page_title: San José Mogote
section_title: Monument 3
hierarchical_section_title: San José Mogote / Innovations and art / Monument 3
caption_attribution_description: Monument 3 at San Jose Mogote
context_page_description: San José Mogote is a pre-Columbian archaeological site of the Zapotec, a Mesoamerican culture that flourished in the region of what is now the Mexican state of Oaxaca. A forerunner to the better-known Zapotec site of Monte Albán, San José Mogote was the largest and most important settlement in the Valley of Oaxaca during the Early and Middle Formative periods of Mesoamerican cultural development.
  Situated in the fertile bottomlands of the Etla arm of the Valley of Oaxaca, the site is surrounded by the present-day village of San José Mogote, about 7.5 miles northwest of the city of Oaxaca.
  San José Mogote is considered to be the oldest permanent agricultural village in the Oaxaca Valley and probably the first settlement in the area to use pottery. It has also "...produced Mexico’s oldest known defensive palisades and ceremonial buildings, early use of adobe, the first evidence of Zapotec hieroglyphic writing, and early examples of architectural terracing, craft specialization, and irrigation."
context_section_description: A flat, carved stone, designated Monument 3, was placed as a doorstep to the ceremonial structure (Price and Feinman 2005, p. 321). The carving is of a naked man with "a puffy, slitted eye, lips drawn back in a grimace, overall posture of vulnerability . . . rounded elements on the chest and abdomen suggesting the guts after disembowelment."  Glyphs depict drops of blood and a possible calendar day-name "1 Earthquake."  These are the earliest Zapotec glyphs known to exist.  While personal bloodletting was suggested by the stingray spines and similar objects made of obsidian or jade, the figure depicted on Monument 3 shows sacrifice of a victim, probably a captive, on a societal level. In a later time period, monuments carved with similar figures, called danzantes (dancers), were present at Monte Albán.
  Later the public structures on Mound 1 were rebuilt as a residence for a high-ranking family.
  By 500 BCE, with the emergence of Monte Albán as the area's main city, San José Mogote's 1000 years of dominance ended, and it was relegated to the status of a lesser community that fell under Monte Albán's control.
  Some of the artifacts from the San José Mogote archaeological site may be viewed in the town of San José Mogote's Community Museum, which is located in the El Cacique Hacienda.
caption: Monument 3 at San Jose Mogote.  The two shaded glyphs between his legs are likely his name, Earthquake 1.
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