Managing Teotlalpan: Resourcefulness and Socioecological Diversity during the Epiclassic Period in Central Mexico

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Beyond Maize and Cacao: Reflections on Visual and Textual Representation and Archaeological Evidence of Other Plants in Precolumbian Mesoamerica" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Studies on traditional ecological knowledge stress the importance of local resource management and autonomous governance. Resourcefulness constitutes an integral aspect of such bottom-up pathways. Dependent on knowledge, skills, and social capabilities, resourcefulness allows multiple organisms, materials, techniques, and places to be assembled into diverse ecological strategies and spaces. Resourcefulness is adaptive but also can buffer communities from a range of problems—environmental, social, and political. Recent investigations at the Epiclassic community of Los Mogotes, located between the northern Basin of Mexico and the Mezquital Valley, demonstrates a connection between ecological diversity and sociopolitical autonomy. Established on a defensible hilltop during a time of change, instability, and conflict, residents responded resourcefully to the environmental challenges of their local environment. They mobilized household and communal institutions to create a landscape of gardens, terraces, walls, canals, and reservoirs. They cultivated and collected a diverse assemblage of plants with unique and overlapping ecological requirements. Not only Zea mays but species of Chenopodium, Amaranthus, Salvia, Phaseolus, Portulaca, and other taxa were just as important, if not more so. This research suggests political autonomy, community persistence, and ecological resilience mutually depended on the resourceful management of a diverse suite of species, practices, and physical spaces.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Beyond Maize and Cacao: Reflections on Visual and Textual Representation and Archaeological Evidence of Other Plants in Precolumbian Mesoamerica   •
• Society for American Archaeology 89th Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA (2024)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 40323.0