The Cerro Jazmín Archaeological Project: Investigating prehispanic urbanism and its environmental impact in the Mixteca Alta, Oaxaca, Mexico

Village and field abandonment in post-Conquest Tlaxcala: A geoarchaeological perspective

“…The most important geoarchaeological contribution is to bring out the importance of terrace collapse. In this respect the Tlaxcalan evidence points the same way as recent studies in the Basins of Mexico (Có rdova, 1997;Frederick, 1996) and Patzcuaro (Fisher et al, 2003, but see Metcalfe et al, 2007), the Toluca Valley (Smith et al, 2013), and the Mixteca Alta (Pé rez Rodríguez et al, 2011;Rincó n Mautner, 1999), all more densely populated than the Mezquital or Bajío that figured prominently in the debates of the 1990s.…”

Recent Advances in Mixtec Archaeology

“…Recent excavations have also taken place at the smaller but unusually monumental site of Xatachío (Martínez Tuñón and Robles García in press). The Postclassic urban centers of Coixtlahuaca, Cerro Jazmín, Yucundaa, and Tilantongo have been subject of intensive survey and, in the case of Yucundaa, excavation (Pérez Rodríguez et al 2011;Robles García and Spores 2008;Spores and Robles García 2005).…”

“…There have been paleoenvironmental and geomorphic studies done in the Coixtlahuaca Valley (Rincón Mautner 1999), the Nochixtlán Valley (Mueller et al 2012) and the area surrounding Cerro Jazmín (Kirkby 1972;Pérez Rodríguez et al 2011), and the lower Río Verde Valley (Goman et al 2005;Joyce and Mueller 1997). Joyce and Mueller (1997;Goman et al 2005) conducted a study of geomorphic transformations in the highlands and found chronological correspondence with demographic shifts and changes in land-use practices in the highlands that led to changes in alluvial deposition and river morphology in the lower Río Verde.…”

“…346-349) proposed that given the integration of agricultural areas and terraces in and around Mixtec cities, these settlements functioned primarily as centers of agrarian production and administration. Cerro Jazmín and the surrounding landscape have been recently studied using an environmental approach, further discussed below, which tests the agrarian urbanism model (Pérez Rodríguez et al 2011). Data on the history of intermittent occupation at the hilltop city characterize the urban layout as multinucleated, perhaps the result of long occupation and internal specialization of different city sectors.…”

“…Pérez Rodríguez et al (2011) recently investigated Cerro Jazmín's layout, history of occupation, and immediate environmental impact by systematically mapping the city and recording exposed stratigraphic profiles in the surrounding areas. They found that as the city grew in the Early Postclassic, the urban population engaged in land-use practices that allowed the formation of an organic soil layer, suggesting landscape stability.…”