Emerging Agro-Rural Complexities in Occident Mexico: Approach from Sustainability Science and Transdisciplinarity

Rural and agricultural modernization and industrialization (RAMI) increased in recent decades in a multiscalar way. RAMI has implied the rural landscape transformation through the arrival of industrial models. These processes have not been linear or unidirectional; heterogeneities, opposites, mosaics, hybridizations, new interactions, problems, and tensions, between traditional and industrial agriculture and other agriculture types, have emerged. We tackle and problematized the RAMI processes, which is a complex and a real-world problem, from Sustainability Science (SS) and transdisciplinarity. Thus, considering studies and experiences in different rural areas in the world, an epistemological positioning is presented, which allows overcoming scientific frontiers and relating it to rural sustainability. We delve into the Lake Pátzcuaro Basin (LPB), Mexico, an area with a strong agricultural tradition (“milpa” systems). Recently, the presence of industrial agriculture (mainly avocado monoculture and berry greenhouses) has increased, occurring the coexistence between peasant-entrepreneurs, indigenous–non-indigenous, and new-rural. The article aims to understand comprehensively the emerging complexities from the RAMI, deepening LPB’s real case. The epistemological approach developed allow us to conceive the interaction and possible complementation between traditional agriculture, industrial agriculture and other agriculture types, and the emergence of an included middle that corresponds to an “emerging complexity”. Finally, relevant topics and questions are highlighted.

THE “LAND OF FISH”: RECONSTRUCTING THE ANCIENT AQUATIC LIFEWAY IN MICHOACÁN, WESTERN MEXICO

This article deals with the cultural activities linked to subsistence in aquatic environments (fishing, hunting, gathering, and manufacture) in Michoacán from ca. a.d. 1540 to the present. First, I present an ethnohistorical account of aquatic landscapes and resources based on the major written sources from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries. Second, I discuss the extant ethnographic information about subsistence activities in the Lake Pátzcuaro Basin (Michoacán) during the twentieth century. Finally, I discuss the archaeological implications of all the information presented here, through an ethnoarchaeological analysis of the subsistence strategies and the material culture associated with the aquatic lifeway in the study area. The main goal of this study is to provide bridging arguments for the reconstruction and interpretation (through analogy) of the archaeological assemblages associated with production and consumption activities in aquatic landscapes within the Tarascan region and elsewhere in Mesoamerica.

Handmade Comal Tortillas in Michoacán: Traditional Practices along the Rural-Urban Gradient

Certain components of global food security continue to be threatened. Globalization has impacted food patterns, leading to greater homogenization of diets and the standardization of processes of food transformation, both in the countryside and in the cities. In Mexico, this has led to a drop in the use of native corn landraces and in the value associated with traditional practices around their growing and the processing and consumption of tortillas. The aim of this work was to analyze the main characteristics of the handmade comal tortilla system along the rural-urban gradient taking into account: (1) The type of seed and production, (2) manufacturing processes, (3) marketing channels and purpose of sales, and (4) perceptions regarding the quality of the product. Research was conducted on 41 handmade tortilla workshops located in rural areas in the Lake Pátzcuaro Basin and in urban and peri-urban areas of a medium-sized city in Michoacán (Mexico). Results showed that the origin of the grain follows a gradient-like pattern: In rural areas, tortillas are made with local and native corn predominate, while in urban contexts most tortillas come from hybrid corn produced in Sinaloa or Jalisco. There is a generalized preference for white tortillas, but blue tortillas are used for personal consumption in rural areas and as a gourmet product in the city. 100% of the rural workshops make their own nixtamal, while almost 50% of the peri-urban and urban businesses buy pre-made nixtamal dough. Surprisingly, 50% of the rural handmade tortilla workshops admit that they add nixtamalized corn flour and/or wheat flour to their tortilla mix. We conclude that not all handmade comal tortillas are produced equally and, although in rural areas traditions are better preserved, these also have contradictions. We also conclude that it is important to promote the revaluation of agrobiodiversity, traditional gastronomy, and food security without sacrificing quality, nutrition, and flavor.

A Typology of Ancient Purépecha (Tarascan) Architecture from Angamuco, Michoacán, Mexico

The morphological study of architectural features, the building arrangement within urban spaces, and multiscalar variation are critical for understanding urbanism as a process. Building types and architectural typologies form the foundational blocks of urban morphology and are essential for identifying architectural patterning. We use a process-typological approach to present an architectural typology from the ancient Purépecha (Tarascan) city of Angamuco, located in the Lake Pátzcuaro Basin, Michoacán, Mexico. Using archaeological survey, lidar analysis, and excavation, we analyze building foundations from houses and public structures; storage facilities; monumental architecture such as pyramids, altars, and public buildings; and landscape features such as plazas, roads, terraces, and raised roadways locally known as huatziri. Our typology enhances understanding of the dense urban environment of this important prehispanic city during and after the formation of the Purépecha Empire.

OBSIDIAN PRODUCTION AND CHANGING CONSUMPTION IN THE LAKE PATZCUARO BASIN, MICHOACAN, MEXICO

Many Tarascan settlements surrounded Lake Patzcuaro in Michoacan, Mexico, during the Late Postclassic period. A hierarchy of settlements existed from the capital of Tzintzuntzan to secondary administration sites and small tributary communities. Obsidian artifacts from the large site, Erongaricuaro, have been studied by the author. Analysis of the obsidian from this site highlighted particular patterns in the production and consumption of prismatic blades and large scrapers. Data from another site, Urichu, was collected and analyzed more recently. Urichu was a tributary center to Erongaricuaro during the Tarascan empire. Local and state elites inhabited both sites, and analysis of obsidian manufacture indicates that the sites may have had different functions. Obsidian from the sites also varies by source location. This too may indicate site function and the changing sociopolitical organization of obsidian production and use throughout the Tarascan empire.

A MODEL OF THE EMERGENCE OF THE TARASCAN STATE

Bya.d.1350, central-western Mexico was incorporated into the Tarascan state. Thisirechequa tzintzuntzani(kingdom of Tzintzuntzan) has been known primarily from sixteenth-century documents. With three decades of archaeological, ecological, and ethnohistoric research, it is now possible to propose a model of the emergence of the first archaic state in Michoacan. Critical issues to be addressed include (1) why state formation occurred (and why this form); (2) why even secondary state formation was “delayed” for more than a millennium; (3) why it occurred in the Lake Patzcuaro Basin; and (4) the role of Purepecha ethnicity in the process.

TARASCAN CERAMIC PRODUCTION AND IMPLICATIONS FOR CERAMIC DISTRIBUTION

Research on the emergence of social complexity and state economies tends toward an understanding of either political economies or market economies as the privileged economic form and with producer specialization emerging contemporaneously with the state. Markets and political control need not be seen as oppositional; rather, they are part of the continuum of multiple strategies elites use to create the larger political economy of a state. The Late Postclassic period Tarascan state is known for its strong centralizing tendencies, and an overview of previous research indicates political involvement in various aspects of the larger economic coordination of metal, obsidian, and agricultural production and distribution. Tarascan state ceramics are highly distinctive in form and decoration. Ethnohistoric evidence suggests that they were produced under court control, yet no direct evidence for ceramic production has been found in the Tarascan core, the Lake Patzcuaro Basin. A mix of compositional and statistical analyses of the ceramic assemblage from Urichu, Michoacan, Mexico, indicates that ceramics were not under centralized political control but, instead, were produced at a local level and distributed using the market mechanisms of the larger mixture of economic strategies on the part of the Tarascan political elite.