Settlement Patterns and Political Structures of Prehispanic Northeast Honduras

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2025: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

While the political structures of Mesoamerica are characterized by verticality and stratification, societies in Southern Central America exhibit a more horizontal, less hierarchical organization. However, detailed settlement pattern studies in Southern Central America that would allow a thorough investigation of this phenomenon are still very scarce. The Archaeological Project Guadalupe/Colón is reconstructing the pre-Hispanic settlement and cultural history of northeast Honduras to provide new data about this long-neglected transitional zone between Mesoamerica and Southern Central America. By conducting systematic surveys employing modern remote sensing methods—including satellite imagery, drone-based Structure from Motion (SfM) photogrammetry, and LiDAR—as well as traditional prospection and excavation techniques, and through typochronological and archaeometric analyses of artifacts, we are compiling a growing corpus of foundational archaeological data for interpreting settlement patterns and political structures. We present the results of surveys and excavations of 66 settlements dating to the Cocal (1000–1525 AD), Selin (300–1000 AD), and Betulia (250 BC–300 AD) settlement phases. The data provide insight into the densely settled Northeast Honduras Cultural Region, which is characterized by small- and medium-sized settlements interconnected by networks of economic and cultural exchange. Such societies have been described in other studies as “communities of practice.”

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 90th Annual Meeting, Denver, CO (2025)   •
• SAA 2025: Individual Abstracts

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 53653