Urban Palimpsest Landscapes: Interpreting the Teotihuacan LiDAR map

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Journeying to the South, from Mimbres (New Mexico) to Malpaso (Zacatecas) and Beyond: Papers in Honor of Ben A. Nelson" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

With 54% of the world’s population living in urban zones, investigating the nature and impact of urban centers has never been more relevant. Archaeology’s unique ability to reconstruct prehistoric urban systems across the long dureé makes the Pre-Columbian metropolis of Teotihuacan (1-550 CE) an outstanding candidate for probing the complex sociopolitical, environmental, and economic circumstances that precipitate urbanization. Project Plaza of the Columns Complex interprets the new Teotihuacan LiDAR map within the framework of palimpsest landscapes; quantifying how prehistoric urban systems leave enduring impacts on the modern landscape. This 2.5 dimensional map covers 165 km2 of the Teotihuacan Valley, expanding the reach of Millon’s survey map by over 122 km2. Not only does this map redefine ancient city limits, it quantifies how the present landscapes trace the contours of their past. Archaeology contributes valuable and influential insights about the continuity between past and present landscapes. The LiDAR data already attests to significant loss of the remaining traces of ancient urban systems. Extensive bedrock mining for the construction of the new international airport has demolished many archaeological features on entire hillsides. Evidence of these lost features are now preserved only as a digital archive on our LiDAR map.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Journeying to the South, from Mimbres (New Mexico) to Malpaso (Zacatecas) and Beyond: Papers in Honor of Ben A. Nelson   •
• Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 24644