INDIGENOUS LANDSCAPES AND ECOLOGY AT GUAIMORETO LAGOON, HONDURAS (Invited Presentation)

Research at the Selin Farm site, adjacent to a mangrove lagoon in northeastern Honduras, examined changing cultural landscapes and ecology in a region whose prehistory is poorly understood. In collaboration with the indigenous Pech descendant community, we used several low-impact field methods (e.g. LIDAR, pedestrian survey, and coring), developed a detailed radiocarbon chronology, and analyzed a preliminary faunal dataset to reveal how this cultural landscape changed in response to shifting priorities among its inhabitants from AD 300 – 1000. Results show a rapid accumulation of deposits beginning around AD 600, when the site nearly doubled in size over the span of just decades, before retracting again within a few centuries. In some cases, mass deposition of shell and ceramics with minimal sediment suggest communal activities such as feasting were common at the height of the occupation.

Although the Pech's ancestors were caught up in some of the broader social and political changes that began around AD 600 throughout southern Mesoamerica, the longevity of this site suggests overall stability of their cultural and ecological systems until the final centuries of occupation. Although faunal analysis reveals changes in ecosystems and food culture, there is no trajectory to those changes that might reflect overfishing, agricultural runoff, or impacts from the beginning of the Medieval Climatic Anomaly. Instead, Guaimoreto Lagoon and other nearby marine ecosystems seem to have provided a rich ecological backdrop against which the Pech's ancestors experimented with new forms of social and political organization at Selin Farm. Well-preserved, long-term deposits make Selin Farm an ideal location in which to explore entangled processes of environmental and social change in the little-known small-scale societies of Central America.