“ Trails, paths and roads are essential structures of the human landscape. They weave together the disparate elements of daily lives, bridging distance and obstacles to connect us to each other” – LANDSCAPES OF MOVEMENT, JAMES SNEAD ET AL. (2009)
TRAILS OF CULTURES:
BY ALEX BENITEZ BY ALEX BENITEZ
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Greater Nicoya female figure on a feline-effigy bench, AD 800–1200, Linea Vieja area, Costa Rica. Pottery, clay slip, paint. Formerly in the collection of Carlos S. Balser; MAI exchange with William Hawker, 1959 (22/8837).
14 AMERICAN INDIAN SUMMER 2013
or thousands of years, people living in the region we now call Central America traversed near and distant lands to acquire food resources, conduct trade in materials such as jade and finely crafted pottery, and maintain social and political relations. The trails, paths and roads that facilitated these movements, and the villages and cities
they connected, formed a dynamic pre-Columbian landscape whose complexity and vitality we have yet to fully understand.
These human landscapes also embodied
significant cultural meaning. Consider how pathways used to acquire natural resources may develop into routes for sacred pilgrimages. Regard how the repeated use of ancient paths in Costa Rica created deep sunken corridors that were later emulated in formal architecture to create impressive entrances to villages. Current efforts to map and interpret these landscapes using aerial photography, satellite imagery and GPS technologies offer exciting new possibilities for understanding the past. But the richest evidence for tracing the movement and interactions of people in ancient Central America is still found in the distribution of pottery, stonework and other materials found at the ends and inter- sections of trails, paths and roads; namely,
the cities and villages where people lived, worked and socialized. This region, encompassing present-day
Belize, Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Costa Rica and Panama, is the focus of a major new National Museum of the American Indian exhibit Ceramica de los Ancestros, drawing on the Museum’s collec- tion of 17,000 ancient ceramics, more than 10,000 of them intact. In collaboration with the Smithsonian Latino Center, it explores the vibrant but lesser-known cultures such as
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TRADE ROUTES CONNECTED ANCIENT CENTRAL AMERICA
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