page_title: Tehuacalco
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Tehuacalco / History
caption_attribution_description: English: View of the Palace at Tehuacalco This is a photo of a monument in Mexico, identified by ID ZA58
context_page_description: Tehuacalco is an archeological site located near the city of Chilpancingo, Guerrero, Mexico. It was the first archeological site associated with the Yope people to be excavated, in the 2000s. The site is on a hill surrounded by mountains, which were worshipped by the Yope. Four marked the cardinal directions and one, Compuerta, was used to mark solar events such as equinoxes and solstices as the sun rose behind it. Tehuacalco was occupied as a ceremonial site from about 400CE to about 1100CE. The site was opened to the public in 2008.
context_section_description: The name of the site comes from the Nahuatl phrase “tehuacalli” which refers to holes bored into stones to be used for ritual purposes. It can be interpreted various ways such as “place of the stone box,” “house of priests” or “house of the sacred water.”
  While mostly associated with the Yopes, it is not completely certain. There may have been Yopime or even Tlapaneca settlements here as well. Occupation of the site began around 400CE with its height between 650 and 1100CE. At this time, the population center covered about eighty hectares and the ceremonial center covered twelve. Most of the structures were built when the Toltecs were at the height of their influence. The Yopes of Tehuacalco were sedentary farmers with different social classes with classes of rulers and priests on top, followed by warriors, merchants and artisans. The diet consists of meat from hunting and corn. The Yopes thought of the mountains as repositories of water and seeds. These mountains were worshipped as a way to ensure good harvests. The sun was thought to be devoured by a monster at the end of the day and had to fight in the underworld to arise the next morning. It was considered obligatory to “feed” the sun to help it return.
  The area around the site was named Yopitzingo in Nahuatl, and it was one of the few areas that the Aztecs could not conquer in the late Post Classic period even though by then the Yopes had become semi nomadic practicing intermittent agriculture. However, after the Spanish Conquest, the Yope were decimated by European diseases. They did not submit completely to Spanish rule and had one major rebellion. However, this was crushed with the Spanish scattering the remaining Yopes to other settlements.
  Tehuacalco is the first site related to the Yope to be extensively explored, which was done in the 2000s. Nineteen structures have been discovered so far, mostly by field work performed in 2006 and 2007. Afterwards, forty million pesos were spent to ready the site for tourism and it was opened to the public in 2008. It is one of twelve sites opened to the public during the Calderon administration from 2006 to 2012. There is a welcome center with explanations about the site in Spanish, but the explanatory signs on the site are in Spanish and English.
caption: The Palace at Tehuacalco
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