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EARLY–MIDDLE FORMATIVE PERIOD SUBSISTENCE IN THE TEOTIHUACAN VALLEY, MEXICO: PRE-HISPANIC PLANT REMAINS FROM ALTICA

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 August 2019

Emily McClung de Tapia Open the ORCID record for Emily McClung de Tapia [Opens in a new window] ,
Guillermo Acosta-Ochoa ,
Diana Martínez-Yrizar ,
Carmen Cristina Adriano-Morán ,
Jorge Cruz-Palma  and
Berenice Chaparro-Rueda
Emily McClung de Tapia*
Affiliation:
Instituto de Investigaciones Antropológicas, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Circuito Exterior s/n, Ciudad Universitaria, Delegación Coyoacán, Mexico City, Mexico, 04510
Guillermo Acosta-Ochoa
Affiliation:
Instituto de Investigaciones Antropológicas, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Circuito Exterior s/n, Ciudad Universitaria, Delegación Coyoacán, Mexico City, Mexico, 04510
Diana Martínez-Yrizar
Affiliation:
Instituto de Investigaciones Antropológicas, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Circuito Exterior s/n, Ciudad Universitaria, Delegación Coyoacán, Mexico City, Mexico, 04510
Carmen Cristina Adriano-Morán
Affiliation:
Instituto de Investigaciones Antropológicas, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Circuito Exterior s/n, Ciudad Universitaria, Delegación Coyoacán, Mexico City, Mexico, 04510
Jorge Cruz-Palma
Affiliation:
Programa de Posgrado en Antropología, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Circuito de Posgrados, Ciudad Universitaria, Delegación Coyoacán, Mexico City, Mexico, 04510
Berenice Chaparro-Rueda
Affiliation:
Escuela Nacional de Antropología e Historia, Periférico Sur y Zapote s/n, Colonia Isidro Fabela, Delegación Tlalpan, Mexico City, Mexico, 14030
*
E-mail correspondence to: emily.mcclungtapia@gmail.com
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Abstract

Recent excavations at the Early–Middle Formative period site of Altica in the southern piedmont of the Teotihuacan Valley, Mexico, provide evidence for early agriculture and plant use in a rural community in the northern Basin of Mexico. In the Basin of Mexico, settled agricultural communities were present in the southern sector of the region from at least 1200 cal b.c. Initial expansion into the semiarid northern sector of the Basin, however, appears to have taken place towards the end of the Early Formative, during the transition to the Middle Formative when agricultural economies based on maize cultivation became firmly established, setting the scene for increased population density and concomitant social complexity.

Altica is currently the only community in the Teotihuacan Valley spanning this transitional period that has survived in the face of intensive changes in land use over the last three millennia. Macro- and microbotanical evidence recovered from radiocarbon-dated excavated contexts at Altica provide evidence for maize cultivation and suggest a subsistence economy in transition, prior to the establishment of intensive dependence upon a broader range of domesticated and cultivated plants.

Type
Special Section: Before Teotihuacan—Altica, Exchange, Interactions, and the Origins of Complex Society in the Northeast Basin of Mexico
Information
Ancient Mesoamerica , Volume 30 , Issue 2 , Summer 2019 , pp. 339 - 354
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2019 

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