Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant: Prehispanic Settlement Systems and Landscapes in the Lake Patzcuaro Basin, Michoacan, Mexico

Michigan State University, East Lansing MI

Investigators

Abstract

Under the guidance of Dr. Helen Pollard, Christopher Stawski will examine the settlement of the Lake Pátzcuaro Basin (LPB) by the Tarascan Empire from the Late Preclassic (100 B.C.) to the time of Spanish Conquest (circa A.D. 1525). Located in the highlands of the Mexican state of Michoacán, the LPB was the core of the Tarascan Empire, a major rival of the Aztecs. This lake basin has been the focus of not only archaeological and anthropological research, but also geological, geographical, ethnohistoric, and paleoecological research. Mr. Stawski's research will combine all these types of data into a multi-disciplinary, multi-scalar analysis that will explore the process of settlement and the ways in which the Tarascans and their ancestors modified, adapted and cultivated the landscape. The research is important because the region underwent significant environmental change over this time period and the work will show how humans living in a traditional society responded to this change to maintain a functioning and expanding social system. The work is directly important because it will increase understanding of many societies in multiple parts of today's world. Due to firsthand accounts from the Spanish, and the rich ethnohistoric and archaeological data, much is known about the Tarascan State during the Late Postclassic time period that led into the Spanish conquest (A.D. 1350 to 1525). However, what is still relatively unknown is the manner in which the lake basin became the core of a major Mesoamerican empire. The goal of this research is to provide a longitudinal study of the peopling of the lake basin, including analysis that will answer questions of how and why certain communities were settled, moved, or grew during certain time periods. Key to this is the nature of the human-environmental relationships in the lake basin, and how they changed the foundations of the socio-political setting of the area. Through the use of Geographic Information Systems (GIS), high resolution satellite imagery, and an archaeological database that has collected and accumulated data from the past 40 years of work in the LPB, Mr.Stawski will be able to map and analyze the communities and landscape over a period of 1,600 years. This will provide a means to determine the variables that affected cultural transformations, environmental fluctuations, and state emergence at varying scales and with multiple lines of evidence. This research will have a broader impact, both through its intellectual merit as well as on the social science community. It will continue a long tradition of multi-disciplinary work, and contribute to on-going collaborative efforts between American, Mexican and French researchers in archaeology, anthropology, history and the physical sciences. The project should make a direct contribution to the literature on human-environmental relationships and the emergence of secondary states. Furthermore, this research will be an outlet for the accumulated data of 40 years of research in the Lake Pátzcuaro Basin, and will be able to provide new and updated data for the region that has yet to be published and presented. This proposed research would provide a means for this data to be disseminated to other academic and professional forums, in hopes that this renewed interest in West Mexican anthropology, archaeology, and ecology will spark an international and inter-disciplinary movement towards intellectual collaboration.