It has been 28 years since Dumbarton Oaks devoted a symposium and subsequent volume to Teotihuacan, which is surprising given the tremendous impact of the city on Mesoamerica. This new book frames Teotihuacan as the thoroughly Mesoamerican city it was and explains its impact throughout the region.

The editors open with a succinct overview of Teotihuacan's development, building on a refined chronology made possible by data within and outside the city. They make a convincing case that the city depended on in-migration after the eruption of Popocatepetl in the first century AD and through later periods, when foreign enclaves engaged in trade and craft production. They organize contributions into three sections. The first part admirably explores political and economic models for the city. Michael Smith takes on both Teotihuacan's unique and standard Mesoamerican attributes. Its orthogonal planning and its commodious and egalitarian apartment compounds are among its most distinctive features. Smith considers its craft production, markets, population, deities, and rituals within the norm for a preindustrial city in Mesoamerica. He argues that Teotihuacan's deities arose from Formative traditions, although the supremacy of Tlaloc was more distinctive during the Classic period than he maintains. Smith resists taking a position on the validity of a collective governance model. However, David Carballo systematically questions evidence for individual rulers in favor of a pluralistic model. He highlights the confederacy of the Triple Alliance and the Aztec Huey Tlatoani council to demonstrate that central Mexico had systems other than singular, autocratic rule. Focusing on murals from the Atetelco apartment compound, he questions whether the replication of an individual with a particular staff invalidates his identification as a ruler. However, nominal hieroglyphs appear repeatedly in Teotihuacan mural art, reflecting a penchant for repetitive, decorative compositions. Carballo also makes the questionable assertion that the recurrence of Spearthrower Owl's name over two centuries invalidates it as an individual name. Several Henrys ruled England, and the rulers of Copan continued to mention K'inich Yax K'uk’ Mo’ for centuries after his death.

Kenneth Hirth tackles the weighty issue of Teotihuacan's economy, citing obsidian—its best-known export—to argue that multiple sources precluded a state monopoly. He offers a model in which elites from Teotihuacan engaged with elites from other areas, accompanied by pochteca-like actors who protected more than they conquered. In this model, Teotihuacan's expansion of marketplaces eventually undermined the city as foreign merchants competed for resources and commerce that Teotihuacan itself could no longer control.

The second section consists of three contributions on iconography, beginning with an examination of Maya-style murals in the Plaza of the Columns Complex. Nawa Sugiyama, William Fash, Barbara Fash, and Saburo Sugiyama offer tantalizing iconographic and stylistic evidence that these murals have a Tikal affiliation. Maya elites from Tikal may have visited and resided at Teotihuacan from about AD 300 to 350, before the famous AD 378 Entrada. However, like Chak Tok Ich'aak of Tikal, these foreigners may have fallen from favor in the second half of the fourth century.

Matthew Robb unseats a tenet of Mesoamerican iconography by cogently asserting that the scroll decoration typically associated with the Gulf Coast originated in Teotihuacan, citing the earliest-known scroll design on a Ciudadela floor. However, an exploration of other Late Formative scrollwork would reveal inspiration for Teotihuacan artists. His argument that the carved slate disks commonly identified as back mirrors may have been the central motif of wood and feather banners, sometimes memorialized in stone, is a brilliant insight. It explains the double-sided nature of the carved slate disks: if they were back mirrors, one side would be invisible, but in a feathered banner both the mirrored and carved sides were visible. Through a spectacularly careful analysis of imagery and materials, Diana Magaloni-Kerpel, Megan O'Neil, and María Teresa Uriarte identify Teotihuacan stucco vessels as portable means to transport information about stucco fresco technique and the ideology of Teotihuacan mural iconography. Rather than offering a simple story of ideological export, they develop an image of Maya artists who creatively adapt a new stucco decoration tradition.

The third section considers places with which Teotihuacan interacted. Several of these chapters provide detailed summations of decades of excavations, but the amount of repetition makes for a tedious read. The editors could have done a better job of eliminating duplicative information and easing the awkward insertion of site report data. Chapters covering the Gulf Coast, the Maya Highlands, and the Pacific Coast of Guatemala emphasize that trade with Teotihuacan was bidirectional and among elites. An exception is Teotihuacan's Oaxaca Barrio, in which non-elites from its frontier presumably interacted with high-status Teotihuacanos who traveled to Monte Alban. Gary Feinman and Linda Nicholas argue that worship of a calendrically associated feathered serpent deity engendered an effective trading system. However, they do not explain its rejection when the Feathered Serpent Pyramid was violently smashed. Several chapters make the case that Teotihuacan was more interested in controlling trade routes than in the goods themselves.

Chapters on Cholula and the Maya Lowlands demonstrate Teotihuacan's interconnectedness. Gabriela Uruñuela y Ladrón de Guevara and Patricia Plunket note that Cholula and Teotihuacan exhibited parallel economic expansion, even though Cholula's Great Pyramid reflects a more publicly inclusive space than the exclusionary character of Teotihuacan's Moon Pyramid. Marcello Canuto, Luke Auld-Thomas, and Ernesto Arredondo's observation that Teotihuacan's intrusion into the Maya Lowlands coincided with dramatic political reorganization and the emergence of dynastic rule there tells a richer tale of impact, opportunity, and response than earlier, less-nuanced models.

Smith's final rejoinder favors empire and world-systems models for Teotihuacan's interactions with its Mesoamerican contemporaries. He asserts Teotihuacan's conformity as a “standard Mesoamerican capital city” (p. 464) but remains perplexed why it was so emulated and associated with prestige in far-flung parts of Mesoamerica. I concur with George Cowgill, whom he quotes, and William Fash, in the concluding chapter, that Teotihuacan's architectural splendor and cosmological layout, combined with its economic success, overwhelmed visitors and became legendary among those who knew of it only through stories. This book makes it clear that Teotihuacan was simultaneously exceptional and profoundly Mesoamerican.