INAH possible ossuary Mexico City Mexico-Querétaro train construction, Digi Mart USA News (Buenavista terminal, Mexico City): Specialists from the National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH) have discovered a deposit of human bones that probably was an ossuary, according to a publisher report. Its date may fall in the Late Postclassic period (1200-1519 AD) or in the period of contact with the Spanish (1519-1535 AD).
The first bone remains were located on September 17, 2026, during embankment work for the railway track near the Buenavista terminal in Mexico City. The excavations were carried out under INAH supervision as an archaeological rescue project coordinated by archaeologist Víctor Francisco Heredia Guillén.
After digging 1.40 meters deep, workers found skulls, jaws, parts of hips, fragments of femur, ribs and teeth.
Further below, the ossuary was found, described as a funerary deposit without anatomical connection, according to field archaeologist Josué Castillo Sánchez. So far, nine skeletons have been counted, two of which show cranial modifications, along with five jaws and large bones such as radii, tibias and iliacs in good condition of preservation.
Age, sex and the type of alterations will be determined after analysis at the Physical Anthropology Laboratory (LAF). Associated ceramics were found with the bones, dating to the Aztec III period (1350-1520 AD), mostly domestic items such as plates, pots and salt vessels used for salt extraction in the former Lake Texcoco.
Other finds include seven miniature spindle whorls, a pair of figurines and polished stone tools, including four fragments of metate and mortar hand stones as well as small obsidian blades, mostly green obsidian, possibly from the Sierra de las Navajas deposit in Hidalgo. According to LAF head José Manuel Cervantes Pérez, the materials together could correspond to the final years of the pre-Hispanic period and the colonial era (1535-1821).
The find occurred within the former calpulli of Nonoalco, one of 19 pre-Hispanic neighborhoods of the Tlatelolco islet. The remains were also located near the 16th-century church of San Miguel Nonoalco, which served as a visiting chapel for Franciscan friars from the Convent of Santiago Tlatelolco.
Physical anthropologist Abril Machain Castillo, in charge of exhumation, said the bones show a secondary burial pattern, with individuals first buried elsewhere and later moved to the ossuary.
After in-situ recording, the materials were transferred to project laboratories in Tula de Allende and Tepeji del Río de Ocampo, Hidalgo, where they will undergo cleaning and restoration before further analysis and storage. The Secretary of Culture, Claudia Curiel de Icaza, said the material would be studied rigorously by INAH to explain what it reveals.
