Specialized Production of San Martín Orange Ware at Teotihuacan, Mexico

Specialized production forms an important component of the socioeconomic organization of ancient complex societies. Excavation provides critical information on the internal organization of production within a particular workshop and permits the recovery of features not preserved on the surface. In large settlements like Teotihuacan where modern occupation covers much of the ancient city, it is not feasible to fully excavate every suspected craft production locale. At Teotihuacan and in other complex societies, the use of surface indications to generate thematic maps permits discussion of the spatial relationships between economic and social units within the settlement. I use the surface collections made by the Teotihuacan Mapping Project and the partial excavation of one apartment compound and ceramic workshop in the Tlajinga district to consider the organization of specialized production in this neighborhood. I rely on the co-occurrence of ceramic production indicators to define likely workshops, using the surface collections from the excavated workshop as a reasonable indicator of production. Considering the evidence for vessel form specialization and dimensional standardization and previous ethnoarchaeological analyses of the excavated materials, Tlajinga district pottery production appears to have been maximally organized at the community level, with individual apartment compounds forming the basic production units.