Traces Behind the Esmeraldas Shore

5. La Tolita's Hinterland: The Selva Alegre Phase

5 LA TOLITA'! HINTERLAND The Selva Alegre Phase As Lathrap et al. (1985: 68) wryly observe: "It seems almost an operative corollary of Murphys Law that archaeological traditions are usually named after their least appropriate members." Selva Alegre, although a phase rather than a tradition, might comply with this complaint. The phase is named after the modern community of Selva Alegre, a town of about eight hundred inhabitants situated on a shallowly buried outcrop of bedrock on the left bank of the upper Santiago (RlO, the type site, and other Selva Alegre sites are plotted in figs 5.1 and 5.2). The entire community is underlain by prehistoric refuse, and ancient mounds abound where not destroyed by modern construction. Most conspicuous is a group of mounds located at the eastern periphery of the town. This mound group consists ofthree parallel linear embankments with associated domed tumuli (fig. 5.3). A trench excavated through this mound group exposed fill containing quantities of Guadual ceramics mixed with a residuum of distinctive Selva Alegre pottery (fig. 5.4). Test pits scattered throughout the modern community reveal either pure Guadual deposits or a mix of Selva Alegre and Guadual materials . Clearly the most extensive occupation and the bulk of mound construction at Selva Alegre took place during the Guadual phase, with earlier midden being scooped up in the process of mound building. RlO, the site of Selva Alegre, therefore is primarily a Guadual monument. In an earlier report (Tolstoy and DeBoer 1989), Selva Alegre and Guadual, although recognized as sequent phases, were considered together, just as they are found together in the mixed secondary deposits at RIO. In fact, the two phases are radically distinct, a point to be made evident in this and the following chapter . The notations RIO! and RlOII refer to the Selva Alegre and Guadual components respectively Although not as extensive as the Guadual component, RIO! covers an area estimated at more than 5 hectares and is the largest Selva Alegre settlement recorded in the survey In size, its only rival is R36, a ca 5 ha site located beneath the modern village of Colon Eloy on the lower Estero Maria. Like RlO, R36 contains a number of domed tumuli; however, a distinctive feature of the R36 earthworks is a pair of elevated causeways connecting several of the mounds (fig. 5.5). Because these causeways parallel a recently constructed road, it was suspected that they might be the berms resulting from the bulldozing of the road. This suspicion, however, is unfounded because one of the causeways extends beneath modern houses built before the road arrived in Colon Hoy Unlike RlO, R36 is almost a pure Selva Alegre occupation. The qualifier "almost " is required because a small sample of highly distinctive, non-Selva Alegre ceramics also occurs at R36. This distinctive pottery always mixed with Selva ego. KM ,~ .. o LA TOLITA'S HINTERLAND 8J Fig. 5.1 Distribution of Selva Alegre sites. See fig. 5.2 for amplification of the area enclosed by dashed rectangle. 84 LA TOLlTA'S HINTERLAND r· KM o 2 Fig. 5.2 Distribution ofSelva Alegre sites within the inset offig. 5.1. Alegre materials, is found on the surface, exposed in drip-lines of modem houses, and in the surficial deposit of test pit 1. These ceramics, so sparsely represented at R36, are assigned to the problematic Mina phase and will be considered in a later chapter. Following the same notational system employed at RlO, R361 refers to the major Selva Alegre occupation, whereas R36Il deSignates the poorly defined Mina component at Colon Eloy Natural hillocks are common in the Santiago and Cayapas basins, and distinguishing these natural formations from artificial mounds is not always an easy task, especially as natural elevations are often favored spots for human occupation today and were so in the past. This ambiguity is further complicated by the current (and perhaps ancient) practice ofscooping up soil (archaeological middens seem to be preferred) to form elevated garden beds. To evaluate the nature of the mounds at R36, test pits were excavated atop two of the more prominent tolas (1 and 2 in fig. 5.5). The profile of the "telephone booth" sunk into tola 1 is shown SELVA ALEGRE Rl0 "t#O., .... "'"",,:' mound D test pit o ~ ~ ~' : ; , ) D [ill U . . . . . .· ,· L c ':0.'''':, C """'; =\"'''~ 'II"~ 0(".'\ .... ",,,::. ::,' .~":. ",,~~. "),,,."' o 1 _- .----I -. I I !"\ I •..... , ..... I:::;~ ,.d"'~ 0 ~)I I () ... ,~" 0...