Corporate Paint and Ancient Pharmaceutical Mixtures from Teotihuacan: the Teopancazco Neighborhood Center

Abstract

International Journal of Pharmacovigilance Open Access Research article constituted the most dynamic social units of the Teotihuacan society. These neighborhoods had coordination centers, and were probably headed and managed by the intermediate elite, an entrepreneurial class who competed to bring to the city the most exotic and strange ornaments and garments for public display [4,5]. We have counted ca. 22 of these neighborhood centers in the city [6]. Numerous apartment compounds surrounded each neighborhood center. Around the core, the ethnic enclaves [7] of people coming from Oaxaca (Tlailotlacan), Michoacán and Veracruz (Mezquititla and Xocotitla) were located, each one reproducing its original identity through distinctive funerary rituals, symbolic items (urns, stelae, figurines), and foreign goods. The Oaxaca Barrio and the three concentrations of Oaxaca people settled along the Western Avenue of Teotihuacan that Veronica Ortega, et al [8] has proposed may suggest that the Oaxaqueños were the most numerous foreign group in the metropolis. The extensive excavations (1997-2015) of the Teopancazco neighborhood center (square S2E2 in Millon's map, located to the south of the Ciudadela) by Linda R. Manzanilla [9] and her team [Figure 2, 3], revealed a coordination center for a peripheral neighborhood in the southeastern sector of Teotihuacan, with Abstract This work describes the whole range of body colors with medical properties found in different contexts in the multiethnic neighborhood center of Teopancazco, in the Classic Mesoamerican city of Teotihuacan (AD 200-550). This neighborhood center located in the southeastern part of the city had strong ties to the Gulf Coast of Mexico, particularly to Nautla in Veracruz. Our study suggests that the preparation and confection of body colors (i.e., pigments used for painting one's skin) was one of the specialized activities at Teopancazco, together with garment-making, basket manufacture, and pottery and mural painting. Another specialized activity was the practice of medicine. Both are closely related. A careful analysis of functional sectors in the Teopancazco compound, and the interdisciplinary perspective implemented by Linda R. Manzanilla and her team provided new information on medical practices in Teotihuacan, the most important city of Classic Mesoamerica. This research states that important activities provided by specialists based in neighborhood centers were medical interventions, child-birth assistance, and the preparation of medical prescriptions.