Central America and Northern South America (Geographic Keyword)
176-200 (214 Records)
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...
Reflectance Transformation Imaging: New Methods in Documenting Preclassic Maya Graffiti from Holtun, Guatemala (2018)
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...
Relaciones Sociales y Medioambientales en Selin Farm a través del Análisis de su Conjunto Arqueomalacológico (2018)
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...
Religious Practices of Pre-Columbian Pacific Nicaragua (2019)
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...
Reorganización socio-política entre lago y montañas: El sitio de Los Naranjos y la cuenca de Yojoa durante el Postclásico Temprano (2021)
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...
Representation Matters: The Importance of Local Participation in Archaeological Projects in Belize (2023)
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...
"Rich" Men: Caciques in Trade and Exchange in the Polyglottal Southern Central American World (16th Century) (2019)
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...
The Rise of Social Complexity in Pacific Nicaragua (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Centralizing Central America: New Evidence, Fresh Perspectives, and Working on New Paradigms" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Despite over 150 years of research, the archaeology of Nicaragua remains in its infancy. Projects have conducted settlement pattern surveys and rescue projects have recovered information from endangered sites, but very little problem-oriented research has ever been conducted. Consequently, “big...
Riverbank Insights: Exploring Prehispanic Adaptation in Central Nicaragua’s Alluvial Landscapes through Archaeological Analysis and Local Wisdom (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Centralizing Central America: New Evidence, Fresh Perspectives, and Working on New Paradigms" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. “El Agua es Vida, si no hay Agua, no hay Vida” (“Water is Life”) says Doña Francisca (community of Huehuestepe, Mayales River Valley [MRV], Nicaragua). Today more than ever this sentence holds true, given water’s increasing significance in the global climatic debate. Rivers are essential to...
The Role of Kinship Networks and the Lowland Ecology in the Interpretation of the Caribbean Archaeology of Greater Chiriquí (2018)
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...
Sacred Landscapes, Spaces, and Ritual Offerings as the Materialization of Environmental Narratives at the Site of Pacbitun, Belize (2018)
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...
San Jacinto and the Origins of Pottery Making in the Americas: A Technological Perspective (2023)
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...
Settlement, Subsistence, Culture Change and Networking: New Perspectives on Bocas del Toro’s Integration with Greater Central America (2018)
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...
Shell Midden Zooarchaeology and Paleoecology of Guaimoreto Lagoon, Northeast Honduras (2019)
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...
Shipwrecked Heritage of the Old and New World: Owning and Owning up to the ‘Midas Touch’ of the Colonial Past (2019)
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...
Situating Mobility: Local and Regional Connectivities in and beyond the Gulf of Fonseca (AD 800–1520) (2021)
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,...
Social and Physical Landscape Changes at Buen Suceso (2023)
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...
Social Interaction and Exchange Networks in Eastern Honduras: Late Classic-Early Postclassic Period (AD 600-1000) (2019)
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...
Spatial Analysis in Pre-Columbian Nicaragua (2019)
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...
Structurally Speaking; Architecture of El Rayo and the Greater Nicoya Region (2019)
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,...
A Tale of Two Cities: Quelepa, El Salvador and Guayabo de Turrialba, Costa Rica (2018)
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...
Tales of Extinction: Natives in the Narratives of Early Colonial Panama, Historical Representations, and Archaeology (2019)
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...
Those Flowering Waters: Reconstructing 1,200 Years of Human Adaptation to Hydroclimatic Changes in Central Nicaragua (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Underwater and Coastal Archaeology in Latin America" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Central Nicaragua is highly susceptible to hydroclimatic variations, which are affecting the subsistence economies of local populations. To what extent hydroclimatic changes impact prehispanic adaptation strategies in the Mayales River Valley (MRV)? This presentation will show the final result of the Interdisciplinary Archaeological...
Towards a Nonlinear History of Lake Cocibolca, Nicaragua (2018)
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...
Tracing Tides of Change: Perspectives on Mobility and Materiality in Precolonial Central America (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Materials in Movement in the Isthmo-Colombian Area" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Matters of materiality and mobility across Central America have long been the subject of archaeological investigation concerning its precolonial past. In outlining the spectrum of material movements and their broader sociocultural implications beyond traditional archaeological narratives, this introductory paper seeks to explore the...