Household Lake Exploitation and Aquatic Lifeways in Pre-Aztec Central Mexico

Summary

This is an abstract from the "The Legacies of The Basin of Mexico: The Ecological Processes in the Evolution of a Civilization, Part 1" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Lake exploitation was central to ways of life and culture in the Basin of Mexico. Evidence of lake exploitation, however, is often difficult to document archaeologically. Thus, discussions of production and exchange in pre-Aztec times usually focus on more durable goods such as ceramics or obsidian. In this paper, I explore archaeological evidence for the exploitation of lake resources in the island site of Xaltocan in the northern Basin. Xaltocan’s island location provided abundant locally available resources including waterfowl, fish, reeds, and insects. People would have been attracted to the site because of the wealth of resources offered by its lacustrine setting, enabling Xaltocan to grow into an important regional center controlling much of the northern lake bed in pre-Aztec times. Evidence suggests that Xaltocan’s commoners were actively processing lake resources during the Early Postclassic (AD 900-1200). However, as a result of political, social, and environmental changes, patterns of lake exploitation shift over time.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• The Legacies of The Basin of Mexico: The Ecological Processes in the Evolution of a Civilization, Part 1   •
• Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 23479