Zona Arqueológica Arroyo Seco

Arroyo Seco is an archaeological zone of rock paintings in a small, fertile valley in the municipality of Victoria, on the edge of the Sierra Gorda in northeastern Guanajuato. Its rock shelters were used by people for an extraordinarily long time, from around 7000 BC until the nineteenth century, and the painted panels are a rare record of the hunter-gatherer peoples of this frontier region.

INAH has documented 46 pictorial groups containing hundreds of motifs, many of them painted on top of earlier ones. Human figures are the most common, shown hunting or dancing in what look like ceremonies, alongside animals such as deer, coyotes, foxes, eagles, lizards and scorpions, plants, geometric designs like concentric circles and crosses, and long sequences of marks that may have been calendars. Many of the paintings are thought to be around three thousand years old, and they may have been made by shamans or healers recording important events.

A visitor center with a small site museum, showing reproductions of the art, sits at the entrance. The visit is a guided walk of about two hours through the dry valley, past the painted rocks, and it is one of the most unusual archaeological experiences in the state.