The ball game in Capulac-Concepción, Amozoc. The oldest known in the Central Highlands of Mexico

Abstract

In 1974 during an archaeological survey conducted in the Puebla-Tlaxcala Valley, we found a ballcourt in a pre-Hispanic settlement—p-211 Capulac Concepción—which was occupied during the Formative (Preclassic) period. We excavated this Ballcourt at the beginning of 1975 and after analyzing the data recovered during the explorations, we realized it was the largest and oldest ballcourt in the Central Highlands of Mexico. In 1983 a text on that Ballcourt ball was published in a volume— Homenaje a Walter Palm—that came out in Germany, however, this text is little known in Mexico. Thirty-seven years have passed and we now know many more ballcourts from the Formative period in the eastern Central Highlands, specifically in the Eastern Basin, and the ballcourt described herein has now disappeared. In the ancient pre-Hispanic site another human settlement has been established, since the late twentieth century, known as the Colonia Benito Juarez in the municipality of Amozoc de Mota in the state of Puebla. For this reason we decided to make information available to a wider public on this ballcourt, which is still the oldest example known in the Mexican Central Highlands.