Erosion and Agricultural Resilience in the Formative Teotihuacan Valley

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

During the Formative Period, the Teotihuacan Valley’s population was dispersed in small farming settlements in the piedmont slopes surrounding the valley bottom. The end of this period witnessed a dramatic population shift, with the Valley’s inhabitants clustering near perennial streams on the valley floor, along with thousands of new migrants. Erosion is suspected to have been a major pressure leading to the piedmont’s Classic Period abandonment, but little is known about the agricultural strategies employed by Formative farmers or their erosive potential. This study uses the EPIC model, a modern agronomic model developed by Texas A&M’s Agrilife Institute to simulate a variety of likely Formative Period cultivation strategies and model their ecological effects in terms of erosion and soil depletion. The intent is to determine the true erosive potential of Formative agriculture and to better understand the ecological constraints placed on early Central Mexican farmers.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 23963