Los Guachimontones is the largest Late Formative to Classic period (300 BCE to 450/500 CE) pre-Columbian archaeological site in the state of Jalisco. Situated in the hills above the town of Teuchitlán that provides the namesake for the culture that built the site, Los Guachimontones is part of the Agave Landscape and Ancient Industrial Facilities of Tequila UNESCO world heritage site and a major tourist attraction within the Tequila Valleys.
Los Guachimontones is one of several dozen Teuchitlán Culture sites within the Tequila Valleys, though it is by far the largest site in terms of both the number and size of its ceremonial buildings. These buildings, called guachimontones (singular, guachimontón) after the site name, are bulls-eye shaped buildings consisting of several distinct architectural elements that constitute a whole structure. These unique buildings are found primarily in the Tequila Valleys with other examples found in northern Jalisco near Bolaños, Guanajuato to the east, and Colima to the south.
The Teuchitlán culture that built the site was one of several cultures in West Mexico during the Late Formative to Classic periods that participated in the shaft tomb tradition in which some, but not all, people were interred underground. Sometimes mortuary goods accompanied the deceased with objects such as ceramic vessels, hollow and solid figurines, shell ornaments, conch shell trumpets, jadeite, and ground stone objects.
While Los Guachimontones was founded in the Late Formative period, there is some evidence of a Middle Formative occupation suggesting some temporal continuity at the site. Major construction began in the Late Formative and continued into the Early Classic. Monumental construction appears to have tapered off in the Late Classic with a decline in population followed by a drastic decline in the Epiclassic. Population levels rebounded to their Early Classic levels in the Postclassic, but with no monumental construction at or near the site.
UNESCO World Heritage List
UNESCO has added the whole region, including the nearby tequila distilleries, to its World Heritage List. Due to heavy looting, the site was also included on the 2008 World Monuments Watch list of 100 Most Endangered Sites.
Research history
The earliest documentation of Los Guachimontones comes from Victorian artist Adela Breton. Breton traveled through the Tequila Valleys region in the 1890s. During her travels, near the town of San Marcos Breton documented a mound in the process of being destroyed that contained several burials, hollow ceramic figures, and shell ornaments. This mound was likely the central altar for a guachimonton, but with its complete destruction, we may never know exactly what the mound was. Breton continued east stopping at the town of Teuchitlán in which she documented the site of Los Guachimontones. Breton took three photographs of the site, created two sketch maps, and collected a number of obsidian artifacts from a Postclassic workshop. These materials are now stored at the Bristol City Museum and Art Gallery in Bristol, United Kingdom. Unfortunately, Breton did not publish her maps or photographs and the unique architectural form of the guachimontones went unnoticed for several decades until the late 1960s.
Following shortly after Breton, anthropologist Carl Lumholtz journeyed through the Tequila Valleys as part of his travels south from Phoenix, Arizona through the Sierra Madre Occidental to Michoacán. While Lumholtz did not record a visit to Los Guachimontones itself, did acquire ceramic vessels from the nearby town of Estanzuela to the southeast of Teuchitlán. Of some importance are the photos Lumholtz took of Laguna Magdalena showing the extent of some of its shoreline before the lake was largely drained in the 1930s to create arable land. Laguna Magdalena would have provided important lacustrine resources to the Teuchitlán culture in the form of fish, reeds, lake fowl, and other goods.