In southern Mexico’s Oaxaca Valley around a.d. 600, ancestors of today’s Zapotec people dedicated a spectacular tomb to an honored forebear. Archaeologists from Mexico’s National Institute of Anthropology and History recently unearthed the funerary monument outside the town of San Pablo Huitzo, where other Zapotec tombs have previously been found. The tomb’s antechamber features a painted stucco relief depicting the face of a Zapotec lord with a headdress shaped like a massive owl. These birds represent night and death in the Zapotec belief system. On either side of the monument’s threshold are carved figures of a man and a woman, also wearing headdresses. Archaeologists believe the ancient Zapotec might have considered these figures guardians of the tomb. Inside the burial chamber, colorful murals depict a procession of men and women walking toward the tomb’s entrance and carrying bags of copal, or resin incense.
Located about 25 miles north of the ancient Zapotec capital of Monte Albán, the monument must have held the remains of a person of high standing. Archaeologists are still at work inside the tomb and may yet discover more about this individual, who could have been the man depicted wearing the owl headdress.
