The Prehispanic 'Fossilized' Canal Systems of the Tehuacan Valley, Puebla, Mexico: Their Distribution, Chronology, and Environmental Context

在美国国家科学基金会的支持下，詹姆斯·尼利博士和合作者将重建位于墨西哥中部特瓦坎山谷的史前运河系统。希望了解导致复杂社会的过程的考古学家们把重点放在水管理系统上，因为它们发挥了重要作用。在世界上早期文明出现的许多地区，降雨量不足以进行大规模可靠的农业，也不足以满足生存需要，于是建造了大量的运河系统。这样的大型劳动密集型项目需要许多人以协调的方式一起工作。主要的系统需要广泛的规划，关于土地和水分配的决定需要某种形式的中央控制。因此，考古学家认为，在许多地方，运河灌溉与大规模社会的发展以及政府和经济的集中系统密切相关。包括阿兹特克人在内的一系列早期国家和帝国在墨西哥中部高地发展起来，考古学家几十年前就知道那里有运河系统。然而，运河的年代极其难以确定，因此很难将灌溉变化与社会发展联系起来。尼利和他的同事们已经发现了一个非同寻常的“化石”运河系统，有可能解决这个问题。它们保存得非常完好，这是由于流经它们通道的水中含有的矿物质（石灰华主要由碳酸钙组成）的沉积。因此，运河系统被保存在一些地方超过2.0米厚的石头中。这些系统建造了大约2700年的时间，显然是随着时间的推移而更新和扩展的。石灰华保存了其构造顺序的记录，并为制造和使用它们的人对农业生产的需求提供了敏感的衡量标准。尼利博士和他的同事们将绘制这些运河的地图，并有选择地提取石灰华样本，这些样本以分层的形式出现在运河的横截面上。将进行铀系列定年和稳定同位素分析，并去除有机物进行放射性碳定年。将恢复相关的花粉、植物岩和硅藻，用于古环境重建。相关档案研究将查找有关前西班牙晚期和早期殖民地土地和水的使用和所有权的文件。在此基础上，将有可能构建一个运河建设、随后的扩建和改进以及系统最终消亡的年表。植被生态学和对运河附近农田的栽培和非栽培植物的见解也将获得。

With National Science Foundation support, Dr. James Neely and collaborators will reconstruct the prehistoric canal system located in the Tehuacan Valley, central Mexico. Archaeologists who wish to understand the processes which led to complex societies have focused on water management systems because of the significant role they played. In many regions of the world where early civilizations emerged, rainfall was not sufficient to permit large scale dependable agriculture and to meet subsistence needs extensive canal systems were constructed. Such large, labor intensive projects, require many people to work together in a coordinated fashion. Major systems require extensive planning, and decisions about allocation of land and water necessitate some form of central control. Therefore archaeologists believe that in many places canal irrigation is closely linked to the development of large scale societies and centralized systems of government and economics. A series of early states and empires, including the Aztec, developed in central highland Mexico and archaeologists have known for decades that canal systems were present. However canals are extremely difficult to date and therefore it is hard to correlate changes in irrigation and social development.Dr. Neely and his colleagues have identified an extraordinary system of "fossilized" canals with the potential to obviate this difficulty. They have been incredibly well preserved due to the deposition of minerals (travertines comprised primarily of calcium carbonate) that were contained in the waters that passed through their channels. Thus the canal systems are preserved in stone that is in some places over 2.0 meters thick. These systems, constructed over an estimated 2700 year period were apparently renovated and extended through time. The travertine preserves a record of its construction sequence and provides a sensitive measure of the demand for agricultural production of the people who made and used them. Dr. Neely and colleagues will map the canals and selectively extract samples of travertine present as stratified layers in the canal cross-sections. Uranium-series dating and stable isotope analyses will be conducted and organics removed for radiocarbon dating. Associated pollen, phytoliths and diatoms will be recovered for paleoenvironmental reconstruction. Related archival studies will search out documents pertaining to late Prehispanic and early Colonial land and water use and tenure. On this basis it will be possible to construct a chronology of canal construction, subsequent expansions and improvements and the eventual demise of the systems. Vegetational ecology and insights into the cultivated and non-cultivated plants from fields adjacent to the canals will also be obtained.