Mountain Doorways: Caves, Shelters, and Rock Art in Past and Present Southwestern Honduras

Summary

Caves and shelters hold a special place among Mesoamerican cultures. Some of the earliest evidence of human occupation in this region is found inside these natural features, where well-preserved materials attest to the detailed knowledge past populations had of their surrounding landscapes and resources. In later time periods, caves were treated as the portals to the underworld and became an essential part of Mesoamerican ideology. The landscape of the Santa Elena highlands of southwestern Honduras is defined by its numerous shelters and caves, all of which have been used and continue to be used to some degree by its inhabitants. This paper presents the results of a multi-disciplinary research project that demonstrated significant long-term use of sheltered sites in this area, documenting their use as residences, locales for communal gatherings and rituals, and as places of burial. This study and previous work in the area suggest that caves, shelters and the rock art within have been and continue to be sites charged with meaning and importance for the groups that have visited and inhabited them for the past 10,000 years.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 81st Annual Meeting, Orlando, FL (2016)   •
• Rock Art and Sacred Spaces: Recent Approaches to the Study of Ritual Landscapes

Keywords

Spatial Coverage