Watering Tlaloc's Gardens: Ancient Irrigation in the Teotihuacan Valley

Summary

As showcased by the "Feeding Teotihuacan" symposium at the 79th Annual Meetings of the Society, there has been a surge of interest in understanding Teotihuacano agriculture or food production. Nevertheless, there is still the glaring question of how the ancient inhabitants dealt with water collection and irrigation in the semi-arid environment of the Northeastern Basin of Mexico. Although canal systems have been previously identified and excavated in various sites throughout the Teotihuacan Valley, the scale of these systems has eluded study. Using remote sensing and geospatial analysis, we have identified previously unknown canal systems throughout the valley, and have intensively studied one such system in the Ejido de San Sebastian through geophysical prospection. As a result, it is now possible to better understand the scale of such systems and hydraulic management techniques employed by the inhabitants of the valley through the centuries-old history of Teotihuacan. This paper will attempt to reconstruct the irrigation system of ancient Teotihuacan using the current sources of information available, and show how through time, the strategies employed by the inhabitants changed.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 81st Annual Meeting, Orlando, FL (2016)   •
• The Rise and Decline of Teotihuacan: Urbanism, Daily Life, and Regional Relations through Time

Keywords

Spatial Coverage