Archaeometallurgy in Mesoamerica: Current Approaches and New Perspectives

4. The Production of Copper at El Coyote, Honduras: Processing, Dating, and Political Economy

77 This chapter seeks to contribute to our understanding of the role metallurgy played in southern Mesoamerican prehistory. We do this by describing in some detail evidence of a copper workshop that came to light at the Terminal Classic (AD 800–1000) center of El Coyote, northwestern Honduras; detailing evidence concerning dates for copper processing there; and briefly considering the implications of these finds for understanding past political economies that operated on multiple spatial scales in southern Mesoamerica. The chapter concludes with some suggestions for future research into metallurgy among populations generally thought to have been consumers, not producers , of metal goods. Copper Working in MesoaMeriCa: a Brief revieW It is traditionally thought that metalworking appeared late in Mesoamerica and then was limited primarily to western Mexico, where smelting copper and copper alloys dates back to the seventh century AD (Hosler 1988a, 1994; Maldonado 2009). More recent research (see Blanca Maldonado, John M. Weeks, and Simmons and Shugar: Chapters 3, 5, and 6, of this volume, respectively ) has shown that metalworking has a much wider breadth than previously thought. Around the same time that metal artifacts began to be made in West Mexico, they were appearing in southern Mesoamerica, especially the F o u r The production of Copper at el Coyote, Honduras PROCESSING, DATING, AND POLITICAL ECONOMY Patricia Urban, Aaron N. Shugar, Laura Richardson, and Edward Schortman DOI: 10.5876/9781607322009.c04 78 Patricia urban et al. Maya Lowlands. Their distribution and stylistic typologies are summarized in Pendergast (1962), Bray (1971), and Hosler (1988b; for Mexico proper, see Castillo Tejero 1980 and Flores de Aguirrezabal, M. D. López, and Quijada López 1980). Pendergast surmised that the concurrent presence of copper artifacts in both West Mexico and the southern Maya area “suggests that both areas functioned as centers of diffusion of metal artifacts in Mesoamerica” (1962, 535), by which we assume he meant centers of production and distribution . Bray (1971) suggests that copper production was pursued in southeast Mesoamerica (the adjoining portions of Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador) on the edge of the Maya Lowlands (cf. Stone 1957). Artifacts of this material are uncommon here but have been discovered at several locations close to El Coyote: the Late Postclassic (AD 1300–1532) entrepôt of Naco (Wonderley 1981), the sites of Las Flores Balsa and Los Naranjos in Honduras (Strong, Kidder, and Paul 1938), and the Quimistán Cave of Bells (Blackiston 1910;Bray1971).Theexactlocationoftheaforementionedcave,whichyielded hundreds of copper artifacts, the majority of which were bells, is unknown. It may have been approximately four miles west of El Coyote in the midst of shallow copper deposits that were heavily mined during the twentieth century. Alternatively, the cave might be approximately four miles to the northeast of Coyote, based on Blackiston’s rather opaque discussion of his route: he began his trek in San Antonio de Majada, the southernmost town in the Naco Valley and on the east side of the river. Wherever Blackiston’s finds originally came from, this trove and the presence of easily accessible copper near El Coyote suggest that the ore was available for use by the site’s inhabitants and may have been converted close by into finished goods such as the bells recovered from the elusive Quimistán cave. In sum, evidence for extractive copper metallurgy (smelting) is thus far restricted in Mesoamerica to western Mexico. Primary copper and bronze artifacts found in the rest of Mesoamerica from the seventh century onward are thought to have derived from those workshops. The presence of copper deposits accessible using pre-Columbian technologies in northwest Honduras, coupled with the concentration of artifacts of this material in such locales as the Quimistán Cave of Bells, has led some to suggest tentatively that this portion of southeast Mesoamerica was another source of metal goods. Thus far, this proposition has not been substantiated. Recent work at El Coyote, however, may change that situation. el CoyoTe in iTs seTTing Northwestern Honduras is generally considered to be the eastern terminus of southern Mesoamerica, though the interface between Mesoamerica and 79 the Production oF coPPer at el coyote, honduras the so-called Intermediate Area of lower Central America is a porous membrane rather than a hard-and-fast boundary (Figure 4.1). Work here has concentrated on the Classic Maya site of Copán (e.g., Andrews and Fash 2005); the large Caribbean coastal plain (e.g., Hendon 2010...