Interactions Between The Ancient Maya And The City Of Teotihuacan Revealed By New Excavations

Panorama of Pyramid of the Sun. Teotihuacan. Mexico. View from the Pyramid of the Moon.

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Earlier this month, Mexico’s National Institute of Anthropology and History announced new discoveries made by archaeologists working at the site of Teotihuacan, located outside of Mexico City. Teotihuacan was first occupied in 100 BC and grew to be one of the largest cities in the entire world until its collapse in AD 650.  The new findings from this ancient city shed important light on the complex relationship that the people of Teotihuacan held with their Central American neighbors, the Maya.

For many decades, archaeologists have found occasional examples of Teotihuacan style artifacts and architecture at Maya sites leading to speculation about the relationship between these two cultures.  Significant light was thrown onto that relationship in 2000 when epigrapher David Stuart published his interpretation of a hieroglyphic text from Stela 31, a monument from the Maya city of Tikal. This public monument seemed to describe the conquest of Tikal in AD 378 by foreigners with the backing of Teotihuacan.

View of majestic mayan ruins with green grass and trees at Tikal National Park in Guatemala near the border of Belize.

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In the 4^th century AD, Maya cities were still relatively small, and thus it was not difficult to imagine that Teotihuacan could have held some political or military influence over their neighbors, yet we still knew relatively little about the nature of the relationship between these two powers. The new findings announced by the National Institute of Anthropology and History, however, have revealed the presence of Maya people at Teotihuacan prior to the invasion of Tikal, thereby adding yet more layers of complexity to this story.

These new findings were presented by archaeologist Nawa Sugiyama of the University of California, Riverside, at the conference Descubrimientos recientes en Teotihuacan: excavaciones en la Plaza de las Columnas. Sugiyama, together with an international team of archaeologists, documented numerous signs of Maya presence in a group known as The Plaza of the Columns at Teotihuacan.

These signs included both human remains and distinctive types of artifacts. While excavating in The Plaza of the Columns, the team encountered numerous human remains in a deposit they named Offering A1. Several of these remains showed signs of both cranial and dental modifications, which were common among Maya elite, but not typically found among the people of Teotihuacan. 

In another offering, the archaeologists encountered what appeared to be the remains of a great feast. These included extensive food remains and more than 10,000 broken pieces of pottery, all deposited within ten square meters. Just 68% of the pottery, however, appears to have been from Teotihuacan. Much of the remaining 32% of the pottery was decorated with Maya motifs, and thus presumably was brought to the sight from great lengths. The food remains also included traces of tobacco and yuca plants, which also likely were brought in from outside of central Mexico. 

Finally, the excavators encountered fragments from a painted mural associated with a structure within The Plaza of the Columns. Much like the motifs on the pottery, these mural fragments exhibited Maya motifs not typically found at Teotihuacan. 

Radiocarbon dating conducted by the archaeologists suggested that the human remains found in Offering A1 date to approximately AD 300 to 350, and that the mural exhibiting Maya motifs appears to have been destroyed between AD 350 to 450. These early dates tantalizingly suggest interactions between the Maya and Teotihuacan prior to the AD 378 invasion of the city of Tikal.  

It is difficult to fully understand human interactions like these through the scant remnants of the archaeological record. It is clear, however, that Sugiyama’s findings at Teotihuacan have shown that the relationship between these ancient cultures was more complex than we previously knew.

Panoramic view at Avenue of the dead in Teotihuacan, Mexico

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