The Mesoamerican Urban Tradition

The process of preindustrial urbanization is an important archeological issue because of its association with the emergence of early complex societies. There is considerable debate among Mesoamerican archeologists concerning both the evolutionary nature of the process itself and the configurations and functions of the centers that might be called "urban." Part of this debate is caused by the variation that clearly exists among such Mesoamerican centers, as well as the distinctive nature of urbanization in the culture area, which differs in important respects from similar processes in the Old World. Components of a model proposed by Richard Fox are used to set the Mesoamerican urban tradition into a wider, multilineal evolutionary framework. Copán, Teoti-huacan, Tenochtitlan, and other Mesoamerican centers provide comparative examples.