Figure 1.
Models of settlement structure and social interactions.
A. The Amorphous Settlement Model, showing a small settlement (Capilco) that can be i) easily circumscribed by a circle of radius and ii) traversed primarily by linear paths [30]. B. The Networked Settlement Model, showing an infrastructure-dense city (Teotihuacan) containing large avenues (red), canalized streams (light blue), and streets connecting open spaces, apartments, and the major avenues (dark blue inset); the settlement area acquires a structured shape determined by the underlying infrastructure network [31].
Figure 2.
A: Location within Mexico [34]. B: Settlements dating to the Formative period (circle size is proportional to population; colors range from yellow through red to white denoting increases in elevation; gray area shows the extent of Mexico City in 1964) [35]. C: Settlements dating to the Aztec period. During the latter period settlement expanded into the shallows of the lake. Today, settlement covers the entire basin and the lake has been drained.
Table 1.
Scaling relations for settled area versus population in the BOM.
Table 2.
Scaling relations for settled area versus population among amorphous vs. networked (population ) settlements in the BOM, and for the 1960 census in the same region.
Figure 3.
Scaling of settled area with population.
A. Population vs. Settled Area for Aztec (blue, archaeological data) and 1960 (red, census data) settlements; for display, the data series have been centered by subtracting the average scaling relation in logarithmic variables, , from both datasets, so that the Aztec and 1960 census data share the same average coordinate on both axes; for power-law fits for the individual data series, see Tables 1 and 2; B. Residential mound area vs. settled area for sites with well-preserved architectural remains; also see Table 3. In both charts the annotations present power-law fits from OLS regression of the log-transformed data, solid lines represent power-law fits of the displayed data and dashed lines represent proportionate (linear) scaling.
Table 3.
Comparisons of population estimation methods for various subsets of the BOM survey data.