Archaeological Survey in the Coastal Chontalpa de Oaxaca, México

PARH Survey

In order to identify ancient settlement remains in the Río Huamelula River, a team of five locals and I walked over a continuous block of c. 14 km² in and around the village of San Pedro Huamelula (Figure 3, shown above). Our survey field walking achieved a full coverage except for the private lots in the village center of Huamelula. Our goal was to record and map all detectable archaeological surface features in the survey area. After that, we made cursory visits to the sites surveyed by Brockington around 1970 (Brockington et al. 1974; Brockington and Long 1974), Hualampamo (RH09) and Hualakgoce (RH08). There, we recorded the position of surface features and took reference sample collections of artifacts. Furthermore, we visited previously unrecorded sites indicated by local informants. Local Informants also gave us additional information on the distribution of archaeological sites outside the surveyed area.

We recorded 91 archaeological surface features in the entire study area. Terrace retention walls were most common on the slopes of lower foothills. Less frequent were the foundation walls of probably domestic buildings on the terraces or flat areas. Monumental mounds were massive concentrations of stones and dirt with a minimum height of three meters. Mounds of one to two meters height were recorded as low mounds. The identification of architectural surface remains was restricted to the foothills around the Río Huamelula valley. In the lower alluvial valley bottom and the coastal plain, any existing features may have either been disintegrated by flooding or covered by alluvial deposits.

Archaeological sites and site sections were defined according to the clustering of architectural features, using an arbitrary distance of 250 m to 300 m between isolated or clustered architectural remains. We recorded three village-size settlement sites, two of which can be identified as early colonial Huamelula and Astata (see Table 1, below). While San Pedro Huamelula remained in its river valley location and grew from the Classic period until the Spanish conquest, the coastal population apparently shifted their main center various times to different locations. It seems as if Hualampamo, Hualakgoce, and Guapote were the consecutive predecessor settlements of modern Santiago Astata. In addition to these village-size settlements, we identified several associated barrios (wards) and hamlets and around Huamelula.

Artifacts were continuously scattered in varying density in and between sites. Due to time and technical constraints, we had to take non-probabilistic sample collections. We concentrated our collections around architectural features in order to associate them with the pottery’s chronology. Within a judgmentally chosen collection area, the team picked up every sherd or other artifact visible on the surface. The artifact inventory was mainly composed of pottery and obsidian fragments plus a few specimens of other stone tools, figurines or minerals.³

Ceramics were collected as indicators of the relative chronological relationships between the sites and site sectors. Their chronological assessment was to be achieved by:

1. identifying diagnostic index types in reference to Brockington and Long’s (1974) previous ceramic classification and pottery studies from outside areas, and

2. correlating diagnostic pottery attributes to those of the pottery that had been stratigraphically distinguished in the test excavations at RH01 Huamelula-La Soledad.

Endnote

3. Reference collections of the retrieved pottery, as well as all other clay and lithic artifacts are now stored at the storage facilities of the Centro INAH Oaxaca at the Ex-Convento Cuilapan, Oaxaca, and at the "Museo Chontal," Centro Coordinador Indigenista (Instituto Nacional Indigenista), San Pedro Huamelula, Oaxaca.

Previous Page  |  Table of Contents  |  Next Page

Return to top of page