The site

Monte Albán is a large pre-Columbian city crowning an artificially leveled ridge some 400 metres above the Valley of Oaxaca in southern Mexico. Founded by the Zapotec around 500 BCE, its civic-ceremonial core spreads across a defensible summit ringed by hundreds of artificial terraces and mounded architecture. One of the earliest cities of Mesoamerica, it holds temples, a ballcourt and a necropolis at the junction of the valley's three arms.

Field notes

civilizations

Zapotec

types

City · Temple · Ballcourt · Astronomical observatory · Necropolis

built

500 BCE — 700 CE

occupied

500 BCE — 850 CE

country

Mexico