ABSTRACT
The application of Wittfogel’s synthesis to test the case of developments in the Americas constitutes one special instance of the more general problem of broader assessment of its impact upon anthropology in the United States. Large-scale irrigation systems are functionally similar in other respects to any other kind of architectural monumentality. Irrigation agriculture is not a unitary phenomenon of unique characteristics. Irrigation in general shares many of the causes and effects common to other systems of intensive agriculture. Further, not all systems of canal irrigation are themselves strictly alike. The subsistence base of many of the pueblos is irrigation agriculture, particularly floodwater and seasonal-spring irrigation. Irrigation alone is incapable of fully explaining the growth of civilizations.
