3 Contextualizing Commerce at Teotihuacan: Pottery as Evidence for Regional and Neighborhood-Scale Markets

Abstract

The growth of Teotihuacan in the first millennium CE entailed the development of an extensive, dynamic, and multifaceted economic system. Teotihuacan's economy likely included forms of market exchange, making it an important case study for research concerning the origins of market economies. The settings in which goods changed hands and the social significance of economic interactions are not well understood, however. Here, I discuss how contexts of exchange may be reconstructed through the study of domestic artifacts. I focus on ceramics associated with Teotihuacan's neighborhoods and outlying communities, emphasizing recent data from settlements south of the capital. Compositional analyses are important for tracing exchange networks; macroscopic analyses of assemblage content and stylistic variation are also needed to estimate the scales at which goods circulated and to comprehend the social aspects of economic transactions. Finally, I consider the diverse kinds of physical settings in which market exchange may have occurred. Tendencies to view marketplaces primarily as large, architecturally formal, permanent, and centrally located may constrain our ability to identify and assess the significance of those that were small, informal, and situated within communities.