Conventions

Archaeological Conventions

LPC: Late Postclassic Period (A.D 1350-1521)

LPB: Lake Pátzcuaro Basin

SA1: Sacapu Angamucu Archaeological Site

LORE-LPB: Legacies of Resilience Lake Patzcuaro Basin Archaeological Project. Directed by Dr. Fisher, associate professor, Department of Anthropology, Colorado State University.

INEGI: Instituto Nacional de Estadistica y Geografia (National Institute of Statistics and Geography-Mexico).

ROUTE: This analysis defines a route as a linear course of travel through a physical (Field et al.2007) and social landscape, which includes the crossing of flat plains, and most of the times, crossing of mountain passes and rugged terrain.

GIS Layers

No Pass Zone- Areas having residential and civic-ceremonial structures, walls, residential and agricultural terraces. The residential structures consist of platforms, mounds, circular rooms, "L" shape rooms, and buildings with one entrance. The civic ceremonial structures consist of pyramids, altars, and priest house complexes ("casas de papas"). Walls restrict and direct traffic throughout the site.

Transit Zone- Known areas with transit infrastructure surveyed roads, stairs,entrances, and opened plazas. The plazas are both sunken and opened plazas defined by other structures. These plazas are usually connected to other plazas via roads and trails within the site.

These archaeological featrues had been documented and surveyed during the 2009 and 2010 "Legacies of Resilience: Lake Patzcuaro Basin Archaeological Project" (LORE-LPB) directed by Dr. Christopher T. Fisher, associate professor at the Deparmtnet of Anthropology at Colorado State University.

Friction Surfaces - Regional and Local Scales: Slope values were derived from a 30 m DEM (ASTER) at the regional scale and 0.5m (derived from GPS tracking poings-4m TIN to raster resampled) at the archaeological site scale. The higher the slope degree, the more costly the path became. Each cell in the Slope file was given a particular slope value (in degrees), therefore, creating a “Friction Surface” that could be used to analyze portions of the landscape for least costly routes between the east and the western capital city of the Purepecha Empire, Tzintzuntzan, and between the east and western portions of SA1 archaeological site.

The friction surface consists of a grid formed by cells, where each cell is assigned a value based on the relative cost of traversing that cell (Atkinson et al. 2005). A “cost-of-passage” (Atkinson et al. 2005) is created by weighting and combining the multiple friction surface values, representing the total cost associated with transversing each cell (Atkins et al. 2005).The accumulated cost surface is calculated by combining two separate grids representing the source point and the destination points.

Data Element	Reclassified values
No Pass Zone pixels	NO DATA
Pass Zone Pixels	0
Site Slope (pixel values)(degrees)	0-87.09
Regional Slope (pixel values) (degrees)	0-72.17

GIS Geodatabase Files Conventions

Boundary Site

Final_walls: Shapefile (polylines) representing walls from the 2009 and 2010 archaeological surveys.

survey2009ashp.shp : Shapefile (polygon) representing the archaeological Survey 2009 field season boundaries.

survey2010b.shp: Shapefile (polygon) representing the archaeological Survey 2010 field season boundaries.

SurveyBoundary_Dissolve.shp: Shaepefile (polygon) representing the 2009 and 2010 SA1 survey and site boundary for the least cost path analsys at the local scale.

SurveyBoundary_Line: Shaepefile (polylines) representing the 2009 and 2010 SA1 survey and site boundary for the least cost path analsys at the local scale.

boundarysite: Raster file representing the extent of SA1 archaeological site surveyed area.

Civic Ceremonial

Entrances: Shapefile ( polygons) representing entrances into plazas and civic ceremonial structures documented during the 2009 and 2010 archaeological surveys at SA1.

merged_ceremonial: Shapefile of merged polygons representing all the civic-cemonial archaelogical features documented during the 2009 and 2010 archaeological surveys at SA1.

Plazas: Shapefile of merged polygons with all the plazas (sunken and opened) documented during the 2009 and 2010 archaeological surveys at SA1.

Pyramid_Complexes: Shapefile representing all the pyramids and civic-ceremonial compounds documented during the 2009 and 2010 archaeological surveys at SA1.

No Pass Zone

NoPassZone: Shapefile (polygons) representing all the archaeological features representing areas of no pass zones for a path. This shapefile does not include all the archaeological features considered traffic infrastructure (roads, trails, plazas).

Transit Zone

transitzone_r: Raster file representing all the zones and corridors for transit within SA1 archaeological site (0.5m resolution).

Origin and Destination

destination_b: Raster file representing the city of Tzintzuntzan, the destination location of the cost path analysis.

destination_c: Raster file representing the destination of the cost path analysis as the western edge of SA1 archaeological site location of the cost path analysis at the local (site) scale.

MineZone.shp: Shapefile (polygon) defining the region of obsidian mines northeast of Lake Patzcuaro in the Cuitzeo lagoon region. This shapefile represents the zone from where routes transporting obisidan from the Zinepecuaro/Ucareo and Maravatio into the Lake Patzcuaro Basin would have started.

originc: This raster file represents the origin of the cost path within SA1 archaeological site to represent the origin point for the cost path analysis within SA1 archaeological site.

origin: This file was converted from shapefile into raster (MineZone.shp) to represent the origin point for the cost path analysis.

destination_Tzin: Shapefile (point) representing the city of Tzintzuntzan, the destination location of the cost pathanalisys.

Friction Surface

dem_krig: Raster file representing elevation for SA1 archaeological site. This file was derived from the GPS tracking points through interpolation (Krigging) (resampled from 4m to 0.5m-cubic convolution resampling) and clipped to Site boundary extensions.

finaldem: Raster file representing elevations for the regional scale analysis (ASTER 30m ) and representing Lake Patzcuaro and the Cuitzeo lagoon as NO DATA.

finalfriction: Raster file representing slope data, no pass zone (no data), and pass zones (0*slope degree) for SA1 archaeological site.

friction1: Raster file representing elevation data minus no pass zone (nodata) for SA1 archaeological site.

friction2: Raster file representing elevation data minus no pass zone (no data) and zero cost for transit corridor zones for SA1 archaeological site.

hillshade: Raster file representing a hillshade for SA1 archaeological site derived from Dem_Krig (0.5m resolution)

hillshade_1: Raster file representing a hillshade for the regional scale of the Lake Patzcuaro Basin derived from ASTER (30 m resolution).

krig_resamp: Raster file representing elevations for SA1 archaeological site. This file was derived from the GPS tracking points through interpolation (Krigging) (resampled from the 4m original to a resolution of 0.5m -cubic convolution resampling) to the extent of GPS point density.

tin_dem: Raster file converted from a TIN (Triangulated Irregular Network) derived from GPS tracking points ( 0.5 m resolution).

Least Cost Path

path_a: Cost Path shapefile (polygon) for path A (from obisidan mines to SA1 archaeological Site).

path_b: Cost Path shapefile (polylines) to path B (from SA1 archaeologcial site to Tzintzuntzan (Purepecha Capital)

path_c: Cost path shapefile (polyline) for path C (within SA1 archaeological site).

regional_path: Cost Path shapefile (polyline) representing the cost path from origin (obsidian mines) to destination (Tzintzuntzan) without taking into consideration SA1 archaeological site.

Residential

SettlementZones: Shapefile (polygons) representing all settlement zones ( areas with high density of artifacts associated with domestic activities, mostly ceremics and lithics) documented during the 2009 and 2010 archaeological surveys at SA1.

Platforms: Shapefile (polygons) representing all platforms (a single-level mansonry structure) documented during the 2009 and 2010 archaeological surveys at SA1.

Patios: Shapefile (polygons) representing all patios ( an exclusive flat area surrounded by structures) documented during the 2009 and 2010 archaeological surveys at SA1.

Mounds: Shapefile (polygons) representing all mounds (a multiple-level mansonry structure) documented during the 2009 and 2010 archaeological surveys at SA1.

merged_residential: Merged all residential features (polygons) documented during the 2009 and 2010 archaeological surveys at SA1.

CircularRooms: Shapefile (polygons) representing all sweat bath (Temazcales) and granaries (Cuexcomates) documented during the 2009 and 2010 archaeological surveys at SA1.

Buildings: Shapefile (polygons) representing all residential structures (buildings) documented during the 2009 and 2010 archaeological surveys at SA1.

Terraces

Agriculture: Shapefile (polygon) representing all agricultural terrace zones and/or systems documented during the 2009 and 2010 archaeological surveys at SA1.

Residential: Shapefile (polygon) representing all residential terraces documented during the 2009 and 2010 archaeological surveys at SA1.

merged_terraces: Shapefile (polygon) representing a merged shapefile with all agricultural and residential terraces documented during the 2009 and 2010 archaeological surveys at SA1.

Transit Infrastructure

final_roads: Shapefile (polygon) representing all the roads, passages, and routes documented during the 2009 and 2010 archaeological surveys at SA1.

Roads: Shapefile (polygon) representing all the roads, passages, and routes with appropiate widths (in meters) documented during the 2009 and 2010 archaeological surveys at SA1.

Stairs: Shapefile (polygon) representing all the stairs associated with buildings and plazas documented during the 2009 and 2010 archaeological surveys at SA1..

TransitZone: A merged shapefile (polygon) with all the stairs, roads, and plazas representing all the transit areas within SA 1 archaeological site.

Path Analysis Files

costbacklinka: Cost Back Link raster file for path A (from obsidian mines to SA1 Archaeological Site).

costbacklinkc: Cost back link raster file for path C (within SA1 archaeological site)

pathdistancea: Path Distance raster file for path A (from obsidian mines to SA1 Archaeological Site).

pathdistancec: Path distance raster file for path C (within SA1 archaeological site)

Cost Path Result Files

costpath_a: Cost Path raster file for path A (from obisidan mines to SA1 archaeological Site).

costpath_b: Cost Path raster file for path B (from SA1 archaeologcial site to Tzintzuntzan (Purepecha Capital)

costpath_c: Cost path raster file for path C (within SA1 archaeological site).

region_path: Cost path raster file from Obisidan mine regions (origin) to Tzintzuntzan (destination) without taking into consideration SA1 archaeological site boundaries.