Exploring Long-Term Environmental Dynamics and Human Transformation of Aquatic Spaces in Lake Texcoco, Mexico

Summary

This is an abstract from the "2023 Fryxell Award Symposium: Papers in Honor of Timothy Beach Part II" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Lake Texcoco was the largest of the five lakes that existed in the Basin of Mexico. Drained almost completely in the early 1900s, most of its western part has been occupied by Mexico City’s metropolitan area, though its eastern part remains undeveloped, which permits exploring the prehistory of the lake. In addition to several Pleistocene sites with extinct megafauna, Holocene preceramic sites, and numerous tlatel-type settlements and hydraulic infrastructure of the agricultural period. Additionally, sequences of fluvial, fluvio-lacustrine (deltaic), lacustrine, lakeshore, and palustrine sediments provide information to reconstruct lake level fluctuations and the adaptation of human populations to extreme changes in the lacustrine environment. Our team has initiated survey and excavation of test pits in key areas, as well as mapping former deltaic features, springs, as well as lacustrine settlements and features associated with prehispanic hydraulic control of the lake. The application of photogrammetry and lidar to map former canals, dikes, and raised fields, and the chronological sequence of mapped features and sediments show that the evolution of management of saline and freshwater for intensive occupation described in the lake at the time of the Spanish conquest had a long history concomitant with sizable lake fluctuations.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• 2023 Fryxell Award Symposium: Papers in Honor of Timothy Beach Part II   •
• Society for American Archaeology 88th Annual Meeting, Portland, OR (2023)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 36553.0