Central America (Other Keyword)
1-13 (13 Records)
A desire for art to reflect social identity is made apparent through prolific representations of human faces in Pre-Columbian ceramics. The ceramic art of Greater Nicoya and the surrounding regions demonstrates an intrinsic drive to communicate distinct group characteristics and illustrates the importance of individuals’ bodies as instruments of both personal expression and social relationships. Physical expressions of collective identity foster a sense of belonging and satisfy the human desire...
Boats and Captians of Cahuita: Recording Watercraft and Small Boats of Costa Rica (2016)
The boats of Cahuita, Costa Rica vary in design, size and decoration. This poster displays the design variation and depicts the East Carolina University summer field school methods used to record these small watercraft. The differences in design are catalogued through photography and also with recorded measurements. The information gathered should be sufficient to reconstruct the vessel at full scale. In some cases, the data was further utilized to create more practical three dimensional...
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...
Conducting an Archaeological Survey Across a Country: the Trials and Triumphs of the Nicaragua Canal Archaeological Baseline Project (2016)
In 2014, ERM undertook an archaeological baseline survey for the Canal de Nicaragua project as part of an Environmental and Social Impact Assessment. Intended to assess the entire canal route, the area examined included a 10km wide corridor from the Boca de Brito on the Pacific coast to the mouth of the Punta Gorda on the Caribbean coast (a 1,400km² impact area). This paper presents ERM’s Nicaragua project as a case study of a high level CRM effort operating within a politically charged medium...
The Disparate and Unexpected Impacts of Climate Change and Other Crises on Cultural Heritage: Case Studies from Three Continents (2023)
This is an abstract from the session entitled "Cultural Heritage During Crises: Crime, Conflict, and Climate Change", at the 2023 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. Some of the impacts of climate change and other crises on cultural resources have been anticipated by archaeologists, such as rising sea level, but there are also numerous less obvious or even unexpected impacts of these crises. Using recent archaeological investigations in Central and North America as case...
Exploring the Viability of Geochemically Sourcing Elaborate Metates Through XRF Spectroscopy (2017)
The Central American elaborate metate is a perplexing group of ground stone artifacts. Their function continues to be the subject of debate, with interpretations ranging from hallucinogenic and food preparation to ritual seating. It is difficult to deny, however, the substantial labor investment represented and likely symbolic significance. X-Ray fluorescence spectroscopy has proven an invaluable tool in the non-destructive geochemical sourcing of archaeological obsidian, providing insights into...
Mohammed’s Paradise: indigenous society and natural surroundings in southern Central America (2017)
Human-environment relations are a point of interest in the archaeology of indigenous southern Central America, defined here to encompass Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica and Panama. As such, it does not seem to deviate from other world regions. This focus in past and contemporary research reflects the weight given to the idea of natural surroundings as resource endowments, following the cultural ecology approach. Elsewhere, such emphases on material, and indeed economic, sides of human...
Mortuary Practices at Locus 3, El Rayo, Nicaragua (2016)
Excavations in 2009 and 2010 established the presence of mortuary remains at the El Rayo archaeological site, located on the Asese Peninsula near modern Granada, Nicaragua. In 2015 an additional field season expanded upon previous excavations in Locus 3, one of two known cemetery locations at the site, exposing several more burial urns, and further investigating previously known urn burials. This new data contributes to a greater understanding of mortuary practices at El Rayo, which at Locus 3...
Natural Springs: A Critical Life Force in ancient Costa Rica (2017)
Water is a life sustaining substance, sought after, fought over, and revered in both the past and present. The relationship between humans and water resources is an essential component of our human history that warrants archaeological focus. Natural springs have been identified as key locations of archaeological remains throughout the Americas – places inherently intermixed with practices of drinking, bathing, cooking, and worship of the divine. In Costa Rica, the documentation of Silencio Phase...
'Out of Mexico' 25 Years Later: A Reconsideration of Migration into Greater Nicoya (2015)
In 1989, John Hoopes and I presented a paper at the SAA conference in which we attempted an archaeological evaluation of ethnohistorical models for Mexican migrations into the Greater Nicoya region of Central America. Although the paper was never published, it became the foundation for my current research in Pacific Nicaragua. Colonial chronicles describe ‘Mexican’ cultural practices of the Nahua-speaking Nicarao and, to a lesser extent, the Oto-Manguean-speaking Chorotega. Linguists and art...
An Overview of Paleoindian and Archaic Finds from August Pine Ridge, Belize, Central America (2024)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Recent findings have come to light from previously reported but poorly known preceramic deposits from near the village of August Pine Ridge, Belize, Central America. Years of sand quarrying have led to the recovery of hundreds of artifacts representing the entire known preceramic sequence from Central America. Present are fluted bifaces as well as...
Shadows of War, Shadows of Peace: Sites from El Salvador’s Civil War (2017)
The Salvadoran civil war, fought from 1980 to 1992, devastated the country and left 75,000 to 100,000 people dead. Much of the worst fighting was in the northeastern department of Morazán. Numerous battles were fought there, where several terrible civilian massacres occurred as well. Through most of the war, northern Morazán was a primary stronghold of the FMLN guerillas. The poster examines two civil war sites in northern Morazán. The first, Cerro Pelón - the northern spur of Cerro Gigante, was...
Understanding Exchange in Late Pre-Hispanic Central America. Current Thinking on Culture Areas and Ethnicity (2015)
This paper argues that improving understanding of exchange in Central American prehistory is hampered by static cultural taxonomies, and traditions of thinking and publishing that are limited in terms of the 'archaeology of Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Panama', dividing the field to the point where scholars are uncomfortable discussing Pre-Hispanic Central America as such. This has put an unsatisfactory halt to the discussion about how to understand and conceptualize this isthmian region. If ethnic...