Romero and Valenzuela Caves

Romero's and Valenzuela's Caves are two small caves located on the same cliff face overlooking a small canyon that, during the rainy season, drains into the Cañón Infiernillo, which in turn feeds into the Cañón Huazacana as it drains south towards the town of Ocampo in Tamaulipas, México. Romero's Cave sits about 20 m above Valenzuela's Cave on the cliff face so they have the same geographic coordinates. The caves were excavated in 1953-54 by Richard MacNeish as part of his quest to find evidence for the origins of agriculture in Mesoamerica (MacNeish 1958). MacNeish labelled Romero's Cave Tmc-247 and Valenzuela cave Tmc-248, and these were excavated as two separate sites. Another small cave excavated by MacNeish, Ojo de Agua (Tmc-274), is located about 1.5 km downstream. All three caves produce large amounts of well preserved plant remains and these form an extremely important corpus of materials for understanding Archaic period plant use and early agriculture in the northeastern part of Mesoamerica (Hanselka 2011; Smith 1997). The only directly dated maize remains come from excavations in Romero's and Valenzuela's Caves (Jaenicke-Després and Smith 2006).
Hanselka's study (2011) provides the most recent comprehensive synthesis of the Ocampo caves, their botanical remains, and their role and significance in understanding early agriculture in Mesoamerica.