Teotihuacan Art Abroad, Parts i and ii: A study of metropolitan style and provincial transformation in incensario workshops

The Archaeological Study of Empires and Imperialism in Pre-Hispanic Central Mexico

“…Pachuca obsidian, whose distribution was almost certainly in Teotihuacan hands (Sanders and Santley 1983;Santley and Pool 1993;Spence 1987Spence , 1996, is a rare but consistent commodity at Classic Maya sites (Spence 1996;Moholy-Nagy 1999) as are Teotihuacan ce-ramics (discussed below). Teotihuacan-type decorated censers have been found with local censer types in Escuintla and Lake Amatitlan, Guatemala (Berlo 1984). Cylindrical tripod vessels, a hallmark of Teotihuacan, appear in sites throughout Mesoamerica, although many are locally made variants.…”

“…We consider these censers as imperial goods based upon the identification of a large censer workshop associated with the Ciudadela in Teotihuacan (Sugiyama 1998). Although Teotihuacan-type censers are found in distant areas outside of the empire (Berlo 1984), their presence is isolated from other indicators of Teotihuacan contact and such examples are probably local imitations of Teotihuacan censers. Figurines have been extensively described for two areas in the Teotihuacan empire, Chingu (Díaz Oyarzábal 1991) and the Yautepec Valley (Montiel 1999).…”

The Archaeology of Disjuncture

“…The Maya used Tlaloc-Venus warfare to enhance the prestige of individual rulers and their lineages (Fash and Fash 2000), but Teotihuacan warrior sodalities served to crosscut and deemphasize the importance of individual lineages (Headrick 2007: 100-101). At Monte Albán, some of those same images, like the butterfly complex, blend with local religious styles that de-emphasize war (Berlo 1984). Still other regions, like the Gulf Lowlands and specifically the Tuxtlas region, rarely displayed the militaristic images associated with Teotihuacan (Santley et al 1987), the warrior statue described below notwithstanding.…”

An Archaeology of the Senses: Perception and Cultural Expression in Ancient Mesoamerica

“…Smoke issuing from the effigy censer mouth is a pungent exhalation from the supernatural being. For one of the aforementioned floral censer lids from highland Guatemala, a face occupies the centre of the flower, with the smoke issuing as fragrant breath (see Berlo 1984 (Fig. 7a).…”