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Michoacán, formally Michoacán de Ocampo, officially the Free and Sovereign State of Michoacán de Ocampo, is one of the 31 states which, together with Mexico City, compose the Federal Entities of Mexico. The state is divided into 113 municipalities and its capital city is Morelia (formerly called Valladolid). The city was named after José María Morelos, a native of the city and one of the main heroes of the Mexican War of Independence.
Michoacán is located in western Mexico, and has a stretch of coastline on the Pacific Ocean to the southwest. It is bordered by the states of Colima and Jalisco to the west and northwest, Guanajuato to the north, Querétaro to the northeast, the State of México to the east, and Guerrero to the southeast.
The name Michoacán is from Nahuatl Michhuahcān, from michhuah [ˈmit͡ʃwaʔ] 'possessor of fish' and -cān [kaːn] 'place of' and means "place of the fishermen", referring to those who fish on Lake Pátzcuaro. In pre-Hispanic times, the area was the home of the Purépecha Empire, which rivaled the Aztec Empire at the time of Spanish encounter. After the Spanish conquest, the empire became a separate province which became smaller over the colonial period. The state and its residents played a major role in the Mexican War of Independence.
Today, the state is still home to a sizable population of Purépecha people as well as minor populations of Otomi and Nahua. The economy is based on agriculture, ranching, fishing, mining, and the arts. The major tourism draw for the state is the Lake Pátzcuaro–Tzintzuntzan–Quiroga area, which was the center of the Purépecha Empire; as well as the location of the Tzintzuntzan yácata pyramids. The national and state parks which include the winter grounds of the monarch butterflies (Mariposas Monarca) are located here. Michoacán is known for its Spanish colonial towns. In 1991, Morelia was declared an UNESCO World Heritage Site for its well-preserved colonial buildings, pink stone cathedral, historic center, and aqueduct. Michoacán has ten Pueblos Mágicos; such as the towns of Pátzcuaro and Santa Clara del Cobre.
Day of the Dead celebrations in some parts of Michoacán, such as the towns of Janitzio and Pátzcuaro, are often considered to be the most elaborate and famous in all of Mexico. The famous Parícutin volcano, which is one of the Seven Natural Wonders of the World, is located near the city of Uruapan. The state is known as "the soul of Mexico".
The earliest human settlement of the Michoacán region started during the Palaeoindian or Lithic period, pre-dating c. 2500 BC, and carried out by small groups of hunter-gatherers, as evidenced by fluted projectile points and other stone tools found together with remains of mammoths and bison.
Most documentation for this human occupation during this period is from the basin of Lake Chapala, although similar activities also happened in the late Pleistocene lakes of the region, such as Cuitzeo, Zacapu, and maybe Pátzcuaro.
There are barely any known remains of the Archaic period from Michoacán, with preceramic deposits from c. 2500 to c. 2200 BC being attested from the Los Portales Cave in conjunction with waste flakes of basalt and obsidian, one projectile point, and one mano.
The Preclassic population of Michoacán lived in agricultural villages, especially located in El Opeño in the west and the basin of the Balsas river in the south.
The remains of these first societies to produce ceramics suggest that the Michoacán region was occupied with various localised cultures with their own histories and dynamics of interaction with their neighbours and with each other. This diversity of cultures would remain the norm in the Michoacán region until the rise of the Purépecha Empire.
The formative culture of El Opeño dates from c. 1500 to c. 800 BC, and performed a burial cult whose remains consist of tombs including ceramic vessels, figurines, and the burial shafts themselves, suggesting that this culture interacted along the Santiago-Lerma river with more western cultures in Jalisco and Nayarit, as well as with other cultures to the east.
In the middle and lower basin of the Balsas river were El Infiernillo villages whose ceramics suggest ties to the Capacha culture of Colima and the Pacific coast from Nayarit to Guerrero.
Remains of domesticated maize pollen from c. 1500 BC suggests that Michoacán was more densely inhabited during the Early and Middle Preclassic than attested by the archaeological evidence.
During the late Preclassic period, at least three regional cultures existed in Michoacán:
These cultures were each defined by small village societies, and they have been distinguished from each other by differences in the ceramics associated with their respective burials.
Over the course of the Late Preclassic and Early Classic periods, the sites of Santa Maria near Morelia, Loma Alta in the Zacapu basin, and Chehuayo in the Cuitzeo basin, experienced developments such as changes in the style of ceramics and public architecture becoming more complex, with sunken patios and platforms.
At the Loma Alta site, there were some sherds of Thin Orange pottery, cloisonné, and an uncommon necropolis which had been repeatedly reused and where four types of burial had been performed.
By the 1st centuries AD, social ranks existed in the larger settlements, although their location on the floor of lake basins and their absence in defensible positions suggests there was barely any aggression or population movements.
During the Classic period, three regionally distinct cultures existed in Michoacán which nonetheless were related to nearby areas in the south and west:
Between c. 400 and c. 900 AD, an important cultural transformation happened in Michoacán in the form of the appearance of ceremonial centres where village societies had been the norm. The ceremonial centres from this period were widely spread out throughout Michoacán, and included the ones at El Otero near Jiquilpan, Tres Cerritos near Cuitzeo, and minor ones at Queréndaro and/or Zinapécuaro in the Cuitzeo basin, and Tingambato near the Pátzcuaro basin. These ceremonial centres were separated from each other by lands inhabited by populations continuing to live in village societies while also interacting with these ceremonial centres.
Concurrent with this development, the Zacapu basin experienced significant population growth, with the number of sites doubling during the Jaruacuaro phase (c. 600 to c. 700 AD), and again during the Lupe phase (c. 700 to c. 850 AD), so that by the La Joya phase at the end of the Late Classic Period (c. 850 to c. 900 AD), there were 58 sites. The settlements of this period were also located away from the lakeshore, especially in the area between Zacapu and the Lerma river, and they included pyramids, plazas and ball courts. A deeply buried irrigation canal in the Pátzcuaro basin from the Lupe-La Joya phase suggests an intensification of agriculture.
The major centres of this period contained architectural structures and artefacts suggesting they were in direct contact with the Teotihuacán culture of the Mexico basin:
Outside of the ceremonial centres, a few sites from the Lerman river to the Cuitzeo basin to the middle of the Balsas river contained Thin Orange pottery, cloisonné decoration, mosaic disks, Teotihuacán-like figurines, and sometimes talud-tablero architecture.
The number of Central Mexican-type artefacts is low in all these settlements, and they represent only a small part of material goods linked with the central Mexican Classic period culture: thus, while dental mutilation is attested at Tingambato, its variety is limited compared to those of Central Mexico, and for example dental incrustation was absent in Michoacán.
The significance of these new ceremonial centres and the presence of Teotihuacán-type artefacts there is still uncertain. Because most of the research on them was of salvage nature, none of the deposits at the large centres has been dated more precisely to between c. 400-900 AD, meaning that:
The strongest evidence suggests that these came about due to interaction between Teotihuacán along the Balsas river during the Middle Classic Period, as well as central Mexican interaction with central and northern Michoacán after c. 600 AD. Therefore, the presence of Thin Orange pottery, a Teotihuacán mask, and "al fresco" decoration on some sherds at Loma Alta in the Zacapu basin are not linked with any significant changes in settlement pattern or ceramic style during the Loma Alta and Jaracuaro phases (c. 0-600 AD), while observable changes in settlement patterns and ceramic styles are instead linked to populations moving from the lakeshore sites to the area between Zacapu and the Lerma river, meaning that the central Mexican elements entering Michoacán might have done so via Classic Period populations in southern Guanajuato instead of directly through the east.
As a result of these contacts, the process of social differentiation which was already happening accelerated, and the formation of polities occupying discrete territories and competing to access inter-regional and intra-regional trade to the east and west intensified. By c. 800 AD, regions of northeastern Michoacán were interacting directly with central Mexico, which in turn intensified the increased output of the obsidian mines at Zináparo.
The changes in Michoacán continued so that by c. 900 AD they had caused major changes in settlement patterns: populations became concentrated at defensible locations in the Cuitzeo and Zacapu basins, as well as along the Lerma and Balsas rivers, with this process continuing until the formation of the Purépecha state.
Along with these changes in settlement patterns, the local population adopted red-on-cream ceramics on a widespread basis, integrating them with local pottery traditions. These ceramic style shifts are known from a wide part of northern and central Michoacán, including Zinapécuaro, Cuitzeo, Tiristaran, Morelia, Teremendo, Zacapu, Lake Pátzcuaro, Carapan, Zamora, and Tangamendapio. Polychrome pottery with negative decoration resembling the pottery of Guanajuato was already present at the site of Urichu in the Pátzcuaro basin by c. 400 AD, and after c. 900 AD these polychrome ceramics became more common. The ceramics of the future Purépecha would be derived from the polychrome pottery which became widespread in Michoacán after c. 900 AD.
Metallurgy was introduced in Michoacán during the early Postclassic Period by merchants from southern Ecuador who participated in the canoe trade through the Santiago-Lerma and Balsas-Tepalcatepec rivers. Metal objects from this time is known only from burial, and was made of copper and an alloy of copper and silver through cold hammering, annealing, and lost-wax casting in styles and object types known from earlier coastal Ecuador.
During the early and middle Postclassic Period, the local elites of Michoacán competed for communities and they marked their relative success with polychrome pottery, metal goods, and patron deities. Due to the lack of regional authority which possessed decision-making power while the populations were increasing, populations became extremely concentrated in some regions, such as at Zacapu, where 20,000 people and 13 sites occupied 11 kilometres square of the malpais, but the lake marsh below it was not inhabited.
During the middle and late Postclassic Period, the societies of Michoacán had little direct interaction with central Mexico, instead participating in regional cultures and sharing traits and beliefs which would later be typical of the Purépechas, and some of which might have arrived from further west along the Santiago-Lerma river system, while others were results of local cultural changes. Changes during this period included:
Text from the Wikipedia article “Michoacán”, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.