Water, Water, Everywhere, but You Need to Walk to Get a Drink: The Relationship between Water Sources and Teuchitlán Culture Sites in the Tequila Valleys of Jalisco, Mexico

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

This study explores the relationship between several Teuchitlán Culture archaeology sites and their proximity to permanent and seasonal water sources within the Tequila Valleys of Jalisco, Mexico. Water is an essential resource that humans cannot live without. With a lengthy dry season of nearly seven months, questions arise regarding access to water and the ability to store water. The largest sites from around the Tequila Valleys were selected for this case study. The Euclidian distance between sites and permanent and seasonal water sources are compared against least-cost path distances in a GIS to determine how much further people needed to travel. The least-cost path distances are then used in energetics calculations to estimate the amount of labor needed to fetch a daily amount of water. Some tentative conclusions are drawn based on site proximity and labor requirements including the possibility that some seasonal water sources were once permanent or site location was chosen on purpose for political means.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts   •
• Society for American Archaeology 88th Annual Meeting, Portland, OR (2023)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 37281.0