Monte Negro, Tilantongo

Above Santiago Tilantongo, in the Mixteca Alta, the summit of Cerro Negro holds one of the oldest towns in the region. At about 2,600 m, some 500 m above the village and far from any permanent spring, its builders put up houses, courtyards and temples during the Early Ramos phase, between 300 and 100 BC, while the first Monte Albán was growing in the Oaxaca valleys. Its Mixtec name is Yucu Tnoo; Tilantongo, the village below, later became the seat of Lord 8 Deer of the Mixtec codices.

Alfonso Caso heard of the site in 1936 and built a field camp there, designed by architect Armando Nicolau, whose stone chimney still stands. He led digs from 1937 to 1939, and Jorge R. Acosta ran the last season in 1940. They found six tombs and about twenty burials, with shaped skulls, filed teeth and one trepanned skull. A 1999 survey put the settlement at about 78 hectares, and since 2022 digging has resumed, the first excavations in more than 80 years and the first to look beyond the elite sector.

What you see today is the core: at least four enclosed plazas with residential compounds and a causeway running east to west. The buildings are single-tiered, with walls rarely higher than 2 m, and several have round columns of stacked stone drums, about 3 m tall, which give the site its look. Drains and clay pipes ran under the floors. The site is run by the community, and visits have to be arranged with them beforehand.