Producers on the Lake: Late Aztec Lakebed Chinampa Communities of Lake Xochimilco

Summary

Recent historic imagery analysis combined with 1960-70s archaeological surface survey data in a geographic information system (GIS) has generated a detailed spatial model of chinampa beds, canals, and settlement mounds for a 1,010 hectare area of Lake Xochimilco distinct from remnant Xochimilco chinampas that persisted into historic and modern times. The delineated agricultural waterscape was characterized by an approximately 1:1 land to water ratio with narrow raised agricultural beds (3.75 x 49.4 meters). The estimated lakebed population for the study area was 2,525 (2.5 persons/hectare) including 2,000 full-time tenant farmers. In this paper, I continue my spatial analysis of the Xochimilco lakebed chinampa GIS focusing on lakebed settlement. Two types of settlement – chinampa households/hamlets and village wharves – have been identified. Using network and least cost path analyses I define lakebed chinampa communities associated with particular lakebed village wharves – hubs of social and economic activity for tenant chinampa farmers who existed outside the traditional calpolli system of shoreline chinampa communities with pre-Aztec origins. Additionally, transport routes from fields, to lakebed wharves, to the docks of Tenochtitlan-Tlatelolco and other shoreline centers will be modeled. This project creates the first detailed spatially referenced system of lakebed chinampas and producers.

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This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 80th Annual Meeting, San Francisco, CA (2015)   •
• Landscapes of Production: Recent Research on the Archaeology of Field and Irrigation Systems

Keywords

Spatial Coverage