Mountain of sustenance, mountain of destruction: The prehispanic experience with Popocatépetl Volcano

Twelve seasons of work have documented two temporally distinct sets of prehispanic houses and agricultural fields buried by pumiceous airfall deposits at Tetimpa on the northeastern flank of Volcán Popocatépetl in the state of Puebla, Mexico. Archaeological survey and excavation, in addition to stratigraphic, volcanologic, and geomorphic field methods and radiocarbon dating have been used to gather information on two major volcanic eruptions that devastated prehispanic settlements and rendered this region uninhabitable for generations, first about 2000 years BP and then again between AD 700 and 900. Impacts of these eruptions were probably responsible for many of the population shifts evident in the archaeological record during these centuries. Available geological data are interwoven with the historical and archaeological records to summarize and explain the most significant findings of this research.