Valsequillo
name: label: Collection Creator
content: Irwin-Williams, Cynthia
setName: label: See more items in
content: Cynthia Irwin-Williams papers
label: See more items in
content: Cynthia Irwin-Williams papers / Series 7: Photographs and Artwork / Fieldwork
unitdate: label: Date
content: 1962-1973
label: Date
content: 1989
label: Date
content: undated
dataSource: label: Archival Repository
content: National Anthropological Archives
objectType: label: Type
content: Archival materials
scopecontent: label: Scope and Contents
content: The Valsequillo project, in Puebla, Mexico, was the first major excavation that Irwin-Williams headed. It encompassed excavations at four sites (Hueyatlaco, El Horno, El Mirador, and Tecacaxco) which were located by Irwin-Williams and Juan Armenta Camacho, who co-headed the excavation, while Irwin-Williams was seeking out sites in Mexico in 1959-1960. The excavations were conducted between 1962 and 1966. There are two major controversies surrounding the excavations at Valsequillo. The first is a result of allegations made by Jose Luis Lorenzo, the chief of the department and laboratories of prehistory in the Instituto Nacional de Antropología y Historia, that Irwin-Williams had planted the artifacts she found. She refuted this accusation in Comments on Allegations by J. L. Lorenzo Concerning Archaeological Research at Valsequillo, Puebla, Miscellaneous Publications, no. 1 (Paleoindian Institute, Eastern New Mexico University, 1967). The second controversy involves the dating of the site as the Uranium-series dates performed by B. Szabo of the United States Geological Survey date the site to 180-250 thousand years ago, which was rejected by Irwin-Williams but supported by the excavation's geologist, Harold E. Malde, and tephrochronologist, Virginia Steen-McIntyre. Irwin-Williams dated the site to approximately 22,000 years ago.