Central America (Geographic Keyword)
26-50 (239 Records)
Motul de San Jose entered its Golden Age during the Late Classic. It was located at a critical crossroads in the Central Peten Lakes region, sitting between the east-west San Pedro Martir River that connected it to the Western Peten kingdoms all the way to Yaxchilan, and a north-south route that tied it with Tikal in the north and Dos Pilas and the other Petexbatun centers in the south. The political alliances between Motul and these kingdoms were materialized through the gifting of Ik’ Style...
Ceramics, Migrations and Ethnic Identity at the site of Cosmapa Oriental, Department of Chinandega, Nicaragua (2016)
In the summer of 2015, we analyzed ceramics recovered from the site of Cosmapa Oriental in the municipality of Chichigalpa, Department of Chinandega, Nicaragua. The research design calls for the investigation of ethnic identity and migratory processes through the identification, description, and sequencing of the ceramics. Ceramics were recovered from one 1 x 2 m pit, eight stratigraphically excavated shovel tests, and various surface collections. The pottery was analyzed using the Type:...
Change and Continuity in the Greater Nicoya Region of Pacific Central America: A Comparison of Two Bagaces to Sapoa Transitional Areas (2016)
Ethnohistorical sources describe migrations of Mesoamerican peoples into the Greater Nicoya region of Pacific Nicaragua and Northwestern Costa Rica during the Classic to Postclassic transition, ca. 800 CE, a period known regionally as the Bagaces and Sapoa periods. Recent research has targeted this transition in order to better understand the material culture dynamics, as a means to further understand historical linguistic and genetic data. This paper contrasts two case studies: one from the...
Changing Interpretations of the Archaeology of Caribbean western Panama. (2017)
Recent field and laboratory archaeological findings in Bocas del Toro, Panama offer data that changes and amplifies our understanding of the prehistory of the region. Detailed paleoethnobotanical study, further zooarchaeological examination, preliminary ceramic thin-section analysis, and continuing ceramic analysis have all produced results that call in to question entrenched assumptions concerning the timing of settlement, the nature of the subsistence economy, trade, exchange and cultural...
Chichicaste Ceramics and Regional Interactions in Eastern Honduras (2016)
Although the ceramics of eastern Honduras have been sometimes described as being remarkably homogenous throughout the region, recent research points to intraregional variations regarding ceramic assemblages and what they represent in terms of intra and inter regional interactions. The identification of the ceramic group known as Chichicaste has contributed to point out a greater diversity of ceramic traditions in eastern Honduras as well as to recognize more nuances in its intraregional...
Chinina, Panama. First evidence of pre-hispanic raised fields in Central America (2015)
Aerial photography has been known as an extremely useful tool of archaeological prospection for nearly one century. In recent years however it gained increasing importance by two reasons: First the availability of high quality aerial photographs via internet made it quite easy to start archaeological surveys even in remote areas. Second archaeological perspectives on past human societies changed in recent decades. Modern ecological problems caused an increasing interest in landscape...
Classic Maya Housholds in Northern Peten, Guatemala: An Overview (2015)
The Northern Peten is composed by a complex network of monumental sites that proliferated in the Preclassic during a time period that witnessed the maximal centralization of power in the area. Afterward, during the Classic period, this region experimented a cultural shift and a reoccupation forming a different political panorama. However, little is still known about the Classic Maya settlements of Northern Peten especially about their households. Recent archaeological investigations at Naachtun...
Classic Maya Material Worlds: Using Cultural Models to Transform Archaeological Practice and Interpretation (WGF - Post PhD Research Grant) (2015)
This resource is an application for the Post PhD Research Grant from the Wenner-Gren Foundation. This project investigated how Classic Maya individuals understood the objects that archaeologists characterize as 'artifacts,' and applied this Maya material perspective to modern archaeological practices in order to transform how we interpret excavations at Classic Maya sites. To accomplish this, the project focused on three activities: reconstructing elements of a Classic Maya perspective on the...
"Clean Up Your Mess, Chino": Contested Space, Boredom, and Vulnerability among Central American Migrants Crossing Southern Mexico. (2016)
The growing subdiscipline of archaeology of the contemporary has stressed the importance of studying detritus to access silenced or abject aspects of the recent past. This paper takes a different approach, focusing on the ways that an archaeology of the present is not about uncovering “truths” that correct ethnographic research, but is rather a constant agitation and addition to ethnographic engagement. Following recent American pressure on the government of Mexico and changes in Mexican...
Climate Change, Dissonance and Urban Diaspora in the Southern Maya Lowlands (2015)
In response to growing needs for dry-season water, the southern lowland Maya constructed increasingly larger and more complex reservoirs at major centers throughout the Late Classic period (550-850 C.E.). Annual rainfall replenished reservoirs and nourished rainfall-dependent crops. In exchange for access to reservoirs during the annual dry season, farmers contributed goods, services and labor to kings and their administrators. When several multiyear droughts struck between 800 and 900 C.E., the...
Collaborative Research on Maya Ceramic Vessels at LACMA (2017)
This paper features the Maya Vase Research Project, a collaboration of LACMA’s Conservation Center and the Art and the Ancient Americas Program, which is studying Classic-period Maya ceramics in the LACMA collection. The project’s first phase was to perform digital technical imaging, comprised of photography in different regions of the electromagnetic spectrum, starting in the visible and expanding from X-rays to the Infrared, including ultraviolet visible induced fluorescence. Digital rollout...
Collecting Costa Rican and Nicaraguan Art: On the Case of Enrique Vargas Alfaro, Dealer (2017)
In the mid 20th century crates full of Costa Rican antiquities made their way into the United States through the diplomatic immunity of Enrique Vargas Alfaro. Paul Clifford, then a business man in Miami and later donor and curator at the Duke University Museum of Art, purchased works from Vargas in addition to procuring his own pieces from Peru. Clifford's friend Bill Thibadeau of Atlanta and a few of his neighbors enjoyed "block parties" to open the latest Vargas crate and then to divvy up the...
Commerce, autarky, barter, and redistribution; the multi-tiered urban economy of El Perú-Waka’, Guatemala (2016)
The ceramic database from El Perú-Waka’ contains the record of the production, distribution, consumption, and disposal of some 50,000 sherds and 200 whole vessels. Patterns and fine details of the Classic Maya economy emerge from this expansive dataset. These include, but are not limited to, the marketing distribution of monochrome ceramics and the redistributive gifting of high-quality polychrome vessels. Unexpected patterns appeared as well, such as the apparent autarky of monochrome blacks in...
Commoner Landscape, Ritual, and Symbolism in the Shadow of Dos Hombres: Recent Investigations at the Site of Chawak But’o’ob. (2017)
A number of seasons of research at the site of Chawak But’o’ob in the southwestern outskirts of the city of Dos Hombres have revealed an architecturally humble community characterized by dense habitation and extensive landscape modification as well as domestic and public ritual. The evidence suggests that the inhabitants of this farming community had an eye toward symbolism in decisions they made about the disposition of domestic and public structures as well as the manipulation of water and...
Communities of Practice and Sound-related Archaeological Collections (2017)
This paper explores an alternative method for examining ephemeral aspects of material culture, such as sound, in the production processes of ceramic pre-Columbian aerophone construction. In a case study of a museum collection from the G-752Rj site in Greater Nicoya, I demonstrate that it is possible to identify groups of producers and evidence of knowledge transfer between persons that may reflect communities of practice. This research has the potential for examining regional trade and migration...
Computing Material Culture: The utility of mobile photogrammetric techniques in capturing structures (2016)
Photogrammetric techniques have been around for many years but have not been widely implemented because of the requirements of known camera positions and expertise in registering photographs, as well as the difficulty involved with going from data points to actual models. This paper addresses concerns with accuracy, efficiency and overall utility of using more mobile photogrammetric techniques and related software which we began using in 2013. In addition, some of the benefits of photogrammetry...
"Conspicuous Consumption" in Ancient Costa Rica and Panama (2015)
This paper reviews the evidence for mortuary ranking in pre-Columbian Costa Rica and Panama, specifically as it relates to participation in broader trade and exchange networks. An interpretative approach originally developed by Halstead and O'Shea is evaluated against the Binford-Saxe model. SAA 2015 abstracts made available in tDAR courtesy of the Society for American Archaeology and Center for Digital Antiquity Collaborative Program to improve digital data in archaeology. If you are the...
Contemplating Trade Corridors: Cost and Pathway Analysis Around Managua, Nicaragua (2017)
Trade and inter-community connections are keys to understanding how the ancient region around the modern city of Managua, Nicaragua, interacted and participated in the larger Central American and Mesoamerican trade corridor. This paper will present potential interpretations of long distance and local connections through a cost and pathway analysis using ArcGIS. This study will incorporate recent research on obsidian and ceramic sourcing studies from the site of Chiquilistagua into the model of...
Contributions of Archaeological Research in Panama to the Early Human History of the American Tropics (2015)
There has been a sea change in our understanding of the early human occupation in the tropical lowlands of the Americas over the last 4 decades. Research carried out in Panama has contributed to this change in a number of ways. First, evidence of Terminal Pleistocene hunter-gatherer populations using both Clovis technology and presumably later fluted fishtail projectile point technology were recovered in tropical forest as well as open woodland habitats. Importantly, the pioneering analyses of...
Copan in the Wider Maya World (2017)
The peripheral location of Copan has always raised questions about the ways in which it related to the core of the Maya world. Clearly Copan was no isolate in the Classic Maya tradition, divorced from developments elsewhere, but what did it continue to draw from the center and what were the mechanisms underlying those contacts? What do we know about the influence of centrally placed polities in this far-flung region, which held a symbolic status in the far east, but could never be a significant...
Costume and Identity in Pacific Nicaragua (2017)
Sixteen years of archaeological research along the shore of Lake Cocibolca in Pacific Nicaragua has yielded a wealth of material culture relating to domestic practice and mortuary rituals for the period from AD 500 to 1250. Among these are numerous objects of adornment, such as pendants, beads, and ear ornaments. Additional costume information is found on small ceramic figurines, primarily of females with painted decoration indicating clothing, hairstyle, tattooing, and jewelry. Based on initial...
Creating an Interdisciplinary Map of Social and Environmental Change through Topography and Bioarchaeology (2016)
Societal change does not occur in a vacuum and marks the social and physical landscape in a myriad of ways. The natural world—the lived in landscape—is the most pervasive and enduring reminder and example of social order. Water is a staple of both domestic and ritual life and leaves its mark in architectural and biological manifestations of society. Mountains, caves, and ravines and other landscape monuments are emblematic of regional geology and influence the local human population both at the...
Creatures from the Lagoon: Maya Turtle Exploitation at Lamanai, Belize (2016)
Archaeological excavations at the Maya site of Lamanai, Belize, have resulted in the recovery of more than 10,000 remains of turtles dating from the Late Postclassic to the Early Colonial periods. This abundance of turtle specimens represents a unique opportunity to study Maya turtle exploitation at an unprecedented scale. Preliminary analyses of a sample of 2,400 bones recovered from domestic structures provide information on subsistence practices. The Maya primarily exploited river turtles,...
Cultivated Plants of South and Central America (1950)
This resource is a citation record only, the Center for Digital Antiquity does not have a copy of this document. The information in this record has been migrated into tDAR from the National Archaeological Database Reports Module (NADB-R) and updated. Most NADB-R records consist of a document citation and other metadata but do not have the documents themselves uploaded. If you have a digital copy of the document and would like to have it curated in tDAR, please contact us at...
Debt Peonage and Free Labor: Post–Caste War Sites in Northern Quintana Roo and Western Belize (2015)
The Caste War left an indelible mark of the Yucatan Peninsula including helping to perpetuate abusive labor system that continued until the Mexican Revolution. This paper explores the living conditions at sugar productions facilities near the north coast of Quintana Roo, Mexico through comparison to a similarly-aged site in western Belize, San Pedro Siris. San Pedro Siris was a free village of primarily Maya families that were pushed south into Belize by refugees as the Caste War ended. ...