By Carmen Rioja
In an interview for Atención San Miguel, archaeologist Gabriela Zepeda García Moreno, director of the interdisciplinary research and conservation team of the Cañada de la Virgen Archaeological Site, as well as anthropologist Alberto Aveleyra Talamantes, Director of Amigos del Museo Histórico de San Miguel, co-authors of the Izcuinapan project, and archaeologist Hugo Olalde specified the surprising findings once the declaration of Monument Zone was announced by Federal Decree published in the Official Gazette on September 19, thanks to the dossier formed through several decades of work.
The site presented a temporality of occupation from the year 540 to 1050 of our era. It includes four pyramidal structures of great dimension, sunken patios, and an amanalli, or pond, of pre-Hispanic hydraulic work. In addition, it conserves the entrance’s paved roadway and a great collection of ceremonial objects in ceramic, lithic, Shell, and bone, recovered in context of excavation and associated with 19 ritual burials. These are the findings of his team.
Carmen Rioja (C.R.): When did archaeology begin as a scientific discipline in San Miguel de Allende?
Gabriela Zepeda (G.Z.): The first news we have of archaeological sites and the pre-Hispanic presence of corn planting towns in San Miguel de Allende date from the end of the 16th century. The first excavation with scientific dyes occurred in the times of San Miguel el Grande, in 1777, by Benito Diaz de Gamarra, to answer the question of the viceregal authorities about the “antiquities” of San Miguel.
C.R: How many decades ago did the first explorations of the Cañada de la Virgen Zone begin?
Alberto Aveleyra (A.A.): In the middle of the 20th century, in 1956, Miguel Malo Zozaya and his friend Miguel Redondo Olivares made an expedition to the site now known as the Cañada de la Virgen archaeological zone. When they realized its importance due to the architecture and artifacts found, they informed INAH and requested a commission of archaeologists to visit this and other archaeological sites in the region. Archaeologists Jorge R. Acosta and Ponciano Salazar, who at that time were excavating Tula, Hidalgo, responded to the call. Salazar wrote an archaeological report and thus began the history of scientific archaeology in San Miguel de Allende.
Excavation at the Cañada de la Virgen archaeological zone began at the end of the 1980s by archaeologist Luis Felipe Nieto Gamiño with the support of Don Patterson. He began to excavate and consolidate the northern sector of Complex A. He also recorded three burials, sent samples to the INAH Laboratories, and obtained the first carbon 14 dating of the site.
In 2002, the Cañada de la Virgen archaeological project began under the leadership of archaeologist Gabriela Zepeda García Moreno, who coordinated a multidisciplinary team that excavated the three main temples, finding 19 burials with their offerings, and managed 23 carbon-14 dates that allowed us to propose a time period for the site that goes from 540 to 1050 A.D.
C.R: What can you tell us about the ritual burials found in the context of the pyramids?
G.Z: Two of the burials stand out, burials 13 and 5. The first one is a 52-year-old woman, the Hierarch; the second one is a girl, the Warrior Girl. The dating of the bones showed that both characters died about a thousand years before being buried in Complex A. The Hierarch was in the temple located at the top of the pyramid, and the Warrior Girl was in one of the rooms surrounding the sunken courtyard located south of the pyramid. Both funerary bundles allow us to propose that we are in a place where the cult to the grandmothers, to the feminine side of the cosmos, to the ancestry, had a preponderant space.
C.R: Is it correct to say that the pyramids and the site, in general, were oriented to the observation of the stars and time measurement?
G.Z: The astronomy studies carried out in the same architectural complex showed the existence of sophisticated horizon calendars associated with the Mesoamerican time accounts. It also shows that both the sun and moon cycles were fundamental in pre-Hispanic times. The importance of the lunar calendar in Cañada de la Virgen and in the sources on the Otomí peoples, led to the hypothesis that this group was the main occupant of the site.
C.R: Were the settlers of the area of Otomi affiliated at that time, as it has been published lately?
A.A: It is important to note that the hypothesis of Otomi population and the proposal that this ethnic group built and inhabited the archaeological sites of San Miguel and the Laja province has been the most persistent throughout time. Since the XVIth century, it was proposed because it was the closest farming town to Cañada de la Virgen at that time, and it was also proposed by Gamarra in the XVIII century.
Throughout the history of San Miguel, the hypothesis of the pre-Hispanic Otomi presence always seemed the most probable. However, archaeological research consists of testing its hypotheses and refuting or affirming them with data obtained from excavations, laboratory results, and rigorous studies where many disciplines converge. The results of these tests lead to the veracity or falsifiability of our hypotheses and expand our knowledge about the peoples of the past.
G.Z: This is what we did, yours truly, archaeologist Gabriela Zepeda and Dr. Karla Sandoval, who conducted genetic studies of the burials in the archaeological zone. The initial results of this research show that the Hierarch, the primordial grandmother of Cañada de la Virgen, has DNA that is related to Nahua people, besides pointing out that she is female; for some years, the physical anthropologists on the project documented a skeleton with masculine characteristics. Genetic studies showed that it was a woman.
C.R: Were the native people of these lands only Nahua?
G.Z: Two other analyzed burials are grouped with Nahua populations. However, others have ancestral relationships with Purepecha, Tarahumara, and Maya. This first genetic map expands the horizons of our knowledge about the pre-Hispanic past of San Miguel de Allende, showing us a more complex past than we expected to find, a multiethnic site with a Nahua ancestry and a site where female ancestors were revered.
C.R: What does the recent declaration and extension of the zone of sites and monuments mean in terms of future research?
G.Z: The zone of archaeological monuments Cañada de la Virgen includes not only the main temples, but it also integrates an important sector of the processional landscape that led pre-Hispanic pilgrims to the ceremonial causeway of Complex A. The archaeological zone is located in a micro-watershed whose main feature is an impressive system of seven ravines through which the main stream runs and was used as a ceremonial route to enter and leave the pre-Hispanic sanctuary. This geographic scenario where water, ravines, forests, and hills interweave a symbolic landscape: a hill-uterus, a place of origin, a place of seven origins, a place of seven caves-ditches, is fundamental to understanding the location and the choice to order the sacred territory and build the archaeological zone exactly in the birthplace of the riverbed and at the bottom of the seventh gully. It is a place of the multiethnic grandmothers located in the interior of a hill of water that was entered and exited by its matrix of seven ravines.
The decree declaring the area known as Cañada de la Virgen, located in the municipality of San Miguel de Allende, in the state of Guanajuato, as an Archaeological Monument Zone, which comprises a total surface of 722 hectares, 98 areas, and 55.50 centimeters, was published in the Official Gazette on September 19, 2022. Included are the 16 hectares that are federal and have a fenced perimeter, in addition to the amortization polygon agreed upon years before the opening that comprises 172 hectares. With this decree, the protected area covers an area almost five times larger.
This is a federal instrument that favors the best preservation and protection of the Cañada de la Virgen archaeological zone, opened to the public ten years ago. It is a legal instrument that lays the foundations to promote with competent authorities, the regulation of land use, the integration of neighboring populations in productive projects, linked to the dissemination of the archaeological zone that attenuates a little poverty.
It is also an instrument that will allow the establishment of additional visual protection areas on the surfaces of the surrounding hills: Ojo de Agua, Mesa del Turbante,, and Los Picachos, where the most important axes of symmetry and alignment of the archaeological zone end and where the celestial vault can be observed in complete darkness. This is something similar to what was obtained in the Decree of the Zone of Archaeological Monuments of Teotihuacan, where the Tlapachique, Metecatl, Colorado, and Malinal hills are areas of visual protection.
With this instrument, we will be able to promote the proper establishment of the necessary rights of way for access to archaeological monuments and their proper maintenance. This easement is currently impassable during the rainy season. It also establishes the criteria for prohibiting construction, modifying land use, introducing wiring, motorized vehicles such as ATVs, or activities that could affect its conservation.
C.R: How will this achievement be reflected in the present generations of the region and why not, for the protection of the cultural heritage of humanity?
G.Z: Now it is also feasible to promote educational programs that stimulate school visits. Cañada de la Virgen is filled with children and teenagers. The knowledge and appreciation of the heritage is the way to respect and care for it. Agreements with the educational instances to promote technical careers linked to conservation, the program of counselors to stimulate a technical enrollment that allows the young people of the surrounding communities to be trained for the management of an archaeological zone.
