The Problem of the Monument: Widening Perspectives on Monumentality in the Archaeology of the Isthmo-Colombian Area

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 "The Problem of the Monument: Widening Perspectives on Monumentality in the Archaeology of the Isthmo-Colombian Area" at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

The first millennium CE witnessed incipient forms of monumental traces across landscapes of the Isthmo-Colombian Area, from parts of Honduras to Colombia. Still today, mounds and rock art remain the most visible traces of indigenous pasts. This symposium brings together recent research from various parts of this area and with different archaeological foci. The symposium is intended to capture a wider scope of the notion of monumentality, going beyond form and history to include studies that expand into discussions of durable traces, such as rock art, larger geomorphological features, and crossing over between material categories as, for example, stone, sediments, aquatic environments, and particular biotic spheres. The symposium asks if such features human-made or human-regarded are also monumental by positing that such durable traces define or make spaces. By doing so, the symposium intends to argue that the physical surroundings of Central America and Colombia were filled with natural features and physical forms that recalled time, as things from earlier, and structured human movement, as orienting way signs.

Other Keywords
Intermediate Area • Monumentality • Architecture • Rock Art • Geoarchaeology • Landscape Archaeology • Materiality • Iconography and epigraphy • Ethnography/Ethnoarchaeology • Digital Archaeology: 3D Modeling

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

Resources Inside This Collection (Viewing 1-8 of 8)

  • Documents (8)
Documents
  • Converting Monumental Landscapes to Human Dimensions: Ancient Community-Building Processes in Southern Honduras (2024)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Gloria Lara-Pinto.

    This is an abstract from the "The Problem of the Monument: Widening Perspectives on Monumentality in the Archaeology of the Isthmo-Colombian Area" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. A couple of years ago some good meaning citizens offered to donate complete ceramic pieces along with other objects they had “collected” from their properties to the regional campus of my university in southern Honduras. These same local citizens declared themselves a...

  • Fluid Stone: Geological Materials in Process (2024)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Rosemary Joyce.

    This is an abstract from the "The Problem of the Monument: Widening Perspectives on Monumentality in the Archaeology of the Isthmo-Colombian Area" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Geological materials that constitute features in archaeological sites in Central America range from unfired clay and unmodified cobbles, to cut stone, and plasters produced by heating limestone. What these materials have in common is that from an archaeological...

  • Impermanent Architecture, Monumentality, and Landscape Transformation in the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, Colombia (2024)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Santiago Giraldo.

    This is an abstract from the "The Problem of the Monument: Widening Perspectives on Monumentality in the Archaeology of the Isthmo-Colombian Area" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. From AD 100 to AD 1600, the northern and southern faces of of the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta were permanently transformed by preHispanic societies who built hundreds of stone and rammed earth towns throughout an area encompassing over 7,000 square kilometers. Despite the...

  • Monumentality by Communities: Case Study of the Caribbean Coast of Nicaragua (2024)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Dita Auzina.

    This is an abstract from the "The Problem of the Monument: Widening Perspectives on Monumentality in the Archaeology of the Isthmo-Colombian Area" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Large stone and earth mounds of Cascal de Flor de Pino in the Caribbean of Nicaragua, which were built between 4 BC and AD 9, are unique in the region and have been suggested as a sign of social stratification and inequality. Indeed, reaching more than 30 m in diameter and...

  • Monumentality in Sites with Stone Spheres, Diquis Delta, Southern Central America (2024)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Francisco Corrales-Ulloa.

    This is an abstract from the "The Problem of the Monument: Widening Perspectives on Monumentality in the Archaeology of the Isthmo-Colombian Area" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Several sites in the Diquis delta, an extensive alluvial plan in southeastern Costa Rica, present architectural ensembles consisting of artificial mounds up to 30 m diameter and a height between 1.1 and 1.4 m with cobblestone walls and ramp accesses, with stone spheres of...

  • Mounds and Monoliths in Isthmo-Colombian Archaeology (2024)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Alexander Geurds.

    This is an abstract from the "The Problem of the Monument: Widening Perspectives on Monumentality in the Archaeology of the Isthmo-Colombian Area" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Isthmo-Colombian Area entails an archaeology of landscape engagement. Well-attested are the material traces of shifting networks of human ideas that, through communities of practice, led to the creation of monumental landscapes and, with regional specificity, shared...

  • The Piedras Rayadas of El Tigre, Honduras: Brokering Place and Cultural Memory (2024)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Marie Kolbenstetter.

    This is an abstract from the "The Problem of the Monument: Widening Perspectives on Monumentality in the Archaeology of the Isthmo-Colombian Area" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Grooved boulders seem to be an archaeological feature unique to El Tigre island in Honduras. Distributed around the small island, they are known locally as piedras rayadas, and feature in local oral histories. As durable traces, their meaning is everchanging, yet...

  • The Question of Monumentality in the Sacred Spaces and Features of Ometepe Island, Nicaragua (2024)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Suzanne Baker.

    This is an abstract from the "The Problem of the Monument: Widening Perspectives on Monumentality in the Archaeology of the Isthmo-Colombian Area" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Ometepe is the largest island in Lake Coçibolca (Lake Nicaragua), itself the largest body of freshwater between Lake Titicapa in South America and the Great Lakes of North America. Its topography is unique, composed of two volcanoes—one active (Concepción) and one ancient...