1.5 Million Expected
To Travel To Beaches and Resorts During
Semana Santa
Costa Ricans
Need Not Pay Visa To Visit Nicaragua
U.S. Vice President
Arrives in Costa
Rica
Earth Hour in
Costa Rica Saved 95 Megawatts
Donations
Sought For Costa Rica Medical Mission
Student
Training Opportunities in Greater Nicoya
Prehistory: Geology
Student
Training Opportunities in Greater Nicoya
Prehistory: Geology
By Frederick W. Lange (Infowebpress)
Beginning in 1969, and finishing (at least
for the time being) in 1997, I took groups
of students from North America and Europe to
Costa Rica and Nicaragua for, in many cases,
their first training as archaeologists.
Many knew nothing about archaeology other
than what they read in National Geographic,
and then subsequently watched on television
on Nova, the National Geographic Channel,
the History Channel, and others. The
Harrison Ford quartet of Raiders flicks and
Angelina Jolie’s Lara Croft Tomb Raider
films have also attracted millions of
viewers and caused dramatic increases in
university enrollments in introductory
courses.
My challenge, therefore, was to help my
students to avoid the trauma of getting too
far along in their academic careers before
they discovered what archaeology was really
all about: field camps with no electricity,
no running water, no nearby communities,
lots of flies and mosquitoes and the
occasionally scorpion or snake, and all of
this they or their parents paid money for
three to five months. It was more like boot
camp!
I not only taught them about field
techniques and how to record data, but also
the interdisciplinary nature of archaeology
and the natural connections between field
archaeology and geology, zoology, botany,
and laboratory studies such as chemistry and
physics.
I also tried to give them a “taste” for the
entire sequence of activities carried out by
a professional archaeologist. We discussed
the research design, then began to execute
it with survey and field excavation, then we
processed the artifacts (pottery sherds,
stone cutting and grinding tools, animal
bones, marine shells, human skeletons, and
bits of fired clay that indicated the
prehistoric peoples had lived in houses made
of cane with clay or wattle stuck over it).
We did laboratory work during the hot middle
part of the day and at night (remember,
there were no discoteques or TV). Students
learned how to identify and classify the
different categories of artifacts. Finally,
individually or together, they wrote reports
on their research. Some of these reports
were eventually published in professional
journals or became the basis for master’s
theses or doctoral dissertations.
Our geological efforts in Greater Nicoya
have focused on two main objectives: (1) to
identify the clays and rocks in the local
landscape that were utilized by the
prehistoric peoples; and (2) to identify
foreign clays and rocks that were imported
into Greater Nicoya by prehistoric peoples,
either as raw materials or finished
artifacts. Many readers may not think of
clay as a subject of geological study, and
yet, clay is formed from the erosion,
mixing, and re-deposit of rock materials
from the landscape.
Clay. Our research indicated clear
distinctions between the clays from the
Isthmus of Rivas in Nicaragua and the
Tempisque River Valley and coastal valleys
of the Nicoya Peninsula. The clays from the
Tempisque Valley become finer and finer
grained as the river flows from the Central
Volcanic Range (the heavier grained
materials settle out farther up stream) and
have a high degree of volcanic material in
them. The clays from the Isthmus of Rivas
have such a high iron content that just a
few broken pieces of pottery (sherds or
shards in the lingo of archaeologists) in
your purse or pocket will set off the
airport security alarms.
Obsidian. Various surveys helped us to
conclude that there are no geological
outcrops of obsidian (black volcanic glass
used for cutting tools) in either Nicaragua
or Costa Rica. Obsidian is formed under
volcanic conditions, it is true, but the
right kind of volcanism does not occur in
Greater Nicoya to be able to produce
obsidian. We established that through trade
the nearest sources were on the
Honduran/Nicaraguan border and in Guatemala.
Most obsidian was traded into Greater Nicoya
already formed into knives, scrapers, or
projectiles, probably to reduce the bulk and
weight that had to be transported. We
determined that while heavy grinding stones
were made from local igneous rocks, that
finer grained rocks used to make projectile
points and wood and hide-working tools from
local stone were manufactured from locally
and regionally available metamorphic rocks
such as jasper and chalcedony.
Jade. Despite never-ending rumors, there is
no jade source on the Santa Elena Peninsula
in Guanacaste, or anywhere else in Greater
Nicoya. We, and others, have conducted
detailed surveys that clearly demonstrate
the lack of local sources. The nearest
source is in the Motagua Valley of Guatemala
some 600 kilometers, or 400 miles, away. The
presence of Maya and Olmec jades in Costa
Rica has usually been interpreted as
evidence of trade, or conquest, between the
locals and strong groups farther north.
However, there are also those scholars who
think that Maya and Olmec jade were
transported into Costa Rica as raw material.
While this is an interesting idea, the fact
that all jade is found in cemetery contexts
argues against the raw material idea.
These three examples demonstrate the
advantage of collaboration between
archaeology and other disciplines, such as
geology.
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