Dating the Petroglyph Cave of the Purrón Dam Complex of the Tehuacan Valley, Mexico

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Multidisciplinary Approaches to the Subterranean" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Rectilinear planes cut into one of the gypsum outcrops near the base of the north face of Cerro Mequitongo, the hillock that rises above the south end of the massive Purrón Dam, created a subterranean space. The labor invested in excavating this man-made cave (Tc-511), its walls plastered with a thin veneer of stucco and decorated with petroglyphs belonging to different time periods, suggest it had a religious/ceremonial purpose. Petroglyphs allude to hunting, the ballgame and animals active during the rainy season. A charcoal sample obtained from a stucco spall yielded an age of 400-200 BCE, coeval with the age of a hearth on the alluvium that accumulated behind the Stage 1 construction of the Purrón Dam. It is hypothesized that this man-made cave served to organize the people in building and maintaining the dam during its initial construction and working on other soil conservation and water management projects located within the Lencho Diego Canyon. The dates, petroglyphs, and the ceramic types recovered allow for a secure dating of the cave and Stage 2 of the dam to the Middle and Late Santa María Phases. Both features continued to be used in the subsequent Early and Middle Venta Salada Phases.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Multidisciplinary Approaches to the Subterranean   •
• Society for American Archaeology 89th Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA (2024)

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Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 39371.0