By 1997 the Southeastern Coast Project study region extended over approximately 1300 km2 of the easternmost coastal and piedmont land of the Pacific Guatemala, between the Maria Linda and the Paz Rivers (Fig. 1).

The region's settlement history began with small nucleated communities within the coastal estuaries, in an environment favorable for the establishment of sedentary communities of hunting and gathering groups. The Early Preclassic pottery from Chiquiuitán shows a distinct localized style that nevertheless denotes the participation of the early settlers in the Ocos and Cuadros/Jocotal ceramic spheres with other early settlements along the Pacific rim from Chiapas to El Salvador dating to about 1300 B.C. to 850 B.C. (Estrada Belli et al. 1996)

During the Middle Preclassic phase, the focus of settlement progressively shifts to the interior plain and piedmont. Our limited excavated sample shows a number of small independent farming communities without clear signs of settlement hierarchies. Villages across the region continue to participate in a coast-wide interaction network that includes forms and decorative motifs that are widespread across Mesoamerica such as the double-line break and flamed-eyebrow motifs. While architectural growth is not as great on the Southeastern Coast between 850-400 B.C. as elsewhere in southern Mesoamerica, the foundations were laid in that period for the next phase of peak development.

During the Late Preclassic period, the region's population grows considerably, ranging now in the several thousands, and larger centers with impressive civic/ceremonial plazas are built; the regions population is organized in a three-tiered settlement hierarchy marking the development of complex administrative networks between 400 B.C. and A.D. 200. The Southeastern Coast ceramics, civic/ceremonial architecture and stone sculpture of the Late Preclassic show great similarities with those of neighboring regions of the Pacific Coast, Highland Guatemala and El Salvador (including the Potbelly sculptural style, Demarest 1986, Parsons 1986, Amaroli 1997). At this time, the Southeastern Coast's settlement system is integrated in a interregional exchange network know as the Providencia/Miraflores sphere or Southern Maya Sphere (Demarest and Sharer 1986, Bishop et al. 1989). Recent NAA tests at MURR indicate that pottery of the Fine Red and Purple-on-Fine Red types occurring throughout the Providencia/Miraflores sphere were produced at Southeastern Coastal sites and traded throughout the coast and highlands of Guatemala and El Salvador (Kosakowsky et al. 1998), further reinforcing the notion that intensive direct elite interactions in the form of gifts exchange and visits occurred throughout this culturally and ethnically homogenous area of Southern Mesoamerica.

The subsequent Middle/Late Classic periods, A.D. 450-900, represent the highest peak of population density in the Southeastern Coast regional sequence with up to 79 individual settlements and an estimated population of perhaps 100,000. The entire region appears to be sub-divided into four three-tiered polities centered at the Durazno, Maneadero, La Nueva and La Maquina settlements (Fig. 2).

The area of highest population density appears to be that of the Esclavos river were the La Maquina center is located.

See large La Maquina acropolis mapped in 1995. Sap.htm

The second largest center in the study region, La Nueva, features a central acropolis ( photo) that is the second largest structure in the region and its settlement area appears to extend for about 4 km² along a relict channel of the Paz river (map aerial photo). Its population may have ranged from 3000 and 4000 people. Several stone monuments were also found at La Nueva that may date to the Late Preclassic and Classic periods (see below) and which together with the architectural and ceramic evidence form the basis for evaluating the existence of a culturally and politically integrated settlement system and long-distance interactions with neighboring polities.

The general plaza layout with a central acropolis platform found at La Maquina, La Nueva and other southeastern coast centers is also found at the centers of Los Chatos/Montana in the Escuintla region (Fig. 1; Bove 1995, Genovez 1997), about 80 km to the west of La Maquina, and Los Cerritos-Norte about 60 km north-east of La Maquina (Fig. 1; Chinchilla 1996). There is also a general resemblance with acropolis structures of the Cotzumalguapa centers of Bilbao, and El Baul (Parsons 1969, Chinchilla 1996). At Cara Sucia, 15 km to the east of La Nueva (1, 2), is an acropolis platform in all essentials similar to the La Maquina and La Nueva ones (Amaroli 1984).

The ceramic assemblage of La Maquina and all other Southeastern Coast centers shows a high degree of similarity with that of Middle/Late Classic coastal centers of the Escuintla region to the west, such as Montana in the coastal plain (Medrano 1995), and Bilbao, El Baul and other sites of the Cotzumalguapa nuclear zone (Chinchilla 1996). This is evident in the high frequency of Tiquisate orange ceramic groups, hematite-red painted Perdido vessels with human effigy molded slab feet , and other utilitarian ceramic types occurring in both regions (Kosakowsky and Estrada Belli 1997).

To the east, beyond the Paz river, ceramic similarities are also strong with the sites of Cara Sucia (Amaroli 1984), Tazumal (Sharer 1978) and with those in the west-central Salvadoran basins (Sheets 1983, Fowler and Earnest 1985). Copador and Gualpopa polychrome types that are common throughout western El Salvador and Honduras (Beaudy 1984) are also present in limited numbers at La Maquina and La Nueva (Kosakowsky and Estrada Belli 1997). The occurrence of these types on the Southeastern Coast and the finding by a new NAA study by Dr. Hector Neff of large numbers of Ivory Paste Copador-style polychromes manufactured with Salvadoran clays (Neff et al. 1998) directly links La Maquina and/or La Nueva to western El Salvador and the Copán Valley

Also found at La Maquina were small quantities of imported Petén-style polychrome pottery (Kosakowsky and Estrada Belli 1997). The nearest possible place of origin for these types is the site of Asunción Mita, although they are also likely to have been produced in the Maya Lowlands. Its masonry architecture and artifacts suggest that this was an outpost of Lowland Maya groups in the Southern Highlands of Guatemala, as J.E.S. Thompson (1970) pointed out. The elites residing at Asunción Mita, probably controlled the exploitation of the Ixtepeque obsidian source and its distribution to the Maya Lowlands, and therefore may have been directly linked by frequent visits to and from Copán and centers of the Maya Lowlands.
 

The sculptural style of Middle/Late Classic monuments found at La Maquina, Maneadero and La Nueva, appears to be most closely linked to the sculptural style of the Cotzumalguapa Nuclear Zone (Parsons 1969, Chinchilla 1996). The Southeastern Coast corpus includes 23 monuments from La Nueva, one sculpture from Maneadero, and three sculptures said to be from La Maquina.
 

The most spectacular sculpture from La Nueva, Monument 11, portrays a ruler wearing insignia typical of Cotzumalguapa iconography, although with some local variation in the details (Fig. 4). Among other sculptures from la Nueva that have distinctive Cotzumalguapa-style motifs are three columnar coiled serpents (Mon. 7, 20, 21), one of which (Mon. 7) is in Guatemala City's Museo Nacional de Arqueología y Etnología (Fig. 5a,b,d), a finely carved slab with a serpent head (Mon. 9, Fig. 5c) ,
 

a disk with an elaborate low-relief carving of a Death Head (Mon. 6), and two low-relief serpent heads (Mon. 12, Fig. 6), one of which (Mon. 8) is in the Museo Nacional de Arqueología y Etnología.
 

An additional sculpture also probably from La Nueva was located in the Pasaco Municipal office, a stone disk with four bifid tongues radiating from concentric rings (Mon. 10, Fig. 7).
 

A sculpture stylistically similar to the typical Cotzumalguapa low-relief monuments was found at the piedmont site of La Gabia, about 20 km NW of Durazno, representing a long-haired figure in profile (Mon. 1, Fig. 8d). Two tenoned heads housed in the Museo Nacional are probably from the La Gabia site (Fig. 8a,b; Thompson 1948, Fig. 15h,i). The Maneadero sculpture is a human tenoned head half carved naturally and half as a skull (Mon. 1, Fig. 8c).
 

Among the three sculptures said to be from La Maquina are a Tlaloc head and two large heads with wrinkled faces and waterlily headband (Parsons 1986: Figs. 197, 198, 199) similar in style to the Pahuatun heads from Copán (Fash 1991: Fig. 104, 105) and to one from El Baul (Monument 3, Thompson 1948: Fig. 10d).
 

The occurrence of such a large number of sculptures at La Nueva, rather than at La Maquina, opens the possibility that La Nueva had closer ties with the Cotzumlguapa centers, while La Maquina possibly had ties with Asunción Mita and more distant centers such as Copan. If the sculptural florescence at La Maquina and La Nueva should prove to be coeval, as the preliminary dating based on ceramic cross-referencing seem to indicate, it is possible to hypothesize that La Nueva's strategic ties with the powerful centers of the Cotzumalguapa region served to balance the threat from the powerful La Maquina neighbor. Alternatively, since the exact chronological placement of the La Nueva sculpture is still vague, it is possible that the La Nueva sculptural florescence occurred at a later time, shortly before the end of the Classic period, when La Nueva experienced a short-lived primacy on the fading La Maquina center and on the rest of the Southeastern Coast's regional system. However, such a short-lived political turnover may remain difficult to detect from our long-term ceramic-based chronological sequence, until more extensive excavation is done at both La Nueva and the La Maquina ceremonial centers.

In sum, the similarities in Middle and Late Classic period (A.D. 400-900) ceramic, architectural and sculptural styles of the Southeastern Coast centers indicate that their prominent interaction partners were in the Escuintla and Cotzumalguapa areas. In fact, the Southeastern Coast was part of a wide Pacific coastal interaction sphere identifiable by the distribution of Tiquisate and Perdido ceramics, acropolis-type civic/ceremonial architecture and Cotzumalguapa-style sculpture. This interaction sphere might have had its cultural and political epicenter in the Cotzumalguapa Nuclear Zone, and stretched from the Nahualate river to western Pacific El Salvador (Cara Sucia, Amaroli 1984), reaching into the highland valley of Antigua (Chinchilla 1996). Finally, while it is difficult to determine what specific ethnic groups correlate with the Classic period coastal styles, it is noticeable that the Classic period interaction networks continued a pattern of interactions that had been in existence since the Preclassic period (e.g. Providencia/Miraflores sphere, Demarest and Sharer 1986).
 

Because of the position of La Maquina and La Nueva near the eastern margin of this regional sphere these centers' elites were in an ideal position to interact with centers of a neighboring interaction sphere operating in the Middle/Late Classic period. This sphere, which may largely include a Lowland Maya population (Thompson 1970), is characterized by the distribution of cream paste polychrome pottery (Copador-style pottery, Beaudry 1984) that is common in the Middle Motagua Valley, Highland Southeastern Guatemala, Highland Western El Salvador, and the Copán Valley. On the Southeastern Coast, the distribution of "Salvadoran" cream paste polychrome ceramics (Neff et al. 1998) and the scarce Petén-style polychromes suggest direct contacts with Maya centers to the east and north.
 

In sum, it is evident that the above described interaction networks somehow converged on the Southeastern Coast at the La Maquina and La Nueva centers, as the findings of imported polychromes indicate. These centers may have played an important role in linking the powerful Copán Maya elite and their Highland Guatemala and Salvadoran allies with the ethnically eclectic elites of Pacific Coast of Guatemala. Such interactions may have bound together the fortunes of distant allies in ways that we still are to understand fully. In fact, at the end of the Late Classic period, as the fortunes of the Copán elite began to fade, similar processes of social disruption and settlement system disintegration were in progress on the Southeastern Coast, which was ultimately depopulated in following Early Postclassic period, much like the rest of the Lowlands of Southern Mesoamerica.

Acknowledgements

The 1997 field season (as well as in 1995 and 1996) was made possible by a National Geographic Society grant (5934-97) and permits granted by the Instituto de Antropología e Historia, Guatemala.. The field work couldn't have been accomplished without the invaluable participation of Mr. Marc Wolf. Many thanks also to Mr. Keith Danamiller for his great photos and to Mr. Byron Lemus of IDAEH for assisting us. Special thanks to the people of La Nueva for welcoming us on their land and supporting our work, and to the personnel of Hotel Cuernos, Ciudad Pedro de Alvarado for their friendly hostitality.

REFERENCES

Amaroli, Paul

1984 Cara Sucia: Nueva luz sobre el pasado de la costa occidental de El Salvador. Universitas 1:15-19.

1997 A newly discovered Potbelly sculpture from El Salvador and a reinterpretation of the genre. Mexicon 19(3): 51-53.

Beaudry, Marilyn P.

1984 Ceramic Production and Distribution in the Souteastern Maya Periphery. Late Classic Painted Serving Vessels. British Archaeological Reports International Series No. 203. Oxford: Tempus Reparatum.

Bishop, Ronald, Arthur A. Demarest and Robert J. Sharer

1989 Chemical Analysis and the Interpretation of Late Preclassic Intersite Ceramic Patterns in the Southeast Highlands of Mesoamerica. In New Frontier in the Archaeology of the Pacific Coast of Southern Mesoamerica., F.J. Bove and L. Heller (eds.), pp. 135-146. Arizona State University Anthropological Research Papers no. 39. Tempe: Arizona State University

Bove, Frederick

1995 El Colapso del Período Clásico en la Costa Sur de Guatemala. In VII Simposio de Investigaciones Arqueológicas en Guatemala, 1994. J.P. Laporte and H. Escobedo (ed.) pp.763-755. Museo Nacional de Arqueología y Etnología, Guatemala.

Chinchilla Mazariegos, Oswaldo F.

1996 Settlement Patterns and Monumental Art at a Major Pre-Columbian Polity: Cotzumalguapa, Guatemala. Ph.D. Dissertation. Vanderbilt University.

Demarest, Arthur A.

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Demarest, Arthur A. and Robert J. Sharer

1986 Late Preclassic Ceramic Spheres, Culture Areas, and Cultural Evolution in the South-eastern Highlands of Mesoarmerica. In The Southeast Maya Periphery. P.A. Urban and E. Schortman (eds.) pp. 195-223. Austin: University of Texas Press.

Estrada Belli Francisco, Laura J. Kosakowsky, Marc Wolf, and Damian Blank

1996 Patrones de asentamiento y uso de la tierra desde el Preclásico al Postclásico en la costa del Pacifico de Guatemala: La arqueología de Santa Rosa, 1995. Mexicon 18(6): 110-115.

Fash William L.

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Fowler, William R. Jr., and H.oward H. Earnest Jr.

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Genovez, Jose V.

1997 Analisis de rasgos funerarios para la interpretación de Sociedades Clásicas en la Costa Pacifica Central de Guatemala. Thesis on file. Universidad de San Carlos de Guatemala, Escuela de Historia.

Kosakowsky, Laura .J., and Francisco Estrada Belli

1997 La Cerámica de Santa Rosa Una Vista desde la Costa Sur. In X Simposio de Investigaciones Arqueológicas de Guatemala, J.P. Laporte and H.L. Hescobedo (eds.), pp. 651-660. Museo Nacional de Arqueología y Etnología, Guatemala.

Kosakowsky, Laura J., Francisco Estrada Belli and Hector Neff.

1998 (in press) Late Preclassic Ceramic Interaction Spheres: The Pacific Coast as Core, Not Periphery. In Current Guatemalan Archaeology: New perspectives on the Maya. F. Estrada Belli (ed.). Boulder: Westview Press.

Medrano, Sonia

1995 El Complejo Cerámico del Clásico Medio de Montana. In VII Simposio de Investigaciones Arqueológicas en Guatemala, 1994. J.P. Laporte and H. Escobedo (ed.) pp.37-60. Museo Nacional de Arqueología y Etnología, Guatemala.

Neff, Hector, James W. Cogswell, Laura J. Kosakowsky, and Francisco Estrada Belli

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Sharer, Robert J.

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Sheets, Payson D.

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Thompson, J.E.S.

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This page created by Franciso Estrada Belli on 1/1/99. Last modified on 5/21/99. Email at fncesbl@bu.edu

The above maps and graphics of the SE Coast of Guatemala are derived from a GRASS GIS database. For info also email Francisco Estrada Belli: fncesbl@bu.edu.