Abstract Cruz de la Boca (CDB) is a major Epiclassic hilltop center in northern Mesoamerica, located in the transitional zone between sedentary and mobile lifeways. Fieldwork in 2001–2002 by an INAH Zacatecas team mapped architecture, construction techniques, and surface materials in the site’s nuclear zone. Systematic pedestrian survey, total station mapping, remote sensing, and GIS documented more than 15 hectares of monumental and domestic architecture. In a region where only a few hilltop centers—such as Alta Vista, La Quemada, and La Ferrería—have been mapped to comparable standards, this article places Cruz de la Boca among the best-documented sites on the northern frontier. We highlight sunken patio compounds and smaller, hut-like Loma San Gabriel (LSG)-type foundations on outer benches, treating their spatial relations as a form of social stratigraphy. Topography, architecture, and controlled excavation of a looting pit provide stratigraphic, funerary, ceramic, and lithic data situating CDB within the Alta Vista phase (ca. a.d . 600–900). We argue that CDB refocuses the Loma San Gabriel problem by showing how lighter-built peripheral residences related spatially and socially to a Chalchihuites-style monumental core.
Dueñas-Garcia et al. (Mon,) studied this question.