Artisan Communities, Regional Interaction, and Identity in Eastern Honduras

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Centralizing Central America: New Evidence, Fresh Perspectives, and Working on New Paradigms" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

This paper discusses the role that two distinctive artisan communities from Eastern Honduras, El Chichicaste and Dos Quebradas, played as producers of pottery and obsidian blades within local and interregional exchange networks. Analysis of pottery, obsidian, and settlement patterns from both sites disputes the common perception of this region as “intermediate,” less developed, and marginal. Instead, Eastern Honduras was a dynamic region, interacting, exchanging, and selectively internalizing knowledge and practices with groups in Mesoamerica and the Isthmo-Colombian-Chibchan area. Data suggests that eastern Honduras was distinctive, with significant time depth (occupation dated from the Late Preclassic to Early Postclassic times), cultural continuum, and internal developments. The evidence indicates interregional and perhaps long-distance exchange of prestige goods and symbolic material culture via land and riverine networks. These foreign encounters and products, accessible mostly to elite rulers and merchants trading at nearby and long-distance markets, resulted in practices attempting to roughly replicate and reinterpret the array of cultural artifacts and ideology for local consumption. The outcome of these interactions resulted on a hybrid identity that incorporated local and foreign cultural features acquired, construed, and exchanged with neighboring groups.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Centralizing Central America: New Evidence, Fresh Perspectives, and Working on New Paradigms   •
• Society for American Archaeology 89th Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA (2024)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 37778.0