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SWIDDEN AGRICULTURE IN THE TIERRA FRÍA? EVIDENCE FROM SEDIMENTARY RECORDS IN TLAXCALA

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 October 2011

Aleksander Borejsza ,
Charles D. Frederick  and
Richard G. Lesure
Aleksander Borejsza*
Affiliation:
Aleksander Borejsza, Coordinación de Ciencias Sociales y Humanidades, Universidad Autónoma de San Luis Potosí, Av. Industrias 101A, Fracc. Talleres, San Luis Potosí, C. P. 78494, Mexico
Charles D. Frederick
Affiliation:
Charles D. Frederick, Department of Geography and the Environment, University of Texas, Austin, TX 78712–1098, USA
Richard G. Lesure
Affiliation:
Richard G. Lesure, Department of Anthropology, University of California, Los Angeles, CA 90095–1533, USA
*
E-mail correspondence to: borejsza@gmail.com
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Abstract

Swidden agriculture in Mesoamerica is commonly associated with the hot and humid lowlands and with small isolated communities. Charcoal-rich sediments discovered in Tlaxcala, however, suggest that it was practiced in the cold highlands in the Formative and Classic periods. The headwaters of the Xilomantla drainage incised a nine-meter deep channel shortly before 200 b.c., in response to increased runoff from slopes degraded by agriculture. It was filled back within a few hundred years with sands and muds containing recurrent laminae of charred plant matter that reflect the annual burning of secondary scrub in fallowed fields. A gully in the La Ladera drainage received high inputs of charcoal from the surroundings of a nearby settlement between ca. a.d. 400 and 900. The farming practices inferred from these deposits have no exact ethnographic analog. They inflicted lasting environmental damage, but were upheld for several centuries despite changes in settlement patterns.

Type
Research Article
Information
Ancient Mesoamerica , Volume 22 , Issue 1 , Spring 2011 , pp. 91 - 106
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2011

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