ABSTRACT
This chapter describes the reasonableness of the scenarios against two independent sets of data: data on settlement location, and data on prehistoric population densities. Families would have required nutrient release from soil organic matter, or some supplemental fertility from irrigation or mucking, to feed themselves in prehistoric times. Irrigation in pre-Hispanic times would have involved roughly the same adjustments as for unirrigated maize: higher labor inputs and lower fertilizer applications. The logic of chief's land use is that of ordinary land use writ large: subsistence plus the production of a surplus usable for festival purposes. With the modelled yields and labor efficiencies provided, it is possible to generate internally consistent scenarios of pre-Hispanic land use. The projections for prehistoric yields are based on an assumed scarcity of manure, which however is assumed to have been applied.
