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Mapping And Radiocarbon Dating Archaic Period Monuments: La Alberca Structure Complex, Highland Michoacán, Mexico, Mark F. Steinkraus

All Master's Theses

Ongoing collaborations with the Comunidad Indígena de Nuevo San Juan Parangaricutiro hold great potential for exploring the origins of sedentary ranked communities that predate others in Mesoamerica by as much as one thousand years. Three carbon samples from the lower buried portions of the Central Structure at La Alberca Complex yield a date range of 7245-6470 cal B.P. The carbon sample laying on an upper tier of the feature yields a date of 4780 cal B.P. These dates suggest that the feature is 7000 to 6000 years old and may have been in use as recently as 5000 to 4000 …