ABSTRACT
Quachilco (Oaxaca, Mexico) This Late Formative town site in the central zone of the Tehuacan Valley was founded at the beginning of the Late Santa Maria phase (500-150 B.C.), on a dry plain at about 1,200 meters above sea level between the Rio Salado and the Rio Zapotitlan. The principal public or ceremonial architecture surrounded a plaza some 150 by 125 meters and formed the core of an occupation zone of more than 30 hectares, estimated to have had several hundred inhab itants. Occupation continued until perhaps the middle of the Early Palo Blanco phase (150 B.C.-250 A .D .). There is no evidence of fortification at this fairly dispersed com munity in a very indefensible location in the middle of the level valley floor. The town was sustained by irrigating the dry land through an extensive canal network that later became “fossilized” as a consequence of the high mineral content of the springwater that fed it. Outlying barrios of the Late Formative Quachilco community are un mistakably associated with this network. Quachilco was the largest community in the Tehuacan Valley during the Late Santa Maria phase, and the earliest indication of regionally centralized political or economic organiza tion there, although it probably did not serve as a central place for the entire Tehuacan Valley but only for its cen tral sector.
