George Byron Gordon and the Birth of a Colonialist Archaeology on the Southeastern Mesoamerican Frontier

With great power there must also come—great responsibility!

Spider-Man, Amazing Fantasy 15

First we make our habits, then our habits make us.

Charles C. Noble

Archaeology tells people, intentionally or not, who they are and where they come from. Individuals and societies often turn to archaeology for information about their past, particularly when that past was appropriated by invading foreign powers; the ways in which archaeologists approach projects and select interesting foci can have a great impact on how such heritages are reconstructed as part of the reclamation of identities. Honduras offers a fascinating milieu in which to study the actualization of this process and its consequences for modern scholarship. Research within the country, like that conducted in other parts of Mesoamerica, has traditionally focused on architecturally complex sites and materials that offer concrete evidence of grandeur. The Maya city of Copán in Honduras satisfies these requirements; it has directly or indirectly affected all archaeological work in the country since its "discovery" by archaeology in 1836 (Galindo 1836). This consistent focus on Copán created an intellectual environment in which archaeological value is measured, both explicitly and implicitly, on a scale of Mayaness that caused all cultural remains to be approached, analyzed, and explained through a fundamentally Maya framework. The earliest archaeological work in Honduras beyond Copán, conducted by George Byron Gordon, laid the foundation for such an approach and created a Mayacentric and colonialist approach to scholarship that has continued largely unchanged until the present day.

The Earliest Archaeology beyond Copán as Colonialist Scholarship

The first archaeologist to formally work outside of the Copán Valley was George Byron Gordon. He began his Honduran fieldwork as part of the Peabody Museum archaeological expedition to Copán, but from 1896 until 1897 the project was temporarily suspended because of tensions with the Honduran government (Gordon 1898:3). This lull in work at Copán led Gordon to consider other parts of the country as potential field sites, and he ultimately settled on the Ulúa Valley (Figure 1). This region was first introduced to him in 1894 when, following a suggestion made by a resident of San Pedro Sula, he briefly visited the site of Playa de los Muertos when rains prevented him from traveling to Copán as planned (Gordon 1898:5). This initial visit was brief because of the inundation of the Ulúa River, and Gordon describes finding nothing more than lush vegetation and an abandoned indigenous village (1898:5). The ceramic glimpse into the region's history was tantalizing, however, and Gordon decided to return to the valley when time and weather would allow.

His previous experience in the Valley made him wary of the weather, and he was careful to schedule his research in accordance with the dry season. His first Ulúa expedition was conducted in May and June 1896; a second trip was undertaken from March until June the following year (Gordon 1898:5). Embarking via canoe from La Pimienta, the region was scouted for suitable sites located along the Ulúa River; high riverbanks with very clear stratigraphic delineation were believed to be ideal (Gordon 1898:7-8). Many such sites were visible from the water's surface, and Gordon noted in his 1898 report that the vertical riverbanks offered a "continuous spectacle of broken pottery and fragments of bone" (1989:7-8). He initially settled on a series of locations in the central part of the Ulúa Valley, primarily around Playa de los Muertos and the village of Santana (Gordon 1898:8-9); those excavations identified by Gordon as most significant were around the latter location (1898:8). Few specifics were provided on the locations of these excavations, likely owing to the lack of a detailed map of the region; details of the methodology and work conditions were also neglected in the 1898 report. Gordon focused instead on the analysis of his discoveries and descriptions of his adventures.

Gordon's Ulúa research had a colonialist character from the very beginning, and his...