Use of sediments and soils (paleosols) in construction fills of La Joya archaeological site, Veracruz, Mexico: micromorphological evidence

Abstract

In this paper, we study the materials used for the construction of earthen structure in the La Joya archaeological site, on the Gulf of Mexico coast, built on top of a paleodune, from the Late Preclassic (400 BC) to the Classic period (AD 100-1000). The first constructions arise around 100 BC, on a paleodune top rising slightly above the surrounding alluvial terraces of the Jamapa river; then it grows into a 15-ha monumental compound. The total construction volume reaches 250,000 m3, all made of earth, surrounded by large artificial water pounds (reservoirs). To understand the kind of components found in the structures and their provenance, we compare the micromorphological features of the materials from the earthen constructions with the sediments and paleosols located in the surrounding areas. Samples were taken from the fills of three first building stages, as well as from a natural soil profile and the natural paleosol horizons found beneath the structures. Micromorphological features found in fills permit to establish the correlation between them and their parent material. The fills from the first stage of construction have fragments of a Btb horizon, mixed with an A horizon, compacted and crushed, in which abundant artifacts are identified. However, these artifacts were not intentionally incorporated to the fills, but had been accumulated on the pre-occupation A horizon as residential and agriculture trash. Particular attention was paid to a gley material occurring in the third building stage, that was believed to come from the sediments accumulated in the original borrow pits transformed into water reservoirs, enclosing the main architectural compound. These reservoir fills share properties of the natural sediments and paleosols but transformed by the waterlogging conditions. In consequence, these materials are interpreted as a case of anthropogenic pedogenesis, where the gley micromorphology indicates waterlogging conditions, but in artificially made reservoirs, as they do not have dark organic sediments that would result of the vegetation typical of a natural pond in a humid tropical environment.