Canals, Chinampas and Channels: An Archaeologist's Notebook

Field Notebook of Dr. Rosa Quispe, an Imagined Archaeologist

1June 12, Edzná, Campeche, Mexico. Rain fell all afternoon, and by evening water stood in wide sheets across the flat valley floor around Edzná, an old Maya city. There is no river here, and in the dry months, from about December to May, the water underground lies too deep for most wells to reach. Today I walked the edge of the ancient main canal. Archaeologists have mapped it running for more than 10 km across the valley, with smaller canals and large reservoirs joined to it. One ring-shaped canal forms a moat around a raised area near the city. Archaeologists think the Maya dug much of this system more than 1,500 years ago. Most agree it drained water off the fields in the rainy season and stored water for the dry months. Some think canoes also used it to move goods, and that the moat helped defend the city. Maya families still live and farm in Campeche today.

2July 3, Xochimilco, Mexico City. I rode a flat-bottomed boat along the canals of Xochimilco, in the south of Mexico City. Before the Spanish came, this was the southern part of a chain of lakes in the Valley of Mexico, about 2,240 m above sea level, and springs fed it fresh water. Valley peoples, including the Xochimilca, were building chinampas here before the Mexica founded Tenochtitlan. The Mexica conquered the area in the 1400s, and its harvests helped feed their capital. A farmer showed me how he keeps his chinampa: each year he scoops dark mud from the canal bottom and spreads it on his beds of lettuce and flowers. Tall, narrow willows line the edges of his plot. His family has farmed here for generations. After the Spanish conquest, most of the valley's lakes were slowly drained. In the early 1900s, Xochimilco's springs were piped away to supply the growing city, and the water in the canals dropped. Today much of it is treated wastewater.

3July 21, Tipón, near Cusco, Peru. Tipón sits high in the Andes, about 3,500 m above sea level, in a side valley southeast of Cusco, the old Inca capital. The valley's sides are steep, and rain falls mainly between about November and March. The Inca cut the slope into a staircase of broad, flat terraces held up by fitted stone walls. A spring rises above the terraces. Its water runs through narrow stone channels to each terrace and spills from one level to the next in small falls. I watched water still running through channels the Inca built about 500 years ago. Historians think Tipón may have been an estate of the Inca royal family. Quechua-speaking farmers grow potatoes and other crops in this region today, and some still repair and use old terraces.