Centralizing Central America: New Evidence, Fresh Perspectives, and Working on New Paradigms

Part of: Society for American Archaeology 89th Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA (2024)

This collection contains the abstracts of the papers presented in the session entitled "Centralizing Central America: New Evidence, Fresh Perspectives, and Working on New Paradigms" at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Ironically, Central America has tended to be peripheral in Latin American archaeology, as scholars (and their funding agencies) have gravitated to the more glamorous cultures of Mesoamerica and Andean South America. Nevertheless, a growing cadre of young Central American archaeologists (and a handful of intrepid international scholars) have followed in the footsteps of such trailblazers as Baudez, Coe, Cooke, Haberland, Lange, Lothrop, Stone, and Willey. This session will present new evidence and fresh perspectives from Central America (including El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, and Panama), organized around the themes of cultural ecology, complexity, regional interaction, and social identities. Presenters include scholars who have recently contributed to a publication series on the cultural mosaic of ancient Central America, as an opportunity to further expand their research and develop stronger linkages across the region. As we move from the substantive to the more theoretical, we hope to move Central American archaeology toward more anthropologically engaged interpretations.

Other Keywords
Intermediate Area • Social and Political Organization • Craft Production • Ceramic Analysis • Archaeometry & Materials Analysis • Lithic Analysis • Political economy • Geoarchaeology • Pottery • Mortuary Analysis

Geographic Keywords
Republic of El Salvador (Country) • Republic of Guatemala (Country) • Department of Martinique (Country) • Department of Guadeloupe (Country) • Antigua and Barbuda (Country) • Belize (Country) • Anguilla (Country) • Republic of Honduras (Country) • St. Lucia (Country) • Montserrat (Country)

Resources Inside This Collection (Viewing 1-15 of 15)

  • Documents (15)
Documents
  • Aproximación al estudio de forma-función de la cerámica de contextos rituales en dos sitios con arquitectura monumental en el Valle Central de Costa Rica: 750-1150 dC (2024)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Luis Sanchez.

    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. Trabajos pormenorizados a nivel de forma-función para la caracterización de actividades y espacios sociales son raros en las investigaciones arqueológicas intra-sitio en el Valle Central de Costa Rica, incluyendo asentamientos complejos y con construcciones monumentales características del 750...

  • Artisan Communities, Regional Interaction, and Identity in Eastern Honduras (2024)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Virginia Ochoa-Winemiller.

    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. This paper discusses the role that two distinctive artisan communities from Eastern Honduras, El Chichicaste and Dos Quebradas, played as producers of pottery and obsidian blades within local and interregional exchange networks. Analysis of pottery, obsidian, and settlement patterns from both...

  • Avian Imagery on Preclumbian Ceramics from Pacific Nicaragua (2024)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Sharisse McCafferty. Geoffrey McCafferty.

    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. Throughout human history people have been entranced by avians. Their ability to fly from earth to the sky, while displaying grace and beauty, as well as exhibiting a ferocity to protect their nests and hatchlings was revered. Birds were often seen as messengers between the sky and earth,...

  • The Ceramics of Cihuatan, El Salvador: Between Two Worlds (2024)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Karen Bruhns.

    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. Cihuatan, El Salvador, appears to have been the southeasternmost Maya city. Dating to the Early Postclassic, it shows clearly the internationalizing tendencies of the time period in its ceramics. Although most are local versions of widespread Early Postclassic Mesoamerican types (or actually...

  • Chibchan Enlightenment (2024)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Scott Palumbo.

    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. This presentation explores interpretations of past Indigenous political complexity in the Isthmo-Colombian Area. The paper argues that a preoccupation with hierarchy carries unforeseen consequences for the epistemology of the area and proposes a critique; that the various societies of the area...

  • Collaborative Archaeological Research in Central America: A View from the Community of Mogue, Pusa Drua Area, Congreso Local de Tierras Colectivas Emberá Wounaan, Darién, Panama (2024)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Lucy Gill. Natalia Donner.

    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. Over the past three decades, archaeologists and Indigenous communities throughout the Americas have developed varied approaches to collaborative archaeological research. In North America, where there is some legislative recognition of Indigenous sovereignty over cultural heritage, such...

  • Death Knows No Boundaries: Mortuary Patterns and Cross-Cultural Relations of Preconquest Central America (2024)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Celise Chilcote-Fricker.

    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. The characteristics and roles of the preconquest cultures that once existed in Central America have long been the subject of debate, the main focus of which revolves around the nature of their relationships to the surrounding Mesoamerican and Chibchan cultural areas. Largely accepted that no...

  • Diversity in Southern Central America: Exploring Late Aguas Buenas / Early Chiriqui Period Sites in the Diquís Subregion (2024)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Roberto Herrera. Francisco Corrales-Ulloa.

    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. Southern Central American archaeology is a rich tapestry of variation that makes the task of discerning distinctions and commonalities a difficult one, hindered by a lack of systematic research, particularly in southern Costa Rica. This study offers initial findings from recent fieldwork...

  • Explaining Early Complex Society Development in Central America and Northern South America: Patterns, Variation, and Scales of Analysis (2024)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Adam Berrey.

    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. The early complex societies of Central America and northern South America were once widely recognized for their organizational and cultural diversity. Since that time, greater emphasis has been placed on their shared cultural traits, as revealed through genetic and linguistic data and patterns...

  • How Unusual Is the Trajectory of Precolumbian Social Change in San Ramón, Costa Rica among the Trajectories of Chiefdom Development? A Comparison Exercise (2024)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Mauricio Murillo-Herrera.

    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. Recent literature on comparative archaeology has pointed out the need for systematic comparisons of trajectories of social change that use primary quantitative data and standardized variables. This type of comparison has the potential to discover and explore the diversity and complexity in the...

  • New Evidence on the Early Occupation of the Lakes Basin of Pacific Nicaragua (2024)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Hector Neff. Heather Thakar. Clifford Brown. John Jones. Chad Rankle.

    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. Evidence for early sedentary villagers is perplexingly difficult to identify in Pacific Nicaragua. Wolfgang Haberland thought he found Early Formative remains, which he named the Dinarte phase, on Ometepe Island, but our own efforts to resample those putative early deposits did not meet with...

  • Overland Travel Routes and Exchange Spheres of Pacific Nicaragua Using Obsidian and Ceramic Data from Chiquilistagua (2024)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Jason Paling. Justin Lowry.

    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. The emergence of social complexity often incorporates social, political, and economic inter- and intra-regional interactions. In this paper we examine the emerging social spheres and exchange networks that developed during the Tempisque period (500 BC–AD 300) among small prehistoric agrarian...

  • The Rise of Social Complexity in Pacific Nicaragua (2024)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Sharisse McCafferty. Jorge Zambrana.

    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)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Tomas Arce Buitargo. Irene Torreggiani. Alexander Geurds. Marta Arzarello. Gabriele Berruti.

    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...

  • Ternimal Classic Copper Production at El Coyote, Honduras (2024)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Patricia Urban. Edward Schortman.

    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. Archaeologists have long speculated that western Honduras was one source of the copper artifacts found in southern Mesoamerica from the tenth century onward. Until now, there has been little field evidence to back up this claim. Work conducted at the major political center of El Coyote in 2002,...