Swidden agriculture,village longevity,and social relations in Formative central Tlaxcala: Towards an understanding of macroregional structure

Understanding social change within early village societies requires analysis at multiple scales. In this paper, we focus on macroregional structure in the Formative era of Central Mexico, based on excavations at village sites in Tlaxcala. A macroregional scale is particularly important for contextualizing developments in the study region. Rapid political evolution after 900 BC built on a legacy of organizational innovations in settled communities to the south. The earliest farmers in central Tlaxcala practiced a system of swidden agriculture developed at lower-lying elevations. Practiced on the erodible slopes of central Tlaxcala, that system led to the widespread degradation of farmland. Consequences at the village scale involved chronic instability of settlement and recurring localized stress on faunal resources.     

Ground truthing of remotely identified fortifications on the Central Coast of Perú

Remote imagery, including freely available satellite images viewed in Google Earth^® and historic aerial photographs, was used to identify anomalies in a 25,000 km² macroregion encompassing 13 river valleys along the Peruvian coast. These anomalies, located atop hills and mountains, were hypothesized prehispanic fortifications. A sample of remotely identified anomalies was ground truthed in the Huaura and Fortaleza Valleys on the Central Coast of Perú. 140 positive anomalies were documented and assessed using a simple defensibility index. Our results significantly increase the number of fortifications identified in both valleys. We demonstrate the efficacy of this method for locating fortifications in a very large region to facilitate the systematic documentation of these durable indicators of warfare.