ABSTRACT
A unit of analysis is the catchment area: the zone of resources, both wild and domestic, that occur within reasonable walking distance of a given village. Based on the empirical data from San Jose Mogote, one could therefore envision its catchment area as consisting of a series of ever-widening concentric circles. In general, early villages in the Valley of Oaxaca are located either on piedmont spurs or low rises near the Atoyac River, or in the upper piedmont along well-watered tributary barrancas. The Middle Formative village of Las Canoas occupied the east bank of the Ri´o Salado in the central alluvial valley of Tehuacan. The relations between a village and its satellites, like seasonal hunting or harvesting camps, leads naturally into the topic of complex settlement systems. This chapter discusses Fred Plog’s approach thus provides an initial link between the environmental and social aspects of settlement patterns.
