Ancient Mesoamerica has a section with 5 papers on excavations at the Pyramid of the Moon. Here is a piece from the introduction with a couple of the interesting finds
Wm. Fowler 2007 “Introduction. Special Section: Recent Archaeological Research at the Moon Pyramid, Teotihuacan”
Ancient Mesoamerica, 18: 107–108
In the following paper, Saburo Sugiyama and Leonardo Lo´pez Luja´n provide exquisite detail on the five burial/offering complexes. These exhibit a dazzling range of variation in terms of mortuary facility, body treatment and disposition, and associated grave goods, suggesting correlations with dimensions of ethnicity, social class, and political roles of the sacrificed individuals in life. They interpret the burial/offering complexes as an expression of political authority in ritual and mythical terms. The majority of victims were bound, probably gagged, and likely dispatched with brutal violence. Beheading as a manner of execution was not uncommon. Each burial/offering complex is fascinating, but especially intriguing is Burial 5 which contained the remains of three high-ranking individuals, two with exceptionally rich jadeite ornaments, and an impressive array of associated grave goods evoking their high status. All three were buried in seated, cross-legged (“lotus”) position
that rarely occurs in Teotihuacan burials. There is no indication that they were bound, and their interment, judging from body disposition, appears to have been a respectful one. Sugiyama and Lo´pez Luja´n present overwhelming evidence that these individuals were foreign dignitaries from a Maya city. Significantly, these three individuals did not constitute a foundational sacrifice like the other burials in the Moon Pyramid but were placed in a grave pit in the nucleus of the fill of Building 6 (the penultimate construction stage) as it was under construction, dated by Sugiyama and Lo´pez Luja´n to approximately A.D. 350+50. Of course, these data will have a bearing on the debate concerning the nature and degree of
social and political interaction between Teotihuacan and the Early Classic Maya. Astute readers will have already noted that the estimated chronometric range for this burial aligns well with the recorded date of the Teotihuacan entrada into the Maya lowlands led by lord Siyaj K’ak’ in A.D. 378 (Martin and Grube 2000:29; Stuart 2000).
The following two papers deal with osteological and isotope analysis of the human remains of the 37 individuals recovered. These and the recently published papers cited above clearly illustrate the great potential of bioarchaeology to complement and extend the interpretations derived from the analysis of archaeological context, patterns, and artifacts. Michael W. Spence and Gre´gory Pereira present an overview of the human skeletal remains of the Moon Pyramid. They provide age and sex evaluations and stature estimates as well as data on stress, trauma, health factors, cranial modification, and dental decoration. Christine D. White, T. Douglas Price, and Fred J. Longstaffe present the results of their analysis of oxygen-isotope and strontium-isotope ratios from Burials 2-5 to reconstruct individual histories of residence since childhood. They find that all of the sacrificed individuals, with one possible exception, appear to have been born in foreign lands, suggesting that they were war captives or natives of distant regional polities under Teotihuacan control. They also offer some very interesting comparisons between the burial population of the Moon Pyramid and that of the Feathered Serpent Pyramid. The two populations show significant isotopic differences, indicating a range of different places of residence of the individuals in early childhood and differences in the length of time they had spent in the city before they met their respective deaths.
Bernard
