Engaged Investigation: Archaeology within Copán’s past and contemporary neighborhoods

Summary

Generations of Copán archaeologists have revealed the secrets of royal tombs and hieroglyphic inscriptions, as well as explored humble households of the rural periphery. A new project brings together these two initiatives to study the diversity of settlement within one particular neighborhood of the ancient city. Growth and change in the San Lucas neighborhood are articulated with major political events at Copán’s center to assess the degree of state integration, and more importantly, when, how, and why this degree fluctuated over time. Simultaneously, the project prioritized community integration with the indigenous people residing in today’s San Lucas. We collaborated with a local high school to teach a year-long introductory anthropology course and directly involved students in the excavations. This talk highlights how typical academic archaeological investigation may be productively coupled with high school education through a focus on neighborhoods and a blurring of the arbitrary distinction between past and present.

SAA 2015 abstracts made available in tDAR courtesy of the Society for American Archaeology and Center for Digital Antiquity Collaborative Program to improve digital data in archaeology. If you are the author of this presentation you may upload your paper, poster, presentation, or associated data (up to 3 files/30MB) for free. Please visit http://www.tdar.org/SAA2015 for instructions and more information.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Community Diversity in the Archaeological Past and the Complicated Present: Ongoing Field Research and Civic Engagements in the Copan Valley, Honduras   •
• Society for American Archaeology 80th Annual Meeting, San Francisco, CA (2015)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage