2/23/22 – Archaeology Seminar Series Lecture: Urbanization and Abandonment At Teotihuacan

During the Spring of 2022, Boston University’s Archaeology Program will be hosting a series of lectures. Our second lecture is titled Urbanization and Abandonment at Teotihuacan and will take place Wednesday, February 23rd from 12:20 pm–1:15 pm. We are thrilled that archaeologist and scholar Dr. Maria Torras Frexia (Boston University) will be sharing their work on this topic and engaging in a conversation with the BU Archaeology community.

Abstract: The ancient city of Teotihuacan offers us an extraordinary research framework to understand different urban processes involved in settlement creation, development, transformation, abandonment, and reoccupation. In this talk, I will discuss some of these topics. Specifically, I will explore Teotihuacan foundation and early growth until the city achieved its exceptionality. During the formation and monumentalization period (c. 1–250 CE), the settlement displayed an increasing degree of urban planning visible in the coordination and standardization among buildings and spaces. On the other hand, I will present an ongoing project led by the University of Barcelona, which interest is in the abandoned city of Teotihuacan itself. The aim of this project is to analyze the last years of urban phenomenon and the transformation of the landscape from the Epiclassic period to the Early Colonial times.

Maria Torras Frexia is an archaeologist focused on Mesoamerica, with an emphasis on Classic Central Mexico and specializing in Teotihuacan. She has a degree in History (2012), a Masters in Archaeology (2013), and a PhD in Archaeology (2019), all obtained at the Universitat de Barcelona. Her research interests are ancient urbanism, premodern cities, urban life, state formation and architecture. The topic of her doctoral dissertation was to study the early urban formation of Teotihuacan and to understand its social and rulership transformations. She undertook PhD research stays at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (Mexico) in 2015 and 2017. She had held a Gerda Henkel Foundation postdoctoral from the Universitat de Barcelona and currently is a Visiting Researcher in the Archaeology Program at Boston University.