In 1896, British archaeological artist Adela Breton visited a newly excavated shaft tomb in Jalisco, thought to be 1,500 years old.
Seven years later, she reported on her experience in the journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute.
“The town of Etzatlan is about 70 miles north-west of Guadalajara and at the first coming of the Spaniards it was the capital of a state or canton forming one of a confederation of states called Chimalhuacan, inhabited by peaceful and civilised communities speaking the Nahuatl language.
The mound in question is three leagues north of the modern town, on a level field belonging to the hacienda of Guadalupe, and the owner caused it to be excavated early in 1896. Unfortunately there was no skilled supervision, no data were secured, and most of the figures were broken.
The mound was rounded and about 40 feet high. A wide trench was dug from both the north and the south sides towards its centre and almost through, and about half the mound had been cleared away to the ground level. Nearly in the middle, on the south side, the workmen ... found a skeleton resting on a whitey-grey compound, a sort of grey clay. The skull was finely developed. Above this they found the figures ...
There were 20 of these clay effigies in the burial chamber, which was apparently about 13 meters below the surface of the mound, together with jade amulets and beads, shell bracelets, shell and stone ornaments and “some very small flat bits of white metal – not silver – with holes.”
Breton says one of the figures found in the tomb was that of a prosperous-looking woman:
“The head lady bears her offering to the gods and wears armlets like those found in the mound. Her face and body are painted or tattooed, and she appears to have a ceremonial symbolic garment with a pattern of greques (sic). She has several rings in each ear and a nose ornament. The same type of face and figure may still be met in the Indian villages, and it represents a matron of the highest qualities – capable, hard working, kindly, an admirable housewife, and the best mother in the world.”
Breton’s notes may well represent the first description ever made of a shaft tomb’s contents. Sue Giles, the curator of the Breton collection at the Bristol Museum in England, asked me whether any of the recently treasures from the tomb of Guadalupe could still be found in Jalisco.
Archaeologist Rodrigo Esparza and I decided to find out, figuring that a search for such artifacts ought to begin with a visit to their point of origin: the Mound of Guadalupe – or what might be left of it. Our task was made easier by the fact that archaeologist Phil Weigand had located the site of this tomb years ago and had passed on the coordinates to Rodrigo.
These coordinates pointed to a spot six kilometers west of Etzatlán. That struck me as odd since Breton states that the mound was located three leagues (about 14.5 kilometers, I reckon) north of Etzatlán. Since Breton was such a meticulous observer, it was hard for me to believe that the site we were about to visit could be the right one.
Nevertheless, off we went and after an hour found ourselves on a dirt road with the GPS indicating we were only 40 meters from our goal. The only problem was, we were standing in front of a solid wall of green, a thickly planted cornfield twice my height and above it there was no sign of a mound 13 meters high.
That’s when the Internet came to our rescue. Rodrigo whipped out his smartphone and Google Earth showed us a mound – now split in two – 50 meters from the GPS location. We walked in that direction and suddenly saw the top of the mound, peeking above the corn.
Now a barbed-wire fence stood in our way, but squeezing through it was far easier than penetrating the wall of corn, which could only be accomplished by moving forward sideways, crab style. Soon we were walking uphill and at last came to the top of the mound and a guava tree, the only living thing of a non-corny nature anywhere to be seen. Rodrigo leaned over and in a minute held a handful of potshards and obsidian bits, suggesting that this was indeed an archaeological site. More than that I can’t say as we were practically blind even atop the mound, every inch of which was covered with corn.
“Now that we know where it is, we’ll come back after the harvest,” we said.
Next we stopped off at the nearby ex-hacienda de Guadalupe where Breton had stayed. The place looked huge but was walled up tighter than a prison. Getting permission to enter is our next challenge, perhaps a formidable one. Will we find inside any of the statuettes or jewelry from the Mound of Guadalupe? Watch this column: the game is afoot.