| Use of wetlands for agricultural production was not uncommon in pre-Hispanic Mesoamerica, but construction of extensive systems of canals and planting platforms was relatively rare. This dissertation discusses the results and anthropological implications of field and laboratory analyses dating and confirming the existence of such systems in the Tequila Valleys of Jalisco, Mexico. The evidence suggests that drainage-irrigation canals and planting platforms were constructed in Laguna de Magdalena for agricultural production by the Early Classic (A.D. 150–350). A water distribution network, added during the Middle Classic (A.D. 350–650), transformed the earlier seasonally productive system into one with year round productive capabilities. By the Early Postclassic (A.D. 900–1250), the system was abandoned. Construction, intensification of use, and abandonment of this agricultural system strongly parallels the rise, florescence, and fall of the Teuchitlán Tradition.; The dissertation then addresses the questions of who constructed these agricultural systems and the probable nature of sociopolitical conditions when they were built. It explores the evidence for models that propose that such systems were the product of central government dictate or represent the accumulated labor of farmer households; and models that propose that demographic pressure operated as a prime mover forcing adoption of wetland agriculture, in contrast to models that argue that pre-Hispanic wetland agriculture was linked to socioeconomic systems promoting production of a stable agricultural surplus. The investigation concludes that political economy and elite demands for surplus served as the proximate cause, if not of construction of the wetland agricultural system, then of early control and subsequent intensification of agricultural production. Demographic patterns, however, minimally remain an important variable, if not ultimate cause for the system's construction, intensification, and abandonment.; This dissertation provides another example of the utility of palynological analysis in elucidating aspects of human behavior. By demonstrating that pollen extracts derived from archaeological deposits can be radiometrically dated, it also identifies a new means of dating archaeological sites. Further, it documents the value of palynological analysis in identifying and delineating depositional episodes, including those associated with cultivation, even where postabandonment site-formation processes have destroyed stratigraphic and sedimentological evidence for such episodes. |
