Ritual Economy and Celebration in a Central Honduran Chiefdom

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Papers in Honor of Deborah L. Nichols" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Ritual celebrations and feasting were important components for the integration of pre-Columbian societies. Nevertheless, the frequency, scale, and effort expended in ritual events can be difficult to identify from archaeological remains. This paper reconstructs a large and synchronous site-wide ritual celebration at the site of Salitrón Viejo, which was the regional center of a chiefdom society in north central Honduras between 200-400 CE. The celebration commemorated the completion of the site’s primary civic-ceremonial precinct. In addition to feasting the celebration involved the site-wide deposition of over 2,000 carved jade artifacts across the site’s two ritual precincts.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 90th Annual Meeting, Denver, CO (2025)   •
• Papers in Honor of Deborah L. Nichols

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 50009