Central America and Northern South America (Geographic Keyword)

DOCUMENT Citation Only Colin McEwan. Richard Lunniss.

This is an abstract from the "Coastal Connections: Pacific Coastal Links from Mexico to Ecuador" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. From the Middle Formative onwards, La Plata Island was gradually incorporated into developing local and regional networks of exchange along the Pacific littoral of Ecuador. The island also became the focus of increasing ritual activity evidenced in the material remains of offerings made on the coastal bluffs and at the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Rachel Gill. Brigitte Kovacevich. Michael Callaghan.

In the late 19th century, explorers identified graffiti etched in stucco walls of residences, palaces, and temples in the Maya Lowlands. By the mid-20th century, scholars acknowledged that the ancient Maya produced these incised images. Today, archaeologists struggle with documenting these instances of graffiti with precision and accuracy, often relying solely on to-scale line drawings to best represent the graffitied image they see before them. These images can be complex, multilayered, and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Wilmer Elvir. Ashley E. Sharpe. Whitney A. Goodwin.

El motivo al cual se llevó acabo la presente tesis es para adquirir conocimientos sobre las interacciones humanas con su medioambiente de las sociedades prehispánicas que vivieron en el Noreste de Honduras, por medio de un análisis de conchas de moluscos excavadas en el año 2016. Estas investigaciones son parte del Proyecto Arqueológico Regional Islas de la Bahía (PARIB). El material arqueomalacológico proviene del sitio arqueológico Selin Farm, ubicado en el departamento de Colón en las...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sharisse McCafferty. Geoffrey McCafferty.

This is an abstract from the "Reconstructing the Political Organization of Pre-Columbian Nicaragua" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Colonial period ethnohistorical sources recorded the religious practices of the Contact period Nicarao of Pacific Nicaragua, including a pantheon of deities, use of a ritual calendar, and other ceremonies. These were closely affiliated with the religion of Nahua central Mexico, linked to the purported migration of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Julien Sion. Jennifer Arguijo. Divina Perla-Barrera. Ricardo Rodas. Antolín Velásquez.

This is an abstract from the "Postclassic Mesoamerica: The View from the Southern Frontier" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Durante la transición entre Clásico y Postclásico (siglos IX-XII dC), se observan notables cambios en las dinámicas de ocupación y la organización socio-política de los sitios del Noroeste de Honduras, así como en las redes de intercambio a larga distancia con la Zona Maya o la Gran Nicoya. Sin embargo, debido a las...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Antonio Beardall.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Belize has and continues to be an important locus for the training of the next generation of archaeologists, hosting several international field schools annually. While Belizeans play a role in these projects, many simply fulfill the role of hired field/lab assistants. In recent years, Belizean students from Galen University (Belize) have taken an active...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Eugenia Ibarra.

This is an abstract from the "Coastal Connections: Pacific Coastal Links from Mexico to Ecuador" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper will explore the relationship between "rich" men and trade and exchange, particularly in polyglottal Costa Rica and Panama in the sixteenth century. It will focus on these caciques's social organizations, their representatives, their political responsibilities, their power exertions, and their rivalries and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Norberto Baldi.

Archaeological investigations in the Caribbean region of Greater Chiriquí conducted over the last two decades have documented occupations dating to the second millennium BCE. Similarities in material culture suggest local and trans-isthmic cultural relationships within Greater Chiriquí and a pattern of scattered hamlets associated with the exploitation of marine and lowland ecosystems. In order to provide a model for this settlement pattern, we offer a theoretical model based on ethnohistorical...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Megan Parker. Jon Spenard.

Material culture studies allow archaeologists to examine the social implications of the physical world in which people are embedded. Sacred landscapes, for example, inspire social narratives regarding how people should interact with the environment. Components of those landscapes, such as caves and mountains, become active participants in the establishment, maintenance, and mobilization of environmental narratives. They serve as hegemonic tools for conveying morality and proper behavior, and as...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Alejandro Rey De Castro. Augusto Oyuela-Caycedo.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Excavations at various archaeological sites located in the northern coast of Colombia have yielded evidence of early ceramic production and, in the case of San Jacinto, the earliest so far unearthed in the Americas, dating back to 6000 years BP. San Jacinto ceramics are characterized by the use of an organic-tempered clay and the presence of highly...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Thomas Wake. Lana Martin. Tomas Mendizabal.

Understanding the settlement chronology and degree of interaction and integration of Caribbean western Panama within "Gran Chiriqui" and greater Central America has driven archaeological research in the region since the 1950’s. Hernan Colon’s accounts of Bocas and adjacent Costa Rica depict a populous region, with vast fields of maize, people traveling about in numerous canoes and wearing more gold objects than ever seen in the New World. Lothrop’s 1947 synopsis of the "myth" of the Sigua...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Leslie Reeder-Myers. Ashley Sharpe. Whitney Goodwin. Wilmer Elvir.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Recent research documents resource use and ecological change at the Selin Farm site, a group of around 30 well-stratified house and shell mounds occupied AD 300 – 1000 near the Guaimoreto Lagoon on the northeast coast of Honduras. A 4.5 m high shell mound with excellent preservation of vertebrate and invertebrate remains provides a full view of landscape...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Charlotte Williams.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The archaeological past rarely maps perfectly to the borders of current nation states, leaving stakeholder groups to constantly renegotiate boundaries. Located in international water and hosting assemblages from a variety of transitory groups, shipwrecks of the ‘Columbian Exchange’ have prompted Spain’s former colonies to re-order ownership boundaries by...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Marie Kolbenstetter.

This is an abstract from the "Postclassic Mesoamerica: The View from the Southern Frontier" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In precolonial times, the social landscapes of Central America underwent numerous changes. While the impetus for those social changes are still under investigation, they are well documented, both on local and regional scales, in Greater Nicoya between the Bagaces and the Sapoá periods. In the Gulf of Fonseca, to the north,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Cristian Figueroa. Jean-Paul Rojas. Zindy Cruz. Guy Duke.

This is an abstract from the "Finding Community in the Past and Present through the 2022 PARCC Field School at Buen Suceso, Ecuador" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Four seasons of excavation at the Valdivia site of Buen Suceso allow for a preliminary reconstruction of an occupational history of the site. Areas with likely ritual significance point to social changes at the site that demonstrate the unique nature of the Buen Suceso community. This...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Eva Martinez.

This is an abstract from the "The Pre-Columbian Cultures of Honduras after AD 900" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Ceramics have been the most reliable indicator of social interactions in eastern Honduras. However, these material indicators have also been described sometimes as being rather homogeneous throughout the region. On the other hand, some scholars point out intraregional variations regarding eastern Honduran ceramic assemblages and what...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Hsi-Wen Chen.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This poster presents the result of a systematic spatial analysis of lithic and ceramic artifacts and how ratios thereof change over time in order to assess the applicability of the social-risk model originally proposed by Manuel Antonio Román Lacayo (2013) in explaining patterns of population aggregation observed during the Sapoá period (800-1350 CE) in...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Shaelyn Rice. Geoffrey McCafferty. Sharisse McCafferty.

This is an abstract from the "Reconstructing the Political Organization of Pre-Columbian Nicaragua" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Located on the shore of Lake Nicaragua, El Rayo is a unique archaeological site, enriched with a large material base and many examples of human burial practices. Dating from the Late Bagaces Period (500-800 CE) to the Sapoa Period (800-1300 CE), El Rayo’s stone architectural features cover both major timeframes,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Laura Wingfield.

The art and structures of the ancient Central American sites of Quelepa in El Salvador and Guayabo de Turrialba in Costa Rica both suggest influence from afar by the late first millennium CE. Quelepa was restructured from what was likely a Lenca foundation to reflect possibly invasive Veracruz tastes, yet some Lenca elements were retained. Did both Lenca and Veracruz immigrants live together peacefully? What can art and architecture tell us of this possible merger, an instance of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ana Navas.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Previous historical and archaeological narratives on colonial Panama emphasize the annihilation of indigenous communities after European conquest. Although the Spanish occupation in Panama had devastating consequences on the local population through epidemic diseases, war, and slavery, the documentary evidence provides insights on different ways local...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Lucy Gill.

Traditional narratives within Nicaraguan archaeology, based on primarily ethnohistoric rather than archaeological evidence, have privileged the arrival of external actors from Central Mexico at the expense of indigenous developments and have emphasized imposed change rather than situated continuity. Especially given that as archaeologists, our primary sources are material culture, we should approach mobility from a materialist engagement with the flows and hardenings of matter, sensu Manuel De...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Susan Monge.

This is an abstract from the "Advances and New Perspectives in the Isthmo-Colombian Area" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. For over 50 years, excavations in Guanacaste, Costa Rica, have yielded a large amount of well-preserved faunal materials, yet few zooarchaeological studies have been carried out. To explore the research potential of archaeofaunal materials in the region, I will present data from several sites around the Culebra bay area. These...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Amy Gillaspie. Julie Hoggarth. Jaime Awe.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Belize Valley Archaeological Reconnaissance Project is an archaeological field school operating in the Cayo District of Western Belize and has excavated at multiple sites in Belize annually since 1988. In the past five years, the project has focused on excavation of peri-abandonment deposits, or deposits of artifacts built up during and after the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Monica Katz. Emily Kaplan. Richard Newman. Maria Cecilia Alvarez-White.

This is an abstract from the "Plant Exudates and Other Binders, Adhesives, and Coatings in the Americas" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. *Mopa mopa is the collective name given to the resin from species of the plant genus *Elaeagia (family Rubiaceae) that grows in regions of Peru, Ecuador, and Colombia. The resin has been used from prehispanic times to the present day to decorate a range of objects from colonial Inka *qeros to highly decorated and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only José Alvarez Estrada. Lilia Lizama. Guadalupe Zetina. Miguel Covarrubias.

This is an abstract from the "La Práctica Arqueológica en México en Tiempos de Crisis: Escenarios, Problemáticas Claves, Actores, Acciones y Propuestas" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Desde sus orígenes de relativamente baja tecnología, la arqueología ha evolucionado en una disciplina altamente tecnologizada, que emplea instrumentos para localizar, caracterizar y exhibir al sitios y yacimientos. Los arqueólogos con acceso a tecnología novedosa...