Las Bocas, Puebla, Archaeological Project

Preface

The archaeological region known as Las Bocas is located in the southern portion of the state of Puebla, 7 km east of Izúcar de Matamoros, along the road that links this county capital with the town of San Juan Epatlán, in the vicinity of the town of San José Las Bocas.

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During our research, we were able to corroborate that the pre-Hispanic settlements of the Formative Period are found in the region of Caballo Pintado, located in the fluvial terrace contiguous to the NW slope of the Teponaztle hill, at the SW edge of the town (Photo 1, shown above, and Photo 2, below). Therefore, and even though in literature the site is widely known as Las Bocas, we have chosen to call it Las Bocas-Caballo Pintado.

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Prior to our archaeological exploration works at the site, the only official information available regarding this region was found on Report No. 5, a two-page report submitted by David Grove to the head of pre-Hispanic Monuments in 1967, file B/311.47 (Z47-39)(02)/-1, Technical Archive, Coordination of Archaeology, INAH.  In this report, Grove says that he cancelled his plans for excavation at Las Bocas because Román Piña Chan, from the National Museum of Anthropology, was simultaneously conducting excavations at the site area locally known as Caballo Pintado, the results of which we failed to find in any written report.

The archaeological site of Las Bocas-Caballo Pintado is one of the few agricultural villages from the Formative Period that still exists in México’s central altiplano (Paillés, 1995) as most of them have disappeared, devoured largely by the urban patches (Sanders, 1997); such was the case with Tlatilco (Piña Chan, 1958; García Moll, 1989) and Tlapacoya (Porter, 1967; Niederberger, 1976; 1987) in the greater urban zone of Mexico City, Gualupita (Vaillant and Vaillant, 1934) in Cuernavaca, and others whose past existence we are perhaps unaware.

Prior to our explorations at Las Bocas-Caballo Pintado, the ceramic objects considered to have "originated" at this archaeological locality represented the sole information used to evaluate the Olmec dilemma in southern Puebla and its impact on the contemporary communities of the Mexican Basin (Paillés, op. cit.).

Due to its particular geographical location in the Mexican central altiplano, in the middle of the routes that link the Gulf Coast, Guerrero, Morelos and Oaxaca, one of the project proposals was to understand the strategic role that this village probably played during the Formative Period as a place of exchange for raw materials and manufactured goods.

The site of Las Bocas is so far the most disseminated archaeological place from the Formative Period in the entire state of Puebla (SEP, 1998: 82-83), as are the materials that have seemingly originated there, since most of them, in spite of having been taken out in illegal excavations, are considered "examples of the Olmec presence outside the Gulf Coast’s nuclear zone" (Grove, 1996: 105-117).

As stated above, the strategic geographic location in the midst of the major exchange routes that linked the altiplano, the Gulf Coast, Guerrero and Oaxaca, is reflected in the archaeological materials recovered during the 1998 excavations and the subsequent explorations conducted in 2000, many of which are undoubtedly Olmec in style (Paillés, 1999; Paillés, Velasquez and Bojalil, 2000).

Although the precise location of the site was not known, it had been previously mentioned in countless publications, but it was only following Michael Coe’s publication of The Jaguar’s Children in 1965, in which a vast collection of archaeological objects from Las Bocas, mostly ceramics, was first illustrated, that the site acquired international fame.

With the exception of the excavations we have previously referred to, conducted by Piña Chan at the site of Caballo Pintado during 1967, which included only four test units the results of which have remained unpublished, we can assert that it was only in 1995, when we first inspected the site, that the site was given official attention by INAH.  I would also like to say that the proposal for the Las Bocas Archaeological Project was first submitted by me in 1994; however, it wasn't until 1997 when INAH finally granted financial support in the amount of $30,000 to undertake the First Field Season.

In 1997, as a result of surface surveys and of the archaeological materials recovered, we believed that the archaeological site extended towards the southwest of the town along two fluvial terraces of the Atotonilco River, of which the one contiguous to the Teponaztle hill yielded a larger concentration of materials, and was therefore surveyed and delimited. Thus, we considered this terrace place at the foothills of the Teponaztle, locally known as Caballo Pintado, to be the settlement’s nuclear zone, without excluding a future inclusion of the lower terrace; therefore, and to protect it, an initial delimitation proposal for the archaeological site was submitted, which included a surface of 18,619.91 square meters (Paillés et al., 1997).

Throughout the Third Field Season, 2000, we realized that the settlements of the Formative Period were located on the first fluvial terrace of the location known as Caballo Pintado, with no occupation of the lower terrace on the banks of the Atotonilco River. Therefore, and following the last explorations carried out in 2000, we decided to call this archaeological site: Las Bocas-Caballo Pintado.

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We noticed that the archaeological materials recovered in 1997 at the lower terrace actually came from Caballo Pintado, and were dumped on this lower terrace when the surrounding watering channel was opened with heavy machinery. This has happened because the past two rainy seasons were very intense and have considerably augmented the flow of the Atotonilco River, eroding a portion of the lower terrace and revealing large cuts in the terrain. These cuts exhibited the natural stratigraphy only, and no evidence of contexts or archaeological materials (Photo 3, shown above, and Photo 4).

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Prior to undertaking the exploration works we had requested authorization from the land owner, who mentioned that he had not worked the land at Caballo Pintado for the past two years, however, due to the lack of funding the opportunity to carry out the Third Field Season in 1999 was lost and we had to postpone until this year, 2000, when we were granted financial support by FAMSI, Inc.  Since the land surface was clean, we were able to notice an E-W slope, in addition to the N-S slope recorded during our 1998 season (Paillés, 1999).

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