Irrigation (original) (raw)
1996, Encyclopedia of Latin American History
Sign up for access to the world's latest research
checkGet notified about relevant papers
checkSave papers to use in your research
checkJoin the discussion with peers
checkTrack your impact
Abstract
An overview of irrigation in Latin America with emphasis on prehispanic water management.
Related papers
Watering the Fields of Teotihuacan: Early Irrigation at the Ancient City.
Ancient Mesoamerica 2: 119–129., 1991
Recent excavations in Tlailotlacan, the “Oaxaca barrio,” near the western periphery of the ancient city of Teotihuacan, revealed remains of irrigation features associated with the early history of the city. Small floodwater irrigation canals were found underneath a residential structure that had been occupied by Zapotec immigrants from Oaxaca. Radiocarbon dating, corroborated by ceramic evidence, places the earliest architecture in the Early Tlamimilolpa phase (ca. a.d. 200–300), thus providing a concrete terminal date for the hydraulic system, an advantage not enjoyed by previous canal explorations in the region. The hydraulic features consist of segments of two superimposed canal networks that, based on associated pottery, date to the Terminal Formative period (Tzacualli and Miccoatli phases), which represents the earliest well-documented date for the use of irrigation at Teotihuacan. Shortly after the canals were abandoned, control over this land passed from the original inhabitants to Zapotec immigrants. We suggest that this change in ownership and land use directly involved the Teotihuacan state and was part of a policy of maintaining control over the location of economically important “resources,” including foreign immigrants like the Zapotec, who had important trade connections.
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2005
One of the most important developments in the existence of human society was the successful shift from a subsistence economy based on foraging to one primarily based on food production derived from cultivated plants and domesticated animals. The shift to plant food production occurred in only a few independent centers around the world and involved a commitment to increased sedentism and social interaction and to permanent agricultural fields and canals. One center was Peru, where early civilization and food production were beginning to develop by at least 4,500 years ago. New archeological evidence points to 5,400-and possible 6,700-year-old small-scale gravity canals in a circumscribed valley of the western Andean foothills in northern Peru that are associated with farming on low terrace benches at the foot of alluvial fans in areas where the canals are drawn from hydraulically manageable small lateral streams. This evidence reveals early environmental manipulation and incipient food production in an artificially created wet agroecosystem rather than simply the intensive harvesting or gardening of plants in moist natural areas. This finding is different from previously conceived notions, which expected early canals in lower-elevated, broad coastal valleys. The evidence also points to communal organization of labor to construct and maintain the canals and to the scheduling of daily activities beyond individual households. The development of early organized irrigation farming was combined with a hunting and gathering economy to support an increase in the local population size.
Alternative Interpretations of Pre-Columbian Water Management in the Western Llanos of Venezuela
En base a investigaciones recientes se presentan en este trabajo d o s alternativas para explicar: a) la n o popularización del sistema de c a m p o s elevados en los Llanos Occidentales y b ) la funcionalidad de las " c a l z a d a s " . En el primer caso, se sugiere que la p o b l a c i ó n prehispánica haya h e c h o un m a y o r uso de las múltiples estructuras naturales ( b a n c o s , viejos cauces, etc), q u e existen en la z o n a , y q u e son el resultado de la intensa actividad fluvial. En segundo t é r m i n o , se sugiere q u e las " c a l z a d a s " hayan servido c o m o diques de retención de agua, destinados a una intensa e x p l o t a c i ó n de los recursos acuáticos.
Preceramic irrigation canals in the Peruvian Andes
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2005
One of the most important developments in the existence of human society was the successful shift from a subsistence economy based on foraging to one primarily based on food production derived from cultivated plants and domesticated animals. The shift to plant food production occurred in only a few independent centers around the world and involved a commitment to increased sedentism and social interaction and to permanent agricultural fields and canals. One center was Peru, where early civilization and food production were beginning to develop by at least 4,500 years ago. New archeological evidence points to 5,400-and possible 6,700-year-old small-scale gravity canals in a circumscribed valley of the western Andean foothills in northern Peru that are associated with farming on low terrace benches at the foot of alluvial fans in areas where the canals are drawn from hydraulically manageable small lateral streams. This evidence reveals early environmental manipulation and incipient food production in an artificially created wet agroecosystem rather than simply the intensive harvesting or gardening of plants in moist natural areas. This finding is different from previously conceived notions, which expected early canals in lower-elevated, broad coastal valleys. The evidence also points to communal organization of labor to construct and maintain the canals and to the scheduling of daily activities beyond individual households. The development of early organized irrigation farming was combined with a hunting and gathering economy to support an increase in the local population size.
Droughts, floods, and farming at Quebrada Tacahuay from late prehispanic to colonial times
We describe diachronic evidence of moisture reduction and its consequences for coastal irrigation, agriculture, and settlement at Quebrada Tacahuay, a large drainage south of the Osmore River in far southern Peru. These observations are the first for a drainage of this size and for one with occupation spanning over 12,000 years for southern eru. Following several millennia of occupation by coastal foragers, farming populations settled the lower elevations of the drainage. Our analysis indicates that agricultural production was well developed in the fourteenth century prior to a previously documented, catastrophic El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) flood that took place sometime during the early-fourteenth century. Later in the fifteenth century the Inca conquest of the region and establishment of a coastal tambo and village was accompanied by agricultural expansion and the creation of new terraces. Subsequent Spanish colonization took place during the Little Ice Age and a period of increased coastal moisture. The historic and modern contraction of a large olive grove document the ongoing reduction in the coastal aquifer.
Water Policy 12 (2010) 779–797, 2010
This paper explores the long-term development of irrigation system management, and looks at the influence of legislation, irrigation system size, scalar stress and polarized land tenure in the existence and success of self-management. The case studies are drawn from regions of the former Spanish Empire. Hispanic America, between the 16th and early 19th centuries, as part of the Spanish Empire, had a common legal framework; however, in the 19th and early 20th centuries (after the break up of the Spanish Empire), new and diverse country-based legislation developed and, in some cases, this new legislation favoured self-management.
Irrigation of World Agricultural Lands: Evolution through the Millennia
Water
Many agricultural production areas worldwide are characterized by high variability of water supply conditions, or simply lack of water, creating a dependence on irrigation since Neolithic times. The aim of this paper is to provide an overview of the evolution of irrigation of agricultural lands worldwide, based on bibliographical research focusing on ancient water management techniques and ingenious irrigation practices and their associated land management practices. In ancient Egypt, regular flooding by the Nile River meant that early agriculture probably consisted of planting seeds in soils that had been recently covered and fertilized with floodwater and silt deposits. On the other hand, in arid and semi-arid regions farmers made use of perennial springs and seasonal runoff under circumstances altogether different from the river civilizations of Mesopotamia, Egypt, India, and early dynasties in China. We review irrigation practices in all major irrigation regions through the cent...
Loading Preview
Sorry, preview is currently unavailable. You can download the paper by clicking the button above.
Related papers
2021
Water Sowing and Harvesting (WS&H) consists of a series of ancestral procedures by which humans collect and infiltrate (sow) rainwater and runoff underground, so as to recover (harvest) it downgradient at some later time. This management of the water has made it possible for various regions of IberoAmerica —that is, Latin America plus the Iberian Peninsula— to overcome dramatic cultural and climatic changes over the centuries. The principles governing WS&H coincide with those pursued under the present paradigm of Integrated Water Resource Management. Moreover, WS&H implies a better use of water and enhanced conservation of the environment and patrimony, as well as recognition of rural communities as vital custodians of the land and of its relevant cultural aspects. The main WS&H systems that serve Ibero-American countries are described here, emphasizing the principles underlying this means of water management as exemplary of hydro-geo-ethical systems.
Prehispanic Arid Zone Farming: Hybrid Flood and Irrigation Systems along the North Coast of Peru
Agronomy, 2024
As arid lands expand across the globe, scholars increasingly turn to the archaeological record for examples of sustainable farming in extreme environments. The arid north coast of Peru was the setting of early and intensive irrigation-based farming; it is also periodically impacted by sudden, heavy rainfall related to the El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) phenomenon. While the sociopolitical effects, technologies, and engineering expertise of these irrigation systems have been thoroughly examined and theorized, little is known about how farmers managed periods of water stress. The aim of this study is to test whether arid zone farming was supported by hybrid, intermittent flood and perennial water source systems in the prehispanic past. An arroyo in the Chicama Valley was selected for preliminary data collection, and these data are presented here: (1) drone photography of the arroyo capturing the aftermath of a recent (2023) rain event; and (2) potassium (K) soil test kit results from samples collected near suspected prehispanic check dam features in the same area. The paper combines these data with comparative examples from the literature to suggest that the prehispanic features functioned as water-harvesting infrastructure. The paper concludes that sustainable, arid zone farming can be supported by hybrid, intermittent flood and perennial water source systems.
Conflict in the Modern Teotihuacan Irrigation System
Comparative Studies in Society and History, 1962
In recent years a number of investigators have been concerned with the antiquity of irrigation agriculture in central Mexico and its possible relationship to processes of social and political differentiation in the ancient urban civilizations of that region. Because of its strategic role in the prehistory of Middle America, attention has centered on the Basin of Mexico in the Mexican central plateau. The semi-arid Valley of Teotihuacan, in the northwestern part of the Basin, has been of special concern because it was the locus of the enormous city of Teotihuacan, one of the most powerful and influential centers in Middle America during a large part of the first millenium of the Christian era. Studies to date have dealt largely with historical and archaeological evidence bearing on this problem.
Water, 2021
The Andes are defined by human struggles to provide for, and control, water. Nowhere is this challenge more apparent than in the unglaciated western mountain range Cordillera Negra of the Andes where rain runoff provides the only natural source of water for herding and farming economies. Based on over 20 years of systematic field surveys and taking a political ecology and resilience theory focus, this article evaluates how the Prehispanic North-Central highlands Huaylas ethnic group transformed the landscape of the Andes through the largescale construction of complex hydraulic engineering works in the Cordillera Negra of the Ancash Province, North-Central Peru. It is likely that construction of these engineered landscapes commenced during the Middle Horizon (AD 600–1000), reaching their apogee under the Late Intermediate Period (Huaylas group, AD 1000–1450) and Inca (AD 1450–1532) period, before falling into disuse during the early Spanish colony (AD 1532–1615) through a combination of disease, depopulation, and disruption. Persistent water stress in the western Pacific-facing Andean cordillera was ameliorated through the construction of interlinked dams and reservoirs controlling the water, soil, and wetlands. The modern study of these systems provides useful case-studies for infrastructure rehabilitation potentially providing low-cost, though technologically complex, solutions to modern water security.
Water sustainability of ancient civilizations in mesoamerica and the American Southwest
2007
Many civilizations, which were great centers of power and culture, were built in locations that could not support the populations that developed. Throughout history, arid and semi-arid lands seem to have produced more people than they can sustain. I will attempt to make comparisons between civilizations of the past in Mesoamerica and the American southwest and the present world in the context of water resources sustainability. Water has always been a very important factor in the development and survival of societies. A central theme of this paper is very simply, the ancients have warned us.
Puquios- Ancient Irrigation Inspiration
Highlander Monthly, 2023
Centuries, possibly millenia ago, Nazca people of what is today Peru developed an inrrigation system unique to our world. In one of the most arid locations on our planet they used wind, and spiral openings in the ground lined with rock, to draw deep waters to the surface through a series of shafts and underground aqueducts which eventually brought water to the surface for irrigation. This paper copares ancient irrigration systems from around the world with the unique system of the Nazca people.
Determining the cognitive ability of ancient civilizations to conceptualize, design and build water supply systems for agricultural use is examined through mathematical models that predict the optimum use of land, water, labor and technology resources to maximize food production. From the archaeological record of agricultural systems used by several precolumbian societies of ancient Peru and Bolivia, knowledge of agricultural system configurations permits comparison of actual to theoretically optimum agricultural systems. This comparison permits evaluation of the agro-engineering knowledge achieved by societies subject to different ecological conditions and provides insight into their technical achievements produced by evolutionary trial-and-error empirical observation of system improvements and/or engineering foresight to conceptualize an optimum design and put it into use. Use of a basic equation derived from similitude methods provides the basis to replicate the thought process and logical decision making of ancient agricultural engineers albeit in a format different from western science notational conventions. Examples of agricultural system designs from coastal Peru canal-supplied (900-1450 AD) Chimu irrigation systems, groundwater based raised -field agricultural systems of the (300 BC- 1100 AD) Tiwanaku society of Bolivia and later (1400-1532 AD) Inka terrace systems are used to illustrate conclusions derived from a first application of similitude methods to archaeological analysis.
Physics and Chemistry of the Earth, Parts A/B …, 2009
The user has requested enhancement of the downloaded file. All in-text references underlined in blue are added to the original document and are linked to publications on ResearchGate, letting you access and read them immediately. This article appeared in a journal published by Elsevier. The attached copy is furnished to the author for internal non-commercial research and education use, including for instruction at the authors institution and sharing with colleagues.