P'urépecha (Other Keyword)

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kyle Urquhart. Christopher Fisher. Stephen Leisz.

At the time of Spanish contact, Michoacan was under the control of a large empire centered at the capital of Tzintzuntzan in the Lake Pátzcuaro Basin. Prior to the rise of the Postclassic empire, the P'urepecha were organized into a series of small- to mid-scale polities known as ireta, which could be considered roughly analagous to the Nahua altepetl. These polities consisted of of a series of nested territorial divisions composed first of named barrio-level units called vapatzequa followed by...