Puerto Marqués is a bay located on the Pacific Coast in the Mexican State of

Guerrero Guerrero, officially the Free and Sovereign State of Guerrero, is one of the 32 states that compose the administrative divisions of Mexico, 32 Federal Entities of Mexico. It is divided into Municipalities of Guerrero, 85 municipalities. The stat ...

. Approximately 10 kilometers (6.5 miles) south of the city of

Acapulco Acapulco de Juárez (), commonly called Acapulco ( , ; ), is a city and Port of Acapulco, major seaport in the Political divisions of Mexico, state of Guerrero on the Pacific Coast of Mexico, south of Mexico City. Located on a deep, semicirc ...

, it is the second closest Pacific port to

Mexico City Mexico City is the capital city, capital and List of cities in Mexico, largest city of Mexico, as well as the List of North American cities by population, most populous city in North America. It is one of the most important cultural and finan ...

, approximately three hundred kilometres southwest, just north of the

Isthmus of Tehuantepec The Isthmus of Tehuantepec () is an isthmus in Mexico. It represents the shortest distance between the Gulf of Mexico and the Pacific Ocean. Before the opening of the Panama Canal, it was a major overland transport route known simply as the T ...

. It has two main beaches for tourists and locals, Puerto Marqués Beach and Majahua Beach. The oldest known

pottery Pottery is the process and the products of forming vessels and other objects with clay and other raw materials, which are fired at high temperatures to give them a hard and durable form. The place where such wares are made by a ''potter'' is al ...

found in

Mesoamerica Mesoamerica is a historical region and cultural area that begins in the southern part of North America and extends to the Pacific coast of Central America, thus comprising the lands of central and southern Mexico, all of Belize, Guatemala, El S ...

, a culture area within the borders of

Central America Central America is a subregion of North America. Its political boundaries are defined as bordering Mexico to the north, Colombia to the southeast, the Caribbean to the east, and the Pacific Ocean to the southwest. Central America is usually ...

, was found at Puerto Marqués. "Pox" pottery discovered there has been dated to as early as 2400 BC, roughly 3500 years ago. During these times, most people were hunters and foragers, setting up camps and continuously migrating based on the seasons.

Geography

Puerto Marqués is located just south of present day

, in the Mexican state of Guerrero. Nearly half the terrain is mountainous, with the remainder being a mix of flat or slightly elevated. The area is hot, with a tropical climate with distinct seasonal wet and dry periods. Temperatures typically range {{convert, 22, -, 32, C, F on average all year around. Puerto Marqués is at the south end of a deep semi-circular (semi-enclosed)

bay A bay is a recessed, coastal body of water that directly connects to a larger main body of water, such as an ocean, a lake, or another bay. A large bay is usually called a ''gulf'', ''sea'', ''sound'', or ''bight''. A ''cove'' is a small, ci ...

, and has a developing economy with buildings such as

high rise A tower block, high-rise, apartment tower, residential tower, apartment block, block of flats, or office tower is a tall building, as opposed to a low-rise building and is defined differently in terms of height depending on the jurisdiction ...

hotels increasing in number.

History

The development of pottery has been documented at many Mesoamerican sites, and is typically seen as a sign of settlement. But in the Archaic period to which the pottery found at Perto Marqués was dated, the role of foragers and hunters was more prominent than the sedentary life, as agricultural developments were yet to be made and resources were used up from site to site as mobile bands moved around the countryside. Pottery and

ceramics A ceramic is any of the various hard, brittle, heat-resistant, and corrosion-resistant materials made by shaping and then firing an inorganic, nonmetallic material, such as clay, at a high temperature. Common examples are earthenware, porce ...

have often been found at archaeological sites of centuries past, as they preserve well and can allow for research. These artifacts can occur in many different ways. The earliest level excavated at Puerto Marqués had no ceramics, but the level above that yielded "Pox" pottery, so-called because of the pockmarks on its interior surface where bits of fiber temper burned away in the

firing Firing may refer to: * Dismissal (employment), sudden loss of employment by termination * Firemaking, the act of starting a fire * Burning; see combustion * Shooting, specifically the discharge of firearms * Execution by firing squad, a method ...

process. Temper is the material that is added to raw clay in order to heighten the clay vessel's durability, and the kind of temper (fiber, grit, shell, etc.) is a way to diagnose common traits that could indicate shared information regarding a technology. "Pox" pottery bears a red slip on the exterior, similar to ceramics from the Initial Formative period found in coastal

Soconusco Soconusco is a region in the southwest corner of the state of Chiapas in southeastern Mexico along its border with Guatemala. It is a narrow strip of land wedged between the Sierra Madre de Chiapas mountains and the Pacific Ocean. It is the sout ...

, and also to pottery found in

Ecuador Ecuador, officially the Republic of Ecuador, is a country in northwestern South America, bordered by Colombia on the north, Peru on the east and south, and the Pacific Ocean on the west. It also includes the Galápagos Province which contain ...

; some of these finds are dated even earlier. The pottery found at Puerto Marqués serves as a way to relate and understand the makers' social structures, and socio-economic status within the context of their lives long ago.Murray 2001

References

Bibliography

* Bahn, Paul. ''The Atlas of World Archaeology''. Andromeda Oxford Ltd., 2001. pp. 153–181 * Evans, Susan Toby. ''Ancient Mexico & Central America''. Thames & Hudson Ltd., 2008. * Murray, Tim. ''Encyclopedia of Archaeology, History and Discoveries''. ABC-CLIO Inc., 2001. pp. 870–878 * Pearsall, Deborah. ''Encyclopedia of Archaeology''. Academic Press, 2008. pp. 975–983 Ancient pottery Pre-Columbian pottery Mesoamerican artifacts Archaeological sites in Guerrero