Taking it to the Tuxtlas: How the BoM Survey Shaped Gulf Lowland Settlements

Summary

This is an abstract from the "The Legacies of The Basin of Mexico: The Ecological Processes in the Evolution of a Civilization, Part 2" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Robert S. Santley was a junior, third author of the path-breaking The Basin of Mexico (Sanders et al. 1979). Nonetheless, his contribution to the volume was substantial, including co-writing almost 50% of the entire 500+ pages of text and producing almost all of the drawings and survey maps (Sander et al. 1979:xiv). Santley soon turned his attention to the Tuxtla Mountains of southern Veracruz, ultimately directing what was one of the largest total coverage pedestrian surveys of a tropical rainforest environment in Mesoamerica (Santley and Arnold 1996). This almost-400 sq km survey pursued many of the cultural ecological issues that guided the earlier Basin of Mexico project, adjusting for the particular environmental conditions under which prehispanic civilization developed within the upland Tuxtlas. Here we address some of these issues, particularly the relationships between agricultural practices and settlement distributions/densities. Archaeological and ethnoarchaeological data from the region indicate a complex interplay of intra- and inter-community farming strategies, several of which set the Tuxtlas apart from settlements within the surrounding Gulf lowlands. We consider the implications of these strategies for the archaeological record of the Tuxtlas and highlight the intellectual impact of the original Basin of Mexico research beyond the Mexican highlands.

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 2   •
• Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 25723