Joseph B. Mountjoy

In 1996 I began doing archaeological research in several valleys located in the western highlands of Jalisco, Mexico, between Guadalajara and Puerto Vallarta. This research was focused on the registration of rocks with petroglyphs and the location of shaft-and-chamber tomb burial sites. Several spectacular petroglyphs sites were registered, including one canyon (the photograph) that appears to record the kind of sacred deer hunt carried out by the nearby Huichol Indians in the 19th century. Also, excavations were conducted in one ceremonial site where a copper/bronze bell in the form of Mictlantecuhtli (an Aztec god of death) had been unearthed by looters in 1961. In 2000 I began conducting excavations in the Mascota Valley at a burial site dated to ca. 800 B.C. with funds provided by the National Geographic Society. Excavations in that site were completed in 2005, and by that time we had excavated approximately 39 Middle Formative burial pits which contained the remains of about 175 individuals and some 500 burial offerings, some of which show distant relationships with places such as Guatemala and the border area of Peru and Ecuador. In 2004-2005 funding by the Foundation for the Advancement of Mesoamerican Studies, Inc. enabled us to conduct excavations in two more Middle Formative cemeteries (ca. 800 B.C. to 1000 B.C.) where we discovered and excavated human remains and burial offerings from several shaft-and-chamber tombs. At present, 500 of these Middle Formative burial items are on display in three rooms in the Archaeology Museum of Mascota, and a fourth room, with 35 color photographs and 4 petroglyph rocks, is dedicated to presenting an interpretation of the designs pecked or painted onto rocks in this area of Jalisco.

There are 10 included publications by Joseph B. Mountjoy :

TitleDateViewsBrief Description
Anthropomorphic Peg-Based Sculptures from the Banderas Valley of Coastal West Mexico. 2005 3901 Both the accidental as well as the purposeful discovery of a large number of anthropomorphic peg-based sculptures in the Banderas Valley in the states of Jalisco and Nayarit during the 1990s have provided a corpus of contextual and iconographic data ...
Archaeological Investigations at the GF-104 (P. Gilmore) Site 1974 1498 This report is based on research conducted during the summer of 1973, supported by the Department of Anthropology and the Summer School of the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. It has been prepared because it is believed that the results of...
An Archaic Quarry and Stone Knapping Location on Three Hat Mountain, North Carolina 1982 4151 North American Indians relied heavily on stone as a basic material from which to shape a wide variety of tools and ceremonial objects. When an archaeologist excavates a prehistoric Indian camp or village it is often apparent that the one or more Indi...
Burial Practices during the Late Formative/Early Classic in the Banderas Valley Area of Coastal West Mexico. 2006 4233 In this article we report on the results of our attempts to locate and study shaft-and-chamber tombs in the Municipality of Puerto Vallarta on the southern (Jalisco) side of the Banderas Valley of coastal West Mexico and to place these tombs in the ...
Capacha: Una Cultura Enigmática del Occidente de México 1994 23876 Capacha es el nombre que la arqueóloga Isabel Kelly, pionera de la arqueología en el Occidente de México, asignó en 1970 a ciertos restos arqueológicos procedentes de nueve lugares en el altiplano oriente de Colima, en la vecindad de la ciudad de Col...
A Dated Cruciform Artifact? 1971 3256 Excavations at a site on the outskirts of San Bias, on the south-central coast of Nayarit, Mexico (1967-8) yielded an obsidian cruciform artifact in stratigraphic context, associated with artifacts of the locally defined San Blas complex. Radiocarbon...
Early Radiocarbon Dates From a Site on the Pee Dee-Siouan Frontier in the Piedmont of Central North Carolina 1989 2038 In Coe's (1952) discussion of the Pee Dec focus and in a subsequent study by Reid (1967) of Pee Dee pottery from the mound at Town Creek in Montgomery County, North Carolina, accounts are provided of the intrusion and eventual withdrawal of the In...
Studies of Pre-Hispanic New World Cultures. 1979 2683 These books exemplify three different approaches to the study of indigenous New World culture: the first stresses archaeology, the second a combination of archaeology and history, and the third relies almost wholly on historical European contact peri...
Trachemys Ornata (Gray, 1831) (Testudines: Emydidae) en un yacimiento arqueológico del occidente de México. 2012 1671 Carapacial and plastral bones from "El Pantano" archaeological site in Mascota Valley, Jalisco, Mexico have been identified as Trachemys ornata (Ornate Slider). The tortoise was placed as an offering over the burial of an infant and a child. Since th...
West Mexican Stelae from Jalisco and Nayarit. 1991 5712 The process of Mesoamerican cultural expansion into western and northwestern Mexico has been a subject of speculation and investigation for over three centuries. Although many cultural traits have been "implicated" in this process, the practice of er...