Archaeological Survey in the Coastal Chontalpa de Oaxaca, México

The Prehispanic Settlement of Huamelula

The most salient feature of the ancient settlement at Huamelula is a civic-ceremonial compound that includes two monumental mounds, a ballgame court (Figure 11, shown above and Figure 12, shown below) and the remains of two other monumental buildings that were recently destroyed.⁵  The pottery surface distribution around Huamelula indicates that RH03 El Recibimiento and RH04 La Powa were contemporaneous wards or hamlets set off from the civic-ceremonial center, while a larger portion of the residential zone is buried underneath the modern village.

We mapped the remaining civic-compound and excavated eight stratigraphic test pits within the compound and in the adjacent residential zones (Figure 13). The test pits Op1 and Op5 were dug next to mound M2 and revealed the earliest traces of elaborate architecture in the Río Huamelula valley. In test pit Op1, a lime plaster floor sealed a shallow deposit of burnished pottery sherds and marine shells at a depth of about 1.6 m (Figure 14, shown below). An associated piece of charcoal was dated with AMS radiocarbon dating and produced a calibrated date between A.D. 210 and 410.⁶  It would place the earliest possible origin for the construction of the plaster floor to the Early Classic period (A.D. 300-600). Conical tripod vessels with solid slab supports found on the surface near elaborate architecture at RH01, RH03, and RH08 are also known from the Classic period (A.D. 300-900) of the central Oaxacan coast (Brockington 1966), the Isthmus of Tehuantepec (Wallrath 1967) and the northern Maya lowlands (Vallo 2000). At the coast this pottery style continued possibly even into the Early Postclassic period (A.D. 900-1200; see Brockington 1966; Brockington and Long 1974).

In the Postclassic period, the site sectors of Huamelula either continued to be occupied or were reoccupied. In addition, large residential zones had developed to the north and east of Barrio La Soledad. If the extensive residential zones of RH11 La Mishi and RH13 Mish Cristo are not merely a product of internally shifting residences, they would indicate that the population grew in size and developed additional wards. Furthermore, we detected isolated residences or hamlets at RH02, RH06, RH09, and RH10 that revealed Postclassic as well as colonial pottery.

While all available data suggest that Huamelula grew in size during the Late Postclassic, it seems that the Classic period civic-ceremonial compound at Barrio La Soledad had lost its original function by the Late Postclassic period. At the northern end of the ballgame court, a stone alignment outlines a small building of unknown date on top of the already eroded court floor. If this feature is not of a colonial or early modern date, it could reflect a Postclassic rearrangement of older materials and space.

The residential structures adjacent to the west of the civic-ceremonial compound revealed pottery only diagnostic for the Late Postclassic or Early Colonial period. There, test pit Op6 uncovered a refuse dump associated with residential house outlines (see Figure 13). AMS analysis of a charcoal sample from that deposit produced a calibrated date of between A.D. 1420 and 1500. The two radiocarbon dates mark two phases of occupation in and around the modern village of San Pedro Huamelula. The earlier one probably coincides with the development of the civic-ceremonial compound during the Classic period and its function as a center of the ritual ballgame cult in the Late Classic.

The Postclassic civic-ceremonial center may have moved to where nowadays the center of modern San Pedro Huamelula extends; as some locals said, archaeological remains were found underneath the parochial church of San Pedro. The colonial churches of San Pedro and San Sebastian (see Garrido Cardona 1995) appear to mark the early colonial cabecera, as outlined by our site RH12 Huamelula Centro.

The Early Postclassic pottery is not well distinguished from earlier and later ceramics; the ceramic classification by Brockington and Long (1974) could imply that pottery assemblages from the Late Classic and Early Postclassic were in fact quite similar. Consequently, it could be argued that Huamelula continued to be settled during the Early Postclassic period, but that the associated pottery is not discernible. On the other hand, the lack of any well-defined ceramic distinction may indicate that the Late Classic and the Late Postclassic occupation were separated by an episode of abandonment or demographic decline at Huamelula. In such a scenario, the Classic period civic-ceremonial compound of RH01 would appear to have been reused for domestic purposes and perhaps burials by a different, Late Postclassic society.

Endnotes

5. Several years ago, a monumental mound close to the ballgame court was bulldozed to give way for a baseball ground. Thanks to the efforts of Sara de León Chávez, former director of the Centro Coordinador INI at Huamelula, school kids collected a remarkable set of artifacts from the affected site. This material constitutes the main collection of the Museo Chontal at San Pedro Huamelula, including the hacha-style stone sculptures and large vessel fragments.

6. The AMS radiocarbon dating and calibration of two charcoal samples (B160, B197) was conducted by Beta Analytic Inc., Miami.

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