1. Case Studies-Early Formative
San Jose Mogote
Puerto Escondido

2. Case Study-San Jose Mogote
Valley of Oaxaca, ca B.C.
Covered 5 acres (1 acre=1/2 hectare), and contained several public buildings.
Early maize, avocado, and other cultigens for subsistence, but also wild plants and animals.
Household Units
Houses contained braziers, earth ovens, manos and metates, ceramic jars.
Outside the house were bell-shaped pits, burials.

3. San Jose Mogote

4. Village Activities Magnetite mirror production
Magnetite polished into mirrors and traded.
Manufactured in areas 1-2 sq meters, suggesting individual craftsmanship.
Unused iron ore, quartz or hematite for polishing, oyster “mirror holders”.
In one household, four stratigraphic levels contained this material suggesting four generations of manufacture.

6. Artifacts from San Jose Mogote

7. Artifacts from San Jose Mogote

8. Non-residential Architecture
Nonresidential constructions can tell us much about societies.
size and construction can tell us about available labor and poser to organize.
form or shape can tell us the activities that took place.
*i.e. an open plaza or “danceground” would have very different participants than the enclosed ritual space in temple on top of mounds.

9. Hilltop ceremonial center

10. Hilltop temple ruins

11. Public Architecture: “Men’s Houses”

12. First Writing
The earliest writing appears at the site of San Jose Mogote in the form of a glyph.
Between two buildings is a corridor in which a threshold stone is placed so that anyone passing through the passage would have to step over the stone. The carving depicts a dead captive with blood flowing from a chest wound and between his legs is a name glyphs meaning 'I Motion' in the 260-day calendar of the Zapotec.
The Valley of Oaxaca was a place of competition between chiefs and these chiefs were not happy to merely show the dead captives in stone.
They also included the captives calendrical name. Thus, Zapotec writing was born from competition and later was used as a weapon for gaining power.

13. San José Mogote: From Monument 3 ca. 500 B.C.

14. Early Warfare A radiocarbon date of 1500 BC, from a house fire.
It is probable that several hundred people lived there and approximately18 other villages existed in the valley.
A fire also burned a palisade surrounding part of San José Mogote.
The palisade was dated to 1300 BC, which is the oldest date for a fortification.

15. Burnt Postholes from the Palisade

16. Puerto Escondido
Puerto Escondido consists of several large mounds formed by residential debris.
“They are found in the central part of the valley, in the alluvial zones adjacent to the major rivers”.
This information is from a web site compiled by Marilyn Dispensa and John Henderson (Cornell University).

17. Location of Site

18. Puerto Escondido Four, low dirt mounds.
Several house structures, some of which were burned with pottery, features and other artifacts.
The pottery is particularly interesting because it is similar to ceramics from the Olmec culture-located on the coast of Vera Cruz.

19. Mound Profile

20. Hearth

21. Plaster

22. Excavation View

23. Pottery

24. Figurines
Drawing of a small solid hand-modelled figurine depicting a person, probably female, with elaborated hairdo or headdress

25. Figurines, con’d.
Drawing of a large solid hand-modelled figurine depicting a person wearing a necklace

26. Jewelry
Jewelry: circular green jade bead; shell "sequin" (presumably sewn to fabric); fragment of worked jade light green jade (probably a piece of jewelry in the process of manufacture); blue-green jade pendant in the form of a tooth (