Written by Michael E. Smith from the Department of Anthropology, State University of New York, this is a paper presented at the Conference, "Archaeology of Complex Societies: Centripetal and Centrifugal Forces," October 21, 1995, California State University, San Bernardino.

"...that ancient central Mexican society can only be understood by looking at urban phenomena outside of the huge imperial capital cities of Teotihuacan and Tenochtitlan. These two cities were similar in many ways, partly because aspects of the Aztec city were deliberately copied from the Classic-period city. Nevertheless, these similarities can easily mask the fundamentally different patterns of political and economic organization in the two time periods. When we look at rural areas and at non-imperial cities, we see the contrast between the strongly dominant centralized power of Teotihuacan and the open complex market-based economy of the Aztec period. These were fundamentally different urban landscapes, and they had very different effects on peoples' lives, whether in cities or villages..." (Smith)

The Mesoamerican Urban Landscape From Teotihuacan to the Aztecs