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Archival Reports of Poor Crop Yields in the Early Postconquest Texcocan Heartland and Their Implications for Studies of Aztec Period Population

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 January 2017

Jerome A. Offner
Jerome A. Offner*
Affiliation:
Department of Anthropology, Yale University, New Haven, CT 06520
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Abstract

One type of evidence which Sanders has used to show the excessive nature of the population estimates proposed for central Mexico by Borah, Cook, and Simpson is an estimation of the agricultural productivity of the Teotihuacan Valley. This estimation assumes an equivalence of contemporary with preconquest agricultural productivity, but such an assumption may be too optimistic since sixteenth-century crop yields from tribute fields in five towns in the Valley of Mexico indicate a curiously low level of maize productivity. These yields are presented and discussed, and Sanders’ population estimates are seen to be more accurate than those of Borah, Cook, and Simpson.

Type
Reports
Information
American Antiquity , Volume 45 , Issue 4 , October 1980 , pp. 848 - 856
Copyright
Copyright © Society for American Archaeology 1980

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References

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