Long-Term Regional Landscape Change in the Northern Tequila Region of Jalisco, Mexico

ABSTRACT

The Tequila Valleys, in Jalisco, Mexico, are well-known in archaeology for an early complex society known as the Teuchitlán tradition (350 b.c.–a.d. 450/500), but later developments have received little attention. Here I report on the first systematic, full-coverage survey of the Tequila region north of the Tequila volcano. I explore the ways in which the societies that occupied this territory experienced sociopolitical change diachronically by investigating settlement scale, integration, complexity, and boundedness. Through the use of these core features, I analyze how each changed in varying ways, resulting in patterns that do not conform to static societal categories. Interestingly, there is no evidence that a large polity controlled the entire region at any point in the sequence. Results indicate a dynamic sociopolitical landscape that did not develop along any predetermined pathway.

KEYWORDS:

• Alternate pathways to complexity
• diachronic change
• Tequila region
• spatial analysis
• full-coverage survey

Acknowledgments

This project was possible thanks to the support of various foundations and institutions: El Colegio de Michoacán, A.C., Purdue University, the Foundation for the Advancement of Mesoamerican Studies, Inc. (FAMSI #07012), the National Geographic Society (NGS #8711-9), Mexico’s Consejo Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnología (CONACYT #236004), the Secretaría de Cultura del Estado de Jalisco, and the municipalities of El Arenal, Amatitán, Tequila, Magdalena, and Teuchitlan, and the Consejo de Arqueología (INAH) which provided the permits required to carry out the project. Many special thanks as well go to the excellent crew who walked hundreds of kilometers with me. I would like to thank Stephen A. Kowalewksi, Chris S. Beekman, and Richard E. Blanton for reading and commenting on a previous draft of this manuscript. Of course, I take responsibility for all errors and omissions.

Notes on contributor

Verenice Y. Heredia Espinoza (Ph.D. 2005, Purdue University), is an Assistant Professor at the Centro de Estudios Arqueológicos of El Colegio de Michoacán, A.C. Her main research interests lie in alternative pathways to the development of social complexity in Mesoamerica and cross-culturally and their correlation with material culture and settlement patterns.