Jan Bartek – AncientPages.com – A researcher from McGill University has uncovered new insights about Guiengola, a 15th-century Zapotec site in southern Oaxaca, Mexico. Previously believed to be merely a military fortress, it has now been identified as an extensive fortified city.
The site spans 360 hectares and includes over 1,100 buildings, four kilometers of walls, and a network of internal roads. Its organized urban layout features temples and communal spaces like ballcourts, with distinct neighborhoods for elites and commoners.
View of Guiengola’s North Plaza from above. It is the only area not covered by a canopy of trees. Credit: Pedro Guillermo Ramón Celis
Pedro Guillermo Ramón Celis, a Banting postdoctoral researcher in McGill’s Department of Anthropology and author of an article in Ancient Mesoamerica, suggests that the city was likely abandoned just before the Spanish arrival. The inhabitants are believed to have relocated approximately 20 kilometers away to Tehuantepec—a small city where their descendants reside today.
Ramón Celis emphasizes that understanding how this Mesoamerican city was structured on the eve of the Spanish conquest is only the beginning. Continued research at Guiengola is expected to shed light on Zapotec political and social organization levels and enhance our understanding of their interactions with the Spanish.
This discovery was facilitated by lidar (light detection and ranging), a remote sensing technology that uses pulsing laser beams similar to sonar. Lidar provides precise three-dimensional topographic data about surfaces beneath dense forest canopies.
Epicenter of the city. The biggest buildings of the city were found in this area surrounded by the main wall. Credit: Ancient Mesoamerica (2024). DOI: 10.1017/S0956536124000166
“My mother’s family is from the region of Tehuantepec which is about 20 km from the site, and I remember them talking about it when I was a child. It was one of the reasons that I chose to go into archaeology,” Ramón Celis said. “Although you could reach the site using a footpath, it was covered by a canopy of trees. Until very recently, there would have been no way for anyone to discover the full extent of the site without spending years on the ground walking and searching. We were able to do it within two hours by using remote sensing equipment and scanning from a plane.”
By utilizing data from scans and leveraging the Geographic Information Centre’s resources at McGill, Ramón Celis has successfully mapped the dimensions and layouts of remaining structures, deducing their functions based on artifacts discovered at these sites.
Lidar scan showing the Civic and Ceremonial Center (left) and the commoner areas (right), split by a defensive wall (center). Credit: Pedro Guillermo Ramón Celis
To investigate power distribution within the city, he analyzed the allocation of building space to elite areas like temples and ballcourts compared to commoner regions. In Mesoamerica, ballcourts were constructed for ritual ballgames, symbolizing both the underworld and fertility as they serve as a connection to ancestors and represent growth beneath the soil where the underworld resides.
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Ramón Celis added, “Because the city is only between 500 and 600 years old, it is amazingly well preserved, so you can walk there in the jungle, and you find that houses are still standing… you can see the doors… the hallways… the fences that split it from other houses. So, it is easy to identify a residential lot. It’s like a city frozen in time, before any of the deep cultural transformations brought by the Spanish arrival had taken place.”
The study was published in the journal Ancient Mesoamerica
Written by Jan Bartek – AncientPages.com Staff Writer
