Let The Earth Forever Remain Landscape L

Let the earth forever remain!
Landscape legacies and the

materiality of history in the
northern Basin of Mexico
Christopher T. Morehart Arizona State University
This article examines the landscape as an enduring protagonist in the northern Basin of Mexico over
the past 1,000 years in communities north of Mexico City. Viewing materiality as the mutual
constitution between social and physical worlds, I discuss the production and inheritance of landscape
legacies. The manner in which legacies are inherited is tied to changing political, economic, and social
conditions. This project integrates multiple sources of information (archaeological, ethnographic,
historical, and ecological) to understand transforming connections between people and the landscape
in this region, from the ancient state of Xaltocan to the Aztec and Spanish empires, continuing into the
struggle for a modern nation. It reveals relationships that are apparent only via a perspective in
dialogue with the landscape’s materiality over time. In so doing, this article asserts archaeologists’
unique contribution to the study of not only long-term change but also historical processes inherited
by and relevant to the contemporary world.
Let the earth forever remain!

Line of verse by Ayocuan Cuetzalpaltzin (Leon-Portilla 1992: 215)
During July 2012, public water sources in Xaltocan, a small town 30 kilometres north of
Mexico City, were turned off for three weeks. The greater municipality of Nextlalpan
claimed that inadequate numbers of households had paid their bills. The water would
flow, officials asserted, once residents paid. Local perspectives on the issue were diverse,
but debate focused on whether water should be a free service. Many felt water should
be a public good. Others argued that water bills were the responsibility of households
(or were simply willing to pay them). Imposed water scarcity fostered intra-community
tension and artificially created a tragedy-of-the-commons-like sentiment (i.e. Hardin
1968) in which some individuals labelled others as free-riders. The local governmental
elimination of water for households and businesses stood in stark contrast to the
climate. July is the heart of the rainy season. Torrential downpours in the afternoons
and evenings water crops in surrounding fields, make gravel and dirt roads unpassable,
and flood paved roads in Xaltocan and surrounding areas. Local people on both sides
of the controversy responded strategically. Many drove trucks to the water reservoir
in the town centre to fill up tanks (tinacos) and cisterns for daily consumption and as
Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (N.S.) 22, 939-961

C Royal Anthropological Institute 2016
940 Christopher T. Morehart
a surplus to buffer households from the coming weeks’ scarcity. Entrepreneurs with
water trucks increased in frequency and sold water to households and businesses.
The disappearance of water in Xaltocan and its consequences represent far more than
a temporary inconvenience for local residents. Both the scarcity of water and the threat
of excess water are part of this landscape’s long-term history (Candiani 2014; Connolly
1999; Mathes 1970; see also Endfield 2008). The ways in which water has flowed or
has ceased to flow are connected to several intersecting variables, among which are the
strategies of local people and organizations as well as the policies of political institutions,
including ancient states and empires, the Spanish Colonial Empire, and the more recent
nation. The configuration of water has shifted at differing periods in Central Mexico’s
history in response to growing populations, the production of agricultural surpluses
and commodities, past and present commercial exchange and manufacturing, the need
to eliminate human and industrial waste, and the power of political regimes. The
distribution of different kinds of water (e.g. potable, irrigation, etc.) has empowered
some groups and disempowered others, at times creating levels of unequal dependency
and vulnerabilities that affect cities, communities, economies, and ecosystems.
Water has a unique materiality physically, as well as socially and culturally (Orlove &
Caton 2010; Strang 2004). As Wittfogel observed, ‘water is specific’ (1957: 15). Physically,
it absorbs into soil, weathers stone, erodes earth, rusts metals, flows through canals and
pipes, collects in and evaporates from reservoirs, carries nutrients and pollutants, and
deposits them in soil, crops, and bodies. Experientially, water is the source of livelihood,
power, conflict, memory, and myth. Yet the states in which water exists are tied to the
materiality of land and landscape. Indeed, the manipulation of water is dependent on
investments in infrastructure that have altered the landscape at different periods of
time and at distinctive levels of intensity, durability, scale, and integration. From an
archaeological perspective, where water must be reconstructed in lieu of its absence,
the study of the persistent landscape offers a means to understand how land, water, and
local and extra-local social and political institutions have interacted across long-term
history.
Societies and landscapes transform over time. But landscapes, as physical precursors
and consequences of human behaviour, also persist and are inherited as material
legacies. The study of these legacies enables archaeologists to write histories in which
political, economic, and environmental relations are inextricably connected to the
materiality of landscape. Archaeology’s combined emphasis on deep history and on
material processes and places might be overlooked by other researchers, ‘literally,
when they are below the surface’ (Ingold 1993: 153). When articulating research from
the past to the present, archaeology can elucidate how many contemporary human
problems surrounding both water and land – inequality, pollution, sustainability –
stem from processes in which the landscape has long played and continues to play
a major role. These material relationships also produce unexpected (and frequently
ironic) consequences that can only be observed historically.
This article explores the dynamic relationship between political and ecological
processes via an analysis of the materiality of the landscape across long-term history. I
first describe conceptual issues surrounding materiality to emphasize that interaction
with the landscape creates legacies inherited by subsequent generations. People do not
passively inherit the landscape, however. They make continual changes depending on
how the landscape conforms or does not conform to their interests, particularly those
tied to local and extra-local political economies. Across time, the landscape presents

Let the earth forever remain! 941
itself as a potential palimpsest to be wiped clean of previous inscriptions as social,

political, and economic institutions transform.
This background leads me to a study of the long-term materiality of the landscape
in the northern Basin of Mexico, particularly around the former lake habitat and
contemporary town of Xaltocan. Over 1,000 years ago in this region, landscape
alterations for farming created field and canal systems fundamental to subsistence and
the finance of city-states. The incorporation of these areas into the Aztec empire led
to changing landscape investments that reduced freshwater influx. Previous canals and
springs remained but became connected to local economies focused on the exploitation
of seasonal lake resources. After the Spanish conquest, much land was appropriated and
re-allocated by Europeans and indigenous elites, and hydraulic resources were drained
or re-routed to alleviate the flooding of Mexico City. These Colonial period policies
intensified greatly after Mexico’s independence from Spain and the 1910 Revolution.
Since the twentieth century, the landscape has been altered severely with land and
hydraulic policies that subsidize the city while making rural areas dependent on
recycled wastewater. Polices tied to national and global economies are emerging that
seek to wipe the landscape clean of previous features and their connections to local
entitlements. As the value of farming declines, developers acquire land for housing
projects and related infrastructure to support urban expansion. Such changes place
pressure on resources and on local communities as they seek to preserve their historical
and ecological patrimony. These issues are part of the present but are inherited from
the past. This article elucidates how they have unfolded historically in relation to the
landscape’s persistent and transforming materiality. Such an endeavour also opens our
eyes to problems, paradoxes, and ironies that exist today but can only be understood
with a long-term gaze.
The materiality of history: landscapes and legacies, palimpsests and power

Materiality means many things to many people: physical, social, even metaphysical
(see Joyce 2012; Knappett 2012; Strang 2004). The term has been subject to a range of
perspectives and meanings, which can make it difficult to integrate diverse scholarship
and epistemologies (Cowgill 2004). Materiality can highlight the materialization of
institutions as a necessary element for social transformation (e.g. DeMarrais, Castillo
& Earle 1996; Earle 2005); it can capture the choreography and entanglements between
humans and nonhumans (e.g. Bennett 2010; Hägerstrand 1975; Hodder 2012; Ingold
2011; 2012; Latour 2005; Olsen 2010; Pauketat 2012; Shanks 2007; Whitmore 2007); and it
can also elucidate the semiotic contexts in which human subjectivity is tied to material
worlds (e.g. Gell 1998; Keane 2003; Meskell 2005; Preucel 2006).
Despite their diversity, these perspectives all stress interactions and the mutual
constitution between people and the physical world across time and space, a
contribution well suited to studying landscapes. As Christopher Tilley wrote, the
‘landscape is both medium for and outcome of action’ (1994: 23). That is, societies
and landscapes transform over time. But landscapes, as physical precursors and
consequences of human behaviour, also persist as legacies that subsequent generations
inherit and shape into transforming worlds (Bender 1993: 3).
Studying materiality matters. Rowlands (2005: 74) asserts that ignoring materiality
is the result of a hubris that fosters both social and ecological misfortune. Recent
discussions on archaeology’s role in understanding environmental change help link
archaeological approaches on materiality and landscape to multiple disciplines (ecology,

geology, etc.) and to contemporary issues. Archaeological contributions to research on

the Anthropocene, for example, are not centred exclusively on evaluating its chronology.
Archaeologists recognize a historically unique and physically persistent human imprint
that has not just been deposited in the atmosphere but is also inscribed into the
stratigraphy of the landscape itself, what Price, Ford, Cooper, and Neal (2011) refer to
as ‘artificial ground’ (see also Edgeworth 2014; Harris 2014; Solli 2011). Archaeological
studies with this view towards the materiality of landscape point our attention to tangible
connections and their long-term consequences. Landscapes, that is, are the accumulated
legacies of both human and environmental relations (Crumley 1994; Descola & Pálsson
1996; Miller et al. 2008; Paulson, Gezon & Watts 2005; Redman & Kinzig 2003; Rocheleau
1999). Their legacies persist, both materially and immaterially, and human relationships
with them are continually changing. Such a longue durée view stresses that any specific
social and material formation in time and space is simultaneously the heir to and the
generator of a legacy of social and physical processes.
The archaeological record, however, is embedded within and is part of a
contemporary, not a past, landscape. To apprehend this fact, archaeologists have
employed the metaphor of the palimpsest, which compares the landscape to a parchment
with the accumulated inscriptions of the past perceptible in the present (e.g. Anschuetz,
Wilshusen & Scheick 2001: 188; Bailey 2007; Lucas 2005; Sullivan 2008). Mexican
archaeologist Pedro Armillas early recognized this dimension in his efforts to introduce
landscape archaeology to Mexican research: ‘Because of unending reshaping, the
landscape . . . can be pictured as a sort of palimpsest on which the marks of man’s
efforts to change the natural environment are continually being erased and rewritten,
and quite often smudged’ (1971: 655). All things an archaeologist encounters may have
been deposited at different times and rates. But they none the less exist in the physical
present, together with things and places that conventionally have been deemed too
contemporary to fall within the archaeological gaze (Bailey 2007: 214). This view helps
us to think of the landscape’s materiality as an ensemble or a bundle of phenomena
and properties (Hägerstrand 1975; Ingold 2011; 2012; Keane 2003; Knappett 2012: 196),
caught momentarily in the present but with unique historical trajectories (see also Robb
& Pauketat 2012: 28-9).
Considering palimpsests is not exclusively metaphorical thinking or only a
methodology to interpret the depositional structure of archaeological sites. A palimpsest
often retains the inscriptions of the past, but, significantly, this is an unintended
consequence. A palimpsest is a parchment that is, by definition, to be cleaned – ‘scraped
again’ (Montague 1890: 334). Thus, the idea of the palimpsest often is incredibly apt,
particularly with cases in which landscapes are wiped clean of their previous material
properties and connections to social and economic entitlements. A parking lot paved
over an archaeological site; the imposition of a gridded agricultural system over a
drained lake; the construction of condominiums over farmland – all represent efforts
to treat the landscape as a true, completely scraped palimpsest. Rather than simply
representing functional relationships between society and space (see Grant 2010), these
developments involve fundamental ruptures as new relationships come to dominate,
disregard, or obscure the materiality of history.
The idea of the landscape as a palimpsest elucidates how people have interacted with,
understood, and shaped its materiality across history. As Barbara Bender observed, ‘The
landscape is never inert, people engage with it, re-work it, appropriate and contest it’
(1993: 3). These transformations occur in relation to both social and physical precedents.

This dialogue can result in the persistence of elements and features inscribed on the
landscape, an incompletely scraped palimpsest. Both their absence and their persistence
require explanation. In complex societies past and present, for example, the ability or the
inability that institutions have to modify the landscape is the product of their negotiation
with pre-existing relationships between people and land. The outcomes of this relation
are the result not only of the state’s organizational and financial power but also of the
extent of its legitimate authority across a physical and social landscape. Studying the
materiality of landscape, in other words, sheds light on how social, economic, political,
and environmental processes have developed over the long term as diverging interests,
locally and extra-locally, coalesce in the physical world.
The materiality of landscape legacies in the northern Basin of Mexico

Considerations of historical change from the past to the present in the Basin of Mexico
begin with archaeology. Current researchers working in central Mexico are heir to
several approaches that archaeologists have developed to study the long term (e.g.
Armillas 1971; Blanton & Feinman 1984; Feinman & Nicholas 1989; Kowalewski 2003;
Palerm 1973; Parsons 1972; Sanders & Nichols 1988; Sanders, Parsons & Santley 1979;
Sanders & Price 1968; Smith 1992). Although they differ in their interpretations, these
archaeologists established long-term perspectives that are in dialogue with a dynamic
past landscape. Pedro Armillas (1971), for example, stressed both the interaction between
the cultural and the physical dimensions of landscape and the need to examine this
interplay historically. He advocated the integration of multiple lines of information to
‘trace the evolution of the landscape – its genesis and its fading away as a result of
mismanagement, the impact of new technologies, or the changing cultural demands
on the environment’ (Armillas 1971: 655). Armillas’s work early demonstrated that
the archaeological gaze does not have to be focused exclusively on the distant past.
Archaeology can shed light on current issues by connecting the past to the present.
For over 100 years, Mexican hydrologists, scientists, and policy planners have
maintained a tradition of situating contemporary conditions and crises in the Basin
of Mexico in the longue durée. The unique Colonial and National history in Mexico
has affected the landscape and produced a historical consciousness among Mexican
environmental researchers quite unlike that of their counterparts in other countries,
such as the United States, who often struggle with the fact that history establishes social
and material precedents. This article’s opening vignette highlights localized debates
surrounding water and landscape in the northern Basin of Mexico in communities
outside of Mexico City. The social and institutional dynamics embedded within this
situation is a topic of research in itself. However, positioning these issues within long-
term history helps to clarify contemporary dilemmas by showing how they developed
in dialogue with the materiality of landscape.
To examine this process, I trace connections from the Early Postclassic period to
the present day (c.CE 1000-2016) and centre predominantly on the history of the lakes
of this region, particularly Lake Xaltocan. I organize this article according to major
political formations that affected how people shaped the landscape in this area, from
the pre-Aztec city-state of Xaltocan to the imperial policies of the Aztec and the Spanish
states to the landscape transformations following Mexico’s independence from Spain
and the 1910 Revolution. Significantly, however, these divisions are in tension with the
materiality of landscape legacies, which often persist and endure them.

Pre-imperial landscape legacies of Xaltocan

The northern Basin of Mexico is the more arid region of the broader Basin of Mexico, a
closed hydrological plateau between 2,200 and 2,700 metres above sea level previously
comprised of a network of lakes and lagoons (Fig. 1). Prior to the arrival of the Spanish,
Lakes Zumpango and Xaltocan were the largest bodies of water in the northern Basin.
They fluctuated across the late Holocene between alkaline freshwater and brackish
environments (Frederick, Winsborough & Popper 2005), and water quality varied
depending on the location of freshwater sources (Morehart 2010). For recharge, Lake
Xaltocan depended on seasonal rains, influx from the Cuauhtitlan River, and a series
of springs that emerged at the base of a hill known today as Cerro Chiconautla in the
town of Ojo de Agua.
Prior to the Early Postclassic period, the northern Basin of Mexico lakes region
witnessed the formation of permanent settlements by the Late to Terminal Formative
periods (c.500 BCE-CE 150) (Gorenflo & Sanders 2007; Parsons 2008; Sanders et al.
1979). From the Middle Formative to the Early Postclassic period, settlements varied
from small hamlets and villages to centres influenced at different periods by broader
political systems, such as the Classic period urban centre of Teotihuacan or the Epiclassic
to Early Postclassic centre of Tula in present-day Hidalgo. Evidence of canal systems
exists in the foothills as early as the Late Formative period (Nichols 1987). However,
the first strong evidence of systematic landscape alteration of the lakes dates to the
Early Postclassic period. During this time, villages and secondary centres tied to the
Tula polity existed throughout the region and along the lake shore (Parsons 2008).
The polity of Xaltocan developed between the tenth and eleventh centuries on an
anthropogenic island in Lake Xaltocan but maintained autonomy from the Tula state
(Brumfiel 2005). Xaltocan became a powerful regional state by the Middle Postclassic
period (CE 1200-1350) and eventually incorporated areas previously dominated by Tula
when the earlier polity declined.
Residents of Xaltocan strategically modified the landscape, which facilitated its
demographic growth and helped generate surplus to finance political institutions
(Brumfiel 2005; De Lucia 2013). Farmers constructed an expansive system of raised
fields, a form of wetland agriculture locally known as chinampas (Fig. 2). This system
was dependent on freshwater from the Cuauhtitlan River but mostly from the springs
from Cerro Chiconautla. As Xaltocan grew in political power and influence during the
Middle Postclassic period, the chinampa system expanded to over 1,500 hectares and was
capable of supporting two-thirds more than the town’s estimated population (Morehart
2014). The surplus likely financed political institutions and also could be exchanged
on the market (De Lucia 2013). Throughout this time, new fields and canals were
constructed, and the landscape eventually was parcelled, possibly into smallholdings
managed by families (Morehart 2012a).
As material investments in landscape, the chinampas represent an example of
landesque capital, or ‘any investment in land with an anticipated life well beyond
that of the present crop, or crop cycle’ (Blaikie & Brookfield 1987: 11; see also Håkansson
& Widgren 2014). These investments were necessary not to enhance or extend the
longevity of already existing field systems but to create the agricultural landscape itself.
Water is a fundamental constraint to any agricultural system. But, unlike other agro-
technologies, for chinampas the problem is too much rather than too little water.
However, landesque capital investments create durable infrastructural features that can
inhibit change in tangible ways. Their physical permanence exists in tension with the

Figure 1. Map of Basin of Mexico.
need to create new canals and fields as demographic or political demands for produce
increase. Dividing and parcelling land must occur in reference to the landscape’s
previous material structure, either by disregarding it or by accommodating it. At
Xaltocan, satellite imagery and excavations revealed patterns that suggest a dynamically
formed landscape (Morehart 2010). Many canals that appear to be short and tapered
are the remnants of previously longer features. Figure 3 demonstrates a parcelled area,
showing a trend that exists throughout the system. This area displays a complex pattern
of tertiary and secondary canals. Yet one can trace particular canals much farther
than their truncated final forms, designated as first-order canals. Later canals divided
these long features into smaller segments and, eventually, canals were constructed with
entirely different orientations. Third-order canals were constructed in reference to the

Figure 2. Reconstructed map of Xaltocan’s chinampas. The arrow indicates the shrine mentioned in
the text below (p. 950).
second-order canals, whereas the pre-parcelled length of first-order canals cross-cuts

them.
In other words, the static, final form that confronts archaeologists developed as past
people made changes, adapted their relationships, and created the landscape in reference
to its pre-existing materiality. The landscape was not treated as a complete palimpsest.
Farmers navigated previous tangible and intangible constraints as they diverted water,
created new lands, and fostered changing social relationships. Simultaneously, residents
at Xaltocan became increasingly dependent on this new landscape. Significantly, the
diversity of subsistence resources available in the community declined with Xaltocan’s
growth (De Lucia 2013; Morehart 2014). With chinampa intensification, agricultural
production was standardized. The diversity of cultigens present in the community
declined. Farmers became reliant on a narrow range of maize cultivated in the chinampas
to finance the household, the community, and the state (Morehart & Eisenberg 2010).

Figure 3. Satellite image (top) and map (bottom) showing the developmental sequence for parcelled
canals in an area of chinampas.
The increased dependence on Xaltocan’s chinampas was related to regional shifts

in the political economy. Xaltocan was embroiled in the competitive geopolitics that
characterized the Basin of Mexico before the formation of the Aztec empire (Brumfiel
2005; Carrasco Pizana 1950; Morehart 2012b). Historical sources suggest the kingdom
became progressively more isolated politically and economically, which likely increased
the reliance on intensive agriculture (Morehart & Eisenberg 2010). By the end of the

fourteenth century, however, an alliance of polities conquered the town. Rulers fled
to neighbouring regions, where Xaltocans or Jaltocans exist today. Many residents
remained and were incorporated into the Aztec empire by the mid-fifteenth century
(Overholtzer 2013), but the chinampa system collapsed.
Imperial landscape legacies of the Aztec and Spanish

Despite its potential productivity for the Aztec empire, the chinampa system was not
used after Xaltocan’s conquest (Morehart & Frederick 2014). This situation stands in
stark contrast to Lakes Xochimilco and Chalco in the southern Basin of Mexico. Here,
the Aztecs systematically expanded previously small-scale chinampa farming into an
extensive, standardized grid of fields and canals to provide land to nobles who rented
to tenant farmers (Armillas 1971; Luna 2014; Parsons 1976). In other words, the Aztecs
treated the southern lakes region as a palimpsest to create a new landscape tied to
financing state institutions and supporting urban populations.
The policies of the Aztec empire affected the landscape around Xaltocan differently.
This trajectory resulted from the way the imperial political economy integrated the area
and its residents. The permanent abandonment of Xaltocan’s chinampas was tied to
several interlocking environmental, political, and economic conditions. Residents were
pulled in many directions under the Aztec state. They paid taxes in cloth, served as
warriors, and performed labour on noble estates (Brumfiel & Hodge 1996). The Aztecs
diverted the Cuauhtitlan River away from Lake Xaltocan in the early to mid-fifteenth
century after the kingdom’s conquest (Doolittle 1990; Palerm 1973), which eliminated
a significant source of freshwater. To protect the Aztec and eventual Spanish capital
from periodic floods, the southern half of Lake Xaltocan was bisected by causeways,
which created Lake San Cristóbal (Candiani 2014: 32). Regional population increased
(Parsons 2008: 90). Terracing on and settlement around Cerro Chiconautla during the
Late Postclassic and Colonial periods likely affected the discharge of the springs that fed
the chinampas (Morehart & Frederick 2014). These alterations increased hydrological
scarcity, changing the lake into a seasonal lagoon and increasing salinity (Gibson 1964:
268; Paso y Troncoso 1905: 176; Pérez Zevallos 1990: 152). Episodic droughts also occurred
during the late fourteenth to fifteenth centuries, some resulting in famines (Stahle et al.
2011; Therrell, Stahle & Acuna Soto 2004). Despite the decline in chinampa agriculture,
residents living under the Aztec and, later, Spanish empires adapted to a new ecological
system. Millhauser (2012), for example, documented how residents took advantage of
these ecological shifts by specializing in salt production.
Although farmers abandoned the chinampas, their canals and channels remained
well past the arrival of the Europeans. During the conquest, for example, the Spanish
had to flee the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan less than a year after their arrival in 1519.
They reconnoitred the Basin to regroup. Conquistadors Hernan Cortés (1986: 196)
and Bernal Dı́az del Castillo (1956: 355-7) recorded attacking Xaltocan, a town they
described as built on water with numerous canals (see also López de Gómara 1964:
252). Spanish officials towards the end of the sixteenth century also recorded dredged
channels along the lake shore (AGN Tierras 1584/1). They described in detail the springs
at Cerro Chiconautla and the existence of canals used for seasonal fishing. The springs
and remnants of a major canal are also depicted on maps from the mid-sixteenth to the
nineteenth centuries (Fig. 4a).
Throughout the Colonial period, this region and these springs were closely connected
to the hydraulic policies of the Spanish empire. Colonial officials were determined to

Figure 4. (a)-(d). Basin of Mexico maps from the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries depicting Xaltocan
and springs (at arrows) (adapted from Memoria de las obras del sistema lacustre de drenaje profundo del
districto federal, 1975, vol. IV): (a) 1555; (b) 1607; (c) 1774; (d) 1774. (e) Map (c.CE 1569) of irrigated lands
adjacent to Xaltocan and the Hacienda Santa Inés. The crucifix in the centre marks Indian land tracts,
labelled as vacant (valdı́os) (Photo by author, from the archives of Newberry Library, Chicago, with
permission.)

drain the lakes to alleviate recurring floods in Mexico City (Candiani 2014; Ezcurra,
Mazari-Hiriart, Pisanty & Guillermo Aguilar 1999; Lankao 2010: 159; Mathes 1970).
Knowledge of indigenous religious practices collected by clergy shaped initial efforts
to drain the lakes, revealing culturally distinctive views of the physical and spiritual
properties of landscape. For example, Franciscans recorded accounts of ritual activities
at sacred whirlpools, especially the shrine of Pantitlán (located to the south in Lake
Texcoco), where Aztec priests sacrificed to rain deities (Durán 1971; Sahagún 1951). The
Catholic order misunderstood the shrines as sites of potential sumps that could solve
flooding. They offered an award of 100,000 pesos to any individual who could find
these ‘drains’ and unplug them (Bancroft 1883: 90).
The Chiconautla springs and the Cuauhtitlan River, earlier sources for Lake Xaltocan,
were early targets in Colonial hydraulic policy (Candiani 2014). Don Luis de Velasco,
Viceroy of New Spain (1550-64), wrote to the king of Spain that he ordered the diversion
of the Cuauhtitlan River and the springs to create an artery to bring supplies through
the hinterland to Mexico City and to alleviate the bad odour of the lake (Morehart
2010: 154). Velasco was familiar with the negative effects that draining the springs
would have on local people, who complained that damage would come to their land.
The continued importance of the springs is reflected in ritual activity at a shrine just
north of where the springs flowed into Lake Xaltocan (Fig 2, at arrow). The shrine
was first constructed and used in the Epiclassic period (CE 600-900) prior to the
settlement of Xaltocan (Morehart, Meza Peñaloza, Serrano Sánchez, McClung de Tapia
& Ibarra Morales 2012), and residents during both the Aztec and Spanish periods
re-initiated ritual activity in this environment of hydrological scarcity. Evidence of
Late Postclassic and Colonial period ritual is abundant, including sherds of censers,
Colonial majolica, and Christian artefacts (Morehart 2015). The shrine’s location may
have occupied the social memory for generations. But it also is likely that lower water
levels made it more visible physically, allowing later residents to recognize a significant
place and incorporate its materiality into new hybrid, religious practices (Morehart 2010:
380).
Velasco’s efforts to divert the springs never materialized. But they represent the initial
planning efforts that eventually would be transformed into the systematic drainage of
the basin’s lakes, the desagüe, much of which focused on the northern Basin of Mexico
(Candiani 2014; Mathes 1970). The first complete effort, which was finished in the
early 1600s, was the Nochistongo or Huehuetoca canal, which drained water from the
Cuauhtitlan River and Lake Zumpango to the Tula River. This effort, which took over
60,000 Indian labourers, not only reduced flooding in Mexico City, it also decreased
already diminishing sources of water and arable land. Reductions in populations due
to disease and out-migration also became common justifications for alienating lands.
Both Spaniards and indigenous elites argued that they were vacant and the population
too small to cultivate them productively (Gibson 1964: 268; Konrad 1980: 25). Early
Colonial documents and maps, such as those of the lands of the Hacienda of Santa Inés,
depict former lands of Xaltocan and nearby towns with tracts labelled baldı́os, vacant
wastelands (Fig. 4b). Significant quantities of land around Xaltocan and Cuauhtitlan
were awarded as encomienda to Alonso de Ávila (Konrad 1980: 29-30). In addition to
the Hacienda Santa Inés, the Hacienda Santa Lucia also absorbed land. Santa Lucia,
the earliest Jesuit hacienda complex in central Mexico, maintained a tract immediately
north of Xaltocan, which now is a military airport that still uses some of the Colonial
buildings (Konrad 1980).

National landscape legacies

The deteriorating condition of hydraulic infrastructure, which still depended upon
both Colonial and even pre-European canals, dikes, dams, and aqueducts, represented
a dilemma after Mexico’s independence from Spain (Candiani 2014: 315-18; Tortolero
Villaseñor 2001: 20). From the middle to the end of the nineteenth century, governmental
officials surveyed the region and described Xaltocan as an impoverished town plagued
by dusts when the lagoon was seasonally dry (Garay 1888: 64-5; Orozco y Berra 1864:
169-70; Parsons 2008: 45-9). However, vestiges of the former canal system remained, as
did the Cerro Chiconuatla springs, now surrounded by the Hacienda of Ojo de Agua.
But they were integrated into a different ecological and economic system. As Garay
observed, ‘The waters from this spring, carefully gathered by the natives by means of
embankments . . . have turned farmers into fisherman’ (1888: 64-5; see also Parsons
2008: 47-8).
As part of President Porfirio Dı́az’s policy to invest in the nation’s infrastructure, a
Gran Canal was built in the early twentieth century to continue to drain waters and waste
from Mexico City. This plan was expanded after the Mexican Revolution. During the
twentieth century, freshwater wells were also excavated throughout the city to support
the urban population. This caused the city to sink about 9 metres between 1910 and
1987, reducing the Gran Canal’s gravity-based functionality (Birkle, Torres Rodrı́guez &
González Partida 1998; Ezcurra et al. 1999; Lankao 2010; Ovando-Shelley, Ossa & Romo
2007). Population growth during the twentieth century exceeded the capacity of local
wells, however, and rivers and springs in neighbouring regions increasingly subsidized
the water needs of the city (Dumars & Herrera-Revilla 1995; Ezcurra 1990; Ezcurra et al.
1999).
A paradox of Mexican nationalism has been the simultaneous embracing and
erasing of the vestiges of both the indigenous and the Spanish past (Bonfı́l Batalla
1996). However, this process has unfolded unevenly, leaving many elements inscribed
on the landscape. Some places, such as large archaeological sites and Colonial
churches, persisted, recognized as significant places for both Mexican and community
identity. Other sites, such as smaller archaeological sites, ancient terraces and
canals, and Colonial aqueducts, vestiges that exist today, were viewed as failed
infrastructure impeding progress (Candiani 2014; Tortolero Villaseñor 2001). The
growing hydraulic interdependency between urban and rural was also connected
to post-revolutionary land reform, particularly the development of state-mandated,
communally administered land, known as ejido. Ejido land first appeared in Nextlalpan,
the greater municipality, in 1929 (Varela Morales 1987: 66). But little ejido land existed
around Xaltocan during this time. Most land was still fed by the springs at Ojo de Agua.
However, the plan originally set forth in the 1550s by Velasco to drain the springs finally
materialized in the 1950s. The springs were tapped via a series of wells and channelled
to provide freshwater for Mexico City (Viejo Zubicaray & Alvarez Fernández 2004: 182).
This permanently drained the lake and created new land, much of which eventually was
parcelled into standardized ejido plots.
The disappearance of the water in Xaltocan is a theme in local myths of landscape
and alive in community members’ memories (Barlow 1999; Varela Morales 1987: 100-1).
According to one, a lord named Awı́tsotl controlled all the lands and waters – the
wealth – of Xaltocan, including ‘the treasure given to the town . . . the freshwater that
came from a place called today “Ojo de Agua”’ (Barlow 1999: 184). Awı́tsotl shares
names with a fifteenth century Aztec ruler, ironically known for his failed hydraulic

projects, and this myth is a local appropriation of the Aztec’s king’s efforts (Durán 1994:
364). Xaltocan’s Awı́tsotl often would not fulfil his role as arbiter and leader. When
residents approached him for justice, he would transform himself ‘into a dog, bird, or
maize serpent’ (Barlow 1999: 189). Residents grew angry. They captured Awı́tsotl and
took him by canoe to the area’s cabecera, or head town. En route, ‘he was escorted by
thousands of small birds called awiwı́tzkatl (water swallows) and Awı́tsotl . . . plunged
into the waters’ (Barlow 1999: 184), killing his abductors. One resident summarized the
tragic consequences: ‘The waters dried up, all the fish and all the animals of the water
ran out; all went with Awı́tsotl’ (Barlow 1999: 184).
Although the myth of Awı́tsotl seemingly places responsibility for water scarcity
on the shoulders of residents for violating a sacred covenant, the changing landscape
was the product of a historical political economy that intensified inequality between
urban and rural (Connolly 1999; Endfield 2008; Ennis-McMillan 2006; Whiteford &
Melville 2002). By 1969, the Chiconautla source in Ojo de Agua – the springs that once
fed the chinampas of the kingdom of Xaltocan – provided over 14 per cent of Mexico
City’s annual water consumption (Fernández Escartı́n 1971: 106). With desiccation
came a layer of windblown sediment and vegetation. Vestiges of the ancient canal and
chinampa system, which elderly residents in Xaltocan claim were visible as low ridges
up to 1950s, were buried. Much of the land was divided into ejido parcels dissected
by concrete canals. Where the springs once originated, the Hacienda de Ojo de Agua
is today a restaurant with fountains and chlorinated swimming pools for urbanites
wanting to escape the city (Fig. 5a).
In exchange for the freshwater that once irrigated ancient fields and provided lake
resources for centuries, Xaltocan’s ejido farmers now receive wastewater from Mexico
City brought via the Gran Canal. By the mid-1990s, wastewater irrigated over 5,500
hectares of land around Xaltocan as well as over 80,000 hectares in the state of
Hidalgo (Dumars & Herrera-Revilla 1995: 48; Ezcurra et al. 1999: 91). The liquid is
a combination of stormwater runoff, industrial products, and biological wastes rich in
faecal coliform bacteria. Heavy metals are high. As much as 16 kilogrammes of heavy
metals may be incorporated into 1 hectare of irrigated land a year (Ezcurra et al. 1999: 91).
Studies of nearby lakes, such as Zumpango and Texcoco, recorded dangerous levels of
anthropogenic chemicals (Vega-López, Carrillo-Morales, Olivares-Rubio, Domı́nguez-
López & Garcı́a-Latorre 2012; Vega-López, Jiménez-Orozco, Jiménez-Zamudio, Garcı́a-
Latorre & Domı́nguez-López 2009). The government responded to this health dilemma
by limiting the varieties of crops grown. In 1991, the Ministries of Urban Development
and Ecology (SEDUE), Health (SSA), and Agriculture and Hydraulic Resources (SARH)
prohibited the use of untreated wastewater on crops consumed raw or cultivated on the
ground surface (Dumars & Herrera-Revilla 1995: 49). In an ironic historical twist, the
highly standardized production in Xaltocan’s ancient chinampas is repeating owing to
the way the political economy shapes the landscape’s materiality. Such standardization
during the Middle Postclassic period was tied to landesque capital investments and
state finance. Today farmers respond to state laws designed to adjust agriculture to a
progressively poisoned landscape.
During the dry season, fields are bare. Dead vegetation burns easily. Ash and
contaminated sediment become airborne, contributing to the region’s air pollution
(Alvarez del Villar 1971; Connolly 1999; Ezcurra et al. 1999). One response has been
to pave over the land, creating roads and condominiums (Connolly 1999: 62). This
new infrastructure might reduce dust, but it encourages population growth; escalates

Figure 5. (a) Contemporary pools at Hacienda de Ojo de Agua. (b) Sign in Xaltocan’s common lands.
(c) View from Huehuetoca chapel with chapel column in foreground and condominium complex in
background. (Photos by the author.)

flooding and inhibits aquifer recharge (because surfaces are impermeable); increases
automobile pollution; and intensifies thermal island effects contributing to urban
warming (Ezcurra et al. 1999; Jazcilevichi, Fuentes, Jauregui & Luna 2000). In 1992,
changes to the Mexican constitution encouraged such landscape developments by
making it easier for ejido members to acquire private title to and sell ejido land
(Austin Memorandum 1995; Hamilton 2002). The alienation of land has intensified
with the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and the importation of
cheap agricultural commodities that out-compete farmers’ crops, contributing to rural
unemployment and land sales (Fitting 2011).
However, local residents have not responded passively to appropriations of land and
water. In addition to ejido, Xaltocan maintains rights to tierras indı́genas, indigenous
land, despite efforts dating to the 1830s to abolish this kind of common property (Escobar
Ohmstede & Rojas Rabiela 1992: 17-18). The western indigenous lands of Xaltocan are
adjacent to newly constructed condominiums by the company Casas ARA, directly on
the lands of the former Hacienda Santa Inés. As one approaches the area, large signs are
posted on the highway that announce ‘Communal Property of Xaltocan: Not for Sale’
(Fig. 5b). Many of the members of the organization that administers these lands also
belong to a historical society that celebrates the area’s past. This organization erected a
replica Aztec Calendar Stone in the town plaza and put the ancient hieroglyph for the
town in the monument’s centre (Morehart 2012b). This organization sponsors events
to foster community identity, to deny efforts that marginalize the town in the pages of
Mexican history, and to valorize historical patrimony in response to processes that are
devaluing its lands.
Other towns have reacted differently to the encroachment of developers and
the alienation of land. North of Xaltocan, the ejido organization of Huehuetoca
responded to the development of condominiums on its lands and incursions by
Pemex, the oil and gas company. The ejido erected a Catholic chapel on top of the
only remaining platform of an Early Postclassic period (c.1000-1200 CE) Toltec political
centre that lies on its farmland, within view of a massive condominium complex
(Fig. 5c). The ritual reuse of the structure was not tied to continuity in
indigenous religious practices or to social memories of a distant, traditional past.
The construction of the chapel was a strategy that deliberately deployed the
persistent materiality of landscape to confront a changing and invasive political
economy. The neighbouring towns of Tequixquiac and Apaxco have responded
to similar processes by converting ejido lands used for pasture into ecological
preserves.
Conclusions
Archaeologists’ unique training in landscapes’ materiality is well attuned to patterns
of long-term change that many other disciplines might overlook (Ingold 1993). But
this project also requires the integration of archaeological data with other sources,
such as historical texts, ecological records, government documents, and ethnographic
information. As Snead, Erickson, and Darling recently observed, ‘The concept of
landscape bridges methodological barriers and regional differences, creating a flexible
analytical framework in which previously overlooked . . . data can be seamlessly
integrated into a broader discussion’ (2009: 3). Pulling these materials together
elucidates how processes and phenomena that occur today have developed over time. An
archaeological perspective, in this sense, does not just provide a backdrop or a context

to frame contemporary case studies. It sheds light on current issues by connecting the
materiality of the past with the present.
Beginning this narrative with Postclassic Lake Xaltocan and neighbouring areas
offers a useful starting-point to consider the creation of landscape legacies. The canal
system built around the kingdom of Xaltocan became an important means to finance the
state. Changes that occurred during the chinampas’ existence took into consideration
the system’s previous materiality as canals and fields were segmented into parcels.
But with the polity’s conquest, the diversion of the Cuauhtitlan River, and the area’s
incorporation into the Aztec empire, the previous social relationships and hydraulic
requirements necessary to maintain the farming system declined. Yet the canals and
the springs that fed them remained and were integrated into new practices adapted
to seasonal hydraulic scarcity. With Spanish conquest and the resulting demographic
decline, many lands were appropriated by Spaniards and indigenous elites. However,
efforts to divert the springs failed partly owing to their continued value for residents.
Following Mexico’s independence from Spain and the 1910 Revolution, water sources
critical to local economies were tapped to subsidize Mexico City. In exchange, the
government promoted rural agriculture via the formation of ejidos. In the process, the
sustainability of Mexico City became dependent on the exploitation of a hinterland
now dependent on the city for recycled wastewater. This mutualism has unfolded in
ways that have led to new landscape investments that intensify the physical and unequal
dependency of rural areas on the city. As the exchange rate of agricultural commodities
declines, the valuation of land changes as it is either sold to developers or strongly
protected as a source of cultural and ecological patrimony.
With increased conversation on the Anthropocene, archaeologists have an
opportunity not simply to push back the chronology of geological epochs but also
to assess archaeology’s contributions to recent history. What is unique to the Human
Age and what is simply the product of the long-term trajectory of human behaviours?
The creation of highly anthropogenic landscapes, Price et al.’s (2011) ‘artificial ground’,
has been occurring throughout the Holocene. Yet the magnitude of change in the past
200 years is significant. The increase in creating landesque capital or artificial ground in
recent history comes at a cost. Do we see an intensified disregard for social and physical
precedents embedded in the landscape during this time – a dramatic increase in how
state or corporate institutions treat the landscape like a palimpsest in which the physical
past is an impediment to progress and the expansion of capital?
This idea is central to James Scott’s (1998) assertion that capitalism is engineered
through the universal imposition of economic, social, political, and physical grids,
allowing capital to control subject peoples and places. Scott’s analysis suggests that
recent changes are not only physical (stratigraphic and atmospheric) but are also tied
to the universalizing mechanisms of a global political economy. Viewed in this way,
our conversations on the dynamics of the Anthropocene do not appear new at all.
Rather, they extend to the physical sciences discussions that have been ongoing in
the social sciences and philosophy for almost 200 years (ironically contemporaneous
with the Anthropocene) about the very nature of modernity itself, particularly what
it means to be modern versus non- or pre-modern. In this struggle to understand
modernity, a tendency exists to create ahistorical caricatures between a traditional,
harmonious past and a destructive, calamitous present: past people are viewed as
essential ecological stewards who had achieved a bio-psychological connection between
themselves and their spatial milieu that was fundamentally altered by a capitalist

modernity that severed, abstracted, and rendered legible what was formally embedded in
practice.
This article shows that these views are too simple. As Bruno Latour (1993) might
observe, ‘We have never been modern’. This is not to deny the great magnitude of
changes in recent history. But the complex materiality of history matters. True, the
struggle to treat the landscape as a palimpsest does appear evident today more than at
any other time in the Basin of Mexico’s history as public and private developers attempt
to wipe clean pre-existing physical imprints. Spaces are becoming homogenized socially
and materially. Community lands are converted to condos. Highways and roads foster
expansion. Shopping centres, Walmarts, Oxxo Convenience Stores, and Pemex Gas
Stations are increasing in frequency. As infrastructural developments connected to
neoliberal economic policies expand, they destroy the past in physical ways at greater
scales and at faster paces. The new visible landscapes of concrete, steel, and asphalt
and the invisible landscapes of poisoned air, water, soil, and food also will persist and
produce a legacy that is inherited into the future.
However, next to these ongoing changes, elements of the pre-existing landscapes
persevere. Churches, archaeological sites, aqueducts, terraces, and town centres resist the
grid. They are not simply the detritus of the past, impediments to progress, or material
saviours to mitigate the onslaught of the modern age. Their physical permanence
and contemporary relevance depend on how local people, government officials, and
private entrepreneurs value them in relation to changing social and national economies.
The network of relationships among people, places, institutions, and things in this
region created landscapes that have been inherited for generations and will continue
to be the sources of livelihood, power, and identity. Such a process places even greater
responsibility on the shoulders of researchers to pay attention to the materiality of
landscape and to develop long-term histories that connect the past with the present.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Several individuals have made comments and suggestions that have improved this article in its various
manifestations. I would like to thank Wendy Ashmore, Vera Candiani, Michael Chibnik, George Cowgill,
Timothy Earle, Christina Halperin, Michelle Hegmon, Kostalena Michelaki, John Millhauser, June Nash,
Enrique Rodrı́guez Alegrı́a, and Emily Umberger. Research in Mexico has been supported financially by the
National Science Foundation, the Wenner-Gren Foundation, Fulbright Hays, Digital Globe, the National
Geographic Society, Georgia State University, and Arizona State University. I am grateful for permission to
conduct research and support offered by the Instituto Nacional de Antropologı́a e Historia, the delegation
of Xaltocan, the organization of the ejido and common lands of Xaltocan, the Civil Association of the
Great Kingdom of Xaltocan, the ejidos of Apaxco, Huehuetoca, and Tequixquiac, and the municipality of
Tequixquiac.
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Que la Terre reste toujours ! Héritages paysagers et matérialité de l’histoire

dans le nord du bassin de Mexico
Résumé
L’article examine le paysage en tant qu’il a constamment été un protagoniste de l’histoire des mille dernières
années dans des villages situés au nord de Mexico, dans le nord du bassin du même nom. Considérant
la matérialité comme la constitution partagée entre monde social et monde physique, l’auteur discute de
la production et de l’héritage du patrimoine paysager. La manière dont ce patrimoine est hérité est liée à
l’évolution des circonstances politiques, économiques et sociales. Ce projet puise à de nombreuses sources
d’information (archéologie, ethnographie, histoire et écologie) pour comprendre les liens mouvants entre
les gens et le paysage dans cette région, de l’ancien état de Xaltocan aux empires aztèque puis espagnol
et jusqu’à la lutte pour la construction d’une nation moderne. Il révèle des relations qui ne sont visibles
qu’à travers une perspective en dialogue avec la matérialité du paysage dans le temps. Par ce biais, l’article
affirme la contribution unique des archéologues à l’étude non seulement des changements sur le long
terme, mais aussi des processus historiques dont le monde contemporain est l’héritier, et qui sont toujours
d’actualité.
Christopher T. Morehart is Assistant Professor of Anthropology in the School of Human Evolution and Social
Change at Arizona State University. Christopher directs research on the archaeology and historical political
ecology in the Basin of Mexico. As a palaeoethnobotanist, he also collaborates with archaeological projects
internationally.
School of Human Evolution and Social Change, Arizona State University, 900 S. Cady Mall, Tempe, AZ 85287,
USA. Christopher.Morehart@asu.edu


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Let the earth forever remain!

Landscape legacies and the

Let the earth forever remain!

Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (N.S.) 22, 939-961

Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (N.S.) 22, 939-961

itself as a potential palimpsest to be wiped clean of previous inscriptions as social,

The materiality of history: landscapes and legacies, palimpsests and power

Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (N.S.) 22, 939-961

geology, etc.) and to contemporary issues. Archaeological contributions to research on

Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (N.S.) 22, 939-961

The materiality of landscape legacies in the northern Basin of Mexico

Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (N.S.) 22, 939-961

Pre-imperial landscape legacies of Xaltocan

Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (N.S.) 22, 939-961

Figure 1. Map of Basin of Mexico.

Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (N.S.) 22, 939-961

second-order canals, whereas the pre-parcelled length of first-order canals cross-cuts

Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (N.S.) 22, 939-961

The increased dependence on Xaltocan’s chinampas was related to regional shifts

Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (N.S.) 22, 939-961

Imperial landscape legacies of the Aztec and Spanish

Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (N.S.) 22, 939-961

Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (N.S.) 22, 939-961

Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (N.S.) 22, 939-961

National landscape legacies

Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (N.S.) 22, 939-961

Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (N.S.) 22, 939-961

Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (N.S.) 22, 939-961

Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (N.S.) 22, 939-961

Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (N.S.) 22, 939-961

Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (N.S.) 22, 939-961

Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (N.S.) 22, 939-961

Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (N.S.) 22, 939-961

Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (N.S.) 22, 939-961

Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (N.S.) 22, 939-961

Que la Terre reste toujours ! Héritages paysagers et matérialité de l’histoire

Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (N.S.) 22, 939-961

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