Extensive description and analysis of the archaeological settlement data collected in the late 1960s and early 1970s in the Chalco-Xochimilco Region in the Valley of Mexico.

This monograph presents data from a systematic regional archaeological survey carried out over an area of ca. 600 square kilometers during May through December 1973 by the University of Michigan Museum of Anthropology.

In this volume, archaeologist Jeffrey R. Parsons presents research based on an extensive 1967 survey of the Texcoco Region in the Valley of Mexico. The sites are organized by time period, from Middle Formative to Aztec. Parsons describes the sites in detail and compares them to those of the same time periods in the Teotihuacan Valley and the Valley of Mexico in general.

The building blocks of the Aztec state were smaller, local polities known as city-states. Author Mary G. Hodge selected five city-states in the Valley of Mexico (Amecameca, Cuauhtitlan, Xochimilco, Coyoacan, and Teotihuacan) for detailed study of their internal organization.

An archaeological study of ancient settlement patterns in Peru’s rugged and diverse central highlands.

Based on his study of the nearly vanished aquatic economy of Chimalhuacán in the Valley of Mexico, Parsons describes the surviving vestiges of aquatic insect collection and fishing and considers their developmental and archaeological implications within a broad context of historical, ethnographic, biological, ecological, and archaeological information from Mexico, North and South America, the Near East, and Africa. Activities, implements, artifacts, and landscapes are richly illustrated, in many cases with the author’s own photos and a number of vintage photographs. The study concludes that aquatic resources were fully complementary with agricultural products during prehispanic times in Mesoamerica where a pastoral economy was absent.