Aproximaciones al desarrollo del paisaje prehispánico de Tamtoc

Abstract

Since 2008, a group of specialists from the National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH) has conducted systematic studies at the urban nucleus of the archaeological site of Tamtoc and in some of its outlying sectors, located on the banks of the Tampaón River in the Mexican State of San Luis Potosí. The objective of the authors of this article has been to consider the emergence of this urban society and the processes of change it underwent in its historical development. In the article, based on our review of various characteristics of the urban landscape of Tamtoc, we identify a series of formative stages which suggest that by 400 B.C., the society was already organized in a complex manner, and that by the beginning of the Christian era it was showing evidence of patterns of urbanism and the founding of institutions. Ultimately, after two millennia, and having reached the peak of its development, with the arrival of the Iberians on the coasts of the Gulf of Mexico in the early sixteenth century and the dismantling of the political structures of the region that followed, Tamtoc experienced gradual decline.