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Multiethnicity or Multiple Enigma

Archaeological survey and cave exploration in the Río Talgua drainage, Honduras

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 October 2008

Boyd Dixon ,
George Hasemann ,
Pastor Gomez ,
James Brady  and
Marilyn Beaudry-Corbett
Boyd Dixon
Affiliation:
International Archaeological Research Institute, Inc., 949 McCully Street, Suite 5, Honolulu, HI 96826, USA
George Hasemann
Affiliation:
Instituto Hondureño de Antropología e Historia, Villa Roy, Bo. Buenos Aires, Apartado 1518, Tegucigalpa, Honduras, Central America
Pastor Gomez
Affiliation:
Instituto Hondureño de Antropología e Historia, Villa Roy, Bo. Buenos Aires, Apartado 1518, Tegucigalpa, Honduras, Central America
James Brady
Affiliation:
Department of Anthropology, California State University, Los Angeles, CA 90032, USA
Marilyn Beaudry-Corbett
Affiliation:
Institute of Archaeology, University of California at Los Angeles, Box 951510, Los Angeles, CA 90095-1510, USA
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Abstract

During the summer of 1995, an intensive archaeological survey of the Río Talgua drainage in eastern Honduras was conducted after the discovery of the Talgua Cave in the Department of Olancho. One important goal of this survey was the identification of the indigenous population responsible for depositing the ninth-century b.c. human burials found upstream in Talgua Cave. In addition to this survey, four other caves were found and/or explored during this season, and limited excavations were also conducted at the mounded site of Talgua downstream and at the ceramic-production site of Chichicaste in the mountains to the west. Preliminary analysis of the architecture and ceramics from 39 newly identified archaeological sites in the Talgua Valley suggests that all appear to date to the Late Classic period (a.d. 600–900), leaving the location of the Middle Formative period population unresolved. A review of the survey, cave, and ceramic data, however, does reveal possible information about the multiethnic nature of the regional political system and local social structure that existed in this previously unstudied area of Central America.

Type
Articles
Information
Ancient Mesoamerica , Volume 9 , Issue 2 , Fall 1998 , pp. 327 - 340
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1998

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