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Revealing Ancestral Central America, Part 1
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Revealing Ancestral Central America, Part 1

Bienvenidos

Ranald Woodaman, the Exhibitions of Public Programs director at Smithsonian Latino Center, welcomes everyone to the day-long symposium, Revealing Ancestral Central America. He explains that this program is part of a larger project to highlight Central American heritage and engage with the immediate heirs of the legacy of material culture.

  • Ranald Woodaman welcomes everyone to the symposium.
  • The symposium is part of a larger project to highlight Central American heritage.
  • The goal is to engage with the immediate heirs of the legacy of material culture.

Cerámica de los Ancestros

Ranald Woodaman talks about an exhibition called Cerámica de los Ancestros, which is at the center of this entire initiative. It's part of a collaboration between his office, the Smithsonian Latino Center, and the National Museum of the American Indian.

  • The exhibition upstairs is called Cerámica de los Ancestros.
  • It's part of a collaboration between Smithsonian Latino Center and National Museum of American Indian.

Central American Heritage

Ranald Woodaman discusses how El Salvador, Guatemala, Costa Rica, Panama and other countries in this region are intertwined with U.S. empire history, agribusiness, immigration and archaeology.

  • Countries in Central America are intertwined with U.S. empire history.
  • Archaeology plays an important role in understanding Central American heritage.

Identity and National Histories

Ranald Woodaman talks about how Latinos can lay claim to much older histories that have often been erased by aligning their sense of history with Indigenous peoples' history.

  • Latinos can lay claim to much older histories that have often been erased.
  • Aligning their sense of history with Indigenous peoples' history can help them understand their identity and national histories.

Collaboration between Latino Center and NMAI

Ranald Woodaman discusses how the Smithsonian Latino Center collaborates significantly with the National Museum of the American Indian to tell Latino stories.

  • The Smithsonian Latino Center collaborates significantly with the National Museum of the American Indian.
  • The collaboration is based on the belief that this museum has objects in its collection that tell Latino stories.

Symposium

Ranald Woodaman introduces today's symposium, which carries the same title as their publication, "Revealing Ancestral Central America."

  • Today's symposium carries the same title as their publication, "Revealing Ancestral Central America."

Availability of Books

The speaker informs the audience that a book and a bilingual children's coloring book are available.

Book Availability

  • A book and a bilingual children's coloring book are available.

Archaeology in Central America

The speaker discusses archaeology in Central America, including national boundaries, dwelling, connecting, authority, and spirituality.

National Boundaries

  • Archaeology is viewed differently from the perspective of someone from Honduras or Salvadoran or Nicaraguan background.
  • For an archaeologist looking at the same region, there's a temptation to talk about the region in relationship to Mesoamerica to the north or the Andean region to the south.
  • Instead of looking at Central American archaeology from a highly removed bird's-eye view, we should look at it from the perspective of someone situated in one of the places that form a network in Central America.

Dwelling

  • Most people in Central America lived in small villages before colonization by Spanish people.
  • Joya de Cerén village was covered by volcanic eruption preserving intact features that normally would disappear and that archaeologists wouldn't have access to. It tells us even small rural villages contained great social complexity with multiple forms of social authority exercised by men and women.

Connecting

  • Cosmopolitan and long-range connections were forged as well as how connection happened from village to village, town to town.

Authority

  • Multiple complex ways that authority was framed in Central America.
  • Different forms of authority existed instead of one central authority.

Spirituality

  • People in this region understood themselves in relation to supernatural beings and to ancestors.

Cerén and the Question of How Archaeologists Know Things

In this section, the speaker introduces Cerén, a farming community in Central America that was preserved by volcanic ash. The speaker explains that while no humans were affected by the eruption, all of the buildings were covered intact with various forms of objects that people had used. The only things that died here were buildings.

  • No humans were affected by this eruption.
  • The only things that died here were buildings.
  • The speaker raises the question of how archaeologists know things like who lived in certain structures or what activities took place there.

Ritual Specialists and Women's Work at Cerén

In this section, the speaker discusses Structure 4 at Cerén, which may have been a space where a ritual specialist practiced divination for the community. The speaker explains how archaeologists determine these kinds of details and notes that they tend to use words like "possibly" to avoid overstating their findings.

  • Structure 4 was a space where women's work was concentrated.
  • Using assemblage of tools found in Structure 4, it is suggested that it might have been a space where there was a ritual practitioner doing divination.
  • There is an interesting latticework on Structure 4 which suggests someone inside could convey messages outside.
  • Other details of the internal structure suggest special kinds of activities took place in Structure 4.

Wealth and Community Structures at Cerén

In this section, the speaker discusses the wealth of the community at Cerén and points out evidence of that wealth, such as fields growing cacao, maguey, guayaba, and milpas of corn. The speaker also notes that the community structures at Cerén include sweat baths which were probably used for ritual purposes or to coordinate disputes without central authority.

  • The community at Cerén was quite wealthy.
  • Evidence of wealth includes fields growing cacao, maguey, guayaba, and milpas of corn.
  • Kitchen gardens suggest a rich and complex diet.
  • Sweat baths were probably used for ritual purposes or to coordinate disputes without central authority.

Village-Level Identities at Cerén

In this section, the speaker discusses how villages like Cerén had their own village-level identities based on things like ritual performance.

  • Villages like Cerén had their own village-level identities.
  • These identities were based on things like ritual performance.

Joya de Cerén and Ancient Central American Villages

In this section, the speaker discusses the ancient villages of Central America, focusing on Joya de Cerén as an example.

Unusual Village

  • Joya de Cerén is an unusual village in El Salvador that was preserved by volcanic ash.
  • The village provides a glimpse into the daily lives of ancient Central Americans.

Rural Farming Villages

  • Hundreds of thousands, probably tens of thousands, of rural farming villages existed in Central America's past.
  • These villages were located along watercourses and took advantage of the land's fertility and accessibility to water.
  • People grew plants in their house gardens and cacao groves in the area.
  • Over 500 archeological sites have been located within an 800-square mile valley.

Towns

  • There were also larger settlements known as towns that had different kinds of activities.
  • These towns had buildings that were fancier and larger with people living in houses with more wealth.
  • They traded for things they couldn't get locally but weren't necessarily controlled or bound by people in the centers.

Examples from Honduras

  • Curruste is one excellent example of one of these towns. It has small house platforms around the margins but larger buildings and wide-open spaces at its center.
  • Aguas Buenas, Nicaragua has a whole series of round mounds arranged in circular patterns.

Ceramic Sculptures from Central America

In this section, the speaker discusses unique ceramic sculptures found in Central America and their significance.

Unique Ceramic Sculptures

  • The National Museum of the American Indian displays a figure holding an axe, believed to be masculine.
  • The sculpture shows a blade tied through an axe handle.
  • Each sculpture is unique and depicts a person in an important role within their community.
  • These roles were significant enough to be commemorated in large ceramic sculptures, possibly the largest known from the Americas.

Mantecales Site

  • Mantecales is another site where these sculptures have been excavated by students working with the speaker.
  • The sculptures originally stood on vessel lids.
  • Wearing sandals was one of the distinctive traits of authorities in at least Northern Central America.
  • One particular figure held a small ceramic bag that contained pellets of resin burned during rituals.
  • Mantecales is located in the Ulúa River Valley and has four platforms with individual buildings on them. It's a rural village, not even a town.

Stone-Walled Chamber

  • Over 200 to 300 years, villagers returned repeatedly to one area where they eventually built a stone-walled chamber.
  • Layer after layer, archaeologists carefully excavated broken pieces of incense burning vessels and mapped every single fragment for better understanding.
  • A lid with an almost complete jaguar was found but its head was missing. It's believed that the head was taken away as a reminder of the event.
  • Felines, possibly jaguars, were repeatedly represented in these sculptures and became another indicator of positions of authority.
  • These positions of authority seem to be heavily related to ritual practice and possibly communicating with ancestors.

Imagery on Pots

The speaker discusses the combination of imagery on pots and how they should be interpreted symbolically rather than just pragmatically.

Symbolic Nature of Artifacts

  • Honduran pot with a figure holding a spear only appears very late, around 900 AD-plus, 850 to 950 AD.
  • Need to look at artifacts for their symbolic nature, not just for their pragmatic nature.
  • Artifacts related to other metaphors of capturing vitality, fertility, and resources.

Authority through Military Conquest

The speaker talks about how military conquest is often misrepresented in Central American materials.

Misrepresentation of Politics

  • Misrepresenting people in the past when we take things like military conquest and represent them as the main form of politics or interaction.
  • Need to look at things like the use of a spear by a figure on a Honduran pot for their symbolic nature.

Life on the Ground in Central America

The speaker discusses life on the ground in Central America before the 16th century and how it has been underreported.

Alternative Ways of Thinking About the Past

  • Archaeologists can reveal things not about big states or large-scale but about life on the ground.
  • Life on the ground in Central America before the 16th century has been underreported.
  • Public exhibition about this area that is so important gives us alternative ways of thinking about the past where people were able to engage in highly beautiful craft work and long-distance connections without entering into such very unequal social relations.
Video description

This symposium, presented by the Smithsonian Latino Center and the National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI), celebrates the landmark exhibition Cerámica de los Ancestros: Central America's Past Revealed, as well as the Smithsonian publication, Revealing Ancestral Central America, edited by Rosemary A. Joyce. This program features leading voices in the interpretation and recovery of the region's rich indigenous heritage. In Part 1, Rosemary A. Joyce (University of California, Berkeley) gives a presentation entitled What Archaeology Reveals about Central America's Past. The symposium, exhibition, and book have their genesis in the Central American Ceramics Research Project, an initiative launched when visiting researchers from the Smithsonian Latino Center realized that the NMAI was quietly caring for one of the largest and most significant collections of Central American archaeology in existence, with approximately 17,000 objects from the region. Astonishingly, this includes more than 10,000 intact vessels, embodying countless untold stories. From figurines depicting powerful women in the Greater Nicoya region to finely decorated vessels of wealthy farming hamlets of the Ulúa Valley and the fantastical designs on Coclé, we can see that the peoples of pre-Hispanic Central America developed uniquely local identities and cultural traditions while also engaging in vital exchanges of ideas, goods, and technologies with their neighbors in all directions. Ranald Woodaman, Exhibitions and Public Programs Director, Smithsonian Latino Center introduces and moderates the symposium. This program was webcast from the National Museum of the American Indian Rasmuson Theater on September 8, 2013.