Monte Albán is a large
pre-Columbian
In the history of the Americas, the pre-Columbian era spans from the original settlement of North and South America in the Upper Paleolithic period through European colonization, which began with Christopher Columbus's voyage of 1492. Usually, th ...
archaeological site
An archaeological site is a place (or group of physical sites) in which evidence of past activity is preserved (either prehistoric or historic or contemporary), and which has been, or may be, investigated using the discipline of archaeology an ...
in the
Santa Cruz Xoxocotlán Municipality in the southern
Mexican state of
Oaxaca
Oaxaca ( , also , , from nci, Huāxyacac ), officially the Free and Sovereign State of Oaxaca ( es, Estado Libre y Soberano de Oaxaca), is one of the 32 states that compose the political divisions of Mexico, Federative Entities of Mexico. It is ...
(17.043° N, 96.767°W). The site is located on a low mountainous range rising above the plain in the central section of the
Valley of Oaxaca
The Central Valleys ( es, Valles Centrales) of Oaxaca, also simply known as the Oaxaca Valley, is a geographic region located within the modern-day state of Oaxaca in southern Mexico. In an administrative context, it has been defined as comprising ...
, where the latter's northern
Etla, eastern
Tlacolula
Tlacolula de Matamoros is a city and municipality in the Mexican state of Oaxaca, about 30 km from the center of the city of Oaxaca on Federal Highway 190, which leads east to Mitla and the Isthmus of Tehuantepec.
It is part of the Tlacolul ...
, and southern
Zimatlán and
Ocotlán (or
Valle Grande) branches meet. The present-day state capital
Oaxaca City
Oaxaca de Juárez (), also Oaxaca City or simply Oaxaca (Valley Zapotec: ''Ndua''), is the capital and largest city of the eponymous Mexican state Oaxaca. It is the municipal seat for the surrounding Municipality of Oaxaca. It is in the Centro ...
is located approximately east of Monte Albán.
The partially excavated civic ceremonial center of the Monte Albán site is situated atop an artificially leveled ridge. It has an elevation of about
above mean sea level
Height above mean sea level is a measure of the vertical distance (height, elevation or altitude) of a location in reference to a historic mean sea level taken as a vertical datum. In geodesy, it is formalized as ''orthometric heights''.
The comb ...
and rises some from the valley floor, in an easily defensible location. In addition to the monumental core, the site is characterized by several hundred artificial terraces, and a dozen clusters of mounded architecture covering the entire ridgeline and surrounding flanks.
The archaeological ruins on the nearby Atzompa and El Gallo hills to the north are traditionally considered to be an integral part of the ancient city as well.
Besides being one of the earliest cities of
Mesoamerica
Mesoamerica is a historical region and cultural area in southern North America and most of Central America. It extends from approximately central Mexico through Belize, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, and northern Costa Rica. W ...
, Monte Albán was important for nearly one thousand years as the pre-eminent
Zapotec socio-political and economic center. Founded toward the end of the Middle
Formative period
Several chronologies in the archaeology of the Americas include a Formative Period or Formative stage etc. It is often sub-divided, for example into "Early", "Middle" and "Late" stages.
The Formative is the third of five stages defined by Gord ...
at around 500 BC, by the Terminal Formative (c. 100 BC – AD 200) Monte Albán had become the capital of a large-scale expansionist
polity
A polity is an identifiable Politics, political entity – a group of people with a collective identity, who are organized by some form of Institutionalisation, institutionalized social relation, social relations, and have a capacity to mobilize ...
that dominated much of the Oaxacan highlands and interacted with other Mesoamerican regional states, such as
Teotihuacan
Teotihuacan (Spanish language, Spanish: ''Teotihuacán'') (; ) is an ancient Mesoamerican city located in a sub-valley of the Valley of Mexico, which is located in the State of Mexico, northeast of modern-day Mexico City. Teotihuacan is ...
to the north (Paddock 1983; Marcus 1983). The city lost its political pre-eminence by the end of the
Late Classic (c. AD 500–750), and soon thereafter was largely abandoned. Small-scale reoccupation, opportunistic reuse of earlier structures and tombs, and ritual visitations marked the archaeological history of the site into the Colonial period.
The etymology of the site's present-day name is unclear. Tentative suggestions regarding its origin range from a presumed corruption of a native
Zapotec name to a colonial-era reference to a Spanish soldier by the name Montalbán or to the
Alban Hills
The Alban Hills ( it, Colli Albani) are the caldera remains of a quiescent volcano, volcanic complex in Italy, located southeast of Rome and about north of Anzio. The high Monte Cavo forms a highly visible peak the centre of the caldera, bu ...
of Italy. The ancient Zapotec name of the city is not known, as abandonment occurred centuries before the writing of the earliest available
ethnohistorical
Ethnohistory is the study of cultures and indigenous peoples customs by examining historical records as well as other sources of information on their lives and history. It is also the study of the history of various ethnic groups that may or may n ...
sources.
Research history
![Borrala](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/fb/Borrala.JPG)
Being visible from anywhere in the central part of the Valley of Oaxaca, the impressive ruins of Monte Albán attracted visitors and explorers throughout the colonial and modern eras. Among others, Guillermo Dupaix investigated the site in the early 19th century CE, J. M. García published a description of the site in 1859, and
A. F. Bandelier visited and published further descriptions in the 1890s. A first intensive archaeological exploration of the site was conducted in 1902 by
Leopoldo Batres Leopoldo Batres (1852 in Ciudad de Mexico – 1926) was a pioneer of the archaeology of Mexico. He worked as an anthropologist and archaeologist for the Museo Nacional de Antropología between 1884 and 1888, beginning his excavations at Teotihuacan ...
, then General Inspector of Monuments for the Mexican government under
Porfirio Diaz Porfirio is a given name in Spanish, derived from the Greek Porphyry (''porphyrios'' "purple-clad").
It can refer to:
* Porfirio Salinas – Mexican-American artist
* Porfirio Armando Betancourt – Honduran football player
* Porfirio Barba-Jac ...
.
It was not until 1931 that large-scale scientific excavations were undertaken, under the direction of Mexican archaeologist
Alfonso Caso
Alfonso Caso y Andrade (February 1, 1896 in Mexico City – November 30, 1970 in Mexico City) was an archaeologist who made important contributions to pre-Columbian studies in his native Mexico. Caso believed that the systematic study of ancient M ...
. In 1933,
Eulalia Guzmán
Eulalia Guzmán Barrón (1890–1985) was a pioneering feminist and educator and nationalist thinker in post-revolutionary Mexico. She was one of the first women to work in the field of Mexican archeology. She was the lead investigator of the re ...
assisted with the excavation of Tomb 7.
Over the following eighteen years, Caso and his colleagues
Ignacio Bernal
Ignacio Bernal (February 13, 1910 in Paris - January 24, 1992 in Mexico City) was an eminent Mexican anthropologist and archaeologist.
Bernal excavated much of Monte Albán, originally starting as a student of Alfonso Caso, and later led major ar ...
and
Jorge Acosta
Jorge Acosta (born May 29, 1964) is a Colombian-born American retired soccer forward. He spent most of his career in the lower U.S. divisions, as well as four in the Colombian first division. He also earned twelve caps with the U.S. national t ...
excavated large sections within the monumental core of the site. Much of what is visible today in areas open to the public was reconstructed at that time. Besides resulting in the excavation of a large number of residential and civic-ceremonial structures and hundreds of tombs and burials, one lasting achievement of the project by Caso and his colleagues was the establishment of a ceramic chronology (phases Monte Albán I through V) for the period between the site's founding in c. 500 BCE to end of the
Postclassic
In Human history, world history, post-classical history refers to the period from about 500 AD to 1500, roughly corresponding to the European Middle Ages. The period is characterized by the expansion of civilizations geographically and develop ...
period in CE 1521.
The investigation of the periods preceding Monte Albán's founding was a major focus in the late 1960s of the Prehistory and Human Ecology Project started by
Kent Flannery
Kent Vaughn Flannery (born 1934) is a North American archaeologist who has conducted and published extensive research on the pre-Columbian cultures and civilizations of Mesoamerica, and in particular those of central and southern Mexico. He has a ...
of the
University of Michigan
, mottoeng = "Arts, Knowledge, Truth"
, former_names = Catholepistemiad, or University of Michigania (1817–1821)
, budget = $10.3 billion (2021)
, endowment = $17 billion (2021)As o ...
. Over the following two decades, this project documented the development of socio-political complexity in the valley from the earliest Archaic period (c. 8000–2000 BCE) to the Rosario phase (700–500 BCE) immediately preceding Monte Albán. It set the stage for an understanding of the latter's founding and developmental trajectory. In this context, among the major accomplishments of Flannery's work in Oaxaca are his extensive excavations at the important formative center of
San José Mogote
San José Mogote is a pre-Columbian archaeological site of the Zapotec, a Mesoamerican culture that flourished in the region of what is now the Mexican state of Oaxaca. A forerunner to the better-known Zapotec site of Monte Albán, San José M ...
in the Etla branch of the valley, a project co-directed with Joyce Marcus of the University of Michigan.
A further important step in the understanding of the history of occupation of the Monte Albán site was reached with the Prehistoric Settlement Patterns in the Valley of Oaxaca Project begun by Richard Blanton and several colleagues from the University of Michigan in the early 1970s. Their intensive survey and mapping of the entire site demonstrated the full scale and size of Monte Albán, beyond the limited area which had been explored by Caso.
Subsequent seasons of the same project under the direction of Blanton, Gary Feinman, Steve Kowalewski, Linda Nicholas, and others extended the survey coverage to practically the entire valley, producing an invaluable amount of data on the region's changing settlement patterns from the earliest times to the arrival of the Spanish in CE 1521.
Site history
As indicated by Blanton's survey of the site, the Monte Albán hills appear to have been uninhabited prior to 500 BCE (the end of the Rosario ceramic phase). At that time, San José Mogote was the major population center in the valley and base of a
chiefdom
A chiefdom is a form of hierarchical political organization in non-industrial societies usually based on kinship, and in which formal leadership is monopolized by the legitimate senior members of select families or 'houses'. These elites form a ...
that likely controlled much of the northern Etla branch.
Perhaps as many as three or four other, smaller chiefly centers controlled other sub-regions of the valley, including
Tilcajete in the southern Valle Grande branch and
Yegüih in the Tlacolula arm to the east. Competition and warfare seem to have characterized the Rosario phase. The regional survey data suggests the existence of an unoccupied buffer zone between the San José Mogote chiefdom and those to the south and east.
It is within this no-man's land that Monte Albán was founded at the end of the Rosario period and it quickly reached a population estimate of around 5,200 by the end of the following Monte Albán Ia phase (c. 300 BCE). This remarkable population increase was accompanied by an equally rapid decline at San José Mogote and neighbouring satellite sites, making it likely that its chiefly elites were directly involved in the founding of the future Zapotec capital. This rapid shift in population and settlement, from dispersed localized settlements to a central urban site in a previously unsettled area, has been referred to as the “Monte Alban Synoikism” by Marcus and Flannery,
in reference to similar recorded instances in the
Mediterranean
The Mediterranean Sea is a sea connected to the Atlantic Ocean, surrounded by the Mediterranean Basin and almost completely enclosed by land: on the north by Western and Southern Europe and Anatolia, on the south by North Africa, and on the e ...
area in antiquity.
Although it was previously thought
that a similar process of large-scale abandonment, and thus participation in the founding of Monte Albán, occurred at other major chiefly centers, such as Yegüih and Tilcajete, at least in the latter's case this now appears to be unlikely. A recent project directed by
Charles Spencer and
Elsa Redmond of the
American Museum of Natural History
The American Museum of Natural History (abbreviated as AMNH) is a natural history museum on the Upper West Side of Manhattan in New York City. In Theodore Roosevelt Park, across the street from Central Park, the museum complex comprises 26 inter ...
in
New York has shown that, rather than being abandoned, the site grew significantly in population during the periods Monte Albán Early I and Late I (c. 500–300 BCE and 300–100 BCE, respectively). Tilcajete might have actively opposed incorporation into the increasingly powerful Monte Albán state.
By the beginning of the
Terminal Formative (Monte Albán II phase, c. 100 BCE – CE 200), Monte Albán had an estimated population of 17,200,
making it one of the largest Mesoamerican cities at the time. As its political power grew, Monte Albán expanded militarily, through cooption, and via outright colonization, into several areas outside the Valley of Oaxaca, including the Cañada de
Cuicatlán to the north and the southern
Ejutla and
Sola de Vega
Villa Sola de Vega is a town and municipality in Oaxaca in south-western Mexico, part of the Sola de Vega District in the Sierra Sur Region.
Significado
"Lugar de codornices" proviene de "zollin": codorniz y de "tlán": lugar de.
Geography
Th ...
valleys.
(Feinman and Nicholas 1990) During this period and into the subsequent
Early Classic (Monte Albán IIIA phase, c. CE 200–500), Monte Albán was the capital of a major regional
polity
A polity is an identifiable Politics, political entity – a group of people with a collective identity, who are organized by some form of Institutionalisation, institutionalized social relation, social relations, and have a capacity to mobilize ...
that exerted a dominating influence over the Valley of Oaxaca and across much of the Oaxacan highlands. Evidence at Monte Albán is suggestive of high-level contacts between the site's elites and those at the powerful central Mexican city of
Teotihuacan
Teotihuacan (Spanish language, Spanish: ''Teotihuacán'') (; ) is an ancient Mesoamerican city located in a sub-valley of the Valley of Mexico, which is located in the State of Mexico, northeast of modern-day Mexico City. Teotihuacan is ...
, where archaeologists have identified a neighbourhood inhabited by ethnic Zapotecs from the valley of Oaxaca (Paddock 1983). By the Late Classic (Monte Albán IIIB/IV, c. CE 500–1000), the site's influence outside and inside the valley declined. Elites at several other centers, once part of the Monte Albán state, began to assert their autonomy, including sites such as
Cuilapan
Cuilapan de Guerrero is a town and municipality located in the central valley region of Oaxaca in southern Mexico. It is to the south of the capital city of Oaxaca on the road leading to Villa de Zaachila, and is in the Centro District in the ...
and
Zaachila
Zaachila (the Zapotec name; Nahuatl: ''Teotzapotlan''; Mixtec: ''Ñuhu Tocuisi'') was a powerful Mesoamerican city in what is now Oaxaca, Mexico, from the city of Oaxaca. The city is named after Zaachila Yoo, the Zapotec ruler, in the late 14 ...
in the Valle Grande and
Lambityeco
Lambityeco is a small archaeological site just about 3 kilometers west of the Tlacolula city in the Mexican state of Oaxaca. It is located just off Highway 190 about east from the city of Oaxaca en route to Mitla. The site has been securely dated ...
,
Mitla
Mitla is the second-most important archeological site in the state of Oaxaca in Mexico, and the most important of the Zapotec culture. The site is located 44 km from the city of Oaxaca, in the upper end of the Tlacolula Valley, one of the ...
, and
El Palmillo in the eastern Tlacolula arm. The latter is the focus of an ongoing project by Gary Feinman and Linda Nicholas of
Chicago
(''City in a Garden''); I Will
, image_map =
, map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago
, coordinates =
, coordinates_footnotes =
, subdivision_type = Country
, subdivision_name ...
's
Field Museum (Feinman and Nicholas 2002). By the end of the same period (c. AD 900–1000), the ancient capital was largely abandoned. The once powerful Monte Albán state was replaced by dozens of competing smaller polities, a situation that lasted up to the Spanish conquest.
Monuments
The monumental center of Monte Albán is the Main Plaza, which measures approximately 300 meters by 150 meters. The Main Plaza was created through artificial levelling of the mountaintop, being covered in white plaster afterwards. The plaza would have had the capacity to hold the entire population of the city for participation in state-sponsored rituals.
The site's main civic-ceremonial and elite-residential structures are located around it or in its immediate vicinity. Most of these have been explored and restored by Alfonso Caso and his colleagues.
To the north and south the Main Plaza is delimited by large platforms accessible from the plaza via monumental staircases. On its eastern and western sides, the plaza is similarly bounded by a number of smaller platform mounds, on which stood temples and elite residences, as well as one of two
ballcourts
A Mesoamerican ballcourt ( nah, tlachtli) is a large masonry structure of a type used in Mesoamerica for over 2,700 years to play the Mesoamerican ballgame, particularly the hip-ball version of the ballgame. More than 1,300 ballcourts have been i ...
known to have existed at the site. A north-south spine of mounds occupies the center of the plaza and similarly served as platforms for ceremonial structures. The majority of the temples faced in the east or west directions, aligning with the sun's path. The temples were constructed with a characteristic two-room floor plan: a communal porch situated at the front, connected to a lesser revealed sanctuary at the backend. This collection of sacred venues may have been dedicated to royal ancestors, who acted as supplicants to
Cocijo
Cocijo (occasionally spelt Cociyo) is a lightning deity of the pre-Columbian Zapotec civilization of southern Mexico. He has attributes characteristic of similar Mesoamerican deities associated with rain, thunder and lightning, such as Tlaloc of ...
.
One characteristic of Monte Albán is the large number of carved stone monuments throughout the plaza. The earliest examples are the so-called "Danzantes" (literally, dancers), found mostly in the vicinity of Building L. These represent naked men in contorted and twisted poses, some of them genitally mutilated. The figures are said to represent sacrificial victims, which explains the morbid characteristics of the figures. The Danzantes feature physical traits characteristic of Olmec culture. The 19th-century notion that they depict dancers is now largely discredited. These monuments, dating to the earliest period of occupation at the site (Monte Albán I), are now interpreted as representing tortured, sacrificed war prisoners, some identified by name. They may depict leaders of competing centers and villages captured by Monte Albán.
(Blanton et al. 1996) Over 300 “Danzantes” stones have been recorded to date, and some of the better preserved ones can be viewed at the site's museum. There is some indication that the Zapotecs had writing and calendrical notation.
![Monte_Albán_archeological_site,_Oaxaca](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f2/Monte_Alb%C3%A1n_archeological_site%2C_Oaxaca.jpg)
A different type of carved stones is found on the nearby Building J in the center of the Main Plaza, a building also characterized by its unusual arrow-like shape and an orientation that differs from most other structures at the site. Inserted within the building walls are more than 40 large, carved slabs dating to Monte Albán II. They depict place-names, occasionally accompanied by additional writing and in many cases characterized by upside-down heads. Alfonso Caso was the first to identify these stones as "conquest slabs", likely listing places which the Monte Albán elites claimed to have conquered and/or controlled. Some of the places listed on Building J slabs have been tentatively identified. In one case (the Cañada de Cuicatlán region in northern Oaxaca), Zapotec conquest there has been confirmed through archaeological survey and excavations.
![Panoramica_Monte_Alban](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/69/Panoramica_Monte_Alban.JPG)
The site of Monte Alban contains several pieces of evidence, through its architecture, to suggest that there was social stratification within the settlement. Walls ranging up to nine meters tall and twenty meters wide were built around the settlement; these would not only have created a boundary between Monte Alban and neighboring settlements, but also proved the power of the elites within the community. In Scott Hutson's analysis of the relationships between the commoners and the elites in Monte Alban, he notes that the monumental mounds found within the site seemed to be evenly spaced throughout the area. The mounds were thus close enough to each house to easily keep them under surveillance. Hutson also notes that, over time, the style of houses seemed to have changed, becoming more private to those living in the buildings and making it harder for outsiders to obtain information about the residents. These changes in the ability of the elites to gain information about the private lives of other citizens would have played a key role in the internal political structure of the settlement.
Many of the artifacts excavated at Monte Albán, in over a century of archaeological exploration, can be seen at the
Museo Nacional de Antropologia in
Mexico City
Mexico City ( es, link=no, Ciudad de México, ; abbr.: CDMX; Nahuatl: ''Altepetl Mexico'') is the capital and largest city of Mexico, and the most populous city in North America. One of the world's alpha cities, it is located in the Valley o ...
and at the Museo Regional de Oaxaca, located in the former convento de Santo Domingo de Guzmán in Oaxaca City. The latter museum houses many of the objects discovered in 1932 by Alfonso Caso in Monte Albán's ''Tomb 7'', a Classic period Zapotec tomb that was opportunistically reused in Postclassic times for the burial of
Mixtec
The Mixtecs (), or Mixtecos, are indigenous Mesoamerican peoples of Mexico inhabiting the region known as La Mixteca of Oaxaca and Puebla as well as La Montaña Region and Costa Chica Regions of the state of Guerrero. The Mixtec Culture w ...
elite individuals. Their burials were accompanied by some of the most spectacular burial offerings of any site in the Americas.
Monte Albán is a popular tourist destination for visitors to Oaxaca. Its small museum on site displays mostly original carved stones from the site. The site received 429,702 visitors in 2017.
Threats
The primary threat to this archaeological site is urban growth, which is encroaching and "threatening to expand into territories that have potential archaeological value."
To complicate matters, the administration of the site is divided amongst four different municipalities, making a unified effort to stop the urban encroachment challenging.
Architecture
Symmetry was not a major concern for the layout of Monte Albán plaza. Although the angles within the plaza are not perfect 90-degree corners, the plaza appears to be a rectangle without actually being so. The structures are not laid out in a symmetrical fashion, as the distances between the structures vary greatly from building to building. Construction methods used for orientation changed as Monte Albán expanded. Early structures, on the western side of the plaza, are rotated south of east, while later structures align more with the cardinal directions.
The exception is the structure referred to as building “J.” This structure is located on the center line of the plaza but it is rotated and does not align with the other structures. It is believed that building “J” had an astronomical relation/ significance. In design / construction of the structures, earthquakes were also taken into consideration. Thick walls were often used in construction, as well as sloped sides when constructing tall / larger structures.
Elite residencies were made up of three to four rooms, encompassing an inner patio and sub-patio
tomb
A tomb ( grc-gre, τύμβος ''tumbos'') is a repository for the remains of the dead. It is generally any structurally enclosed interment space or burial chamber, of varying sizes. Placing a corpse into a tomb can be called ''immureme ...
accessible via stairway. Classical tombs of the elite were walled with stone and often adorned in painted murals.
Civilians lived on residential terraces that coated the slopes of the mountain below the Main Plaza. Such residencies were one or two room
adobe brick
A mudbrick or mud-brick is an air-dried brick, made of a mixture of loam, mud, sand and water mixed with a binding material such as rice husks or straw. Mudbricks are known from 9000 BCE, though since 4000 BCE, bricks have also bee ...
houses with a central, partially enclosed patio.
Agriculture
Monte Albán was not just a fortress or sacred place, but a fully functioning city. The inhabitants had come from the rich agricultural land below Monte Albán and depended greatly on agriculture. Monte Albán became an agricultural center as the area expanded which was developed with structures. The population cultivated the valleys and land up to the crest of the mountain in order to support this growing population.
Gallery
Image:Monte Albán-12-05oaxaca031.jpg, Altar
Image:Monte Albán-12-05oaxaca034.jpg, Unrestored section of Monte Albán with Oaxaca City
Oaxaca de Juárez (), also Oaxaca City or simply Oaxaca (Valley Zapotec: ''Ndua''), is the capital and largest city of the eponymous Mexican state Oaxaca. It is the municipal seat for the surrounding Municipality of Oaxaca. It is in the Centro ...
in the background
Image:Monte_Albán_archeological_site,_Oaxaca.jpg, View of Main Plaza from the South Platform, with Building J in the foreground.
Image:monte_alban_stela01.jpg
Image:monte_alban_stela02.jpg
File: MonteAlbanStela.jpg, One of the stelae known as ''Dancing'' by unorthodox positions of the characters represented.
Image:Cyark_monte_alban_1.jpg, Plan of Monte Alban's System IV structure, cut from a 3D laser scan image.
Image:Cyark_monte_alban_2.jpg, Image of Monte Alban's System IV structure, taken from a 3D laser scan image.
Image:Monte Albán-12-05oaxaca036.jpg, View across Main Plaza from the South Platform, with Building J in the foreground.
Image:Mexico.Oax.MonteAlban.Panorama.02.jpg, Building M as seen from the South Platform.
File:Monte Alban - The Dancers.jpg, Stones of the Dancers, in the Plaza of the Dancers, next to Building L.
File:TombMonteAlban.jpg, Tomb north of the North Platform
File:BuildingX1MonteAlban.jpg, Building X on North Platform
File:UnexcavatedBldgNorthPlatform.jpg, Unexcavated building on North Platform
File:Stone Carvings-1.JPG, Stone carvings, L
File:Main Plaza from North.JPG, View of Main Plaza from the North Platform
See also
*
San José Mogote
San José Mogote is a pre-Columbian archaeological site of the Zapotec, a Mesoamerican culture that flourished in the region of what is now the Mexican state of Oaxaca. A forerunner to the better-known Zapotec site of Monte Albán, San José M ...
, an earlier site and predecessor of Monte Albán in the Valley of Oaxaca
*
Mixteca Alta Formative Project Mixteca Alta Formative Project (2003–present) is an archaeological project directed by Andrew Balkansky that focuses on the Mixtec of Oaxaca, Mexico. The project, which is funded by the National Science Foundation, the National Geographic Socie ...
*
List of archaeoastronomical sites sorted by country
This is a list of sites where claims for the use of archaeoastronomy have been made, sorted by country.
The International Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS) and the International Astronomical Union (IAU) jointly published a thematic study on ...
References
External links
Website that has useful 3D resources, a VR/360 tour of Building J, and more information about archaeological research at the site INAH site with
VR imagery of the site
Monte Albán Digital Media Archive(creative commons-licensed photos, laser scans, panoramas), particularly focusing on System IV but with images from all over the site, with data from an
INAH/
CyArk
CyArk (from "cyber archive") is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization located in Oakland, California, United States founded in 2003. CyArk's mission is to "digitally record, archive and share the world's most significant cultural heritage and ensure ...
research partnership
Mexican and Central American Archaeological Projects- Electronic articles published by the Division of Anthropology, American Museum of Natural History.
*
ttps://web.archive.org/web/20170207022340/http://delange.org/MonteAlban/MonteAlban.htm The DeLanges visit Monte Alban, with many photosbr>
Monte Alban - Sacred Destinations article With a short panoramic video of the site.
Field Museum of Natural History Ancient Americas web siteMore photos of the Monte Albán area
Historic Centre of Oaxaca and Archaeological Site of Monte Albán
{{DEFAULTSORT:Monte Alban
Zapotec sites
Mixtec sites
World Heritage Sites in Mexico
Former populated places in Mexico
Archaeological sites in Oaxaca
Tourist attractions in Oaxaca
History of Oaxaca
Museums in Oaxaca
Archaeological museums in Mexico
19th-century archaeological discoveries
6th-century BC establishments
10th-century disestablishments in North America