Copán’s Preclassic Pioneers: New Evidence from the San Lucas Neighborhood

Summary

Recent work in the San Lucas neighborhood outside of Copán’s urban core discovered significant human occupation in the Late Preclassic period—centuries before the first king came to power. Construction materials, ceramic styles, obsidian tools, human remains, and radiocarbon dates from three households attest to the early and continuous settlement of this area in the foothills south of the Copán River. This paper reviews the evidence for San Lucas’s Preclassic population, and its significance for a revised understanding of early Copán culture history. Comparisons are then made to known Preclassic settlement within the southeast borderlands region, to begin to explore the cultural and ethnic affiliation of Copán’s pioneering families.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 81st Annual Meeting, Orlando, FL (2016)   •
• The Copan Kingdom and its Political Interactions along the Southeastern Maya Frontier

Keywords

Spatial Coverage