Ancient Agriculture on Lava Flows: Using LiDAR and Soil Science to Reassess Pre-Hispanic Farming onMalpaísLandforms in West Mexico

Abstract

The Mexican Central Highlands have been a major cluster for human settlement since pre-Hispanic times and its soils provide much of the food for modern Mexico. Rainfed cultivation yielded and still yields most of the agricultural products. However, pre-Hispanic rainfed cultivation has been less documented than other practices. Moreover, textual and ethnographic records, mostly postdating the deep modifications made by the Spanish conquerors, have long been prevalent in studies on pre-Hispanic farming and have tended to bias our conception of the latter. Archaeology provides new key information but struggles to address rainfed techniques, which leave few remains behind in some landscapes. To that regard, spatial approaches considering geoecological parameters are helpful. Furthermore, remote sensing techniques and airborne laser scanning (LiDAR), above all, offer increasing potential for feature detection and provides new ways to address fossilized landscapes at both archaeological and environmental levels. This paper offers new insights on pre-Hispanic rainfed cultivation through an interdisciplinary approach. It focuses on archaeological settlements on malpaís landforms (young and rugged lava flows) in the Malpaís de Zacapu, in western Mexico. There, a method combining fieldwork and remote sensing in archaeology and soil science was developed to reassess pre-Hispanic farming. After presenting the method and this study's main results, I discuss the latter in light of examples of ethnohistorical and ethnographical uses of malpaís landforms. They suggest that widespread conceptions about agricultural soils of the Mexican Central Highlands held by external observers differ from Indigenous and local farmers' notions, which seem partly inherited from pre-Hispanic times.

Evolution of ancient farming systems and demography in the volcanic highlands of Zacapu: A model drawn from Geoarchaeology and archaeogeography

“…At another scale, the same strategy is observed in the Pleistocene malpaíses , where Epiclassic people installed their houses on rock outcrops to cultivate in between them (see Figure 2). This topic is detailed by Dorison (2022). Therefore, we emphasize our last point by encouraging our colleagues to consider the environmental factor at every scale of investigation, especially when dealing with populations whose livelihoods depend heavily on agricultural products.…”

The unseen world beneath our feet: Heliyon soil science. Exploring the cutting-edge techniques and ambitious goals of modern soil science

“…Cutting-edge techniques, such as analysing rare earth elements (REE) in both soils and artefacts, might provide crucial information about the history of the area and the origin of the materials used by ancient civilizations [ 24 , 25 ]. In addition, for the exploration of the historical function of the soil some techniques have become important: Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) [ 26 ] X-ray fluorescence spectroscopy [ 27 ] Uranium–thorium (U–Th) dating [ 28 ] Multi-sensorial remote sensing [ 29 ] High-throughput sequencing [ 30 ] Portable X-ray fluorescence (pXRF) [ 31 ] Unmanned aerial vehicles [ 32 ] 3D Printing [ 33 ]. …”

Tropical Agriculture, past and Present: Cross-Cutting Approaches to Global Challenges

“…Among the articles of this special issue, those of Lemonnier and Arnauld (2022), Dorison (2022), and McKey and colleagues (2022) were initially presented at the conference, while the contributions of Mariel and colleagues (2022), Locqueville and colleagues (2022), Kahn and Leposky (2022), and Gonçalves and colleagues (2022) are original research that was added later. This set of articles illustrates very well the diversity of approaches, both archaeological and ethnobiological, used in the tropics to understand agricultural systems, their socioecological implications, and their long-term sustainability.…”