Teotihuacan and Southwest Puebloan cultures are similar in collective ideals, yet strikingly opposite in architecture. The Southwestern tribal groups of North America and those of ancient Mesoamerica are similar in aspects of city layout, their places of worship, and living spaces. Primitive and vernacular architecture is the most obvious and relevant evidence for the study of the relative importance. Climate, site, and constraints of materials and technology will modify, but not determine, the form of the dwelling for Puebloan cultures. Pueblo culture is closely linked with the environment which enabled it to be in a self-regulatory ecological balance with that environment. Teotihuacan has built massive temples and structures in such a way that dominates and controls the environment around them. Both the Southwestern tribal groups of North America and the peoples of Teotihuacan share one vital aspect of their personal and cultural identity: collective ideals and individual variation.
The layout of the city of Teotihuacan is a vital aspect of understanding the culture. The city was based on a grid, and the center was considered a sacred place. This center, also known as Way of the Dead had its own complex about it. The square compound was likely the city’s administrative-residential capital for the rest of its history, and Teotihuacan usually turned away from an emphasis on sanctified dynasts. There were residential areas, special purpose rooms, ceremonial plazas, as well as the Temple of the Moon and Temple of the Sun. It is built on a North and South axis, known as the Miccaotli. Architecture is of both mass and space – mass in temples, space in the plazas.
Teotihuacan most often presented by the artist as a style of greater purity, spirituality, almost platonic ideal being. Abstraction at Teotihuacan was a negation of other Mesoamerican traditions and that they once had a powerful religion with ideas of the highest purity, combined with concepts of rational order and organization. Another spiritual aspect of the city is that it is hidden within the flat space between the mountains – spiritual.
Teotihuacan was an immensely religious society that emphasized the collectiveness of its peoples. One of the most important parts of the religion they practiced is where they gave offering to the gods. The Pyramid of the Sun is likely the largest structures in Pre Columbian Mesoamerica. This pyramid is the most divine aspect of Teotihuacan because of the grand size, and the cosmic alignment with the sun. As previously mentioned, Teotihuacan heavily stressed the use of fertility and water symbols. This massive structure includes many of the most important aspects of political rule in Teotihuacan: divinity, hierarchy, and cosmic alignment. The Pyramid of the Sun was used not only for the rulers as a throne but also where a connection between man and the spiritual realm was to be made. The rulers were thought to be partially divine themselves, and the sheer height of the pyramid and alignment to the sun demonstrated helped to bridge this gap between man and the gods. Pyramid of the Moon was also built on various levels. The astronomical observation was related to divination and the orientation of the Temple of the Sun and the Temple of the Moon is set in a way of astronomical scale.
Archaeology produced evidence of ethnic neighborhoods and barrios of craft specialists in an urban environment of immense diversity, but all lived along a grid. There were large exterior walls for privacy. Multiple passageways to a central courtyard (altar in the middle). Apartments were arranged w/o attention to a family’s status which added to the Teotihuacan collective identity beliefs. There was also a diverse range of floor plans pertaining to different statuses of different families. Such as priestly quarters that were elaborately painted and decorated, compared to a more simple plan and a smaller space.
Chaco Canyon (A.D. 750) was a major cultural, spiritual, economic, and administrative center of a broad range of outlying great houses that are thought of as the “Chacoan World” Symmetry, geometrical order, a crescent shape were distinct characteristics of Chaco Canyon. Chaco Canyon was also based on a North, South, East, West Axis to emphasize the great importance of cosmological order. The axis is the main ceremonial road that runs through the canyon and into Pueblo Bonito. There were small towns surrounding the main center and each dwelling of each town added to a broader plan. Pueblo Bonito was one of the most impressive of the houses at Chaco Canyon. There were 350 ground floor rooms, 32 kivas, 3 great kivas, and 650 rooms in total. A very important aspect of all Southwest Puebloan cultures is that the main goal of the architecture was to coexist with the landscape. They did not want to try and control the land or nature around them, but rather, let it take control of how they built their homes and went about their lives. As in nature, symmetry is not stress. These Southwestern cultures stressed a natural and organic shape in the way they built towns and added onto homes when the families expanded.
Southwestern Puebloan cultures relied on a cycle of rituals related to the seasons, affects the order between man and nature. The kivas are used for ritual or private activities. Used as the symbolic representation of the primordial underworld home from which the Tewa believe they emerged to this world. Kivas could either be rectangular (western) or round (eastern) and very carefully placed in orientation to the sun and moon. There is significance in every detail of the kiva. The roof is made out of timber, and the round shape of the room is to help symbolize the earth and the four corners of the universe. For instance, one descends into them as into an ancient Pueblo room by means of a ladder. This is to stimulate transferring into a different realm. Kivas were generally believed to have been halfway between the underworld and earth. Families would have small kivas of their own, and they would paint new murals inside it every year to pay homage to their ancestors. Also, kivas are usually used only by men as they held the positions of being the shaman and other tribal leaders.
Most pueblos shared similar characteristics. Consisting of rooms with thick dark mud or stone wall arranged in closely-built, extremely compact, multi-story, flat-roofed, terraced, clustered groups. This helps to represent a highly organized life. All pueblos looked to be a part of the landscape, making them harder to see. Term “pueblo” has been used for a variety of ancient and modern cliff-dwellings, mesa-top villages and plains villages (all have common characteristics). Pithouse is the earliest type of dwelling used by the ancient ancestors of the later Puebloan peoples. Pueblos in Chaco Canyon include a repetition of room dimensions, multiple stories, circular ‘religious’ chambers (kivas), su floor of the kive ‘ventilator tunnels.’ Front of the dwellings defined by the position of kivas and refuse and sometimes by the presence of firepits and work surfaces.
The Teotihuacan and Southwest Puebloan cultures thrived on the harsh environments that they lived in, and despite have similar ideals in government and collective ideals, their architecture is immensely different from one another. The city layout of Teotihuacan and Chaco Canyon is intrinsic to understanding the social order stressed by these peoples. Although the cosmic order was stressed in both cultures, Teotihuacan was based strictly upon the idea of geometric shape and symmetry. The abstract geometric style related to the idea of a more universal, divine power within the culture. Whereas in Southwestern Puebloan cultures, the city layout was organic and flowed the way nature often does: without any rhyme or rhythm. The places of worship also varied between the two. Teotihuacan worshiped their gods through massive temples that dominated the landscape, whereas Puebloan cultures practiced their religions in humble kivas. The living spaces of the two were equally and different from one another. Again, Teotihuacan stressed geometric style to represent cosmic balance and a collective persona. Puebloan cultures added to their homes as their families grew and did not stress organic style, but rather an organic and naturalistic one.
Despite both cultures having an emphasis on collectivity and cosmic harmony, the ancient dwellings that were left behind are not necessarily conducive to the way their social order worked. Teotihuacan managed social order by carefully organizing the city and every aspect of the lives of its peoples. Puebloan societies used the landscape around them to create a feeling of balance between man and nature. Southwestern Puebloan tribal groups of North America and the peoples of Teotihuacan share one vital aspect of their personal and cultural identity despite their differences in architecture: collective persona and divine balance.