Hostname: page-component-77c89778f8-sh8wx Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-20T21:10:12.975Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Irrigation at Teotihuacān

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 January 2017

René F. Millon
René F. Millon*
Affiliation:
Columbia UniversityNew York, N.Y.
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

The role played by irrigation in the development of civilization in Mesoamerica has never been satisfactorily determined. Steward (1949: 12-13, 17) has assumed that it played a role in Mesoamerica similar to that which it played in the development of the earliest civilizations in Mesopotamia, Egypt, the Indus Valley, north China, and coastal Peru. In each of these other areas the first urban civilizations to develop were in regions requiring the control of water for the cultivation of crops, and the necessity for this control is generally accepted as having provided the basis for the development of these urban class societies. Yet in Mesoamerica the matter has actually never been established one way or the other. Armillas (1948: 109) states that rainfall is sufficient today during the rainy season in the highlands of central Mexico in general, and the Valley of Mexico in particular, to produce a crop of maize without irrigation, but that irrigation is necessary for the production of an additional crop in any year.

Type
Facts and Comments
Information
American Antiquity , Volume 20 , Issue 2 , October 1954 , pp. 177 - 180
Copyright
Copyright © The Society for American Archaeology 1954

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

APENES, OLA 1943 The “Tlateles” of Lake Texcoco. American Antiquity, Vol. 9, No. 1, pp. 29–32. Menasha.Google Scholar
ARMILLAS, PEDRO 1948 A Sequence of Cultural Development in Mesoamerica. In “ A Reappraisal of Peruvian Archaeology,” assembled by W. C. Bennett. Memoirs of the Society for American Archaeology, No. 4, pp. 105–11. Menasha.Google Scholar
ARMILLAS, PEDRO 1949 Notas sobre Sistemas de Cultivo en Mesoamérica: Cultivos de Riego y Humedad en la Cuenca del Río de las Balsas. Anales del Jnstituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia, 3, pp. 85–113. Mexico.Google Scholar
GAMIO, MANUEL 1922 The Population of the Valley of Teotihuacan: Introduction, Synthesis and Conclusions. Secretaría de Agricultural y Fomento, Mexico.Google Scholar
KIDDER, ALFRED V., JENNINGS, J. D., AND SHOOK, E. M. 1946 Excavations at Kaminaljuyu, Guatemala. Carnegie Institution of Washington Publications, No. 561. Washington.Google Scholar
MILLON, RENé F. 1952 Irrigation and the Origin of the State in the Virú Valley of Peru. Unpublished Master’s Essay, Columbia University.Google Scholar
NOGUERA, EDUARDO 1940 Excavations at Tehuacan. In The Maya and Their Neighbors, edited by Hay, C. L., and others, pp 306–19. Appleton-Century, New York.Google Scholar
NOGUERA, EDUARDO 1943 Excavaciones en El Tepelcate, Chimalhuacan, Mexico. American Antiquity, Vol. 9, No. 2, pp. 33–43. Menasha.Google Scholar
SEAKS, PAUL B. 1951 Pollen Profi1es and Culture Horizons in the Basin of Mexico. In “The Civilizations of Ancient America,” Selected Papers of the XXIXth International Congress of Americanists [New York, 1949], edited by Sol Tax, pp. 57–61. University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
STEWARD, JULIAN H. 1949 Cultural Causality and Law: A Trial Formulation of the Development of Early Civilizations. American Anthropologist, Vol. 51, No. 1, pp. 1–27. Menasha.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Vivó, JORGE A. AND GóMEZ, JOSE C. 1946 Climatología de Mexico. Instituto Panamericano de Geografia e Historia, Publication No. 19. Mexico.Google Scholar
WILLEY, GORDON R. 1953 Prehistoric Settlement Patterns in the Virú Valley, Petú. Bureau of American Ethnology, Bulletin 155. Washington.Google Scholar