Thèse : références bibliographiques Alexandra BIAR, Navigation et installations lacustres sur les hautes terres mexicaines : les cas mexica et tarasque, Thèse de doctorat en Archéologie des Amériques, Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, Paris (France), soutenue le 24 novembre 2017, un volume de texte (507 p.).

This article provides a new application of Westerdahl's concepts of maritime cultural landscape and maritime cultures within the context of Mesoamerica, and more specifically during the Postclassic period (AD 1325-1521). The results presented here were obtained by transposing maritime archaeological research questions to new fieldwork in the Mexican highlands, using a pluri-disciplinary methodology. Combining archaeology, ethnohistory, iconography, and ethnography allowed to throw new light on the undervalued lacustrine cultural landscape of the Basin of Mexico and its understanding by the Aztecs.

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The island nature of the Aztec capital, Tenochtitlan, is an under-studied aspect in our understanding of this unique urban space, located in the Mexican highlands of Mesoamerica. The island location induces cross-links from aquatic and terrestrial paths to create connectivity and continuity within the lacustrine cultural landscape of the Basin of Mexico during the Postclassic period (a.d. 900–1521). Although Cortés described this city as the “Venice of the New World,” no specific and systematic investigation of facilities related to water transport has been carried out. In this article, I fill this gap through a study of navigation routes which were conceived to facilitate the continuous movement of people and goods through the numerous canals crisscrossing the Aztec capital, and which are identifiable by means of anthropic markers that respond to functional needs. Transition zones (piers, quays, shoreline areas), coordination zones (ports), and activity zones (customs facilities, warehouses, bridges, sacred sites) are all related to the practice of water transport and intimately related to terrestrial roads. I identify and locate these areas using a multidisciplinary methodology based on archaeological data, ethnohistorical testimonies, and pictographic and iconographic documents.

The early human occupation of the Antilles was based on the manufacture and use of expanded and extended dugout canoes named kanawa. The same boat type is also associated with the Carib linguistic family groups precolonial expansion along the coasts from Brazil to Venezuela. This paper describes this type of boat and its construction process in a comparative approach to archaeological and ethnohistorical data related to the Antillean archipelago and an ethnoarchaeological study of the contemporary construction process of the kanawa by the Kali'na Amerindians of Guiana (French Guiana/Suriname). Lastly, an experimental maritime archaeology programme carried out in the Antilles over several years allows us to discuss the nature of navigation permitted by this type of boat.