Mesoamerican Technology: A Characterization in Relation to Hydraulics

This paper presents some reflections and proposals on the consequences for Mesoamerican technology of the arrival of Europeans in the region in the second decade of the 16th century, especially in relation to hydraulics. In this context, I discuss the topics of energy sources, tools, machines, and the social organization of work. The analysis of these four aspects allows us to contextualize the processes of technological transformation that occurred with Indian-Spanish contact.

Dr. Rojas has a B.A. in Ethnology, an M.A. in Anthropological Sciences, and a Ph.D. in Social Sciences (specialization in Anthropology) from the Universidad Iberoamericana (1985). She has worked as a researcher in the Centro de Investigaciones y Estudios Superiores en Antropología Social (CIESAS) since 1973, and was General Director from 1990-1996. She became a member of Mexico’s National System of Researchers in 1985 (Level III).

She received the Francisco Javier Clavijero Prize in History and Ethnohistory from the Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia for the best Doctoral thesis (1985), and the Mexican Academy of Sciences Award for Social Sciences (1987). She is now a Member of the Sub-Committee for Scientific Policy of the Consulting Forum on Science and Technology, and the External Academic Committee of the Social Sciences Department, Universidad Iberoamericana, Adviser to the Academic Committee of Mexico’s Archivo General de la Nación and Vice-President of the Mexican History of Science and Technology Society. A pioneer in the historical study of earthquakes in Mexico, she specializes in the ethnohistory of agriculture, irrigation and Mesoamerican technology and its transformation in the Vice-regal period.

She has coordinated various joint research projects on her topics of interest and several archival and documental inquiries that produced indexes, catalogues and compilations of colonial manuscripts, 19th-century newspapers, and historical photography. She is Co-Director of the collections: Historia de los Pueblos Indígenas de México (CIESAS/INI, with Mario H. Ruz), (20 vols.); Bienes y vidas olvidados. Testamentos indígenas novohispanos (4 vols.); and Colección Agraria (20 vols.), which contains the results of inquiries and archival research conducted through the Archivos Agrarios project (CIESAS/RAN) which she served as General Coordinator. Today she is the lead researcher on two projects: El mundo indígena y su iconografía: 1826-1947 (CIESAS/CONACYT) and Catálogo electrónico y Banco de imágenes de la Fototeca Nacho López (since 2002).

Raised-field agricultural systems in the Neotropics: Past, present and heir implications for sustainable agriculture

The need to reconcile food production, ecosystem services and biodiversity conservation has spurred the search for more sustainable ways of farming. Archaeology offers examples of prehistoric pathways to agricultural intensification that could be rich sources of inspiration for applying ecological engineering in agriculture today. In this presentation, I will briefly summarise the nature of pre-Columbian raised field agriculture. In particular, I will report a 2,150 yr old paleoecological record from a French Guianan coastal savanna that forces reconsideration of how pre-Columbian savanna peoples practiced raised-field agriculture and how the Columbian Encounter impacted these societies and environments. The study shows that pre-Columbian raised-field farmers limited burning to improve agricultural production, contrasting with extensive use of fire in pre-Columbian tropical forest and Central American savanna environments, as well as in present-day savannas. The charcoal record indicates that extensive fires in the seasonally flooded savannas of French Guiana are a post-Columbian phenomenon, postdating the collapse of indigenous populations. The discovery that pre-Columbian farmers practiced fire-free savanna management calls into question the widely held assumption that pre-Columbian Amazonian farmers pervasively used fire to manage and alter ecosystems. More importantly, I will discuss how this land use management offers fresh perspectives on an emerging alternative approach to savanna land use and conservation that can help reduce carbon emissions.

We examine one set of techniques, pre-Columbian raised-field agriculture in wetlands of Mesoamerica and South America. We point to gaps in knowledge at three levels. First, raised-field agriculture was conducted in a wide range of soils and climates. How different systems functioned was likely to have been correspondingly diverse, but this variation is under-appreciated. At the scale of single farms, nutrient dynamics in raised-field systems likely included complexities quite unusual in 'modern' agriculture, owing to the mixture of aerobic and waterlogged compartments, but data are scarce. Second, at the landscape level there is disagreement about whether fallow periods were necessary, and their eventual roles are poorly understood. Current evidence suggests that self-organizing processes in fallows may have increased the sustainability of some raised-field farming systems in unusual ways. Third, the labor-intensive nature of raised-field farming is held to limit its pertinence to today's global problems, but its real labor costs are unknown. Furthermore, achieving sustainable intensive agriculture will require compensating farmers for ecosystem services they provide. Under a socioeconomic regime that does this, raised-field agriculture could have considerable practical application.

José Iriarte is an environmental archaeologist and archaeobotanist with a specialism in phytolith and starch grain analyses. He has received his PhD from the Department of Anthropology at University of Kentucky and he is currently Associate Professor at the Department of Archaeology, University of Exeter. Iriarte has a strong track record of research on human environment interactions, the emergence of complex societies and the development of agricultural economies in lowland South and Central America. He has extensive experience in directing and participating in a wide range of international projects in Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Peru, French Guiana, Mexico and Uruguay. The multi-proxy, cross-disciplinary nature of these projects, which had integrated archaeology, palaeoecology, soil science, and botany, has allowed him to explore pre-Columbian coupled human and environment systems in depth and have provided clearer evidence on the timing and nature of human impact on tropical and subtropical ecosystems. He directs the University of Exeter Archaeobotany and Paleoecology Laboratory, which houses a modern reference collection of more than 750 specimens of phytoliths and starch grains from lowland South America.

The Aftermath of Revolution: The Transformation of Irrigation Systems in The Mexican Bajío

In scholarly circles it is generally recognized that during the pre-Hispanic Post-Classic period the region known as the Mexican Bajío was a frontier zone between numerous Chichimec tribes and the state-organized Nahuatl and Tarascan societies. This means that there is little archaeological evidence from that epoch, in contrast to earlier periods, as contemporary archaeologists have amply demonstrated. However, with the arrival of the Spaniards in the 16th century and their expansion into northern New Spain, Spanish and indigenous colonization made the Bajío one of the most prosperous regions in the Spanish Empire. Indeed, the development of an economy based on mining, commerce, manufacturing and agriculture meant that it became, in the conceptualization of the North American historian John Tutino, a key region for the history of world capitalism.

For the purposes of this paper we can draw a line of continuous growth in the agricultural frontier of the Bajío from the 16th century to the first half of the 20th, the foundations of which were twin pillars: first, the ongoing construction of irrigation systems fed by the tributary currents of the Lerma River; and, second, the different sources of water identified there (perennial, torrential and underground). But while it is certain that the construction of hydraulic infrastructure for irrigation can be documented from the 16th century, it was in the 18th and 19th centuries that landscapes in the Bajío underwent a radical transformation as new lands were incorporated into agricultural production and earlier crops were displaced as Mexico dramatically increased wheat production. As I believe I have demonstrated in previous studies, one factor that led to making this process a reality was the control and exploitation of torrential waters through the practice of building embankments around agricultural fields to trap water (entarquinamiento). The perfection of this technique, which required enormous volumes of water, broad territorial extensions, large investments of capital and a huge workforce, allowed the Bajío to construct irrigation systems that, while small in scale compared to modern parameters, were socially and technologically complex, and together covered thousands of acres and contributed to transforming the Bajío into the breadbasket of New Spain and 19th-century Mexico.

Those systems were created and administered through the oligarchic logic of the hacienda, independent of the control of political authority at any level; that is, they were built in accordance with the interests, and under the control, of the resources –economic and natural– that contemporary hacendados possessed, and administered by associations of private irrigators. Thus we may ask: What repercussions did the social policies of the 1910 Mexican Revolution have on water management in the Bajío?; What were the consequences of establishing irrigation districts on top of those ancient hydraulic systems?; What changes in the landscape occurred as a result of applying the great irrigation works of the Revolution?; and, What repercussions did hydraulic policies have on the social organization of irrigation? These are some of the question we attempt to elucidate in this paper.

Ph.D. in History from El Colegio de México. Professor/Researcher in the Center for Historical Studies at El Colegio de Michoacán, which he has presided over as President since 2009. Member of Mexico’s National System of Researchers (Level I). In 1991, he received Honorable Mention for the Salvador Azuela Prize awarded by the National Institute for Historical Studies of the Mexican Revolution, and in 1993 won the Salvador Azuela Prize in the “Research” category. The research areas he has developed include: social uses of water in Mexico; water and urbanism; historical cartography; and geographical information systems in historical research. He has edited, authored or co-authored ten books on these topics of interest.

Pre-Columbian Hydraulics and Irrigation Methods: Validity and Adaptability

After more than 3,000 years of experimentation, agriculture on the coast of Peru came to constitute the axis of the life of village societies when, in the 8th-to-15th centuries of our era it achieved the level of intensive agriculture. This stage was characterized by maximum exploitation of the available agricultural lands and a process of expansion into new areas based on the following methods: a) slash-and-burn farming in forest clearings; b) irrigated agriculture controlled by a system of canals on the pampas near the coastal valley; c) wells sunk into river deltas to exploit groundwater (mahamaes); d) runoff from a type of trough or from “waterholes” (eutrophication) through small canals that transformed lagoons near the ocean into vegetable fields (huachaques); and e) a system of terraces irrigated by rainfall or canals that deviated water from Andean lagoons when they increased their volume during the rainy season. Other means utilized included applying manure, crop rotation, the natural hybridization of maize, seed selection, the suitable adaptation of channeling systems, and aligning furrows according to the slope of the terrain.

The objective of this study is to explain that today it is feasible to replicate the technological heritage developed by pre-Columbian Peruvians in the field of hydraulics by incorporating modern techniques and machinery to carry out technical-economic projects that are totally viable. The paper elucidates the replicability of the Nazca aqueducts, whose design and construction were brought to fruition by the Nazca 2000-to-3000 years ago. This involved utilizing locally-available construction materials such as flagstone and wooden poles from Guarango trees with their points burned so as to better resist rotting. In the bed of the Acari River, some 100 kilometers south of Nazca, we have conducted a study that entailed constructing filtering galleries that utilize the body of water located in the sub-superficial zone for domestic use.

Antonio Enciso is Agricultural Engineer, civil engineering magister and doctoral candidate in civil engineering. He is Associate Professor at the Faculty of Agricultural Engineering of the National Agrarian University of La Molina, Peru, where he teaches irrigation engineering subjects, topography, investment projects and geographic information systems. He is a consultant on irrigation and drainage engineering, surveying, investment projects and Columbian hydraulic technology. He investigates Columbian irrigation methods, and is responsible of different studies concerning irrigation systems, roads and water management. He is also an international lecturer and member of CYTED Irrigation Network.

Hydrological Innovation: The Evolution of Human Ecology and Water Management at Tikal

Innovations in water management contributed to the monumental success of the Classic Maya kingdom of Tikal in a region that would otherwise be considered a marginal environment unfavorable to socio-political growth and complexity.   At Tikal, extreme variability in access to water created both a challenge and a stimulus to growth.   Engineering ingenuity specifically designed to optimize the capture of seasonal rainfall increased the supply and consistency of water allowing demographic growth and economic stability.  While water management has been well documented at Central Tikal, the hinterlands have received only minimal attention until recently. 

New data from the hinterlands indicates that the earthworks of Tikal, previously believed to have been primarily defensive in nature, are actually an example of hydrological engineered limestone filtration trenches that exploited the unique character of the Peten's aged karst geomorphology and the seasonal rainfall pattern.  The Limestone filtration trenches of Tikal represent a technological innovation corresponding to the florescence of the kingdom. It appears that the use of limestone filtration trenches faded from the technological regimen of the Maya with the fall of the Tikal kingdom; however, the true spatial and temporal extent of this recently identified innovation has yet to be explored.

Jay Silverstein earned his MA and PhD from the Pennsylvania State University in 2000 and is currently chief of a GIS investigation unit for the United States program to search for missing soldiers from past conflicts as well as an Adjunct Assistant Professor at the University of Hawaii. He has worked on the San Lorenzo-Tenochtitlan Project and the Proyecto Acatzingo-Tepeaca, and he directed the Proyecto Oztuma-Cutzamala for his dissertation research.  Dr. Silverstein has co-directed the Estudio de las Fortelezas de Tikal in Guatemala and currently co-directs the Tell Timai Project in Egypt.  His academic interests include the rise and fall of complex societies, militarism, hydrological adaptations, and imperialism.

From Waterscape to Landscape: Structural and Technological Modifications between Aztec Period and Modern Chinampas of Xochimilco associated with Long-term Social and Ecological Changes

Archaeologists have long recognized structural and functional differences between pre-Hispanic and historic or modern chinampas in the Basin of Mexico. Nonetheless, ethnographic chinampa systems have often been used as an analog for modeling the Late Aztec period raised fields in the southern basin. Computing and software advances since Pedro Armillas' seminal analysis of relic fields visible in historic air photos have enabled the digitization of more than 1,000 hectares of Aztec period chinampas in the former Xochimilco lakebed. The contiguous 1,000 hectare relic field sample represents the best preserved Aztec fields depicted in historic air photos because the area persisted as marshland fewer than two decades before the drained lakebed was photographed from above beginning in 1936. The empirical relic field data permit a spatial and quantitative comparison of Aztec, historic, and modern chinampa systems. The temporal transformation of Xochimilco chinampas can be understood in the context of social and ecological landscape changes over the past 500 years. In spite of substantial structural and functional changes between pre-Hispanic and modern systems, Xochimilco chinampas remain a very productive agricultural system. In addition to a comparative analysis, this paper addresses technological changes in the chinampa system associated with long-term socio-cultural and ecological changes in the southern Basin of Mexico. The chinampa canals we boat along, the organic dark soils we see, and the farming strategies we observe all have a deep pre-Hispanic ancestry; however, the continually changing social and ecological landscape gives rise to novel and altered farming strategies for maintaining productivity.

The presenter is completing his dissertation titled Modeling the Aztec Agricultural Waterscape of Lake Xochimilco: A GIS Analysis of Lakebed Chinampas and Settlement at the Pennsylvania State University. He began his Mesoamerica archaeology career in the mid-1990s as a crew member on Late Archaic and Early Formative projects in the Soconusco, Chiapas while receiving his BA and MA in Anthropology from UC Santa Barbara. He worked as a field archaeologist in the Southwest US for four years before taking a BS in Geography (GIS) at Penn State and working as a GIS professional. Most recently, he enrolled in the Anthropology PhD program at Penn State combining his background in archaeology and GIS to model the development and structure of the southern lakebed chinampa system during the Late Aztec period. Additionally, he has continued working as a seasonal archaeologist for the National Park Service in the Southwest US.

Harvest and Water Management Strategies among the Classic Maya in the northern Petén of Campeche

In recent years there has been a lag and consequent reduction of the rainy season in Campeche that, at the regional level, has resulted in the drying-out of washes and shallow ponds located in the Calakmul Biosphere Reserve, substantially impacting populations of the reserve's native wildlife. Consequently, in order to study this phenomenon, thorough studies have been carried out, which have provided valuable information that will assist in the implementation of management plans aimed at solving this problem. Nevertheless, despite the important contribution of these studies, they have emphasized the negative consequences that human agency has had in the deterioration of the natural environment, without considering that a thorough knowledge of the landscape and the rational management of water resources not only allowed for survival but also the flowering of a complex civilization in the same territory that now faces this serious problem of water scarcity.

Archaeological evidence indicates that the population density in these parts of the Maya lowlands reached a figure of about 200 inhabitants per km², which contrasts dramatically with the current 1.48 inhabitants per km². These facts thus beg the question "what strategies did the ancient Maya apply to ensure water supply for domestic and agricultural use in an environment where the absence of surface water and deep underground reserves prevailed?" The obvious answer makes one think that the ancient Maya had to develop techniques that enabled them to efficiently harvest and store this vital liquid.

Apparently, after the depopulation of the region caused by the collapse of the Maya political system, the hydraulic infrastructure was no longer maintained and thus over time it ceased to function, due to its abandonment. With this in mind, a detailed study of pre-Hispanic efforts at water control and harvesting has been initiated, in order to gain a better understanding of the techniques developed to allow for the presence of a dense population for more than 1200 years and consequently contribute to solving a current problem.

Dr. Anaya obtained his doctorate in archaeology from the University of Calgary, Canada, in 1999. Since 1993 he has been active in archaeological research in the Maya lowlands (Chiapas, Tabasco, Campeche) as Co-director of the Yaxnohcah Archaeological Project at a site located in the Calakmul Biosphere Reserve, where he is in charge of paleoenvironmental and hydric resource management studies. Currently, he is a full-time Professor/Researcher at the Center for Historical and Social Research at the Universidad Autónoma de Campeche.

Dr. Ezgi Akpinar Ferrand is an assistant professor of Geography at Southern Connecticut State University. She is a physical geographer with research interests in climate change, food and water security.  Her graduate training involved studying the civilizations and environments of the eastern Mediterranean and the Yucatan Peninsula.  She is interested in sustainable development initiatives in developing countries with arid, semi-arid and dry-wet climatic regimes.

Dr. Faust has a doctorate in anthropology from Syracuse University (New York State) and is author of El desarrollo rural mexicano y la serpiente emplumada. Her research centers on change and continuity in indigenous environmental knowledge and sustainable management among the Maya of the Yucatán Peninsula. Currently, she is an Honorary Researcher in the Natural Resources Department of the Yucatán Center for Scientific Research.

The Hydraulic Engineering at Palenque

Palenque has what is arguably the most unique and intricate system of water management known anywhere in the Maya Lowlands.  The peculiarity of their hydraulic engineering most likely stems from its environmental setting, one with tightly constrained topographic limits.  As the settlement grew, the inhabitants had to design water features that would allow for densely spaced construction.  Some of the features, such as the subterranean aqueducts, limited erosion and flooding.  Others, like the water pressure system, allowed for water to be lifted.  New research on Palenque's spring-fed pools suggests locations for the washing of ceremonial clothes.  While the water management at most other Maya centers pertained to the storage (i.e. reservoirs) necessary to sustain the dry season, the Palenconos engineered a hydraulic system that dealt with an abundance of water and how to move it through the landscape in an efficient manner.  This paper will present an overview of previous and current research on the elaborate water management systems at Palenque.

Kirk French is a professional archaeologist and an authority on ancient Maya water management systems.  He began working with the water management of Palenque in 1998.  His dissertation, The Hydroarchaeological Approach: Understanding the Ancient Maya Impact on the Palenque Watershed, introduced a new method for measuring the effects of human impact on the environment. French concluded that the major cause for fluctuations in the water cycle at Palenque is landcover alteration (deforestation, urbanism, etc.) not climate change.In addition, French is working on the "Land and Water Revisited", a project that documents the effects of modern day urbanism on the Teotihuacan Valley of Mexico through ethnographic film.  In 1961, Penn State archaeologist William T. Sanders (1926 – 2008), filmed "Land and Water: An Ecological Study of the Teotihuacan Valley of Mexico".  This documentary captured a way of life that is all but gone in the Valley today due to the urban growth of Mexico City.  French has in his possession all of the outtakes and notes of the original film.  His goal is to return to the Teotihuacan Valley and record the changes through juxtaposition of past and present footage and with interviews of the local people. French's goal is to develop a better understanding of the interplay between humans and their surroundings by providing views of what landscape alteration can and has done to the environment through archaeology, watershed modeling, and ethnographic/documentary film.  Currently, he is a Lecturer of Anthropology at the Pennsylvania State University.

Wetlands Agriculture and its Impact on Institutional and Subsistence Economics among the Postclassic Populations of the Valley of Puebla and Tlaxcala

The development of agricultural technologies has been a key element in the formulation of theories that address state control of food production. In Mesoamerican societies, the cultivation of species under improved environmental conditions suggests intensification processes to fund the growth and expansion of the state apparatus. Nonetheless, the relationship between production at the institutional level and that reserved for subsistence and its association with indigenous tributary systems is poorly understood. During the pre-Hispanic period, parts of the western region of Puebla and central Tlaxcala harbored significant wetland areas that allowed for the development of cultivation technologies adapted to flooded environments through the creation of raised and drained fields. This paper explores the relationship between small-scale technological development, wetland agricultural intensification, and its impact on the domestic and institutional economy in the Postclassic populations of the Puebla-Tlaxcala region.

Aurelio López is a researcher at the Tlaxcala center of Mexico's National Institute of Anthropology and History. He studied for his Ph.D. in the Department of Anthropology at Pennsylvania State University (2011). His research interests include the development of ancient agricultural systems in the Puebla-Tlaxcala region, the study of the domestic and institutional economy of the Pre-Hispanic peoples of central Mexico, and processes of change in indigenous land tenure systems in the Postclassic and Early Colonial periods. Today, he is Co-director of the Tepeticpac, Tlaxcala, Archaeological Project and a collaborator in the Tlalancaleca, Puebla, archaeological project. His recent publications include "Los glifos de suelo en códices Acolhua de la Colonia Temprana: un reanálisis de su significado" (Desacatos, 2011), "Tepeticpac: la arqueología del primer señorío de Tlaxcallan"(Jornadas de Antropología e Historia INAH, 2011), "El impacto de la canícula en poblaciones agrícolas de Tepeaca, siglo XVI" (Itinerarios, 2012), and "Terrazguero smallholders and the function of agricultural tribute in sixteenth-century Tepeaca, México"(Mexican Studies/Estudios Mexicanos, 2012).

Gravity-Fed Irrigation and Water-Wheels in the Agroindustry of Michoacán and Guanajuato in the Late 19th Century: An Archaeological Perspective

The study of haciendas as a model of agroindustrial production in the late 19th and early 20th centuries in Michoacán and Guanajuato, especially those devoted to the cultivation of crops like wheat, rice, sugarcane and indigo, has allowed us to come to understand that the hacienda functioned as an organic unit that embraced virtually every stage of the productive cycle; i.e., from the generation of raw materials through to the initial phases of distribution.

Each stage of the cycle was assigned its own space for development, but practically all of them had some relation to the use of water, either for irrigation or as a source of motor force. The installations required for water management (hydraulic technology) generated a characteristic settlement pattern the analysis of which allows us to determine where water was conducted by gravity to be distributed through the different spaces of the hacienda's lands and how production was subject to this mode of transportation.

Based on these observations, an ideal spatial model is proposed that makes it possible to identify the logic of each element built on the hacienda and of its location within that territory. This paper discusses several examples of the use of water through a focus on archaeological evidence from mills and irrigation works.

Alberto Aguirre Anaya studied his B.A. in Archaeology at the Escuela Nacional de Antropología e Historia. His Master's degree is in Architectural Patrimony from the Benemérita Universidad Autónoma de Puebla, and he earned his Ph.D. in Architecture in the Interinstitutional Doctoral Program in Architecture in Guanajuato. His research areas include the study of productive processes from an ethnoarchaeological perspective, the archaeology of production architecture (industrial archaeology) and proposals for the conservation of archaeological and historical patrimony. He is currently a Professor/Researcher at the Center for Archaeological Studies at the Colegio de Michoacán in the field of the generation and application of knowledge entitled "Economic and Production Dynamics and their Impact on Cultural Landscapes", where he has directed and supervised the theses of several graduate students. He has publications by the Colegio de Michoacán and other scholarly institutions.

The Technology of the Lacustrine Lifestyle in Michoacán: Change and Persistence  through Time

The Tarascan Empire was one of the most complex social systems in ancient Mesoamerica. The territory under the dominion of the king or cazonci in the Protohistoric period (ca. AD 1450-1530) covered a wide area of western Mexico. Within this region lacustrine environments abounded, including Lake Patzcuaro, Michoacán, where the core Tarascan power was seated. The region's aquatic resources, exploited through fishing, hunting, gathering, and manufacturing, played a strategic role, as they were an indispensable complement to agriculture, as in other parts of Mesoamerica. Lacustrine, marsh, and riverine environments made ​​possible a sedentary lifestyle and a high level of civilization, despite the fact that indigenous cultures lacked livestock for food and pack animals for the transportation of goods and people, unlike the situation in the Old World.

After the sixteenth-century Spanish conquest, major changes in Mesoamerican technology occurred. Nonetheless, subsistence activities related to aquatic environments maintained many features and processes that were reminiscent of the pre-Hispanic past. In this paper the technology of the lacustrine lifestyle in Michoacán is discussed, analyzing its change and persistence through the centuries.

Dr. Williams earned his Doctorate in archaeology at the Institute of Archaeology, University College London. He is a Professor/Researcher in the Center for Archaeological Studies at the Colegio de Michoacán. Member of Mexico's National System of Researchers (SNI-Level II) and the Mexican Academy of Science, in 2004 he received the Alfonso Caso Prize (CONACULTA-INAH) for outstanding research in archaeology for his book: La sal de la tierra: etnoarqueología de la producción salinera en el Occidente de México. He is the author of 3 books and editor or co-editor of 13 others, and has published over 40 refereed book chapters and articles (in indexed journals) in Mexico, the U.S. and England.

Dr. Rojas has a B.A. in Ethnology, an M.A. in Anthropological Sciences, and a Ph.D. in Social Sciences (specialization in Anthropology) from the Universidad Iberoamericana (1985). She has worked as a researcher in the Centro de Investigaciones y Estudios Superiores en Antropología Social (CIESAS) since 1973, and was General Director from 1990-1996. She became a member of Mexico’s National System of Researchers in 1985 (Level III).

She received the Francisco Javier Clavijero Prize in History and Ethnohistory from the Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia for the best Doctoral thesis (1985), and the Mexican Academy of Sciences Award for Social Sciences (1987). She is now a Member of the Sub-Committee for Scientific Policy of the Consulting Forum on Science and Technology, and the External Academic Committee of the Social Sciences Department, Universidad Iberoamericana, Adviser to the Academic Committee of Mexico’s Archivo General de la Nación and Vice-President of the Mexican History of Science and Technology Society. A pioneer in the historical study of earthquakes in Mexico, she specializes in the ethnohistory of agriculture, irrigation and Mesoamerican technology and its transformation in the Vice-regal period.

She has coordinated various joint research projects on her topics of interest and several archival and documental inquiries that produced indexes, catalogues and compilations of colonial manuscripts, 19th-century newspapers, and historical photography. She is Co-Director of the collections: Historia de los Pueblos Indígenas de México (CIESAS/INI, with Mario H. Ruz), (20 vols.); Bienes y vidas olvidados. Testamentos indígenas novohispanos (4 vols.); and Colección Agraria (20 vols.), which contains the results of inquiries and archival research conducted through the Archivos Agrarios project (CIESAS/RAN) which she served as General Coordinator. Today she is the lead researcher on two projects: El mundo indígena y su iconografía: 1826-1947 (CIESAS/CONACYT) and Catálogo electrónico y Banco de imágenes de la Fototeca Nacho López (since 2002).