Geoarchaeology of an Aztec dispersed village on the Texcoco piedmont of Central Mexico

Teotihuacan

“…Multidisciplinary, paleo-environmental research in the Teotihuacan Valley has been a focus of studies by McClung de Tapia (Adriano-Morán, and McClung de Tapia 2008;Cabadas-Báez et al 2005;Gama-Castro et al 2004González-Arqueros et al 2013;McClung de Tapia 2005McClung de Tapia et al 2003, 2005a. More research is badly needed elsewhere in Teotihuacan's hinterlands (Córdova and Parsons 1996;Frederick et al 2005).…”

“…However, no early terracing in the Teotihuacan Valley has been definitely dated to the Teotihuacan period. Environmental degradation is often linked with population growth, but where intensification involves labor-intensive landscape modifications, such as terracing, a decline in the labor force needed to maintain such features can cause serious deterioration as happened after AD 1519 (Córdova 1997;Córdova and Parsons 1996;Fisher 2005). Future studies at Teotihuacan have the potential to contribute much more to the understandings of urbanism, environmental change, and long-term ecological dynamics.…”

“…Manzanilla (2003), however, suggests that environmental degradation from deforestation, especially if combined with drought, made the city more vulnerable to external threats. Sanders (2003) disputed the idea that environmental degradation posed a serious problem, arguing that the city's collapse and declining population that was unable to maintain landscape modifications, such as terraces, precipitated degradation (Córdova and Parsons 1996). McClung de Tapia et al (2003, 2005b found evidence of increased erosion and deforestation, but it seems most correlated with the city's early rapid growth.…”

Tepexpan revisited: A multiple proxy of local environmental changes in relation to human occupation from a paleolake shore section in Central Mexico

“…However, the paleoecological proxies, although multiple, have certain limitations that hamper constructing a sufficiently detailed local scheme for the whole occupation period. Colluvial and alluvial soil-sedimentary sequences of the eastern piedmont of Sierra Nevada register the dynamics of erosion (natural and especially human-induced) for the Late Holocene (Córdova and Parsons, 1997). The proxies from the lacustrine sediments of paleolake Texcoco and nearby lakes Tecocomulco and Chalco cover a large part of the Late Quaternary (35-50 ka) (Lozano-García and Ortega-Guerrero, 1998;Caballero et al, 1999).…”

Village and field abandonment in post-Conquest Tlaxcala: A geoarchaeological perspective

“…By virtue of the arguments developed above for sites such as Concepció n, it is likely attributable to the wave of early Colonial abandonments. Similar sandy overburdens are known in the Teotihuacan valley (McClung de Tapia et al, 2003), at Olopa (Có rdova, 1997Có rdova and Parsons, 1997), and Calixtlahuaca (Smith et al, 2013). At the two latter sites they are explicitly identified as part of Postclassic and younger terrace fills.…”