Natural Corridor or Challenging Route? Rethinking Pre-Hispanic Communications across the Pacific Coast of Guatemala

Summary

The Pacific coast of Guatemala has long been regarded as a natural corridor that facilitated travel and trade, and served as a route of migration and invasion, connecting eastern Mexico, the Guatemalan highlands, and El Salvador, with further regions of Mexico and Central America. At first glance, the natural configuration of the coast seems to provide unobstructed passage, especially when compared with the rugged terrain of the adjacent highlands. The maps in many publications feature vague arrows marking trade or migration routes, giving the false impression that the coast was a broad unimpeded passageway. They generally omit details of topography and hydrography, and make no distinction among different parts of the coast. A closer look reveals important distinctions in the feasibility and comparative advantage of communication routes along the coastal piedmont, the coastal plain, and the Pacific littoral. The torrential rivers that cut across the coast posed important restrictions for east-west traffic, and in some cases, for north-south access from highland and piedmont sites to the coastal plain and littoral. In this talk, I will use ethnohistorical and geographic data to argue for finer assessment of coastal communication routes.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 83rd Annual Meeting, Washington, DC (2018)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 20239