The Peralta archaeological site is part of a regional culture called the El Bajío Tradition, which inhabited the slopes and plains of this region between the years 300 and 650 AD. It is located east of the Municipality of Abasolo, in the southwestern region of the state of Guanajuato. Its location, in the middle of the alluvial plain of the Lerma River and one kilometer away from the bed of this historic river, ensured the pre-Hispanic population a large amount of resources for their subsistence. Let us imagine the Bajío as a region constantly flooded by the rains and the floods of the Lerma and the rivers that flow into it, such as the Laja, the Guanajuato, the Turbio and the Angulo; showing small lakes and large swamps that provided a great variety and quantity of goods. The material and cultural wealth of these lake and marsh environments, the existence of fertile lands on the slopes and plains, as well as the presence of deposits of raw materials that were strategic for Mesoamerican societies, such as obsidian and rhyolite in the Abasolo and Pénjamo mountain ranges, created the environmental conditions favorable for the development of ancient societies.
In short, the fact that basic resources and those that were strategic for ancient economies existed in this region was undoubtedly one of the determining factors for the Abasolo population to structure a regional production and exchange system, for their social and cultural relations to be established between different settlements (for example with San Bartolomé Agua Caliente and San Miguel Viejo) and, in the specific case of Peralta, for their kinship networks to exceed the immediate limits of what we know today as the Municipality of Abasolo.
The remarkable similarities in the architecture and pottery of almost 200 pre-Hispanic settlements in the State of Guanajuato that form the Bajío tradition are explained not only by the presence of a regional exchange system, but also by the fact that certain spaces were built under the same architectural pattern since they carried out similar cultural and ritual practices there. The constructive principle of this architecture is basically formed by a mound and a sunken patio with eight variants, six of which are found in Peralta. It is precisely this diversity of built spaces that has motivated the archaeological exploration work, seeking to understand the different activities and uses that the closed patios had. For the moment we know that the pre-Hispanic population of Bajío shared the same system of cultural and social practices and created an extensive network of kinship relations. As for social organization, we see a historical scenario of politically organized communities in various independent centers with their own territories. We have called this remarkable set of hierarchical settlements with similar architecture the El Bajío Tradition.