Building a Community: Late Classic and Postclassic Residential Structures at Rio Amarillo, Copan, Honduras

Summary

Rio Amarillo, an ancient town, rests 20 km east of the great Maya city of Copan in Honduras. In the last four years residences from the Late Classic and Postclassic period have been excavated at the site. Investigations of the residential buildings from Río Amarillo have allowed us to better understand the influences and allegiances of the inhabitants of this community resting on the margins of the Maya world. The architecture of the structures reflects ties to both Copan and to areas in the interior of Honduras. Artifacts from the houses nearest to the ritual core echo the dominant ideology of Copan during the Late Classic, including the worship of the great city’s first ruler, K’inich Yax K’uk’ Mo’. With the fracturing of the Copan polity, Rio Amarillo’s population moved their residences to higher ground. The debris around these later homes demonstrates that their inhabitants continued to be involved in long-distance trade networks, but that these goods were rarer, with locally-produced ceramics and lithic artifacts dominating the assemblages.

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This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 80th Annual Meeting, San Francisco, CA (2015)   •
• Excavating the House: Residential Architecture in the Maya Area

Keywords

Spatial Coverage