San José Mogote
   HOME

TheInfoList



OR:

San José Mogote is a
pre-Columbian In the history of the Americas, the pre-Columbian era, also known as the pre-contact era, or as the pre-Cabraline era specifically in Brazil, spans from the initial peopling of the Americas in the Upper Paleolithic to the onset of European col ...
archaeological site An archaeological site is a place (or group of physical sites) in which evidence of past activity is preserved (either prehistoric or recorded history, historic or contemporary), and which has been, or may be, investigated using the discipline ...
of the Zapotec, a
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 ...
n culture that flourished in the region of what is now the Mexican
state State most commonly refers to: * State (polity), a centralized political organization that regulates law and society within a territory **Sovereign state, a sovereign polity in international law, commonly referred to as a country **Nation state, a ...
of
Oaxaca Oaxaca, officially the Free and Sovereign State of Oaxaca, is one of the 32 states that compose the political divisions of Mexico, Federative Entities of the Mexico, United Mexican States. It is divided into municipalities of Oaxaca, 570 munici ...
. A forerunner to the better-known Zapotec site of
Monte Albán Monte Albán is a large pre-Columbian archaeological site in the Santa Cruz Xoxocotlán Municipality in the southern Mexico, Mexican state of Oaxaca (17.043° N, 96.767°W). The site is located on a low mountainous range rising above the plain i ...
, San José Mogote was the largest and most important settlement in the
Valley of Oaxaca The Central Valleys () of Oaxaca, also simply known as the Oaxaca Valley, is a geographic region located within the modern-day state of Oaxaca in southeastern Mexico. In an administrative context, it has been defined as comprising the districts of ...
during the Early and Middle Formative periods (ca. 1500-500 BCE) of Mesoamerican cultural development. Situated in the fertile bottomlands of the Etla arm of the Valley of Oaxaca, the site is surrounded by the present-day village of San José Mogote, about northwest of the city of
Oaxaca Oaxaca, officially the Free and Sovereign State of Oaxaca, is one of the 32 states that compose the political divisions of Mexico, Federative Entities of the Mexico, United Mexican States. It is divided into municipalities of Oaxaca, 570 munici ...
(Evans 2004:122). San José Mogote is considered to be the oldest permanent agricultural
village A village is a human settlement or community, larger than a hamlet but smaller than a town with a population typically ranging from a few hundred to a few thousand. Although villages are often located in rural areas, the term urban v ...
in the Oaxaca Valley and probably the first settlement in the area to use
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 ...
. It has also "...produced Mexico's oldest known defensive
palisade A palisade, sometimes called a stakewall or a paling, is typically a row of closely placed, high vertical standing tree trunks or wooden or iron stakes used as a fence for enclosure or as a defensive wall. Palisades can form a stockade. Etymo ...
s and ceremonial buildings (1300 B.C.), early use of
adobe Adobe (from arabic: الطوب Attub ; ) is a building material made from earth and organic materials. is Spanish for mudbrick. In some English-speaking regions of Spanish heritage, such as the Southwestern United States, the term is use ...
(850 B.C.), the first evidence of Zapotec hieroglyphic writing (600 B.C.), and early examples of architectural terracing, craft specialization, and
irrigation Irrigation (also referred to as watering of plants) is the practice of applying controlled amounts of water to land to help grow crops, landscape plants, and lawns. Irrigation has been a key aspect of agriculture for over 5,000 years and has bee ...
(1150-850 B.C.)."
Archaeological Archaeology or archeology is the study of human activity through the recovery and analysis of material culture. The archaeological record consists of Artifact (archaeology), artifacts, architecture, biofact (archaeology), biofacts or ecofacts, ...
investigations conducted during the late 20th century over two decades (e.g., by Kent Flannery and Joyce Marcus) have built an emerging picture of San José Mogote as an early center of Zapotec culture; it was later supplanted or overtaken by
Monte Albán Monte Albán is a large pre-Columbian archaeological site in the Santa Cruz Xoxocotlán Municipality in the southern Mexico, Mexican state of Oaxaca (17.043° N, 96.767°W). The site is located on a low mountainous range rising above the plain i ...
. From its beginnings as a cluster of family dwellings, San José Mogote developed to incorporate monumental public structures indicative of a larger and complex political center; it ruled over a number of subsidiary settlements in the Valley of Oaxaca, receiving
tribute A tribute (; from Latin ''tributum'', "contribution") is wealth, often in kind, that a party gives to another as a sign of submission, allegiance or respect. Various ancient states exacted tribute from the rulers of lands which the state con ...
and services from the region. For as-yet unclear reasons, its status diminished and it became a tributary to the new Zapotec political center and capital, Monte Albán.


Regional layout

San Pablo Huitzo, Santa Marta Etla, Hacienda Blanca, Tomaltepec,
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 ...
, Abasolo, Mitla, Tilcajete, Zegache, and Santa Ana Tlapacoyan were just a few of the small settlements that supported San José Mogote, which was located in the most developed, north central area of the Valley of Oaxaca.


Development of civilization in the Oaxaca Valley

Between 1500 and 1150 BCE San José Mogote grew from a few house structures to a
village A village is a human settlement or community, larger than a hamlet but smaller than a town with a population typically ranging from a few hundred to a few thousand. Although villages are often located in rural areas, the term urban v ...
occupying a land area of about 2000 m2 (five
acre The acre ( ) is a Unit of measurement, unit of land area used in the Imperial units, British imperial and the United States customary units#Area, United States customary systems. It is traditionally defined as the area of one Chain (unit), ch ...
s), the largest of some 25 villages in the Valley of the Oaxaca and the only community in the area with public buildings (Price and Feinman 2005:320-321). The introduction of two methods of
irrigation Irrigation (also referred to as watering of plants) is the practice of applying controlled amounts of water to land to help grow crops, landscape plants, and lawns. Irrigation has been a key aspect of agriculture for over 5,000 years and has bee ...
may have been responsible for improving agricultural productivity. These included running irrigation
ditch A ditch is a small to moderate trench created to channel water. A ditch can be used for drainage, to drain water from low-lying areas, alongside roadways or fields, or to channel water from a more distant source for plant irrigation. Ditches ...
es from streams and "pot irrigation", which consisted of dipping water out of a number of shallow wells to pour onto the crops (Evans 2004, p. 145). Settlement at the site consists of a number of distinct
household A household consists of one or more persons who live in the same dwelling. It may be of a single family or another type of person group. The household is the basic unit of analysis in many social, microeconomic and government models, and is im ...
s that form the basic social units at San José Mogote. A typical household unit at San José Mogote contained
brazier A brazier () is a container used to burn charcoal or other solid fuel for cooking, heating or rituals. It often takes the form of a metal box or bowl with feet, but in some places it is made of terracotta. Its elevation helps circulate air, feed ...
s, earth ovens and/or
hearth A hearth () is the place in a home where a fire is or was traditionally kept for home heating and for cooking, usually constituted by a horizontal hearthstone and often enclosed to varying degrees by any combination of reredos (a low, partial ...
s for cooking, stone manos and
metate A metate (or mealing stone) is a type or variety of quern, a ground stone tool used for processing grain and seeds. In traditional Mesoamerican cultures, metates are typically used by women who would grind nixtamalized maize and other organi ...
s for grinding, and blackened
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 ...
. Food, including
maize Maize (; ''Zea mays''), also known as corn in North American English, is a tall stout grass that produces cereal grain. It was domesticated by indigenous peoples in southern Mexico about 9,000 years ago from wild teosinte. Native American ...
, was stored in pits that were bell-shaped and located outside the house walls. Later, trash was dumped into these pits, forming
midden A midden is an old dump for domestic waste. It may consist of animal bones, human excrement, botanical material, mollusc shells, potsherds, lithics (especially debitage), and other artifacts and ecofacts associated with past human oc ...
deposits. Burials and other activity areas were also located in areas adjacent to the house structures. Evidence of ritual includes human and animal figurines associated with burials. Basic indicators of long-distance trade include
obsidian Obsidian ( ) is a naturally occurring volcanic glass formed when lava extrusive rock, extruded from a volcano cools rapidly with minimal crystal growth. It is an igneous rock. Produced from felsic lava, obsidian is rich in the lighter element ...
chipped stone In archaeology, in particular of the Stone Age, lithic reduction is the process of fashioning stones or rocks from their natural state into tools or weapons by removing some parts. It has been intensely studied and many archaeological industrie ...
artifacts. Obsidian is a material not locally available in the Valley of Oaxaca. After 1150 BCE other settlements in the area remained small, but the village of San José Mogote increased in population and in the elaboration of its public structures, an indication of its role as the controlling capital over the other villages. Between 900 and 600 BCE, the population in the valley increased threefold to 2000 people living in 40 communities, with half of that number residing in San José Mogote, which grew to in size (Evans 2004, p. 145). A community building, which has been called a "men's home", is believed to have served as a place where the men of the village could gather for civic and ceremonial purposes. The building's ceremonial importance is signified by its orientation of eight degrees west of north.
La Venta La Venta is a pre-Columbian archaeological site of the Olmec civilization located in the present-day Mexican state of Tabasco. Some of the artifacts have been moved to the museum "Parque - Museo de La Venta", which is in nearby Villaherm ...
, an important
Olmec The Olmecs () or Olmec were an early known major Mesoamerican civilization, flourishing in the modern-day Mexican states of Veracruz and Tabasco from roughly 1200 to 400 Before the Common Era, BCE during Mesoamerica's Mesoamerican chronolog ...
site, has the same orientation, which indicates an understanding of astronomy and a calendar system (Evans 2004, pp. 122–123). Exclusively at San José Mogote
mirrors A mirror, also known as a looking glass, is an object that reflects an image. Light that bounces off a mirror forms an image of whatever is in front of it, which is then focused through the lens of the eye or a camera. Mirrors reverse the ...
of polished
magnetite Magnetite is a mineral and one of the main iron ores, with the chemical formula . It is one of the iron oxide, oxides of iron, and is ferrimagnetism, ferrimagnetic; it is attracted to a magnet and can be magnetization, magnetized to become a ...
were made and traded to the Olmec Gulf Coast, some distant. Trade with other areas is also suggested by the greater quantities of obsidian and ceremonial objects, such as drums made from turtle shells, conch-shell trumpets, and stingray spines, as well as pottery designs associated with the Olmec groups, especially at the site of San José de Mogote (Price and Feinman 2005, p. 321). By 700 BC the population of San José Mogote continued to increase. Between 700 and 500 BC, 3500 people occupied the Valley of Oaxaca, with about 1000 living at San José Mogote, which covered approximately (Evans 2004, p. 187). Major public buildings constructed with adobe bricks and large blocks of stone were built on top of dirt mounds. The largest complex of the area prior to 500 BCE was Mound 1 at San José Mogote, which was constructed atop a hill that was augmented to a height of .


Political organization

In this relatively short period of time the region's emergent
Zapotec civilization The Zapotec civilization ( "The People"; 700 BC–1521 AD) is an Indigenous peoples, indigenous Pre-Columbian era, pre-Columbian civilization that flourished in the Valley of Oaxaca in Mesoamerica. Archaeological evidence shows that their cultu ...
experienced a shift in social ranking – the transformation from an autonomous, egalitarian tribal community, to that of a socially stratified society – a "defining moment" in history that would be mirrored throughout the Mesoamerican world at sites like
Paso de la Amada Paso de la Amada (from Spanish: "beloved's pass") is an archaeological site in the Mexican state of Chiapas on the Gulf of Tehuantepec, in the Mazatán, Chiapas, Mazatán part of Soconusco, Soconusco region of Mesoamerica. It is located in farmlan ...
and
San Lorenzo Tenochtitlán San Lorenzo Tenochtitlán or San Lorenzo is the collective name for three related archaeological sites—San Lorenzo, Tenochtitlán and Potrero Nuevo—located in the southeast portion of the Mexican state of Veracruz. Along with La Venta and Tre ...
, among many others. According to John E. Clark, "by the end of the San Jose Phase, San Jose Mogote was clearly...a
chiefdom A chiefdom is a political organization of people representation (politics), represented or government, governed by a tribal chief, chief. Chiefdoms have been discussed, depending on their scope, as a stateless society, stateless, state (polity) ...
". It is not known precisely when or how hereditary inequalities emerged at San Jose Mogote (or anywhere else in Mesoamerica, for that matter) but there are some excellent indicators that give clues as to how this transformation took place and how it was exploited at San Jose Mogote. One widely accepted theory about the transformation of autonomous communities to chiefdoms is that an individual, or group of individuals must have used some degree of
coercion Coercion involves compelling a party to act in an involuntary manner through the use of threats, including threats to use force against that party. It involves a set of forceful actions which violate the free will of an individual in order to i ...
to begin controlling others in their community. Stronger factions may have used coercion to force weaker factions to submit to their desires, and in order to do this they may have obtained their strength through a number of different ways. First, canny choices of farming plots allowed an individual or group of individuals to systematically gain an upper hand in crop production. Second, good alliance-building tactics may have been performed to stave off attacks by competing factions. And, lastly, healthy offspring would have ensured that an individual's lineage was secure for long after they were gone, allowing strong hereditary associations to control the fate of the dynasty. The theory of reciprocity may have been utilized by one member of the community to gain control over others. For instance, if an individual farmer might have had an overly abundant crop one season, that farmer might have been able to use the excess food to hold a community feast, in which he may have been able to persuade others subconsciously, using the theory of reciprocity, to obtain from them labor or goods that the farmer than may have been able to use to slowly gain an economic advantage over his peers. It is also thought that a member of one of these early Mesoamerican communities may have also claimed to possess spiritual and/or supernatural powers. This would enable an individual to gain a foothold up in social ranking, as that individual alone would become the only link for ordinary members of a society to communicate with the spirit world. Since spirituality played such an important role in ancient Mesoamerica, claims, whether truly valid or not, to possessing supernatural powers would be a crucial determinant of higher social ranking within a society. Some or all of these factors are believed to have directly contributed to the
social stratification Social stratification refers to a society's categorization of its people into groups based on socioeconomic factors like wealth, income, race, education, ethnicity, gender, occupation, social status, or derived power (social and political ...
at San José Mogote. It is not known exactly when these events may have occurred, although it is believed to be a gradual development instead of an overnight procedure. Once San José Mogote became a chiefdom, it began to use its authority to gain control over local communities. Supported by smaller villages, like the tiny farming community of Tierras Largas, located about to the southeast, San Jose Mogote became known as a sort of "capital", or central area of trade and command, for dozens of surrounding dwellings. In order for San José Mogote to attain this regional, economic and political dominance, in all likely events, for San José Mogote itself to become a regional leader, the people of San José Mogote must have first elected an individual powerful enough to influence and persuade people living in local villages to cooperate with them. The scale of buildings and the materials imported to erect them clearly indicate that San José Mogote's leaders were able to control people in the surrounding countryside.


Structures, size, and population

San José Mogote had many small dwellings dotting its 20
hectare The hectare (; SI symbol: ha) is a non-SI metric unit of area equal to a square with 100-metre sides (1 hm2), that is, square metres (), and is primarily used in the measurement of land. There are 100 hectares in one square kilometre. ...
(c. 50 acres) landscape that were used to house around 1,000 people, or roughly half the population of the entire Valley of Oaxaca during the San José Phase. The construction of a special men's meeting hall was found inside the boundaries of San José Mogote and was evidently rebuilt many times over the years. Structures 1 and 2 at San José Mogote together form an impressive, multi-level public-scale building that is identified as a place where an ethnically diverse community may have been able to come together to discuss important issues of the time.


Innovations and art

Iron ore Iron ores are rocks and minerals from which metallic iron can be economically extracted. The ores are usually rich in iron oxides and vary in color from dark grey, bright yellow, or deep purple to rusty red. The iron is usually found in the f ...
s were a local product of the Valley of Oaxaca. Because San José Mogote was the central area of trade in this region, it utilized its rich resource of iron ore to manufacture polished stone mirrors, many of which have been found as far as the Olmec Gulf Coast Heartland. Two primary motifs are found on pottery vessels from the Valley of Oaxaca: the forces of earth and sky, symbolically represented by earthquakes or lightning, respectively. Small villages tended to have pottery vessels with lightning, or sky, motifs. Tierras Largas had pottery that favored earthquake, or earth, motifs. And San José Mogote had a mixture of both. Crop productivity may have seen an increase at San José Mogote due to the initiation of two simple irrigation techniques: Pot irrigation and Irrigation ditches. Pot irrigation involved digging many shallow wells in order to accumulate water, and then scooping up that water to use on surrounding plants. Irrigation ditches were small-scale systems used to tap into streams in order to allow water to flow over the plants.


Monument 3

A flat, carved stone, designated Monument 3, was placed as a doorstep to the ceremonial structure (Price and Feinman 2005, p. 321). The carving is of a naked man with "a puffy, slitted eye, lips drawn back in a grimace, overall posture of vulnerability ... rounded elements on the chest and abdomen suggesting the guts after disembowelment."Evans (2004, p.188). Glyphs depict drops of blood and a possible
calendar A calendar is a system of organizing days. This is done by giving names to periods of time, typically days, weeks, months and years. A calendar date, date is the designation of a single and specific day within such a system. A calendar is ...
day-name "1 Earthquake." These are the earliest Zapotec glyphs known to exist. While personal bloodletting was suggested by the stingray spines and similar objects made of obsidian or jade, the figure depicted on Monument 3 shows sacrifice of a victim, probably a captive, on a societal level. In a later time period, monuments carved with similar figures, called ''danzantes'' (dancers), were present at Monte Albán.Price and Feinman (2005, p. 322). Later the public structures on Mound 1 were rebuilt as a residence for a high-ranking family. By 500 BCE, with the emergence of Monte Albán as the area's main city, San José Mogote's 1000 years of dominance ended, and it was relegated to the status of a lesser community that fell under Monte Albán's control. Some of the artifacts from the San José Mogote archaeological site may be viewed in the town of San José Mogote's Community Museum, which is located in the El Cacique Hacienda.


Notes


References

*, p. 122. * * {{DEFAULTSORT:San Jose Mogote Zapotec sites Former populated places in Mexico Archaeological sites in Oaxaca 16th-century BC establishments Populated places established in the 2nd millennium BC