The Tequila region of Jalisco, Mexico followed a unique trajectory of cultural development that challenges traditional models of social complexity. For many decades, it was forced into unsuitable categories, inadequate for explaining the richness and diverse material culture manifested in the archaeological record. Advances in anthropological theory and fieldwork research in the area have enhanced our understanding of the nature of political organization through time. In this presentation, I offer a general overview of the primary shifts in politics as seen through settlement patterns and architecture. Diachronic change shows dynamic and dramatic transformations where natural and cultural factors affected cycles of greater integration, centralization, and decentralization.

Verenice Y. Heredia Espinoza is an Associate Professor of Archaeology at the Centro de Estudios Arqueológicos at El Colegio de Michoacán in Mexico. She received her Ph.D. in Anthropology from Purdue University in 2005. Her research focuses on the development of alternative paths to social complexity and the role and relationship of people and their rulers in the creation of different forms of government. She has directed and co-directed research projects in the Mixteca Alta of Oaxaca, Tlaxcala, and Jalisco. For more than a decade, she has worked in central Jalisco, implementing regional full-coverage survey projects primarily. She is currently director at the Los Guachimontones site in Jalisco Mexico where she has an active research agenda that includes survey, excavation, and laboratory work. Her work is published in journals and books in English and Spanish. Her archaeological projects have been funded by the National Science Foundation, National Geographic Society, CONACyT, Stresser-Péan Foundation among other funding institutions. Recently she was accepted into the Mexican Academy of Sciences.