Mercurial maps and Persisting Populations

We can get a sense of this continuity in the habitation of Teotihuacan by looking to the TMP’s relations with the local populations during survey work for the map. When the TMP surveyed the area between 1963 and 1966, the growing population of the Teotihuacan Valley had already encroached upon what would become the archaeological zone (Millon 1973a:20). In the commendably frank and honest section on the TMP’s methods - ‘Field Procedures’ (1973a:ch.3) - Millon does not directly mention the (then) size of the local populations, we can get an accurate idea from the 1960 Mexican government census (INEGI 2000) and the roughly contemporaneous work of Richard Diehl (1972) on ‘ethnoarchaeology’ in the valley. The ‘middle valley’, encompassing the modern towns which are the focus of this dissertation (Chapter 5-6), had a population of 9,782 in 1960. The greatest majority resided either in San Juan de Teotihuacan (4,537) or in San Martín de las Pirámides (3,996) (Diehl 1972:359). While this is a far cry from either the Tlamimilolpa or Xolalpan period population or the swelling population of these same municipalities today (59,518 cumulative for the same towns, and nearly 80,000 for the valley as a whole according to the 2000 Mexican census), with the commensurately expanded problems between municipal development and management of the archaeological zone, encroachment into the central portion of the zone with private dwellings and agricultural fields was already an impediment to surveying in the 1960’s. Milpa (corn) and alfalfa fields and nopal and maguey (cacti) orchards covered large areas on the peripheries of the central zone . Millon (1973a:figures 55-56b) noted the impossibility of accurately (or at all) surveying these areas and the cognate problems of interpreting the obscured structures. On the 1:2000 scale maps (Millon, Drewitt and Cowgill 1973b), he marks areas not surveyed because of the presence of these modern obstructions, and draws in the dimensions of alfalfa fields and maguey or nopal orchard rows (occasionally even drawing individual cactus). Most of these tracts where modern land rights abutted the goals of the archaeological survey were located on the east and southeast peripheries of the modern archaeological zone, near the densely occupied towns of San Martín and the purificación barrio of San Juan.

Aside from the notations on the small scale maps and the figure captions accompanying photos of the agricultural fields, we have to glean the few remarks given by Millon regarding involvement with the modern populations. Several indicators suggest that there was probably a level of tension between local residents, particularly landowners, and the TMP team which was not divulged. First, Millon also marks on the small scale maps areas which were not surveyed because permission from the landowners had been withheld (Millon, Drewitt and Cowgill 1973b). He summarizes the vagaries of trying to complete the map under “all kinds of pressures over which we had no control. We suddenly would be confronted with the imminent destruction of a site or group of sites, or the sudden concession of permission to work in an area previously denied to us” (Millon 1973a:24). Second, he makes mention of local scholars and administrators who aided the team in gaining access to private land. For instance, in the prefatory remarks he thanks Mexican archaeologist Jorge Acosta who “intervened to help us resolve a conflict with some of the local people, a conflict that threatened the completion of the map” (1973a:xii). This particular problem of access must have involved a critical portion and/or large portion of land, but we are not given the details.

Such problems are (sometimes aggravatingly so) routine in archaeological fieldwork. And similar issues continue today, though it is the archaeologists and administrators of the Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia who grant permissions to landowners – to build within the protected ‘perimeter C’. But it was not Millon’s goal to involve local inhabitants. His interaction during the TMP with the local residents appears to be limited to ‘damage control’, or the minimization of interference with the goal of completely surveying the entirety of the ancient metropolis. Millon states how earlier projects had combined archaeological, historical and ethnographic research (1973a:i). And indeed, prior to this project, Millon had already undertaken ethnographic work in the valley (and region) in an effort to understand the complicated history and politics of the modern irrigation system (Millon 1957, 1962). Clearly, if he had wanted to incorporate more extensive involvement in the project with the local populations, he already had established contacts and a rapport with individuals in the valley, and had training in both archaeological and ethnographic methods.

Nevertheless, whether the local population was involved to a greater extent or not (perhaps accessible through unpublished accounts) the creation of this map was a watershed event for any consideration of Teotihuacan, whether these involve the archaeological associations of prehispanic urbanization detailed above or the contemporary associations of the wider public with the heritage site as examined in the subsequent chapters. It set in motion both trajectories for how archaeology would be conducted at the site, what would be deemed estimable goals for archaeological research, and for how heritage management of the site would affect the local populations.

Figure 4.4: Teotihuacan Mapping Project’s ‘map 1’ with satellite imagery of Teotihuacan with adjacent towns labeled (after Millon 1973a).

The most direct impact that the TMP map held for the contemporary population was the creation of a series of perimeters extending the central (already fenced) portion of the archaeology zone (Marini Flores 2000:167) (Figure 4.4). In 1987 the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), advised by the International Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS), inscribed the archaeological zone of Teotihuacan into the World Heritage list (UNESCO 1988). In the report, the committee noted that great progress had been achieved “with respect to the draft decree designed to protect the whole of the valley of Teotihuacan” (ibid.:6). This management plan acknowledged the need to define a series of more inclusive “perimeters of preservation” which would cover much more of the Valley of Teotihuacan. ‘Perimeter A’, the ‘Central Area of Monuments’, includes around 263 hectares and constitutes the fenced portion of federal property controlled by INAH. This central portion forms the Archaeological Zone where admittance is controlled at five primary gates. Even before the TMP map, this central portion had already been roughly delineated since Leopold Batres’ work at the site at the turn of the 20th-Century. This central zone had become more well defined by the time Manuel Gamio (1922) worked at the site. So by the time of the TMP, with the completion of a new road (the Periférico) in 1964 circling this central area (Millon 1973a:Figure 4), the zone was already defined and protected. Indeed, the major decrees (los decretos) to expropriate landholders and move agriculturalists off of this central area occurred roughly in unison with these major archaeological projects – the first being after Batres’ work in 1907, the second in 1964 during the TMP and road construction, and the most recent in 1988 after the listing as a World Heritage site and the implementation of the perimeter management plan (Delgado 2005). But subsequent to the TMP’s identification of the full extent of the archaeological site, covering a much larger area than the Archaeological Zone, ‘Perimeter B’, or the ‘Amplified Central Area of Monuments’, and ‘Perimeter C’, or the ‘Area of General Protection’, were demarcated (Marini Flores 2000:167). These extend out (not always contiguously) to cover more than 1,730 hectares, or the full extent of the approximately 20 square kilometers of the archaeological site mapped by the TMP (in Figure 4.3).

For the heritage management of Teotihuacan, these new perimeters, based upon the TMP map, have direct and very real consequences for the populations of the surrounding towns. As these relate to contemporary associations, the consequences will be discussed more fully in Chapter 7. Suffice it to say, these perimeters and the accompanying statutes, laid out in articles 12 and 13 of the 1988 decree subsequent to UNESCO listing, impose building restrictions for landowners in the adjacent towns (Marini Flores 2000). Neither new buildings, nor additions to existing buildings, are permitted to be constructed in Perimeter B. While this statute, owing to the more restricted coverage of Perimeter B, affects fewer local residents, Perimeter C covers a much larger area of the surrounding towns and restricts new constructions or modifications to existing buildings to those deemed to have no detrimental effect upon significant archaeological vestiges. Such determination would fall under the jurisdiction of INAH in coordination with the involved municipal governments (ibid.:167). To this end, a salvage archaeology unit (el Departamento de Salvamento Arqueológica de Teotihuacan) was formed and appended to the archaeological zone to oversee compliance. As discussed in Chapter 7, this heritage management plan has created great tension in the relationship between the archaeological zone (and INAH specifically) and the denizens of the surrounding municipalities.

This affect upon the local population, perhaps making understandable the suspicion exhibited towards the TMP personnel on the part of local landowners when access was sought to survey their land, was a direct outcome of the TMP map. Indeed, the TMP map is cited during compliance work when predictions of likely significant subsoil artifact deposits or architectural features are formulated in order to determine the potential impact of proposed projects. The most notorious example being the permitting of the construction of a Walmart within Perimeter C when the initial INAH archaeologist determined it unlikely to disturb significant archaeological material by citing the absence of features in the proposed area on the TMP map (INAH 2004). We do no know if Millon was aware of the potential applications of the map in heritage planning, as there are not explicit statements in the published reports. However, the astute design of the map, specifically its mercurial ability to be amplified both inwardly in terms of the inclusion of greater detail at smaller scale and outwardly in terms of the extension of its grid system, was part of Millon’s stated goal for the TMP (1973a:12).

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Containments

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