Paleomagnetic constraints on the ages of the Holocene Malpaís de Zacapu lava flow eruptions, Michoacán (México): Implications for archeology and volcanic hazards

Abstract

Four monogenetic Holocene lava flows located within the Michoacán-Guanajuato Volcanic Field, Mexico, were sampled for paleomagnetic dating. These flows (namely, El Infiernillo, Malpaís Las Víboras, El Capaxtiro, and Malpaís Prieto) are within the heartland of the pre-Hispanic Tarascan civilization and were inhabited repeatedly since at least 100 BC, but no relation with the volcanic evolution has been proposed so far. The stratigraphically oldest lava flow, El Infiernillo, has a radiocarbon age of 3200 ± 30 yr BP (cal. 1525-1420 BC), and it was used to validate the method. Using full-vector paleomagnetic data from three sites as input for paleomagnetic dating applying the global paleosecular variation model SHA.DIF.14k, an age range of 1500-1370 BC was obtained. Two age ranges of 1340-1230 and 1030-940 BC were obtained for Malpaís Las Víboras. A younger age range of 200-80 BC was obtained for the Capaxtiro lava flow and, finally, the Malpaís Prieto lava flow erupted within the range of AD 830-960. The human occupation history of these flows started around 100 BC during the late Pre-Classic, probably shortly after the Capaxtiro eruption. Archeological records indicate an abandonment of the entire area around AD 900 (late to terminal Classic), which coincides with the paleomagnetic age of the Malpaís Prieto eruption. Interestingly, this area was heavily repopulated again only few hundred years later around AD 1250 and belongs to the core region in which the Tarascan civilization has its roots. The eruption recurrence interval of roughly 1000 years indicates that a new monogenetic eruption should be expected to occur again in the future and that this area deserves to be studied in greater detail with particular emphasis on the impact of past eruptions. This could help to better evaluate volcanic hazards and design preparedness strategies to minimize the impact of a future eruption.

The Mitla Landslide, an Event That Changed the Fate of a Mixteco/Zapoteco Civilization in Mesoamerica

“…Therefore, the spatial autocorrelation coefficient at a frequency is related to the phase velocity c(f) through the Bessel function of first kind and zero order o . The phase velocity calculated from the argument of the Bessel function generated (2). For the SPAC technique, we used Geopsy software [23].…”

“…The location of Mesoamerica compels us to think that those cultures witnessed very important seismic and volcanic events. For instance, the birth of the Tarascan empire is clearly linked to changes in the landscape due to an earthquake and to the birth of Capaxtiro volcano [2]. Besides the areas towered by volcanos, earthquakes caused important imbalances or prophecies, such as the fourth bad omen described by León Portilla [3], which warned the Aztecs about the arrival of the Spanish conquerors (The burning lake, El Lago en Llamas): "Texcoco Lake burned, its boiling waters swelled and swept the houses, killing many".…”

Las Cabras volcano, Michoacán-Guanajuato Volcanic Field, México: Topographic, climatic, and shallow magmatic controls on scoria cone eruptions

“…Detailed mapping and radiometric dating conducted during the past 15 years allow to draw a clear picture of the volcanism in this area of the MGVF (Figure 2). So far, this data has been published for various sectors around the basin: the SE sector around the Alberca de Guadalupe maar (Kshirsagar et al, 2015), the NW sector around El Caracol tuff cone (Kshirsagar et al, 2016), the S sector around the Mazcuta cone near the town of Comanja (Ramírez-Uribe et al, 2019), and the W sector near Zacapu city (Reyes-Guzmán et al, 2018;Mahgoub et al, 2018) (Figure 2). These studies show that the basin has hosted intense and diverse volcanic activity since the Pliocene.…”

Critical analysis of the Holocene palaeointensity database in Central America: Impact on geomagnetic modelling

“…Even if ceramics were dated in the same period, the probability of no contemporaneous cooling is high, because sherds came from different archaeological layers or from a single layer associated to a long-lived settlement. Böhnel et al, 2016;Cifuentes-Nava et al, 2017;Goguitchaichvili et al, 2017Goguitchaichvili et al, , 2018bGoguitchaichvili et al, , 2018cHerrero-Bervera, 2015;Lopez-Tellez et al, 2008;Mahgoub et al, 2017aMahgoub et al, , 2017bMichalk et al, 2010;Morales et al, 2012Morales et al, , 2013Morales et al, , 2015Rodriguez-Ceja et al, 2012;Terán et al, 2016). With this update, our dataset is almost twice larger than the one used in a recently published compilation of Mesoamerica (Goguitchaichvili et al, 2018a) that contains 106 data with only one study (Böhnel et al, 2016) Fifty-four cooling units were dated by radiocarbon.…”