The site of Guiengola is an example of one of the settlements built by the Zapotecs during their fourteenth- to fifteenth-century migration to the Southern Isthmus of Tehuantepec. Although Guiengola is well known in the ethnohistorical record as being the place where the Mexica armies were defeated by Zapotec forces during the late fifteenth century, the full extension of the site was previously unknown. Despite evidence of a dense population at the site, it has been mistakenly characterized as a fortress for housing soldiers and troops from the nearby town of Tehuantepec. Here, I present the research of the Guiengola Archeological Project, which conducted a lidar scan and archaeological surveys between 2018 and 2023. In this article, I share a comprehensive map of Guiengola, a Postclassic Mesoamerican city. My analysis identifies a large settlement that covered 360 ha and included a walled system of fortifications, an internal road network, and a hierarchically organized city. The findings of this project expand our understanding of the variations and social divisions in the city's internal urban organization, which in turn, allow us to deepen our comprehension of the transition to the Early Colonial barrio organization of Tehuantepec.

This article analyzes the assemblages of humans and other-than-humans that animated the sacred landscape of Cerro de la Virgen, a hilltop site occupied during the Formative period (1800 BC–AD 250) in the lower Río Verde Valley of coastal Oaxaca, Mexico. Commensalism in the region increased markedly in scope and complexity throughout the Formative period, culminating in the region's first polity at AD 100. Feasting practices became relatively standardized, but the placement of objects and bodies in public architecture—a set of collective practices associated with the vital forces that animated the cosmos—varied considerably from site to site during the late Terminal Formative period (150 BC–AD 250). Lower Verde scholars have argued that these idiosyncrasies reflect the myriad collective identities of the region's hinterland communities, a pattern rooted in local affiliations that may have conflicted with an expanding regional identity centered at the urban center of Río Viejo. I augment this discussion by highlighting the role that the materiality of the landscape, present before humans even occupied the region, played in the construction of collective identity. I develop an interpretive approach that pays special attention to Indigenous concepts of ontology, particularly those related to animacy and its transference, and uses the semiosis of American philosopher Charles Peirce to elucidate meaning from deposits of cached objects. The animate qualities assembled through fired clay and chiseled stone at Cerro de la Virgen afforded a ritual pattern that was unique in coastal Oaxaca at the end of the Formative period.

This article examines the word histories of 12 nouns (eight zoonyms, two other lifeform names, and two toponyms) in Mixtec, a shallow or emergent language family of Mesoamerica. It argues that these nouns—now morphologically opaque—are fused compounds that arose from the Mixtec vocabulary of the mantic count of 260 days, a temporal organization that was part of the common cultural heritage of pre-Hispanic Mesoamerican peoples. With the European colonization and persecution of Mesoamerican religious practices, the use of the mantic count was abandoned. It was at this time that the compounds would have been demotivated; that is, the internal morphological structure would have become inaccessible to speakers who could no longer relate it to the mantic cycle. This then enriched the lexicon, creating etymological pairs for the same, or similar, referents. It is suggested that the survival of the eight zoonyms may have to do with their use in the context of omens.

At the crossroads of scholarship scrutinizing digital religion and pilgrimage, this article analyzes the use of Facebook, YouTube, and Instagram by devotees of Our Lady of Juquila, a Marian image in Oaxaca, Mexico. It combines the close reading of content and descriptive online ethnography with web scraping and data analysis. The article sketches these platforms’ role in pious expression, virtual community building, pilgrimage group communication, and devotional marketing, tracking closely the intertwining of religion and commerce, particularly religious tourism promotion. The data reveal that Facebook serves as the most popular platform for Juquila’s devotees, thanks to its open, pro-sharing design and flexibility regarding group formation. As a result, it has become the essential hub of devotee expression. YouTube, thanks to its particular affordances, has become an ideal niche for narrating travel to Juquila’s shrine and a showcase of the networked nature of devotion as users borrow tools, tropes, and expressive techniques from many sources, religious and secular. Instagram is the least popular platform among devotees because its design is less open and amenable to group communication. It does, however, facilitate both smaller, more intimate community formation, as well as shallow but significant community building on popular public pages run by religious tourism promoters hosting attractive, easily sharable, free stockpiles of images, memes, and devotional slogans. In the end, social media use appears to be stoking pilgrimage in Mexico and setting the stage for significant cultural change in the future as new tools, emerging shared devotional aesthetics, and media logics reshape religious expression and devotee communication. It is also becoming an unparalleled historical archive of popular religious culture.

On September 28, 1673, Catalina de los Reyes declared before the Royal Tribunal Court that she refused to surrender her property in Oaxaca's provincial capital of Antequera. Her land dispute with the bishop of Oaxaca shows how African-descended women navigated the court system in colonial Mexico and negotiated their social status in this Spanish colonial society. This article examines race and gender in colonial Mexico. It focuses on the ways in which local authorities attempted to confiscate one of the most valuable properties in Antequera from an African-descended woman named Catalina, as well as the strategies she used to challenge the social hierarchy in the city. By analyzing judicial records along with parish and census data, I argue that colonial women such as Catalina contested elite expectations of gender and race to redefine or secure their social status in colonial Oaxaca. My findings show that although colonial authorities marginalized African-descended women such as Catalina, these colonial women understood the judicial system in colonial Mexico, confronted authorities, and fought to retain their properties and their place in the social order. This article thus advances our understanding of the wide range of roles, experiences, and subjectivities of African-descended women in Spanish America.

Pre-hispanic ballgames have an extensive temporal depth and geographical breadth across Mesoamerica, with over 1,500 ball courts recorded on 1,200 archaeological sites in Mexico alone. It is likely that ballgames played critical but variable roles in how communities related to each other. Most interpretations emphasize ballgames as cosmological rituals and legitimation practices exclusive to elites, perhaps often overlooking the more mundane sociopolitical processes and reasons why they carried such critical meaning for people of all classes and statuses. Ethnographic research on modern ballgames played by Indigenous and mestizo communities today can helpfully provide some insights or maybe deeper understandings into ancient ballgame practices and their relation to Mesoamerican communities. While modern games are not isomorphic with the ancient games, the duration of these traditions underscores their continuing importance and their relativity to current research. In this article I present the results of an ethnographic study of the modern ballgame pelota mixteca de hule (Mixtec rubber ballgame) in the southern Mexican state of Oaxaca. Considering the results from the ethnographic data, I then discuss an archaeological case study in the Nejapa Valley of southeastern Oaxaca where numerous ballcourts were recently documented over the past decade.

Anthracotheres are generalised artiodactyls that have an extensive record in the Cenozoic of Eurasia and Africa. In North America they have been collected in middle Eocene to early Miocene localities from the California Coast, the Great Plains and the Gulf Coast of the United States, with a single record from the early Miocene of Panama. Here we report few specimens from the early Oligocene (Ar1) Iniyoo Local Fauna of north-western Oaxaca, and the earliest Miocene of Simojovel de Allende, in northern Chiapas. This material has diverse features that indicate they belonged to the bothriodontine Arretotherium, such as selenodont cristids associated with the protoconid and hypoconid, the absence of a premetacristid, and the crenulated enamel. They share with Arretotherium acridens and Arretotherium meridionale the absence of a mesiolingual metacristid, but their general morphology and size indicate a close relationship to Ar. meridionale. Nevertheless, in absence of better-preserved specimens, we decided not to assign the fossil material to this species. Specimens from Oaxaca and Chiapas are the first records of anthracotheres in Mexico. These new records link the previous ones from temperate North America and tropical Central America and indicate that Anthracotheriidae had a very wide geographical distribution in North America during the Palaeogene and the Neogene. Additionally, they represent the southern-most records of Arretotherium in North America during the Oligocene and the early Miocene.

Se presentan los resultados del recorrido de superficie realizado en la comunidad de Santo Domingo Tonaltepec en la Mixteca Alta de Oaxaca, en el que se identificaron y registraron 43 nuevos sitios arqueológicos datados a las fases Ramos (alrededor de los 300 aC hasta los 250 dC), Las Flores (aproximadamente 250-900 dC) y Natividad (aproximadamente 900-1521 dC). Estos nuevos sitios se contextualizan en el ámbito regional al relacionarlos con los sitios urbanos identificados para cada una de estas fases en los valles adyacentes de Coixtlahuaca, Nochixtlán, Tamazulapan y Teposcolula. Basados en estos datos, consideramos que Tonaltepec se encontró relativamente aislado y fuera del control de los sitios urbanos tempranos durante Ramos; que se transformó en un asentamiento fronterizo entre las entidades políticas durante la fase Las Flores; y que aprovechó los beneficios de localizarse sobre la ruta de comunicación entre importantes reinos mixtecos durante Natividad. La localización de Tonaltepec, relativamente lejos de los principales valles, pero a la vez entre ellos, le otorgó ventajas que supo aprovechar a través de la historia de desarrollo político de la región.

In this article, we present the most significant results of the Monte Albán Geophysical Archaeology Project. Using ground-penetrating radar, gradiometry, and electrical resistance, we carried out a systematic survey of the site's Main Plaza to identify buried prehispanic features that might shed light on Monte Albán's early history. The most important discoveries include three buried structures dating between the Danibaan (500–300 BC) and Nisa phases (100 BC–AD 100). We argue that the largest structure, measuring 18 × 18 m, was probably a temple platform and that all three of the structures were razed and buried by the end of the Nisa phase at the latest. Furthermore, we contend that these events were part of a major renovation and expansion of the site's Main Plaza that occurred during a pivotal period of dramatic sociopolitical transformation in the Zapotec capital.

This article explores the tension between multicultural legal reforms and the liberal state-building project in present-day Mexico. Specifically, it traces the process by which the Mexican state challenged and eventually forced changes to customary restrictions on women in public life in some indigenous communities in the southern state of Oaxaca. The study argues that the act of formalizing autonomy for indigenous communities, in the context of Mexico’s homogenizing neoliberal state, had the unanticipated effect of exposing exclusionary practices to state scrutiny, which eventually forced those communities to recognize women’s political rights. Thus the effort to protect indigenous practices facilitated the territorial and juridical expansion of the Mexican state into formerly autonomous areas of the countryside.

Seven AMS radiocarbon dates (1950–1525 cal BC) from controlled contexts demonstrate Early Formative period occupation in coastal Oaxaca, Mexico. These dated elements from the site of La Consentida include hearths, occupational surfaces, carbon adhering to pottery from a midden, and human bone collagen processed with XAD purification. They were excavated from primary contexts and do not represent redeposited materials. An eighth sample, dated to the Middle Formative period, is considered postoccupational. The diversity of dated deposits and features, their distribution, and their overlapping calibrated ranges indicate settlement by an initial Early Formative period village.

The nature of migration–forest linkages in migrant-sending regions is underreported and poorly understood. In rural Latin America and elsewhere, out-migration, together with agricultural crises and the deterritorialization of rural livelihood, are transforming forests and the communities that manage them. Drawing on research in indigenous communities of Oaxaca (Mexico), we identify the parameters of a new landscape of forest use and conservation, finding that: migration challenges community practices for self-governance of forest resources; declines in agriculture create new spaces for forest recovery and use; and forest conservation policies create economic opportunities around both extractive and non-extractive forest use.

The diet and habitat of Leptomeryx sp. from the Late Uintan Yolomécatl Formation of NW Oaxaca, SE Mexico were inferred using dental enamel carbon and oxygen isotopic relationships, and compared with those of congeneric species from temperate North America. Results show that Leptomeryx sp. fed on C3 plants and lived in open forest or forest/savanna ecotone. The palynoflora and co-occurrence of perissodactyls and artiodactyls that live in an environment like that of Leptomeryx support this interpretation. Further, both records disclose that in NW Oaxaca (southern North America) tropical conditions prevailed at that time, unlike that of temperate North America.

Changes in vegetative cover and land use in the southern part of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec in Oaxaca, Mexico, were identified by analysing satellite images from 2001 and 2014. Fluctuations in population density of mammal species during 2001–2016 in response to these changes were analysed. During 2001–2014 the types of land use that increased in area (per year) were prescribed burning (uncontrolled burning caused by humans) by 105.11 ha, seasonal agricultural plots by 58.14 ha, areas without vegetation by 24.54 ha, and human settlements by 4.13 ha. In the same period, savannahs decreased by 103.94 ha, tropical dry forest by 39.5 ha, secondary forests by 14.46 ha, and human-induced grassland by 0.13 ha per year. The loss of these habitats resulted in low population densities of mammals, including the eastern cottontail Sylvilagus floridanus and the Tehuantepec jackrabbit Lepus flavigularis, which is categorized as Endangered on the IUCN Red List. We recommend establishing a communal ecological reserve in the study area to implement appropriate management strategies for grassland communities and develop a programme of semi-captive breeding to conserve L. flavigularis.

This article analyses efforts by the state of Oaxaca to mark its border from 1856 to 1912. State officials hoped to demarcate a permanent border along the frontier as a way to delineate a peaceful ending to on-going boundary disputes, some of which allegedly dated to pre-Columbian times. The activity of marking Oaxaca's boundary effectively represented a literal process of Mexican state formation. Oaxaca officials attempted to negotiate the state's jurisdictional limits in cooperation with other federations as well as with their own citizens as they located the parameters of the state and the limits of its authority during the era.

Non-governmental organisations operate as nodes in networks of ‘managerialism’ – bundles of often Northern, corporate-inspired knowledge and practices that promote ‘good governance’ under neoliberalism. Managerialism is double-sided: it can guard against corruption and help ensure accountability, but it can also be culturally disjunctive, reinforcing North–South power imbalances while diffusing the political potential of NGOs. In this paper we present a framework for studying managerialism's global circulation and discuss a series of empirical findings from a multi-year study of NGOs in the Mexican state of Oaxaca. We conclude by commenting on managerialism's influence on NGOs during the social upheavals of 2006, highlighting its differential and contingent impact on social and political change in Oaxaca.

We examined the presence of the jaguar Panthera onca, and human–jaguar interactions, in a community-dominated montane tropical forest landscape with formally recognized indigenous/community conserved areas in the Sierra Norte of Oaxaca state, Mexico. We used camera traps to detect jaguars, and social data were collected through informal interviews and 46 semi-structured and 106 structured interviews with community leaders and members. During June 2007–June 2008 camera traps registered two jaguars in the four study communities after 1,164 trap nights, with a photo-capture rate of 7.8 jaguar captures per 1,000 trap nights. Interviews documented 86 jaguar sightings since 1990. Despite some history of livestock predation, 68% of the interviewed farmers indicated jaguar presence was positive, 20% that jaguar presence was both positive and negative, and 12% thought jaguars were a negative presence. All of the respondents with negative attitudes had either owned cattle previously or lost cattle to predation. Despite ongoing risks to jaguars the emergence of community-conserved areas, local conservation initiatives, and a community-imposed hunting ban are supported by 93% of community members. An emerging culture of conservation in the study communities suggests there is an opportunity for jaguar conservation on community lands that should be explored elsewhere in jaguar range countries.

The authors explore the practice of extracting the thighbone from burials in Mesoamerica, making use of a newly excavated Classic period Zapotec burial at the Mitla Fortress, where the femur had been carefully removed and the interment resealed. They conclude that the femur acted as an ancestral emblem and could be used by families of relatively low social rank. This function contrasts with the Aztec, where the large bones could also be used as war trophies. Archaeological readers studying ancestor worship and the cult of relics in other continents will find much of value here.