La Iglesia de Osicala: A Church on the Northeastern Frontier of Colonial El Salvador

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

The Morazán Archaeological Inventory Project documented the colonial church of Osicala in 2015. Osicala was the northernmost Catholic parish in eastern El Salvador during the colonial period, and included 11 towns and a wide swath of territory extending north to Honduras. The town of Osicala, including its church, was abandoned between 1877 and 1881; both the town and the church were relocated about 1 km south. People have reoccupied the area of the abandoned church and town in the decades since the end of El Salvador’s civil war (1979-1992). Cultural and non-cultural formation processes have destroyed much of the church. Recent settlers recycled construction materials to use in their own houses and destroyed the unstable bell tower because of the risk it posed to children playing in it. However, substantial portions of the western wall, including the principal entrance, are preserved. We document the form of the church and the nature of its construction. Contemporaneous Salvadoran colonial churches in a better state of preservation provide models to understand the remains. Colonial church and civic documents offer a context for the church, parish, and town.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts   •
• Society for American Archaeology 88th Annual Meeting, Portland, OR (2023)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 36395.0