Contents
List of Tables, 000
List of Illustrations, 000
Introduction to Volume 14,000
Acknowledgments, 000
CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTION TO ELITES AT SECONDARY CENTERS IN THE 
ZAPOTEC STATE
An Overview of Cerro Tilcajete and the Early Zapotec State
Anthropological Approaches to Defining Zapotec Elites
Zapotec Elites As Members of Socioeconomic Groups
Zapotec Elites as Administrators
Zapotec Elites, Power Sharing, and Conflict
Summary
CHAPTER 2. ELITE BEHAVIOR IN THE EARLY ZAPOTEC STATE
Zapotec Polities in the Sixteenth Century
Zapotec Nobles
Zapotec Policy Makers
Zapotec Priests
Zapotec Warriors
Zapotec Merchants
Summary
CHAPTER 3. THE OAXACA VALLEY IN THE TERMINAL FORMATIVE PERIOD 
(100 B.C.-A.D. 200)
Archaeological Indicators of Elite Behavior
The Regional Picture 
The Settlement Hierarchy
I-Shaped Ballcourts
Pottery Production Network
Monte Alb¿n
The North Platform Governmental Palace
The Main Plaza
The Mound of the Carved Stone
The Northeast Zone
Zone East of Building P
The El Pitahayo Mounds
Mounds and Terraces on the North Slope
Summary
San Jos¿ Mogote
Dainz¿
Regions Outside the Valley
The Cuicatl¿n Ca¿ada
Ejutla
Summary
CHAPTER 4. CERRO TILCAJETE IN MONTE ALBçN II
Surface Data
Site Layout and Occupational History
Surface Ceramics as Possible Clues to Status
Other Materials from the Surface
Summary
Excavation Data
Temples and Civic-Ceremonial Buildings
Structure 2
Mound E
Residential Excavations
Structure 1
Structure 3
Structure 4
Pottery Types Believed to Reflect Status 
Ceramic Types and Forms Found in Residences
Ceramic Types and Forms Found in Middens
Subsistence Activities
Household Ritual
Figurines and Urns
Incense Burners
Mortuary Ritual
Obsidian 
Shell
Summary
CHAPTER 5. CERRO TILCAJETE AND THE DECLINE OF THE ZAPOTEC STATE 
Monte Alb¿n
The Oaxaca Valley in the Classic Period
The Chronology of the Late Classic and Epiclassic
Jalieza 
Cerro Tilcajete
The Adoratory and Mound F at Cerro Tilcajete
The North Mound Complex
Structure 5 Ceramics
Summary
CHAPTER 6. CONCLUSIONS
Appendix A: Ceramic Terms, Analysis, and Illustrations
Appendix B: Inventory of Human Remains From Surface Collections and Features in 
Structures, by William Duncan, 000
Appendix C: The Shell Assemblage from Cerro Tilcajete, by Gary M. Feinman and 
Linda M. Nicholas, 000
Appendix D: Resumen en Espa¿ol
References Cited
Tables
3.1	Settlement hierarchy and population ranges for Monte Alb¿n Late I and Monte 
Alb¿n II sites.
4.1	Mounds and plaza dimensions at Cerro Tilcajete.
4.2	Surface data by collection unit.
4.3	Surface data by collection unit (non-vessels).
4.4	Surface ceramic categories by zone.
4.5	Ceramics coded in Test Pit 1, Mound E.
4.6	Descriptive data from Structure 4 burials.
4.7	Ceramics in residential structures by paste, diagnostic form, and type.
4.8	Ceramics in residential structures by form.
4.9	Minimum number of vessels in Feature 1, Structure 3.
4.10	Minimum number of vessels in Feature 6, Structure 4.
4.11	Minimum number of vessels in Feature 2, Structure 4.
4.12	Ceramics by weight and number in Feature 2, Structure 4.
4.13	Figurines in residential structures.
4.14	Obsidian in Structures 1-4. 
5.1	Paste and weight of sherds in Feature 1, Mound E.
5.2	Diagnostic sherds in Feature 1, Mound E by type.
A.1 Data on G.12 motifs and rim forms from residential structures.
A.2 Diagnostic elements of G.29 vessels in residential structures.
A.3 Diagnostic aspects of orange-paste ceramics.
A.4 Bowl and vase rim forms coded for cream-paste vessels.
A.5 Motifs on C.11 and C.12 vessels.
A.6 The frequency of cream paste types of all decorated cream vessels coded.
A.7 	Shell found in surface collections.
A.8 	Shell in excavations by excavation area and genus.
A.9 	Shell in excavations by excavation area and ornament class.
A.10 	Shell in excavations by object and genus.
A.11 	Shell in excavations by ornament type and genus.
Illustrations
Frontpiece. Monte Alb¿n as viewed from Cerro Tilcajete's Main Plaza.
1.1 Mexico, showing the location of the Oaxaca Valley.
1.2 The Oaxaca Valley showing places mentioned in the text.
1.3 Cerro Tilcajete from an adjoining hilltop to the south.
2.1	Formative Period depiction of Cociyo.
2.2	Plan of Yagul's ceremonial core.
3.1	Plan of Cerro Tilcajete showing mound groups and the ceremonial core.
3.2	The Monte Alb¿n II Settlement Hierarchy in the Oaxaca Valley.
3.3	The I-shaped ballcourt at Monte Alb¿n.
3.4	Cream paste bowl with incised lightning designs and bulbous supports.
3.5	Orange paste bowl with red-painted designs found at Cerro Tilcajete.
3.6	Plan of Monte Alb¿n's ceremonial core.
3.7	Plan of the Pitahayo mound group at Monte Alb¿n.
3.8	A detailed view of the North Mound Platform at Monte Alb¿n.
3.9	Three ceramic statues from Tomb 113, a Monte Alb¿n II tomb at Monte Alb¿n.
3.10	An urn from the antechamber of Tomb 104 at Monte Alb¿n.
3.11	Plan of Tomb 95 and 96 in the Pitahayo mound group.
3.12	Plan of Tomb 77 and 78 in the Pitahayo mound group.
3.13	Map of San Jos¿ Mogote.
3.14	Map of Dainz¿.
4.1	The relationship between El Palenque, Cerro Tilcajete, and Jalieza.
4.2	Plan of Cerro Tilcajete showing surface collection and terraces.
4.3	Map showing the frequency of cream paste ceramics across the surface of Cerro 
Tilcajete.
4.4	Plan of Structure 2, Mound B.
4.5	Profile of the east retaining wall of Mound B.
4.6	Profile of the west plaza-facing wall of Mound B.
4.7	Plan of Monte Alb¿n II structures on Mound E.
4.8	Plan of Structure 1, Mound A.
4.9	Plan of the south wall of Structure 1.
4.10	Photo of the south wall of Structure 1 showing plastered adobes.
4.11	Photo of the southeast corner of Structure 1 showing plastered adobes.
4.12	Modeled gray paste ceramic ornament showing a deceased individual.
4.13	Plan of Structure 3, Area C.
4.14	North profile of Structure 3, Area C.
4.15	West profile of Structure 3, Area C.
4.16	West profile of Feature 1, Structure 3, also east profile of Structure 3.
4.17	Plan of Feature 1, Structure 3, Area C. 
4.18	Plan of Structure 4.
4.19	Photo of Burial 2, Structure 4.
4.20	Gray paste turkey rattle, Burial 1, Structure 4.
4.21	Orange paste figurine of a person with an elaborate headdress.
4.22	Orange paste whistle of a man with an elaborate headdress and walking stick.
4.23	Photo of Burial 4, Structure 4.
4.24	Gray paste figure, Burial 4, Structure 4. 
4.25	Caf¿ paste bowl with an incised step-fret motif, Burial 4, Structure 4.
4.26	Photo of Feature 2, Structure 4, a storage room.
4.27	Photo of Feature 4, Structure 4, a hearth.
4.28	Fragments from stuccoed and painted vessels.
4.29	Rim forms for vases with lids.
4.30	Rim forms for serving wares.
4.31	Rim forms for utilitarian wares.
4.32	Figurines in residential excavations.
4.33	Incense burner fragments in residential structures.
5.1 The Tomb 105 residence at Monte Alb¿n.
5.2	The Oaxaca Valley showing major Classic Epiclassic sites.
5.3	Photo of the Early Classic Jalieza site
5.4	Photo of the Late Classic-Epiclassic Jalieza site. 
5.5	The Plaza I Adoratory platform.
5.6	Bifacially flaked chert knife found on the Adoratory, Plaza I.
5.7	The post A.D. 500 layout of Plaza I.
5.8	Photo of Structure 5, Mound E.
5.9	Plan of Structure 5, Mound E.
5.10	The tomb in Mound F, Plaza I.
5.11	Stylized G.35 vessels forms found in Feature 1, Mound E.
A.1 G.12 bowl bases.
A.2 G.12 rim decoration.
A.3 G.21 rim forms.
A.4 G.12 bowl base motifs.
A.5 G.12 rim motifs
A.6 G.15, G.16, G.25, and G.26 vessels forms.
A.7 G.34 vessels.
A.8 G.29 vessels.
A.9 A.9 vessels.
A.10 A.11 vessels.
A.11 K.17 vessels with incised motifs.
A.12 Incised motifs on K.17, C.11, and C.12 vessels.
A.13 Photo of C.11 sherds.
A.14 C.7 and C.11 vessels
A.15 C.12 and C.20 vessels.
An Introduction to Volume 14 of the Series
by Kent V. Flannery and Joyce Marcus
This volume; the fourteenth in our series of monographs on the prehistory and 
human ecology of the Valley of Oaxaca; deals with Cerro Tilcajete, a secondary 
administrative center below Monte Alb¿n, the capital of the prehispanic Zapotec state. 
To put Christina Elson's excavations at this secondary center into perspective, let 
us review what we have recently learned about Monte Alb¿n and its relationships with 
other sites in the Valley of Oaxaca. To be sure, our knowledge abof Monte Alb¿n's 
relations with areas outside the Valley of Oaxaca has also expanded during the last 
decade, and interested readers will want to consult those contributions as well (e.g., 
Balkansky 1998, 2002; Feinman and Nicholas 1990, 1993; Spencer 1998, 2006; Spencer 
and Redmond 1997, 2001a).
The Valley of Oaxaca has been the scene of extensive archaeological fieldwork 
throughout the twentieth century and into the twenty-first. Impressive early excavations 
were conducted at the city of Monte Alb¿n, situated on the top of a mountain 400 meters 
above the valley floor (e.g., Caso 1932, 1933, 1935, 1938, 1942; Bernal 1946, 1949; 
Acosta 1958-1959, 1965, 1974). The excavation team of Alfonso Caso, Ignacio Bernal, 
and Jorge Acosta worked there throughout the 1930s and 1940s, expanding on the 
pioneering work of Leopoldo Batres (1902) at the beginning of the twentieth century. 
These excavations laid the foundation for all the work that has followed. We owe 
a major debt to Caso, Bernal, and Acosta (1967) because their deep stratigraphic 
excavations established a well-defined ceramic chronology of five periods; Monte 
Alb¿n I, II, IIIa, IIIb/IV, and V; which allowed subsequent generations of archaeologists 
to focus on questions of social and political change. 
Three of the major questions were; How did Monte Alb¿n gain control over the 
Valley of Oaxaca? When did each part of the Valley of Oaxaca come under the sway of 
the capital? Did Monte Alb¿n establish new centers, or take over extant centers, to 
administer the various regions of the valley? 
Current evidence suggests that Monte Alb¿n was founded mainly by the former 
inhabitants of San Jos¿ Mogote and its satellite communities in the northern (Etla) 
subvalley (Marcus and Flannery 1996). It is no surprise, therefore, that when it came time 
for Monte Alb¿n to establish a regional administrative center for the Etla subvalley 
during Monte Alb¿n II, it chose to put that center atop the earlier site of San Jos¿ Mogote 
(Flannery and Marcus 1983:111-13; Marcus 1999; Marcus and Flannery 2004). 
Comparable Period II centers are known from other subvalleys, but until recently their 
history was not known in the detail of San Jos¿ Mogote.
The Oaxaca Settlement Pattern Project (Blanton et al. 1982; Kowalewski et al. 
1989) identified San Mart¿n Tilcajete in the southern (Zimatl¿n-Ocotl¿n) subvalley as the 
second largest pre-Monte Alb¿n site in the valley (San Jos¿ Mogote being the largest). In 
1993, Charles Spencer and Elsa Redmond began intensive surface pickup and mapping at 
three related archaeological sites near San Mart¿n Tilcajete; SMT-11a, SMT-11b, and 
SMT-23. In subsequent seasons, Spencer and Redmond excavated extensively at two of 
these three sites, SMT-11a ("El Mogote") and SMT-11b ("El Palenque") (Spencer and 
Redmond 2001b, 2003, 2004a, 2004b, 2004c, 2005, 2006). Christina Elson took on the 
task of excavating the third site, SMT-23 or "Cerro Tilcajete" (Elson 2003). 
Spencer and Redmond's excavations indicated that the El Mogote site (SMT-11a) 
had not participated in the founding of Monte Alb¿n, and instead had behaved like a 
political rival. Instead of losing population during Early Monte Alb¿n I (= Period Ia), as 
San Jos¿ Mogote had, El Mogote had doubled its size to 52.8 hectares, and created a 
ceremonial plaza oriented 25¡ east of true north, providing a defiant contrast to the true 
north-south orientation of Monte Alb¿n's main plaza. At the end of Period Ia, El 
Mogote's main plaza was abandoned in a conflagration, almost certainly as the result of a 
raid by Monte Alb¿n (see Beckmann et al. 2002; Redmond and Spencer 2006; Spencer in 
press a, in press b; Spencer and Redmond 2001b, 2003, 2004a-c, 2005, 2006).
Spencer and Redmond's research has further documented the Tilcajete polity's 
resistance to Monte Alb¿n's attempt to take over its region. During Late Monte Alb¿n I 
(= Period Ic), El Mogote's population moved uphill to a more defensible location at the 
El Palenque site (SMT-11b) and built a new ceremonial plaza with the same orientation 
as El Mogote's. It also added defensive walls. Throughout Period Ic, Monte Alb¿n seems 
to have denied El Palenque full access to the luxury pottery and imported obsidian that it 
made available to other communities that were its allies.
The rivalry between Monte Alb¿n and the Tilcajete polity continued for centuries 
until a final attack by Monte Alb¿n, during the first century B.C., left the palace and major 
temples at El Palenque destroyed by fire (Spencer 1999, 2003; Spencer and Redmond 
2001b). This time, Tilcajete did not recover. Victorious Monte Alb¿n then turned to a 
mountain overlooking the burned El Palenque site and created an administrative center 
for the Ocotl¿n region.
This new Monte Alb¿n II mountaintop administrative center, Cerro Tilcajete 
(SMT-23), is the subject of this Memoir. Elson excavated there for three seasons (1999-
2001) and showed that, in contrast to San Jos¿ Mogote (Marcus and Flannery 1996), 
Cerro Tilcajete was a newly created regional center rather than a reoccupied earlier site. 
One goal of Elson's excavations was to document the nature of Cerro Tilcajete's 
ties to Monte Alb¿n, especially the links between the elite families at the capital and 
those at Cerro Tilcajete. By Period II, the site of Monte Alb¿n had become the capital of 
a fully developed state and had begun to solidify its core region, investing in the 
administration of the area within one to two days' travel of the capital (Marcus 1992; 
Spencer 1998). 
Elson's work moves us away from our usual top-down, capital-centric Monte 
Alb¿n focus, and in so doing, gives us new insights into secondary administrative centers 
in a pristine state. For more than 100 years, archaeologists have speculated about Monte 
Alb¿n's impact on the rest of its valley (Bernal 1967, 1989; Bernal and Oliveros 1988; 
Marcus and Flannery 1996; Marcus 1983:113-15; Paddock 1966, 1983), and with this 
study some of their questions are answered. We can now see that Monte Alb¿n brought 
different subvalleys under its control gradually, using a variety of strategies. We believe 
that the future excavation of second-tier centers in other parts of the valley would 
continue to open up new avenues for understanding first-generation states.
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Acknowledgments
My excavations at Cerro Tilcajete began in 1999. Several years 
earlier, in 1994, Charles Spencer and Elsa Redmond had mapped the site and 
made intensive surface collections. I am indebted to them not only for 
encouraging me to work at Cerro Tilcajete, but also for graciously providing 
me with their site map and surface collections to analyze. In all, I excavated 
for three seasons and conducted two seasons of analysis. Although the 
analysis continues, this Memoir seeks to provide the most important results 
of my research thus far, in terms of the site's chronology, architecture, and 
material remains. 
The National Science Foundation, the Foundation for the 
Advancement of Mesoamerican Research, Inc., the University of Michigan, 
and the American Museum of Natural History funded the project. In Oaxaca, 
I thank the National Institute of Anthropology, its director Eduardo L¿pez 
Calzada, and its representatives Marcus Winter and Cira L¿pez Mart¿nez for 
assistance. At Cerro Tilcajete, Luca Casparis and Michelle Crossier expertly 
directed some excavation areas. Many skilled workmen from the 
municipality of San Mart¿n Tilcajete climbed more than 100 m to the site 
each day and worked carefully to uncover the structures and features. 
Since completing work at Cerro Tilcajete, Luca Casparis and I have 
gone on to work at Jalieza, the successor to the Tilcajete site. In Luca I am 
lucky to have a great co-director with whom I can plan to work for the many 
years it will take to sort out the long-term processes affecting Ocotl¿n after 
100 B.C. 
Heartfelt acknowledgments must go to the many people who helped 
me get to, and get through, graduate school. I consider myself lucky to have 
had a series of committed professors, including Gabriela Uru¿uela, Patricia 
Plunket, William Parry, Gregory Johnson, Jeffrey Parsons, Robert Whallon, 
John O'Shea, Conrad Kottak, and David Frye. Graduate school was made 
less of an ordeal by studying with an amazing cohort made up of Kamyar 
Abdi, Alan Covey, Patrick Livingood, and Jason Sherman. Alan Covey 
worked with me at Cerro Tilcajete, helped me code thousands of sherds, and 
listened patiently and supportively to a million little complaints all while 
completing his own dissertation work in Peru. Alan and I defended our 
dissertations the same day and I am as proud of his work and 
accomplishments as he is of mine. While being a young academic can be 
hard, having four truly outstanding advisors; Charles Spencer, Elsa 
Redmond, Kent Flannery, and Joyce Marcus; who time and time again 
offered enthusiastic support and encouragement made the work more 
worthwhile.
The realm of moral support belongs to my family; James, Sue, 
Elizabeth, and Scott Elson; who think archaeology and archaeologists are 
pretty odd but are firm believers in doing what one likes. Finally, I want to 
thank my husband Kevin, who has kept me grounded and my priorities in 
order while somehow managing to get me to focus all my efforts on writing 
this monograph.