Ch'orti Maya Area: Past and Present

Part 2: The Pre-Columbian History of the Ch′orti′ Area

part ii The Pre-Columbian History of the Ch′orti′ Area Contributors to this section explore data on the ecology, migration, settlement , and ethnicity of the pre-Columbian inhabitants of the Ch′orti′ area. They deal with several regions inhabited by the Ch′orti′ for at least some interval within the last two thousand years: these include Copan (Cameron McNeil,Allan Maca, Robert Sharer); El Salvador (Payson Sheets); Quirigua and the Motagua Valley, Guatemala (Matthew Looper, Robert Sharer); and Jocotán and Camotán, Guatemala (Carson Murdy). The chapters that follow address a number of important questions: When did people first arrive in this area? Who was and was not Maya? And what degree of cultural continuity can be demonstrated between the ancient inhabitants and the modern Ch′orti′? While several earlier volumes have been devoted to pre-Columbian settlement and ethnicity along the southeastern Maya periphery (Boone and Willey 1988; Pahl 1987; Urban and Schortman 1986), the present book is focused more tightly on the Ch′orti′, from prehistory through modern times. It does not, therefore, rehash the assorted debates about the ethnicities of all of the ancient inhabitants in the area under discussion . In the regions treated in this volume, wide-ranging data demonstrate the complexity of determining the ethnic affiliations of past populations (Andrews and Fash 2005; Gerstle 1987, 1988; Joesink-Mandeville 1987; Longyear 1952; Manahan 2003, 2004; Manahan and Canuto n.d.; Viel 1983, 1993a). Given the already broad geographical and temporal scope of this book, we determined that this section, with the exception of Allan Maca’s contribution, should focus on exploring the vestiges of Maya presence rather than those of multiple ethnic groups. 43 44 · Part II In addition, we wished to push the discussion of the Maya on the southeastern periphery beyond the sites of Copan and Quirigua. While these ancient political centers are the most visible remains of the preColumbian Maya in the region, chapters by Payson Sheets and Carson Murdy examine other areas of the southeastern periphery, in order to expand current understandings of the lifeways and population distribution of the ancient Maya. Although today there are Ch′orti′ communities in the more marginalized and remote sections of the Copan Valley in Honduras , the heart of modern Ch′orti′ culture is on the other side of the border in Guatemala; it is therefore crucial to understand the population and settlement distribution of that area in the past. In Chapter 4, the first chapter in this section, Cameron McNeil uses ecological data to augment what we already know about human populations in the Copan Valley. Her analysis of sediment cores extracted from subaquatic contexts supplements information gained from archaeological excavations and fills in blank spaces in the history of the valley. While this work cannot offer definite conclusions about the ethnicity of past inhabitants , it can provide data on the presence of human populations, the introduction of plant species that may indicate the arrival and perhaps the trajectory of people bearing new cultural traditions, and the impact of natural disasters such as volcanic eruptions. Payson Sheets, in Chapter 5, explores the distinctive traits that reflect a Maya presence in areas northwest of the Zapotitán Valley in El SalvaFigure II. Ethnographer Charles Wisdom and Ladinos at the Copan ruins, circa 1931–33 (Photo by Charles Wisdom, Smithsonian Institution National Anthropological Archives, Manuscript 4826, #215) The Pre-Columbian History of the Ch′orti′ Area · 45 dor. Sheets (1987) has previously proposed that people from this area may have migrated to Copan following the devastating fifth-century eruption of the Ilopango volcano: in Chapter 5, he posits that they may have returned to the ZapotitánValley when the ash had cooled and the land could be farmed once again. At the site of Ceren, which was frozen in time by a later, sixth-century eruption of the Ilopango volcano, traits suggesting Maya presence include ceremonial buildings painted in white and red with successively raised floors; artifacts from the Kuch ceremony (an ancient dance that survives into the present, in which the participants don deer masks); sweat baths; and evidence of rites involving either auto- or human sacrifice. Sheets notes that the settlement pattern of Ceren is characteristic of the Maya, featuring multiple structures that serve specific functions, such as kitchens, storehouses, and domiciles. Very different settlement patterns are associated with the Lenca, another ethnic group that inhabited some areas along the southeastern...