Quiahuiztlan

Quiahuiztlan is a Totonac archaeological site on the terraced slopes of the Cerro de los Metates, also called Cerro Bernal, in the municipality of Actopan on the central Veracruz coast. It looks straight down on the bay of Villa Rica and the Gulf, about 75 km north of the port of Veracruz and some 30 km north of Cempoala. The Nahuatl name means "place where rain abounds". The hill is named for the many small grinding stones (metates) found buried on it, and its dry slopes are covered with cactus, scrub and medicinal plants. The site is managed by INAH.

People settled the hill in the Epiclassic or Late Classic period, when the open Totonac cities of the plain declined after the fall of Teotihuacan and their people looked for high places that were easier to defend. The inhabitants cut terraces into the hill that held back the soil and doubled as defensive walls. Even so, Quiahuiztlan was conquered twice in the Postclassic: by Toltec groups around the end of the 9th century and by the Mexica in the early 1400s, to whom it paid tribute until the Spanish arrived. Specialists estimate it had about 15,000 people at the time of contact. In 1519 Hernán Cortés came here from Cempoala, and at Quiahuiztlan the Spanish and about 30 Totonac towns formed the alliance against Tenochtitlan that shaped the conquest. The Spanish built their Villa Rica de la Vera Cruz on the plain below. The city was abandoned during the conquest. It was later excavated by the INAH archaeologists Alfonso Medellín Zenil and Ramón Arellanos Melgarejo.

Quiahuiztlan was at once a city, a fortress and a cemetery, and the cemetery is what makes it unusual. Excavators found 78 tombs in three main groups, central, eastern and southern. Each tomb is a miniature temple, with a base, a funeral chamber, a small shrine, a roof and steps, built of stone slabs and plaster made from burnt shells; many face the sea. Beyond the cemeteries are plazas, terraces, stairways, two pyramids on the central plaza, a pair of twin shrines known as Los Gemelos and an I-shaped ball court. A path continues up the steep rock above the site, which is also used for rock climbing, and the views over the coastal plain, Villa Rica bay and Punta Bernal are among the best on this coast.