This interval spans the Miccaotli and Early Tlamimilolpa ceramic phases, whose ceramics do not differ drastically from one another. Plainwares derive from those of the Tzacualli phase, while serving and ceremonial wares show some innovations. The city did not increase in area. Settlement withdrew from the slopes of Cerros Malinalco and Colorado in the northwest (Figure 6.1), while sherd densities increased in the eastern and southern parts of the city, and in and around sector N6W3, in what was now the far northwest of the city. The population of the city probably did not increase much, perhaps because of problems in provisioning a larger settlement. I estimate that it was around 80,000 to 100,000.

The rapid pace of civic-ceremonial construction continued or even accelerated. There was a vast program of civic-ceremonial building on an unprecedented scale – the great enlargement of the Moon Pyramid, razing of the pre-Ciudadela and putting something different in its place, the Five-Prime group (and presumably its unexcavated twin, Group Five), the Great Compound, the Xalla complex, and probably the Avenue of the Dead Complex. During this interval, the material form of the civic-ceremonial core assumed the basic configuration that it has had ever since, although in later times there were some significant modifications (Figure 6.2). It is hard to convey in words and pictures the scale of this central district, and it seems only the experience of actually being there can do this. But some comparisons may help. Along the Avenue of the Dead, from the top of the Moon Pyramid to the southern edge of the Ciudadela, the north-south distance is 2.15 km. This is just short of the distance from the dome of the capitol building in Washington to the Washington Monument, and a little more than three-fifths of the distance from the capitol dome to the foot of the Lincoln Memorial. It is not quite half the length of Central Park in New York City.