Joseph B. Mountjoy

Antiquity, Interpretation, and Stylistic Evolution of Petroglyps in Western New Mexico

New data from two sites in the municipality of San Bias, Nayarit, indicate that the practice of pecking petroglyphs in West Mexico is older than it has been possible to establish in previous studies. Petroglyphs at the La Coba site appear firmly dated to the Los Cocos phase (A.D. 200-600), and petroglyphs at the El Conchal site seem attributable to the Early Ixtldn phase (300 B.C.-A.D. 200) occupation. Hypotheses are offered regarding stylistic evolution of the pecked designs and their interpretation.

An Interpretation of the Pictographs at La Peña Pintada, Jalisco, Mexico

A recently discovered sheltered rock scar covered with red pictographs, in Jalisco, west Mexico, is a major addition to the rather meager data on pictographs in Mesoamerica. It appears to contain a complex set of data pertaining to the cosmology of the relatively unknown Indians who inhabited the Jalisco coast during the last Pre-Hispanic period. Analysis of the scar has incorporated both the artistic symbolism of the nearby Huichol Indians, and concepts developed through archaeoastronomy. This analysis suggests that the ceiling pictographs record the use of sky transits of the sun, Venus, or the constellation Orion as wet-season/dry-season calendrical markers. Wall pictographs show the sun on the mountainous horizon, below which is the earth filled with symbols of plants and animals; among these stand shamans calling down the life-giving rain from the god(s) of the sky. I also explore the possibility that one of the ceiling pictographs is a record of the appearance of the Crab supernova in the sky in A.D. 1054.

BURIAL PRACTICES DURING THE LATE FORMATIVE/EARLY CLASSIC IN THE BANDERAS VALLEY AREA OF COASTAL WEST MEXICO

In this article we report on the results of our attempts to locate and study shaft-and-chamber tombs in the Municipality of Puerto Vallarta on the southern (Jalisco) side of the Banderas Valley of coastal West Mexico and to place these tombs in the broader context of burial practices in this area during a time corresponding to the Late Preclassic and Early Classic of Mesoamerica. We located and studied nine sites where shaft-and-chamber tombs had reportedly been discovered and looted, but here we focus on three (El Reparito, El Pozo de Doña Amparo, and La Pedrera) where we were able to excavate un-looted as well as partially looted shaft-and-chamber tombs. In the process we obtained evidence of (1) the location and type of soil selected for the excavation of such tombs; (2) variation in the form and content of the shafts and tomb chambers; (3) the tools used for digging and the manner of sealing such tombs; (4) chronological placement of the tombs; (5) burial of infants, sub-adults, and adults in the chambers; (5) pathology in the pre-Hispanic population responsible for such tombs; (6) cremation of bodies and their curation for different periods of time before incineration; and (7) alternative forms of interment along with shaft-and-chamber tombs in the same cemetery. Also, the data obtained lend support for the idea that the Ameca River and the Banderas Valley formed a “soft frontier” at this time between fairly distinct pre-Hispanic cultural traditions found to the north and to the south of the river, an area in which there was some intermixing of these traditions.

UNDERSTANDING THE WRAPPED BUNDLE BURIALS OF WEST MEXICO: A CONTEXTUAL ANALYSIS OF MIDDLE FORMATIVE MORTUARY PRACTICES

Abstract This article reports on the discovery of an unusual type of secondary burial found at two Middle Formative sites in the Mascota valley of Jalisco, West Mexico. We examine these burials within a Middle and Late Formative period context as well as a broader temporal context of funerary customs and mortuary programs involving secondary-type burials. Tightly wrapped, elaborately processed bundled burials were recovered at the cemeteries of El Embocadero II and Los Tanques. We report on the human remains from both sites and examine burial context and biological identity to seek explanations. The individuals selected for this burial treatment are not associated with any markers of high status. These burials may represent a different ethnic, familial, community or ancestral identity, and we consider the broader secondary burial phenomenon as the possible expression of a ritual of seasonal interment associated with the use of a mortuary hut to curate and process the bodies.

Anthropomorphic Peg-Based Sculptures from the Banderas Valley of Coastal West Mexico.

Both the accidental as well as the purposeful discovery of a large number of anthropomorphic peg-based sculptures in the Banderas Valley in the states of Jalisco and Nayarit during the 1990s have provided a corpus of contextual and iconographic data that, along with conquest-period ethnographic data, allow for an assessment of the date and function of such figures. In addition, because of the similarity of these sculptural figures to ones of comparable dates in Central America, the case for significant pre-Hispanic coastal contacts between the two areas is reinforced.

A Dated Cruciform Artifact

Excavations at a site on the outskirts of San Bias, on the south-central coast of Nayarit, Mexico (1967-8) yielded an obsidian cruciform artifact in stratigraphic context, associated with artifacts of the locally defined San Blas complex. Radiocarbon analysis of marine shell samples collected above, below, and two meters to the north of the obsidian cruciform, has produced raw determinations of 2675±80, 2640±85, and 2605±80 radiocarbon years respectively. This is one of the rare instances in which a cruciform has been found in fairly reliable dated context, adding to present under-standings of cruciform date as well as distribution, potentially important for problems of West Mexico-American Southwest prehispanic contacts.