In the land of the blind, the one eyed man is king: Los Guachimontones, Jalisco

Summary

The site of Los Guachimontones was occupied from the late Middle Formative to the end of the Postclassic period. It had a bimodal history of occupation, with the first peak corresponding to the Late Formative period (100 B.C. – A.D. 200) and the second to the Late Postclassic (A.D. 1400-1600). It had an estimated population of 4000-6000 people in the Late Formative, when most of the public architecture was constructed. This makes it a very modest settlement in comparison to other Mesoamerican capitals, but it was the primate center for the Tequila valleys, and likely all of far western Mexico at the time. Assessing its role has thus been complex. Here we consider the activities reconstructed for the site to date – a preference for community ritual over private ritual, cooperation over aggrandizement, and an orthodox interpretation of ideology – to characterize Los Guachimontones as an exemplary center that dominated the southern Tequila valleys. Beyond that zone however, lineage ritual increased in importance, highlighting the limits on the site’s power.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Quintessential Places: Analyzing the Character of Precolumbian Sites   •
• Society for American Archaeology 82nd Annual Meeting, Vancouver, BC (2017)

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Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 14975