were highly standardized with regard to outward appearance: each was square with about sixty meters to a side, composed of a single story, and enclosed by an outer wall for privacy. Construction was planned, with drainage and plumbing systems built before the plaster floor was laid. The interior design, however, differed markedly from one apartment compound to another, although all shared certain features. Rooms were arranged around open patios and courtyards, and each compound contained shrines or small temples. Some compounds had large, elegantly decorated rooms and courtyards while others looked more like tenements with tiny, gloomy rooms connected to each other by narrow alleys.

Most of the public architecture had facades of a distinctive style called “talud-tablero.” Consequently, each platform of a pyramid had a sloping lower section, on top of which was a vertical, framed panel. In Teotihuacán, these panels were often decorated by stone sculptures or paint.

Teotihuacán gained much of its wealth from trade and tribute, but it was also a major source of goods. Over 600 workshops have been found at the site, 400 of which were obsidian workshops—the volcanic glass, which was the source of everyday tools throughout Mesoamerica, was available from sources all around Teotihuacán. Indeed, much of the city’s economic and political power came from the fact that it seems to have controlled many of the obsidian sources in central Mexico. About 200 workshops at Teotihuacán produced ceramics. Many of them were engaged in the production of kitchen wares used in the city; others produced molded figurines in huge numbers. Other workshops specialized in works of shell, ground stone, or lapidary art utilizing semiprecious stones.

Teotihuacán is famous for its art. Perhaps most noteworthy is the mural painting that has been found at the site—many of the elite palaces and apartment compounds have rich ornamentation painted in polychrome on their stuccoed walls. Images range from depictions of birds and animals to images of warriors and deities to more complex scenes, including one that has been interpreted as a depiction of the “paradise of the rain god” with human figures cavorting among trees and flowers, and butterflies.

Burial patterns varied at Teotihuacán. In some cases the dead were buried beneath the rooms and patios of the compounds where they lived; in others, the dead were wrapped in mummy bundles and cremated. Recently, archaeologists have encountered the remains of sacrificial victims at Teotihuacán, and over 100 skeletons have been found in a series of pits beneath the Pyramid of Quetzalcoatl. The skeletons are those of young men, probably warriors, with their hands tied behind their backs. They wore necklaces of shell pieces carved to look like human jaws set with teeth, and they were buried with large projectile points of obsidian. Beneath the center of the pyramid was a large burial pit that contained more skeletons. These included at least one individual of high status, as he was buried with jewelry and other offerings, including a wooden staff carved with the head of a feathered serpent. The sacrificial offerings were probably deposited to dedicate the Pyramid of Quetzalcoatl around a.d. 300.

Although it can be argued that Teotihuacán’s decline began early in the sixth century (some trade routes seem to have been severed and little new building was undertaken at Teotihuacán after that time), it wasn’t until about a.d. 750 that the site suffered major destruction by fire. Over 600 separate fires were intentionally lit in Teotihuacán, most, but not all, of them in the more elaborate structures adjacent to the Avenue of the Dead. Public buildings were the prime target, and a fury of destruction accompanied the fires. Huge stone balustrades from the stairway of the Pyramid of the Moon were ripped out and dragged hundreds of yards. Other architecture was torn down and smashed. Apartment compounds were not immune to the destruction, although most of the damage involved the temples associated with them. The source of and the reason for the destruction of Teotihuacán are still not clear. The patterns of damage indicate a deliberate ritual destruction, one that probably had a political motive. Whether the destruction was carried out by a disgruntled faction within the city or by outsiders (or both) is not clear, but whoever