A02

This study explores the intersection of urban environments and social complexity related to animal manipulation from an ontological perspective in the ancient city of Teotihuacan (1-550 AD), a representative example of mass landscape modification in the New World. This study modifies the basic assumption that domestication is a unilateral human action on the environment and explores the dialectical, agential, social, and co-creative relationship between humans, animals, and the surrounding material world. In this perspective, animals are as political as humans, and contribute to human society as important agents, both materially and conceptually. This study analyzes two collections of animal matter: those left in the remains of a ritual feast held in a palace-type administrative complex that was the center of ritual activities, and those containing a collection of apex predators that were offered in an ancient tunnel beneath the "Feathered Serpent Pyramid." In this study, we apply multiple archaeological and chemical techniques, including zooarchaeology, stable isotopes (light and heavy), aDNA, and radiocarbon dating, to reconstruct the life cycle of animals, including their relationships with humans.