return to consolidation of land holding of large enterprises. Prehispanic era The rich lands of central and southern Mexico were the home to dense, hierarchically organized, settled populations that produced agricultural surpluses, allowing the development of sectors that did not directly cultivate the soil. These populations lived in settlements and held land in common, although generally they worked individual plots. During the Aztec period, roughly 1450 to 1521, the Nahuas of central Mexico had names for civil categories of land, many of which persisted into the colonial era. There were special lands attached to the office of ruler (tlatoani) called tlatocatlalli; land devoted to the support of temples, tecpantlalli, but also private lands of the nobility, pillalli. Lands owned by the calpulli, the local kin-based social organization, were calpullalli. Most commoners held individual plots of land, often in scattered locations, which were worked by a family and rights passed to subsequent generations. A community member could lose those usufruct rights if they did not cultivate the land. A person could lose land as a result of gambling debts, a type of alienation from which the inference can be drawn that land was private property. It is important to note that there were lands classified as "purchased land" (in Nahuatl, tlalcohualli). In the Texcoco area, there were prehispanic legal rules for land sales, indicating that transfers by sale were not a post-conquest innovation. Local-level records in Nahuatl from the 16th century show that individuals and community members kept track of these categories, including purchased land, and often the previous owners of particular plots. Colonial era After the Spanish conquest of central Mexico in the early 16th century, indigenous land tenure was initially left intact, with the exception of the disappearance of lands devoted to the gods. A 16th-century Spanish judge in New Spain, Alonso de Zorita, collected extensive information about the Nahuas in the Cuauhtinchan region, including land tenure. Zorita notes there was a diversity of land tenure in central Mexico, so that if the information he gives for one place contradicts information in another it is due to that very diversity. Zorita, along with Fernando de Alva Ixtlilxochitl, a member of the noble family that ruled Texcoco, and Franciscan Fray Juan de Torquemada are the most important sources for prehispanic and early colonial indigenous land tenure in central Mexico. There is considerable documentation on indigenous land holding, including estates held