Guachimonton is the nickname given to the circular architecture of the Teuchitlan Tradition, the name given to the largest of the circles at this site (as noted by Adela Breton at the turn of the century - Huaerchimonton), and the name given to this site. It is the largest and most complex site with this architecture, and is located in the center of the Tequila valleys, in the very greatest concentration of public and residential architecture in the region. The map really only depicts the central collection of public architecture, but smaller circles and residential architecture are continuously and closely distributed over a large area beyond this. The section shown here sits on the slopes just behind the town of Teuchitlan and the site is sometimes referred to by this name.

Phil Weigand and Efraín Cárdenas of the Colegio de Michoacán began excavations at this site in early 1998. Phil continues to send me summaries of their work straight from the field. I have cleaned up the text slightly by expanding his abbreviations, adding links, and putting Phil's spanish-isms into italics - csb:

Update - December, 1999 - "At the precinct Los Guachimontones de Teuchitlan, we have conducted 4 seasons of excavations totalling 10 months of field work. The major ball-court has been excavated, except for the west end platform, which, because of a road, has only been tested. The ball-court has upper and lower walls separated by a relatively level 2 meter talud. The floor of the playing field was elevated by a clay layer averaging just over 1 meter thick. The playing field is 80 meters long, 9 meters wide, and the overall length, including the end platforms, is 125 meters (the longest continues to be at Santa Quiteria, with a total length of 135 meters). The second (and minor) ball-court has been tested by a transect trench and the exposing of one cancha-level wall.
   Circle #1, the most monumental structure of the 9 circles in the precinct, has been tested, as well. The enormous looter's trench into the central pyramid has been filled in, requiring 10 weeks of work, an average of 10 laborers working 6 days a week for 8 hours each day, to fill in a void in the pyramid's center which had taken out 8-10,000 cubic meters of fill (approximately one fourth of the structure's bulk). We used wheel barrows and had all the fill at hand. We also did not need to carry up water from the lake below (800 meters away). A transect trench through the patio showed that this surface was raised by a clay fill by approximately 2.5 meters. Platforms #1 and #12 of this Circle also have been exposed, and their cores sampled. Both were burnt twice during their long careers, the last burning residue remaining uncleaned on the platforms' surfaces, sides, and edges. One profile, into #12, is 5.5 m deep, showing a multiplicity of floors and rebuilding episodes. This was the fourth area of deep stratigraphy within the precinct, and showed no surprises for the ceramic sequence already established. As elsewhere, the ceramics strongly suggest that the major building activity took place during the later El Arenal phase, i.e. the time of Christ, or a little before, to about 150 A.D. The deepest layer in the aforementioned deposit, at the original ground level, has produced some Capacha-like sherds, as well. This level is sealed beneath a burnt floor, which turned the liga-like clay into a cement layer approximately 35 cm thick that had to be literally hammered open.
   In Circle #2, the area which has received most of our attention, a profile trench and tunnel into the central pyramid is almost complete. The earliest of 3 structures was constructed of pisé layers of clay, and then faced with rock. Each pyramid had an upper banquette which was topped by an altar, the last of which has 4 steps and a post mold in its exact geometric center. There are 13 tall steps to reach this upper banquette. It appears that the entire pyramid was a stairway. Platforms #9, #5, #10, #1, and #2, around the pyramid and patio, have been excavated or tested. The latter three have been stabilized and modestly restored. These 3 platforms sit atop a common base platform. They were accessed by stairways which faced the banquettes at their sides, instead of directly from the patio. Platforms #9 and #5 were accessed directly from the patio. The central altar of Circle #4 also has a post mold in its exact geometric center. This small circle, whose Platform #1 doubled as an end platform to the major ball-court, was remarkably well preserved in sections. Platforms #2 and #3 have offered one of the best preserved clay surfaces, included steps so finished, and patio walls (respectively) within the entire site. All the rock facing of every structure in the precinct was covered with thick layers of very clean clay, which in turn was plastered and painted. Throughout the precinct, we now have 6 areas which have preserved plastered exterior layers, 2 of which have painted designs. Figurine fragments have been found upon many platform surfaces, thus attesting in excavation what we had observed long ago by survey: the figurines (including the large hollow polychrome ones) where not exclusively used as funerary offerings, but were also used as temple furnishings. The strong presence of Oconahua Red on White and Ahualulco Red on Cream ceramics in all areas of the excavation (floors, pits, fill, etc) suggests that the major building activity belongs to the late Formative, or El Arenal, period. The best ceramic marker for the early Classic period, Teuchitlan Red on Cream, is literally a surface occurrence. Obsidian prismatic blades are also early, and at times found in offerings marking construction episodes. The re-use of a dark grey chert Clovis point fragment in a ball-court remodelling was also discovered."

Update - November, 2000 - "The excavations are going very well. We were accompanied last week by around 35 soldiers. Their spotters saw us from the air and couldn't figure it out, so they sent in the troops. Good kids for the most part, though they kept some shovels and picks.
   The altar in Circle #4 has a deep post mold, but otherwise is very simple. We have sampled 2 residential platforms and a transect across a field terrace with a residential platform attached. They are pretty simple, too, and the walls are really little else than casual piles of rock arranged lineally. But then they have held in place for 1500 plus years, so who am I to complain. We have also explored the second ball-court. It too is quite simple but at least we were able to define its walls, see its taludes, and cancha. At the major ball-court, at the east end platform, we found a wall that had fallen over as a unit, instead of the usual rock-by-rock type of collapse. When we calculated how high this platform was, I was surprised to se it at 2.4 m. We cannot find a stairway for this platform, though! Just one very big step. The sherds, when they have a real context aside from fill, continue to be early. We now know, too, that the second circle was built over the first lateral platform of the major ball-court. We suspected that from last year, but now we have it for sure. Still, the major circle (#1), the ball-court, and the second circle (#2) are all from the late El Arenal phase, at least for their initial dates---no differences in their sherds at all, so the building sequence must have been short and tight. We have explored, with transect trenches, 2 more platforms---still no burials or even bones (human), so it appears as if this precinct, while coeval with the monumental and submonumental shaft-tombs, is "above" this type of ancestor veneration, and may quite really be public architecture in the true sense of that phrase. Some new C-14 samples, also, with 2 of them stuck onto bajareque fragments from Plat. 12 of Circle 1. The consolidation is going well, also, with the ball-court and adjoining platforms on the Circle #2 side almost finished. We have about another 6 or 7 weeks to go, though the funds for this year are beginning to wear thin."

Update - December, 2000 - "Our last day on the site for this season was Saturday. We found still more plastered surfaces, including a floor on a banquette and a floor behind a platform. Also, a 2 kilo meteorite piece on a platform---big enough to have made a crater if it had impacted after the occupation. This, along with a few fossils that we've found here and there, indicates an ancient interest in this type of exotica. The work really went well, especially these last 3 months."

Update - February, 2001 - "About 2 more weeks to go, largely on the bajareque. We have a reconstructable wall, with about 350 fragments, some of which actually (and convincingly) fit together. Some of these fragments were vitrified, and have carbon embedded within them. Two pieces have obsidian embedded wtihin them, and 1 has a sherd (Ahualulco R/C).
   We have some Ahualulco R/C with incised designs, too. Not many but some. We also now have 6 localities with either Capacha or Capacha-like ceramics. Most are from trash used as platform or banquette fill, but 2 are actually stratigraphic, and stratigrafically where they should be, as well. I'm beginning to think that the precinct must have had a fairly important Early/Middle Formative component, though we see no architecture, pits, etc. in association yet."

Update - November, 2001 - "We are doing fine with the excavations, and have finally completed the tunnel into the geometric center of Pyramid #2 (the Iguana), finding a total of 5 structures, 4 beneath the outer one. The first 2 are really just altars, the first one being a rather standard sized 7 m in diameter, and, as we could see the bottom of its top floor, at just under 3 m high. The most interesting feature, though, is a pit, covered with a very large slab, at the geometric center not only of this altar, but of all subsequent structures. Its fill was very distinctive, and its sides were braced by other rocks. Clearly, it is our best volador pit to date.
   We have 2 archaeologists on residential sites, as well. One is clearly epi-Classic and early Post-Classic, giving us that part of the sequence for the neighborhood of the precinct. Another archaeologist, one of my Colmich students, is working Circle #4 (the Circle attached to the Ball Court I), a continuation of work we started last year. Another trench into the largest pyramid has produced exactly the same problems we encountered 2 years ago---very loose and oxidized fill, due to the seepage of water from the huge looters' pit. We will try to define some walls/terraces, but I'm not optimistic. Everything is so loose that its far more dangerous than the tunnel into the other pyramid's core is. More figurine fragments, lots of charcoal, including some burnt corn on the cob (very small cobs, too), lots of Oconahua R/W sherds, and, of course, lots of obsidian. A few pieces of turquoise have turned up, too."

Update - November 2001 - "The maize rows are not 'countable' at this point, being rather fragmented and very delicate. Someone, like Glenn Stuart, who has had experiemce with this type of situation, could do it. But we are leaving them wrapped up for the moment, just happy to have them at all. One thing we all could see, however, is that the cobs are very small. Given that all cobs shrink rather drastically when burnt, these still are much smaller than all traditional but contemporary varieties.
   In Circle #4, in the back-side derrumbe of Platform #4, we found an El Opeņo-like figurine fragment. It is a leg, bowed in the El Opeņo pose, but then it might be an early varient of a Comala variety, too, which have bowed legs as well. Lorenza [Lopez] is going to go over all our figurine fragments, and clearly she will have a more definitive view than we can come up with. So far this year, no more Capacha materials, though we have 2 extremely deep calas --- one at 4.6 m and the other at 3.9 m. The first ends in a series of tightly layered talc deposits that are clearly natural; the later with the regular old soil line and rock layer we see almost everywhere else, with Oconahua R/Ws through more than 3 m of the deposit. We dug this one in levels, of course, but while the clay, earth and rock is different, the ceramics are not."

Update - January 2002 - "We have disarticulated human bone now in 2 locales: associated directly with the great Juego de pelota, and in a masonry "box" built inside a space to become a platform before the platform itself was constructed (Plat. #4 in Circle #4). The bone is very fragmented and scattered quite literally throughout the fill of the "box". Aside from these finds, still no burials. We just today began a test on Circle #5, uphill and north of the largest circle. Also, we completed the tunnel into the heart (and exact geometric center) of the piramide of Circle #2, finding a total of 4 piramides inside the outside one. The tunnel wasn't the safest thing we've ever done, but we escaped without any incidents. We did find, in the earliest structure, which is actually just an altar, an excellent volador post mold with a large (!) stone slab as its cover. All the ceramics of all the construction periods are late El Arenal, and very possibly early Ahualulco phases, with a number of nice obsidian artifacts thrown in from time to time. In the habitation area below the precinct, a series of platforms there are predominately epi-classic and early post-classic. From these levels we have a single metal object, a needle, along with Chapala area polychromes as imports, and the earliest form of Huistla Polychrome. The architecture is a series of stone pavements, clay plastered patios, and low rock walls with adobe bricks here and there. As we have always suspected, the transition from the Teuchitlan Tradition to those which followed was dramatic and involved cultural changes from the kitchen to the architecture."

Comments to Chris Beekman