Montezuma balcony . Archaeological zone located 18 kms from Ciudad Victoria , in the Mexican state of Tamaulipas .
Summary
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- 1 Location
- 2 Description of the city
- 3 Importance of the area
- 4 Related Links
- 5 Sources
Location
It is located in the Sierra Madre Oriental , in the vicinity of Ciudad Victoria. You get to this place by the federal highway 101. Alta Cumbre is located just 18 kilometers from Ciudad Victoria ; From there, the archaeological site is reached by a dirt road that includes a section of 4 kilometers.
Description of the city
Most of the basements are 8 to 10 meters in diameter and the height ranges from a few centimeters to more than two meters. Some have access stairs that open out of the basement in a fan shape. These bases are grouped around two open spaces that have been called Plaza 1 and Plaza 2, in the center of which is a small base similar to the others that perhaps served as an altar.
Among the various finds are the skeletal remains of a three- or four-year-old infant with tooth mutilation. In addition, abundant ceramic fragments have been rescued, among which are some vessels decorated and painted in black on a white background. Around two hundred human burials have also been located, most of them flexed, the same seated as in the lateral, right or left decubitus. In the opinion of the anthropologist Sergio López , who has analyzed the remains, there were at least two types of population living together in Balcón de Montezuma, one with a robust and tall complexion and the other thin and of medium height.
Importance of the area
Rescue and restoration work began in 1988 under the direction of archaeologist Jesús Nárez Zamora , now deceased. The first characteristic element of the place is a great staircase of more than eighty steps, made up of natural outcrops of sedimentary slabs that the groups skillfully used as access. Afterwards, almost a hundred circular bases with large limestone slabs, filled with earth and rubble (platforms on which the houses were built) can be seen; the holes in the basement number 48 indicate that the walls were raised with sticks and branches woven with mud and that the roofs were cone-shaped and lined with palm .
Due to its size, it is considered that it played a very important role in relations and trade routes that possibly reached the southeastern United States or to the south , with the Huastec groups. They probably had a legal structure with chief shamans or priests . On the other hand, the number of structures, as well as the size and weight of the basement walls of their houses, makes us think that there was a solid social organization. Its economy should have been based on gathering and hunting, and supplemented with some crops of corn , beans or squash., although until now the areas dedicated to such activity have not been identified.
