Large-scale Prehistoric Water Management Projects by Small Cooperating Corporate Groups in Mexico and Arizona

Summary

Two large-scale water management systems, one in the Tehuacán Valley of Puebla, Mexico and the other in the Safford Basin of southeastern Arizona, are briefly described and compared. In the Tehuacán Valley, the Purrón Dam exhibits a massive construction effort totaling about 370,000 m3 of earth and stone. In contrast, the 28 "hanging" canals of the Safford Basin are small but extensive in nature, with the longest about 9.5 kilometers in length and the total length of all canals exceeding 80 kilometers. A short history of technological change leading to each of these phenomena is presented. Evidence for the hypothesized engineering and construction of these sophisticated large-scale systems by small cooperating corporate groups is discussed.

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This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• New Perspectives on the Archaeology of Technological Change   •
• Society for American Archaeology 80th Annual Meeting, San Francisco, CA (2015)

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