Tingambato is a municipality

Municipalities of Mexico

Municipalities are the second-level administrative division in Mexico . There are 2,438 municipalities in Mexico, making the average municipality population 45,616...

 in the north-central part of the Mexican

Mexico

The United Mexican States , commonly known as Mexico , is a federal constitutional republic in North America. It is bordered on the north by the United States; on the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; on the southeast by Guatemala, Belize, and the Caribbean Sea; and on the east by the Gulf of...

 state of Michoacán

Michoacán

Michoacán officially Estado Libre y Soberano de Michoacán de Ocampo is one of the 31 states which, with the Federal District, comprise the 32 Federal Entities of Mexico. It is divided in 113 municipalities and its capital city is Morelia...

. Its municipal seat is the city of the same name. The municipality has an area of 188.77 square kilometres (0.32% of the surface of the state) and is bordered by the north by the municipalites of Nahuatzén and Erongarícuaro

Erongarícuaro

Erongarícuaro, which means "Place of waiting" in the Purepecha language, is a town in the Mexican state of Michoacán. It is located about an hour and a half drive to Morelia or Uruapan and just 20 minutes from the famous colonial town of Pátzcuaro...

, to the east by Pátzcuaro

Pátzcuaro

Pátzcuaro is a large town and municipality located in the state of Michoacán. The town was founded sometime in the 1320s, at first becoming the capital of the Tarascan state and later its ceremonial center...

 and Salvador Escalante, to the south by Ziracuaretiro, and to the west by Uruapan

Uruapan

Uruapan is a city and municipality in the west-central part of the Mexican state of Michoacán. The city is the municipal seat of the municipality...

. The municipality had a population of 12,630 inhabitants according to the 2005 census. Its municipal seat is the city of the same name.

The word Tingambato is of Chichimeca

Chichimeca

Chichimeca was the name that the Nahua peoples of Mexico generically applied to a wide range of semi-nomadic peoples who inhabited the north of modern-day Mexico and southwestern United States, and carried the same sense as the European term "barbarian"...

 origin and it means "Hill of mild climate". The story of the region can be traced 1,300 years to the arrival of the P'urhépecha

P'urhépecha

The P'urhépecha, normally spelled Purépecha in Spanish and in English and traditionally referred to as Tarascans, are an indigenous people centered in the northwestern region of the Mexican state of Michoacán, principally in the area of the cities of Uruapan and Pátzcuaro...

 monarchy to the region.

The site had two period of construction. In AD 450-600 ceremonial buildings with Teotihuacan

Teotihuacan

Teotihuacan – also written Teotihuacán, with a Spanish orthographic accent on the last syllable – is an enormous archaeological site in the Basin of Mexico, just 30 miles northeast of Mexico City, containing some of the largest pyramidal structures built in the pre-Columbian Americas...

-style taluds were built. In the second stage (AD 600-950) a ball court was also built in the Teotihuacan style. One tomb contains 6 men who provide evidence of dental mutilation.