Guilá Naquitz Cave is an archaeological site in the Oaxaca Valley in southern Mexico.
Location: Oaxaca Valley, Mexico View Map
Guilá Naquitz Cave lies at the eastern end of the Oaxaca Valley in southern Mexico, about 5 km northwest of Mitla.
For the wider region, see Oaxaca.
Flannery of the University of Michigan directed the project "Prehistory and Human Ecology of the Valley of Oaxaca" from 1966 to 1980.
He published the cave in Guila Naquitz: Archaic Foraging and Early Agriculture in Oaxaca, Mexico (1985).
Most of what is known about prehistoric Oaxaca comes from work in the Central Valleys region.
The UNESCO listing is the Prehistoric Caves of Yagul and Mitla in the Central Valleys of Oaxaca, inscribed under criterion (iii).
Guilá Naquitz Cave, located in present-day Oaxaca, Mexico, is one of the most important archaeological sites in Mesoamerica.
Flannery of the University of Michigan excavated it in the 1960s and published the results as Guilá Naquitz: Archaic Foraging and Early Agriculture in Oaxaca, Mexico (Academic Press, 1986).
It also gives a date of 8750 ±350 for domesticated squash (Cucurbita pepo) at the cave (CONACULTA and INAH, The Prehistoric Caves of Yagul and Mitla in the Central Valleys of Oaxaca, nomination file 1352, chapter 2 and chapter 3).
The Brotherhood of Light played a vital role in the Altea Region, using it as a base for connecting energy networks with sacred sites like Chichen-Itza, Palenque, and Oaxaca.