Early attention to archaeological remains in Central America focused on the architecture and statuary of the region’s ancient cities and towns and on the handsomely crafted gold, shell, semiprecious stone, and elaborate ceramics that often accompanied the burials of important people. Early researchers writing in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries made contributions that can still be profitably consulted. Works by Walter Lehmann (all of CA), Carl Hartman (Costa Rica), E. G. Squier (Nicaragua and Honduras), Carl Bovallius (Nicaragua), J. F. Bransford (Nicaragua and Costa Rica), Earl Flint (Nicaragua and Costa Rica), Anastacio Alfaro (Costa Rica), William H. Holmes (Panama), and Sigvald Linne (Panama) fall within this category. A focus on chronology with an emphasis on ceramics characterized much of the archaeological research in CA during the first two-thirds of the twentieth century and beyond. Over the course of his long career, Samuel Lothrop wrote maj or monographs on ceramic sequences in Nicaragua, Costa Rica, and Panama, but is perhaps best known for his two-volume report on excavations at the Sitio Conte cemetery in Panama. Other researchers contributed to building regional chronologies in CA: among them are Doris Stone (Honduras, Costa Rica), Wolfgang Haberland (El Salvador, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Panama), Claude Baudez (Honduras, Costa Rica), Michael Coe (Costa Rica), Stanley Boggs (El Salvador), and Matthew Stirling (Costa Rica, Panama). This work focused almost exclusively on the last 2000 years of prehistory when populations were living in permanent settlements with agriculture-based subsistence economies that generated highly visible refuse and often above-ground architectural features. The excavation of the Monagrillo site in Panama, reported by Gordon Willey and Charles McGimsey, extended the age of pottery production in Central Pacific Panama back an additional 2500 years, to 3000 BC. Charles McGimsey’s excavation of the nearby Cerro Mangote (6810 ± 110 BP (c. cal 5700 BC)) was the first stratified Preceramic site excavated in CA.
The transformation in archaeological approaches that occurred in the late 1960s and early 1970s was reflected in a host of new orientations for archaeological projects undertaken in Lower Central America by a cohort of then young archaeologists, many of whom are still active in the field. Settlement patterns, the use of animal and plant resources, exchange systems, the first colonizers, the origins of agriculture, and the evolution of social complexity are just some of the topics that came under investigation. Our current knowledge of Central American prehistory, as outlined in the following sections, owes a great deal to the research of Richard Cooke, Francisco Corrales, Robert Drolet, Pat Hansell, Paul Healy, John Hoopes, Fred Lange, Olga Linares, Dolores Piperno, Anthony Ranere, Michael Snarskis, and Payson Sheets, among others.
World History
