Guachimontones

Los Guachimontones is the largest Late Formative to Classic period (300 BCE to 450/500 CE) pre-Columbian archaeological site in the state of Jalisco.Christopher S. Beekman (2018). La secuencia cronológica temprana en Los Guachimontones. In Nuevos enfoques en la arqueología de la región de Tequila: Memoria de la Primera Catedra Phil C. Weigand, edited by Joshua D. Englehardt and Verenice Y. Heredia Espinoza, pp. 83-127. Colegio de Michoacán, Zamora, Michoacán, México. Situated in the hills above the town of Teuchitlán that provides the namesake for the culture that built the site, Los Guachimontones is part of the Agave Landscape and Ancient Industrial Facilities of Tequila UNESCO world heritage site and a major tourist attraction within the Tequila Valleys.

Los Guachimontones is one of several dozen Teuchitlán Culture sites within the Tequila Valleys, though it is by far the largest site in terms of both the number and size of its ceremonial buildings. These buildings, called guachimontones (singular, guachimontón) after the site name, are bulls-eye shaped buildings consisting of several distinct architectural elements that constitute a whole structure. These unique buildings are found primarily in the Tequila Valleys with other examples found in northern Jalisco near Bolaños,Maria Teresa Cabrero Garcia (1989). Civilización en el norte de México: Arqueología de la cañada del Rio Bolaños (Zacatecas y Jalisco). Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, México City.María Teresa Cabrero García (1991). Cultura arqueológica de Bolaños (Zacatecas y Jalisco): Una frontera cultural. Ancient Mesoamerica 2(2): 193-203. GuanajuatoEfraín Cárdenas García (1999). El Bajío en el clásico: análisis regional y organización política. El Colegio de Michoacán, Zamora, México. to the east, and ColimaMaría de los Ángeles Olay Barrientos and Ligia Sofia Sánchez Morton (2015). La Tradición Teuchitlán en Colima, notas para una discusión. Revista Occidente. to the south.

The Teuchitlán culture that built the site was one of several cultures in West Mexico during the Late Formative to Classic periods that participated in the shaft tomb tradition in which some, but not all, people were interred underground.Christopher S. Beekman and Robert B. Pickering (2016). Introduction: An Historical Overview of Shaft Tomb Archaeology in Western Mexico. In Shaft Tombs and Figures in West Mexican Society: A Reassessment edited by Christopher S. Beekman and Robert B. Pickering, pp. 1-21. Gilcrease Museum/Thomas Gilcrease Institute of American History and Art. Sometimes mortuary goods accompanied the deceased with objects such as ceramic vessels, hollow and solid figurines, shell ornaments, conch shell trumpets, jadeite, and ground stone objects.Jorge Ramos de la Vega and M. Lorenza López Mestas Camberos (1996). Datos preliminares sobre el descubrimiento de una tumba de tiro en el sitio de Huitzilapa, Jalisco. Ancient Mesoamerica 7(1): 121-134.Lorenza López Mestas Camberos and Jorge Ramos de la Vega (2006). Some Interpretations of the Huitzilapa Shaft Tomb. Ancient Mesoamerica 18: 271-281.

While Los Guachimontones was founded in the Late Formative period, there is some evidence of a Middle Formative occupation suggesting some temporal continuity at the site. Major construction began in the Late Formative and continued into the Early Classic. Monumental construction appears to have tapered off in the Late Classic with a decline in population followed by a drastic decline in the Epiclassic. Population levels rebounded to their Early Classic levels in the Postclassic, but with no monumental construction at or near the site.

UNESCO World Heritage List

UNESCO has added the whole region, including the nearby tequila distilleries, to its World Heritage List. Due to heavy looting, the site was also included on the 2008 World Monuments Watch list of 100 Most Endangered Sites.

Research history

The earliest documentation of Los Guachimontones comes from Victorian artist Adela Breton. Breton traveled through the Tequila Valleys region in the 1890s. During her travels, near the town of San Marcos Breton documented a mound in the process of being destroyed that contained several burials, hollow ceramic figures, and shell ornaments.Adela C. Breton (1903). Some Mexican Portrait Clay Figures. Man 3: 130-133.Mary Frech McVicker (2005). Adela Breton: A Victorian artist amid Mexico's ruins. UNM Press, Albuquerque. This mound was likely the central altar for a guachimonton, but with its complete destruction, we may never know exactly what the mound was. Breton continued east stopping at the town of Teuchitlán in which she documented the site of Los Guachimontones. Breton took three photographs of the site, created two sketch maps, and collected a number of obsidian artifacts from a Postclassic workshop. These materials are now stored at the Bristol City Museum and Art Gallery in Bristol, United Kingdom. Unfortunately, Breton did not publish her maps or photographs and the unique architectural form of the guachimontones went unnoticed for several decades until the late 1960s.

Following shortly after Breton, anthropologist Carl Lumholtz journeyed through the Tequila Valleys as part of his travels south from Phoenix, Arizona through the Sierra Madre Occidental to Michoacán. While Lumholtz did not record a visit to Los Guachimontones itself, did acquire ceramic vessels from the nearby town of Estanzuela to the southeast of Teuchitlán.Carl Lumholtz (1902) Unknown Mexico: A Record of Five Years ̓exploration Among the Tribes of the Western Sierra Madre; in the Tierra Caliente of Tepic and Jalisco; and Among the Tarascos of Michoacan. Vol. 1 and 2. Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York Of some importance are the photos Lumholtz took of Laguna Magdalena showing the extent of some of its shoreline before the lake was largely drained in the 1930s to create arable land.Gobierno del Estado de Jalisco (2019). Municipios de Jalisco. Electronic document, https://jalisco.gob.mx/es/jalisco/municipios, accessed December 5th, 2019 Laguna Magdalena would have provided important lacustrine resources to the Teuchitlán culture in the form of fish, reeds, lake fowl, and other goods.Phil C. Weigand (2013). Archaeology and Ethnohistory of Etzatlán and Its Region. In Correspondence Analysis and West Mexico Archaeology: Ceramics from the Long-Glassow Collection edited by C. Roger Nance, Jan De Leeuw, Phil C. Weigand, Kathleen Prado, and David S. Verity, pp. 17-66. UNM Press, Albuquerque.

The guachimontón architectural form went undocumented by archaeologists for almost 70 years after Breton's journey through the area. Despite archaeological work conducted in the Magdalena Lake Basin by Jose Corona Nunez in the 1950sJosé Corona Núñez (1955). Tumba de El Arenal, Etzatlán, Jalisco. Dirección de Monumentos Prehispánicos. Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia, México. and Stanley Long in the 1960sLong, Stanley (1966). Archaeology of the Municipio of Etzatlán, Jalisco. Unpublished Ph. D. dissertation, University of California, Los Angeles at the sites of El Arenal and San Sebastian, the guachimontón went unrecognized. Not until 1974 with two publications, one by Phil Weigand and another by Joseph Mountjoy and Weigand, did the guachimonton form gain attention in Mesoamerican studies.Joseph Mountjoy and Phil C. Weigand (1974). The Habitation Zone at Teuchitlán, Jalisco. Proceedings of the 1974 International Congress of Americanists, Mexico.Phil C. Weigand (1974). The Ahualulco Site and the Shaft-Tomb Complex of the Etzatlán Area. In The Archaeology of West Mexico edited by Betty Bell, pp. 120-131. Sociedad de Estudios Avanzados del Occidente de México, Ajijic. Until Weigand's publication, other Mesoamerican academics characterized West Mexico as a region made of small hamlets with no significant contributions until the Postclassic period and rise of the Kingdom of Tzintzuntzan in present-day Michoacán. Weigand and Mountjoy formally mapped Los Guachimontones for the first time in 1974. This map included the two ceremonial centers at the site and a number of terraces and house mounds. Weigand continued working in the Tequila Valleys region for three decades documenting dozens of Teuchitlán Culture sites with guachimontones, Mesoamerican ballcourts, house mounds, and shaft and chamber tombs.Phil C. Weigand (1989). Architecture and Settlement Patterns Within the Western Mesoamerican Formative Tradition. In El Preclásico o Formativo: Avances y perspectivas edited by Martha Carmona Marcías, pp. 39-64. Museo Nacional de Antropología, INAH, México.Phil C. Weigand (1990). The Teuchitlán Tradition of Western Mesoamerica. In La época clásica: nuevos hallazgos, nuevas ideas edited by Amalia Cardós de Méndez, pp. 25-54. Museo Nacional de Antropología.Phil C. Weigand (1993). Evolución de una civilización prehispánica: arqueología de Jalisco, Nayarit y Zacatecas. El Colegio de Michoacán, Zamora, México.Phil C. Weigand (1998). Archaeology in the Occidente of Mexico: Architecture and Settlements Patterns of the Teuchitlán Tradition of West-Central Jalisco. Unpublished manuscript.Phil C. Weigand (2007). States in prehispanic western Mesoamerica. In The Political Economy of Ancient Mesoamerica: Transformations during the Formative and Classic Periods, edited by Vernon L. Scarborough, pp. 101-113. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press.Phil C. Weigand and Christopher S. Beekman (1998). The Teuchitlán Tradition: Rise of a Statelike Society. In Ancient West Mexico: Art and Archaeology of the Unknown Past edited by Richard Townsend, pp. 35-51. Art Institute of Chicago.Phil C. Weigand, Christopher S. Beekman, and Rodrigo Esparza (2008). Tradición Teuchitlán. El Colegio de Michoacan, Zamora, México. It was not until 1999 and the Proyecto Arqueológico Teuchitlán (PAT) that Weigand began excavating Teuchitlán Culture sites, specifically the site of Los Guachimontones. However, other Teuchitlán Culture sites were excavated by other archaeologists, namely at Huitzilapa and the La Venta Corridor.Christopher S. Beekman (1996). The Long-Term Evolution of a Political Boundary: Archaeological Research in Jalisco, Mexico. Ph.D. Dissertation, Department of Anthropology, Vanderbilt University. University Microfilms, Ann Arbor. Weigand noted that until relatively recently, a spring used to flow near the ceremonial center. People from the town of Teuchitlán used to bring people to this spring as part of a baptism ritual.Phil C. Weigand, Efraín Cárdenas García, Acelia García de Weigand, and Eugenia Fernandez—Villanueva (1999). Primer Informe del Proyecto Arqueológico Los Guachimontones de Teuchitlán. Estudio de Superficie, Aeromapificación, Aerofotografía, Delimitación, y Excavaciones. Report presented to the Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia, México D.F.

Weigand was director of PAT from 1999 to his death in 2011.Helen P. Pollard, Eduardo Williams, and Christopher S. Beekman (2012). In Memoriam: Phil Clayton Weigand. The SAA Archaeological Record 12(4): 58 After Weigand's death, Dr. Verenice Heredia Espinoza from El Colegio de Michoacán became the new director. Heredia continues to conduct research at the site with a focus on analyzing the substantial collection of artifacts recovered from Weigand's excavations.

Site description