The Archaeology of Copán, Honduras

Copán, a major Classic Maya center in western Honduras, has been the focus of archaeological investigation for over a century. An intense period of research since 1975, involving projects and scholars from many institutions, has resulted in a comprehensive understanding of the origin, maturation, and decline of this major Maya polity.     

Kings and commoners at Copan: Isotopic evidence for origins and movement in the Classic Maya period

Eight human interments were excavated in the 1990s beneath the Acropolis at the Classic Maya site of Copan in Honduras, which was the capital of a Maya kingdom from ca. AD 400 to 800. These human remains come from both royal tombs and less elaborate burials dating to the early part of this period and lie deep in the accumulated architectural layers of the Acropolis. We present a brief summary of the context, contents, and external links represented by these interments. Several lines of evidence point to connections between early Copan and Teotihuacan in the Central Highlands of Mexico, and Tikal in the central Maya lowlands of the Petén in Guatemala.     

Spatial imaginaries and collective identity in women’s human rights struggles in Honduras

In recent years, geographic analysis on social movements has emphasised the influence of actors’ concepts, lived experiences and perceptions of space on the emergence of collective action. Cultural approaches to social movements in Latin America as well as feminist scholarship have revealed that women’s collective action is shaped by their perceptions of institutional and societal challenges, which are rooted in authoritarian and patriarchal culture prevalent in their society. This article combines geographic and cultural approaches to social movements as well as transnational feminist theories to explore women’s human rights mobilisation in Honduras after the coup d’état in 2009. It investigates how a group of urban and rural activists that included feminists, rural women, students and community leaders, adopted human rights discourses and practices to respond to the coup. The article draws on interviews and focus group discussions to suggest firstly, that protests in response to the coup shaped the interviewees’ spatial imaginaries and particularly considers how urban feminists’ spatial imaginaries were merged with those of rural women under the collective framework of human rights. Secondly, the study demonstrates that a collective identity as women human rights defenders was crucial for the emergence of collective action and also prompted the establishment of a national network. This case study contributes to research on women’s collective action to negotiate women’s rights, human rights and social justice in changing political processes.     

The (Mis)Use of Disaster as Opportunity: Coerced Relocation from Celaque National Park,Honduras

Abstract: “Disaster capitalism” refers to political economic processes that take advantage of mass trauma to impose neoliberal capitalist economic policies, facilitating the redistribution of wealth and exacerbating socio‐economic divisions. Here the basic tenets of disaster capitalism are applied in another context: how natural disasters can be used to impose exclusionary protected area conservation principles with similar socio‐economic consequences and ecological ramifications. The post‐Hurricane Mitch relocation of resident populations from Celaque National Park, Honduras serves as a case study whereby a natural disaster, combined with the effects of neoliberal structural adjustment policies, created the opportunity to implement a universal model of exclusionary nature protection. The resultant displacement and increased semi‐proletarianization of the affected population effectively served the capitalist interests of international conservation and the agro‐export coffee industry and, contradictorily, worked against the proclaimed goals of nature preservation through exclusionary national park policies.     

Honduran boys confronting adversity: urban multi-locality and kin mobilization

This article describes ethnographic research involving street children and child labor in urban Honduras. It is set in a context of deteriorating social, political, and economic conditions that has created an increase in child labor. However, the research findings have delineated that a growing number of children are choosing to work and live on the street to escape extreme poverty and hunger in their familial households. Despite the multi-local spaces they inhabit, they have been able to create unique non-kin relations while often maintaining family based linkages. This study, undertaken in two centers for boys in Tegucigalpa and Comayagua, Honduras analyzes the contextual dynamics and decision-making processes of Honduran youth regarding work and living arrangements in urban spaces.     

Revisiting nineteenth-century U.S. interventionism in Central America: capitalism,intrigue, and the obliteration of Greytown

In October 2016 the Congressional Research Service published its latest version of “Instances of Use of United States Armed Forces Abroad.” One of the “instances” occurred in 1854, and the entry reads in its entirety: “Naval forces bombarded and burned San Juan del Norte (Greytown) to avenge an insult to the American Minister to Nicaragua.”¹1. Torreon, Instances of Use of United States Armed Forces Abroad, 1798–2016, 4.View all notes The following article posits that Greytown was not destroyed to avenge an insult to an American diplomat. Rather, two groups of prominent American businessmen used this and related events and their antecedents as pretexts to enlist the federal government in destroying Greytown. One group, representing a U.S.-owned isthmian steamboat company, sought to seize the port of Greytown as a private fiefdom; the other wanted it as the prospective capital of a new colony based on a huge, dubious land grant they owned.     

Let no space go to waste: comparing the uses of space between two Late Classic centers in the El Paraíso valley,Copan, Honduras

Phosphorus analysis of earthen and plaster floors has been used in Mesoamerica to locate and identify activities at ancient sites. This study uses phosphorus analysis to discern if the inhabitants of two Late Classic coeval and proximal sites located in the El Paraíso Valley of Honduras were different culturally from each other. The buried earthen and plaster surfaces of both sites were systematically sampled and analyzed for phosphorus remains. The patterns of elevated phosphorus from these open spaces were subsequently compared to determine if differences in the habitual use and treatment of open spaces could be discerned. These differences are evaluated as a function of behavioral norms, functional responses, and cultural dispositions in order to evaluate the extent to which these two populations were indeed different from each other.     

The Emergence of Social Complexity in the Chibchan World of Southern Central America and Northern Colombia,AD 300–600

The societies of southern Central America and northern South America, a region historically occupied by Chibchan-speaking peoples, have long been acknowledged as valuable sources of information on chiefdoms and other forms of prestate social organization. Most studies, however, have focused on chiefdoms that are known ethnographically or ethnohistorically with an emphasis on the sixteenth century and the immediate precontact period. This paper reviews archaeological evidence from an earlier period in an attempt to elucidate general patterns associated with the earliest appearance of social inequality. The centuries between AD 300 and 600 are characterized by the first widespread use of prestige goods manufactured from gold and jade, special cemeteries for the interment of elites, and a rich iconography. Detailed consideration of recent research relevant to the events of this period highlights some of the problems inherent in the archaeological identification of hierarchy, chiefdoms, leadership, and other features of prestate complex societies.     

The Matter of Carbon: Understanding the Materiality of tCO2e in Carbon Offsets

Abstract: This paper examines the socio‐natural relations inherent in the commodification of carbon reductions as they are generated in energy‐based carbon offset project activities, and abstracted to wider market systems. The ability to commodify carbon reductions takes place through a socionatural–technical complex that is defined by the material nature of technology's interaction with the atmosphere, local social processes and the evolving governing systems of carbon markets. Carbon is not unproblematically commodified: some projects and technologies allow a more cooperative commodification than others. The examples of a hydroelectricity plant and an improved cookstove project in Honduras are used as empirical case studies to illustrate the difficulties and opportunities associated with the relational aspects of carbon commodification. Drawing upon select literatures from post‐structural thought to complement the principal lens of a more structural, materiality of nature analysis, the paper also outlines the reasons why carbon offset reform is needed if offsets are to more progressively engage debates about climate mitigation and North–South development.