Archaeology+and+Architecture

Colorado State University archaeology Professor Christopher Fisher and geography Professor Stephen Leisz have used LiDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) technology to document thousands of architectural features from an ancient city in western Mexico that could help provide insights into the formation of the pre-Hispanic Purépecha (Tarascan) Empire and help unravel connections between complex societies and climate change. Below is a picture of their finding, and a rendering of what it would have looked like hundreds of years ago. ([])

The city, which predominately dates to between A.D. 1000 to A.D. 1520, may have held as many as 30,000 residents and features thousands of architectural remains, including pyramids, roads, buildings and the first documented ball court in the region. The urban center is located within the Lake Pátzcuaro Basin in Michoacán, Mexico, which was the geopolitical core of the Purépecha Empire at the time of European contact ([])



As might be expected, the principal construction materials are wood and stone. To date, however, no remains or evidence have been found of the use of stucco, either for floors or walls, a significant difference from the rest of Mesoamerica (Pastrana 1999:13-14). Craft specialists in the Tarascan empire did particularly impressive work in ceramics, featherwork, bronze, copper, and gold (Adams 1991:325). Different investigators highlight different types of objects, depending on their what catches their particular attention: Gorenstein and Pollard describe ceramic vessels with distinctive combinations of form, finish, and decorative motifs; highly specialized lapidary work in obsidian and rock crystal with turquoise mosaics; metal artifacts shaped by both hammering and casting, and decorated with numerous different techniques (1983:11). In addition to noting the Tarascans’ use of bronze, Torres Montes and Franco Velásquez highlight their use of gold plating, another technique unused by any other group in Mesoamerica (1996:86). Pastrana appears to enjoy the highly stylized zoomorphic and anthropomorphic sculptures of volcanic rock (1999:16); Coe highlights the bimetallic objects of silver and gold and, “most astonishing of their productions,” paper-thin obsidian earspools and labrets, faced with sheet gold and turquoise inlay (1994:156-157).