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A Middle Formative Irrigation System near Santa Clara Coatitlan in the Basin of Mexico

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 January 2017

Deborah L. Nichols
Deborah L. Nichols*
Affiliation:
Center for Archaeological Investigations, Southern Illinois University, Carbondale, IL 62901
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Abstract

A major theoretical issue in studies of prehistoric societies in the Basin of Mexico concerns the relationship between irrigation and the development of prehistoric settlement systems. Locating and dating the remains of prehistoric water control systems, however, presents a major methodological problem. The discovery of a series of stratified prehistoric canals in the exposed profiles of contemporary borrow pits near Santa Clara Coatitlan provided an excellent opportunity for dating a prehistoric irrigation system. Results of recent excavations, reported on in this paper, demonstrate that these canals are part of a middle Formative floodwater irrigation system, which is the earliest confirmed evidence, to date, for the use of irrigation in the Basin of Mexico.

Type
Reports
Information
American Antiquity , Volume 47 , Issue 1 , January 1982 , pp. 133 - 144
Copyright
Copyright © Society for American Archaeology 1982

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References

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