San Jose Mogote
San Jose Mogote is an archeological site mésoaméricain of the preclassical Time, located in the northern branch of the valley of Oaxaca at the North-West of Monte Alban, in Mexico. It was explored by a team of the University of Michigan, directed by Kent V. Flannery. San Jose Mogote is one of these sites, whose excavation makes it possible to better apprehend, throughout the Preclassical one, the passage of small villages with levelling structure towards increasingly large centers, with an increasingly marked social differentiation.
During the phase Tierras Largas (of -1400 with -1150), San Jose Mogote is the greatest agglomeration of the valley of Oaxaca. The site, which occupied 7 ha, would have sheltered approximately 150 people. The inhabitants cultivated the corn, the pepper, the marrow and the lawyer but the product of hunting still played a part in their food. Only discrete differences in the mode in burial could indicate a beginning of social differentiation. A building, several times rebuilt, is distinguished from the others: he points out the kivas of Pueblos of the south-west of the United States and its orientation of north-western 8° is similar to that of later religious buildings.
During the phase San Jose (of -1150 with -850), the village occupied approximately 20 ha and would have counted 400 to 600 inhabitants. The excavations indicate that the inhabitants of certain houses had specialized in particular forms of craft industry, such as the mirrors in Hématite or ornaments starting from shells. San Jose is also distinguished from the surrounding hamlets by the presence of two pyramidal platforms. During the Rosario phase (of -700 with -500, the last of the site, the archeologists observed the development of rival chefferies of that of San Jose Mogote in the southern branches and is valley of Oaxaca. They think that the war was to prevail between these three entities. In San Jose Mogote, the archeologists are particularly interested in a platform which one calls Structure 19. It carried another platform, the Structure 28, on which temple in coated mattress of Torchis was drawn up, destroyed by a so violent fire which it could not be accidental, but which corresponds to a current practice in Mésoamérique at the time of warlike operations: destruction of the temple of the adversary. Just in the north of Structure 19, one built some another, the Structure 14. Between the two there was a corridor, whose stone of threshold is famous. It acts of Monument 3, which represents an individual whose chest lets escape a flood from blood, probably the victim of a sacrifice. Between its feet two glyphes, which are the first manifestation of the zapotèque writing , that one generally reads “1-movement”. It is thought that, in accordance with the practice mésoaméricaine to give to an individual a name corresponding to his birth date in 260 days the ritual calendar, it is about the name of the victim.
Towards, San josé Mogote is depopulated suddenly, while the site of Monte Alban appears.