary archaeological projects. To begin to understand the inter-relationship of goal driven epistemology (Chapter 3) and the mediation of such knowledge via various media, a mediation not framed by the tenets of representation of reality (Chapter 2), this chapter will follow the long history of various engagements with Teotihuacan which are all connected through mapping practices. Since 1560, with the Mapa de San Francisco Mazapan, the ruins of Teotihuacan have been variously depicted. More than 400 years later, Geographical Information System (GIS) and three-dimensional, virtual reality reconstructions connect up with this ‘socio-technical geneaology’. A ‘geneaology’ (Foucault 1984:81), not a seamless history proceeding uninterrupted from an originary beginning, but a trajectory over time marked by punctuated advancements in mapping techniques and technologies which profoundly alter future research goals and procedures. This is particularly the case with the Teotihuacan Mapping Project (TMP) of the 1960’s which will be discussed extensively.

Yet even today, mapping the ruins of the site continues to be an important contribution to, and organizational framework for, knowledge of the site. Furthermore, these representational and organizational media, important as they are for understanding Teotihuacan, also serve as Latourian ‘actants’, mobilizing actions on the part of archaeologists, urban planners, civic governments and governmental, heritage managers which have very real consequences for the contemporary population of the Teotihuacan Valley (discussed under ‘archaeological associations’ in the Chapter 6). If we are to account for the practical consequences of archaeological research, with an important, stabilized outcome in archaeological endeavors often being a map (a compatible and standardized form of knowledge in Latour’s ‘circulating reference’, Figure 3.7), then, I would argue, we should cast the net wider in assessing the impacts upon all associations formed with the site, not only those which strictly relate to this archaeological geneology.

Since the collapse of the prehispanic city, sometime at the end of the Metepec phase (Table 4.1), or 7th century CE, the area encompassed by the modern archaeological zone has been continuously inhabited. Making the most recent, comprehensive map of Teotihuacan, that of the TMP, involved coordination with local residents of the nearby towns whose ‘sprawl’ had extended onto portions of the archaeological remains. This map, defining the borders of the archaeological site and determining heritage management practices, continues to have real impacts on local population in terms of land ownership, building construction and economic development (discussed further below). But what can be said of the inter-relationship between local inhabitants and previous mapping efforts at the ruins of Teotihuacan? The site does not persist in an ‘ecological’ vacuum. Far from it! While the following chapters present a case study to ‘map’ all of the contemporary associations with the site, forming a vibrant ‘ecosystem’ of mutually informing and constraining goals centered upon the archaeological zone (an ‘archaeo-system’ generated and feed by archaeological activity and goals), historical depth will be given in this chapter to such contemporary associations via the prism of mapping. Often, given the nature of the historical sources, little will be able to be conclusively stated. The accompanying textual explanations for these depictions are often missing, lost or otherwise never written, particularly with earlier ‘maps’ of Teotihuacan. This is frequently due to an historical and contemporary predisposition to disassociate archaeological endeavors and their outcomes (maps or otherwise) from this larger network of associations. Yet something, if cursory, can be said from what is chosen for depiction. Where possible, I will discuss the relationships between these mapping projects and the local populations.

The intent is twofold: to exhibit the multiplicity of goals which have created specific associations with the site; and indicate how the specific medium of the map mediates the understanding of the site and relations with the local populations within these historical and contemporary associations. In doing so, this chapter functions to introduce the archaeology of Teotihuacan, link the previous chapters’ discussions of epistemology and the concept of mediation with practices at the site, and set the stage for the subsequent chapters where the primary, contemporary associations of Teotihuacan on the part of the local population, tourists, students and employees are explored in quantitative and qualitative depth. In terms of coverage of the rich and long history of engagement with the archaeological material of Teotihuacan, this chapter can neither be exhaustive nor sequential. Complete and sequential historical overviews of documents pertaining to Teotihuacan (Boone 2000, Linné 2003 [1934]:22-35, López Austin 1989, Matos Moctezuma 1995, 2003, Ruiz 1997), as well as summaries of modern archaeological research conducted at the zone (Armillas 1944, Matos Moctezuma 2001, Millon 1993, Rattray 1987, Sugiyama 2005:1-7), already exist as valuable sources for understanding the heterogeneity of archaeological and non-archaeological interests in the site. Rather than rehash these, this chapter discusses particular (and particularly important) associations developed with Teotihuacan throughout its long history as these have been visually and materially manifested in maps. As I want to underscore both the mixed nature of associations with the site through history, as well as further contextualize the manner in which pragmatic goals determine courses-of-action and the evaluation of their outcomes, the tradition of mapping at Teotihuacan provides an excellent thread to keep woven both ‘theory’ and ‘practice’. Additionally, a more technical account of how information is visualized in the medium of maps and how maps ‘work’ in archaeological practice at Teotihuacan is a topic I have explained at length elsewhere (Webmoor 2005, 2008(in press)). These maps of Teotihuacan form nodes, or linkages, making connections between disparate individuals and research projects over a dispersed time period. To adequately detail all of the minute encounters and results of all documented engagements with the site would be a prohibitively exhausting - of time and interest - task. So I will single out only those nodes in this vast network or circuitry of people and events wherein maps innervate the salient points I wish to make. Informational tools for arranging space and time, maps serve indeed as mediums, visualizing knowledge generated at particular moments, relating people, past and present.

Forward to Merging Myth and Material Metaphor in Maps

Containments

Return to Chapter 3 conclusions