Persistent Technology, Changing Social Relations: Urban Architecture at Teotihuacan
Architecture provides a significant medium through which people negotiate their social relations. Construction quality is determined on the basis of series of technical choices from the procurement of resources, combining of materials, and techniques of production. The architectural structure is the cumulative aesthetic and practical product of complex interactions between material condition, technical choices, skills, and knowledge of producers, and social relations in which construction process is embedded. Using cases from Teotihuacan including the ceremonial precinct and surrounding apartment compounds, I will identify temporal and spatial variability in architectural technology and explore social implications of technological persistence and change.