Zona Arqueológica de Paquimé (Casas Grandes)

Paquime, also known as Casas Grandes, is the largest and most important archaeological site of the Casas Grandes culture, a Pre-Columbian society that flourished in northwestern Chihuahua between roughly 1130 and 1450 CE before its abrupt decline in the late 15th century. Designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1998, the site preserves multi-story adobe apartment complexes built with a distinctive puddled-adobe technique, some reaching four stories and housing hundreds of residents. Excavated structures include I-shaped and T-shaped ballcourts linked to Mesoamerican ritual ball games, ceremonial platform mounds shaped like macaws and serpents, and a network of subterranean water channels fed by nearby springs that supplied the settlement and its captive-macaw breeding pens, evidence of a documented trade in live scarlet macaws and copper bells with cultures as far south as central Mexico. On-site interpretive walkways lead visitors through excavated room blocks, market areas, and burial chambers, while the adjacent Museo de las Culturas del Norte, an INAH facility, houses recovered ceramics, including the distinctive polychrome Ramos and Babicora wares, effigy vessels, and shell ornaments. Excavation and conservation work, led principally by archaeologist Charles Di Peso in the 1950s-60s and continued by INAH, stabilized the exposed adobe walls, which remain vulnerable to erosion and require ongoing maintenance. Interpretation follows a chronological arc from early pit-house settlement through the site's florescence as a regional trade hub to its violent abandonment, evidenced by burned structures and unburied remains found in some rooms.