Continuities in Architectural Traditions: The Subterráneos of Prehistoric and Modern Northern Mexico

Abstract

The recent discovery of a pit house village, 40 km northwest of Monterrey, challenges the conventional view of inland northeastern Mexico as the domain of purely nomadic hunters and gatherers throughout prehistory. Las Casitas consists of fifty-three subterranean rooms and forty-eight smaller depressions aligned in three slightly arcuate tiers in a small valley adjacent to Boca de Potrerillos, an extremely large open campsite and petroglyph complex that is now an archeological park. Other features of the site are some 325 hearths that surround the depressions and a very limited artifact assemblage numbering only thirty-seven items. Two hearths produced radiocarbon samples that date site occupancy to approximately a.d. 1450, just prior to the arrival of the Spanish in the New World. Las Casitas provides the first evidence of semi-sedentary, surplus producing populations in central northeastern Mexico.