Cerro de las Minas

[1] The site is located on a hill that dominates the Valley of Huajuapan, in what are now the neighborhoods of Chapultepec, Santa Rosa, Alta Vista and Del Maestro of the city.

[1] Cerro de las Minas is the only lowland Mixtec archeological site open to the public.

Commerce through here dealt in obsidian, ceramics, textiles, metals, salt, wood, charcoal, plants, fruit, and copal.

[1] The development of this site from a village to a city is divided into two phases: The first is called Ñudee (the Mixtec name for Huajuapan, meaning “place of the brave”) and covers the period from 400 BCE to 250 CE.

[2] Its apogee was reached in the Classic period with the development of the Ñuiñe culture among the lowland Mixtec in general, which had its own architecture, writing, ceramics, figurines and urns.

Cerro de las Minas was decorated with reliefs of inscriptions, using (a not very well known) writing system, called ñuiñe.

The writing system is very similar to Monte Alban (Zapotec) inscriptions, which suggests a strong relationship between the valleys and the Mixteca Baja during the classical period.

Most of the site covers about fifty hectares on the top and down the sides of the large hill[1] although in 2007, INAH found a pre-Hispanic tomb at the foot of the Cerro de la Minas.

A total of nine tombs were discovered, some had been robbed but in other were found human remains, vessels and gravestones with the names of the deceased.

[3] Major investigation and excavation of the site was carried out in the late 1980s and early 1990s by a team of 200 people headed by Marcus Winter.

This tomb contained a large quantity of Mixtec ceramics as well as a multicolored urn with a representation of the god of wind or fire, with a brazier on its head, seated on a platform decorated with four glyphs.

[3] Cultural elements found here show contact and influence from other Mixtec settlements such as Diquiyú, Monte Negro, Huamelulpan, Yucuita and Yucuñudahui.

Late walls of the Tomb patio show construction techniques (block – stone slab), and of slope-panel.