Twentieth century settlement patterns in the Basin of Mexico: In search of Pre-Colombian roots for regional demography and land use

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.

Archaeological settlement pattern surveys in the Basin of Mexico during the 1960s and 70s capitalized on cultural behavior that seemed to share important connections with the Pre-Columbian past. The labor-intensive agricultural economy that dominated the region throughout much of the 20th century involved dozens of rural communities, many growing the same crops found prior to the Spanish Conquest, helping to justify use of modern material remains to interpret the archaeological record. This paper uses historic air photos, maps, and census data to document settlement in the Basin of Mexico during different parts of the 1900s. Results indicate some striking similarities between Pre-Columbian and historic 20th century settlement and land use that seem to support a link between the historic and prehistoric past. Urban sprawl and expansion of commercial agriculture, beginning in the 1970s in much of the basin, mark the emergence of important differences with the region’s Pre-Colombian past. Late 20th century settlement and land use, continuing into the first decades of the 21st century, have yielded a very different landscape that, among other things, have important implications for many of the more than 3,900 sites discovered by settlement pattern surveys.

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): 25556