Diet and Mobility in the Diverse Geographies of the Lower Central American Land Bridge

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Unraveling the Mysteries of the Isthmo-Colombian Area’s Past: A Symposium in Honor of Archaeologist Richard Cooke and His Contributions" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Richard Cooke dedicated his career to the study of past human groups on the lower Central American land bridge (southern Nicaragua to northern Colombia) and their diversification in the tropical landscapes of the region. He has argued that the diverse geography of the landscape favored both endemism and diversity in human societies, who at the end of the sixteenth century spoke diverse, yet related, Chibchan and Chocoan languages. Moreover, approximately seven centuries before the European contact the region witnessed the arrival of Mesoamerican migrant populations from the north. The long precolumbian history of this complex scenario is accompanied by variation in the interplay between human populations and their surrounding environments. Thus, tracing the diversity of subsistence practices and residential mobility through time and space is critical to understand how these groups colonized tropical habitats and thrived to become complex societies. To assess these issues, we present preliminary data on a multi-isotope program (carbon, nitrogen, strontium, and oxygen) for populations from archaeological sites in Panama and Costa Rica during the last 2,000 years of precolumbian history.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Unraveling the Mysteries of the Isthmo-Colombian Area’s Past: A Symposium in Honor of Archaeologist Richard Cooke and His Contributions   •
• Society for American Archaeology 89th Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA (2024)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 40244.0