Water, Politics, and the Built Environment: Human Eco-dynamics and the Origin of the Tarascan State, Lake Pátzcuaro, Michoacán, Mexico

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One of the great challenges for the 21st century will be creating solutions to linked social and environmental change. Archaeology is uniquely poised to make a significant contribution to this debate by helping to explain trajectories of socio-ecosystem evolution over long time scales. With National Science Foundation support Dr. Christopher Fisher, Dr. Helen Pollard, and an international team of colleagues will conduct two seasons of multi-disciplinary research in West Central Mexico to explore relationships between climatic fluctuation, landscape change, and the formation of the Prehistoric Tarascan (Purépecha) Empire. At the time of European contact the Lake Pátzcuaro Basin (LPB) was the geopolitical core of the Tarascan Empire and has long been recognized as a Mesoamerican core region. Prior to European conquest the LPB contained a large population, centralized settlement system, social stratification, and a highly engineered environment.Current explanations for Tarascan state development (~A.D. 1350) highlight a "perfect storm" of increasing social complexity and competition, climatically induced lake transgression, and associated changes in the agrarian potential of the region, but the timing, extant, and interrelationships between these variables remains unclear. Three interrelated propositions critical to a refined understanding of human ecodynamics and the Tarascan State guide the project. First, was there a Basin-wide lake transgression around the time of Tarascan State formation? Next, what was the nature of socio-political organization in the region? Finally, what was the condition of the Postclassic landscape? The timing, extent, and associations between these changes remains unknown and to capitalize on recent research, extend the utility of extent models, and move archaeology in the region forward new research is needed. This study will initiate an innovative program of multidisciplinary research by archaeologists, geologists, and geographers from the United States and Mexico, including full coverage settlement pattern survey, landscape survey, and environmental excavation within an important portion of the LPB, to expand the utility of current models and better understand the development of the Late Postclassic (A.D. 1350-1520) Tarascan State/Empire. This research will make a direct contribution to explanations for the development of the archaic Tarascan state and its expansion into an empire, Central Mexican prehistory, and serve as an important anthropological example of coupled human/natural systems over long time frames. Most importantly this work will more fully explore the timing, extent, and associations between these three critical factors to construct better models and analogs for the LPB as a whole, and for the region in general. Ultimately this knowledge can aid local conservation efforts by correlating results with local and global climatic indices, models of land degradation, and the feasibility of applying local ecological knowledge to modern problems. Students from Mexico, the United States, and Europe will participate in this research for their MA and Ph.D. research.