Petroglyphs in Zihuatanejo, Costa Grande of Guerrero

Abstract

This text describes petroglyphs in the vicinity of the port of Zihuatanejo in the Costa Grande region of the state of Guerrero. Most of the petroglyphs discussed were located in 1986 by the author and researchers from the Ixtapa-Zihuatanejo-Petatlán Project in the former Archaeological
Salvage Sub-department of inah. In 2010 an opportunity arose to visit these sites and corroborate their condition. With new digital recording techniques, it was possible to produce more faithful drawings and to correct errors and omissions, and to locate the petroglyphs more precisely on an updated map by transforming their coordinates from Datum NAD 27 to Datum ITRF 92 (WGS 84). The importance of this work resides not only in publishing this aspect of the region’s archaeological record, but also to bear witness to the danger threatening this patrimony in the face of growing urbanization and the development of tourism affecting the coastal plain and the lagoon and swamp systems on the Guerrero coast.