LOS SITIOS RURALES Y LA ESTRATEGIA EXPANSIONISTA DEL ESTADO TEOTIHUACANO PARA LA CAPTACION DE RECURSOS EN LA CUENCA DE MÉXICO

Early fieldwork by Manuel Gamio, near the beginning of the twentieth century, made it clear that there were many sites in the Basin of Mexico that were related in some way to the city of Teotihuacan. It was not until the 1960s, however, with the regional survey projects of Sanders and colleagues that we learned that Teotihuacan controlled a rural area containing a system of satellite settlements. Unfortunately, knowledge of the location of these sites has not prevented many of them from being altered or destroyed by the construction in the metropolitan area of Mexico City of highways, shopping centers, residential areas and other kinds of urban infrastructure. Because of this, most of the sites discussed in this paper were examined as "salvage archaeology" projects carried out by the authors under the auspices of the National Institute of Anthropology and History of Mexico. The archaeological remains that have survived reflect part of the wide range of Teotihuacan rural site types that existed in the Basin of Mexico area and which are so crucial to our understanding of the growth and development of Classic period society in the region. The sites vary in size, exhibit different kinds of constructions, and range in date between A. D. 100 and 500. This paper describes major characteristics and features of these sites, above all with a view to relating these data to comparative information from the urban center of Teotihuacan. Although still lacking much data, we attempt to synthesize what is currently available in light of processes of social development in the Classic period of the central highlands of Mesoamerica.