Coxcatlán

Coxcatlán is the seat of the municipality of the same name in south-eastern Puebla, at the southern end of the Tehuacán valley on the Oaxaca line. The name comes from the Nahuatl cóxcatl, a necklace of stones or jewels, and tlan, place: "place of those who wear necklaces". The municipality, about 250 km², climbs from 800 to 2,700 m, from the valley floor to the Sierra Negra, and had 19,639 people in 2010.

Its name is known in archaeology for the Coxcatlán cave, which Richard MacNeish excavated in the 1960s during his survey of the Tehuacán valley. Bands of foragers used it for about 10,000 years, mainly in the Archaic period, as a shelter and rainy-season gathering place, in groups of 25 to 30 people. Some 24,000 maize remains turned up there, along with squash and other early crops, and the cave yielded almost three quarters of the project's stone tools. Those finds forced a rethink of when and how plants were domesticated in Mexico, and are why the valley is called the cradle of maize.

The town has a church dedicated to Saint John the Baptist. To the south the municipality borders the Oaxaca municipalities of San Antonio Nanahuatípam and Teotitlán de Flores Magón; to the east, Coyomeapan, up in the mountains.