El Gigante Rock Shelter: Archaic Mesoamerica and Transitions to Settled Life

The Site and Environment

The El Gigante rock shelter lies in the south-west of Honduras, atop the continental divide, close to the town of Marcala, Dept. of La Paz, and near the border with El Salvador (see Figure 1). Elevations there range from 1200 to over 2000 meters; the site is at approximately 1300. The typical, pronounced wet-dry seasonal cycle of rainfall (with rain usually falling between May and October) characterizes the area. It is now the prime coffee producing region of Honduras.

The environment can be characterized in general as a Pine-Oak forest of the humid sub-tropics (Holdridge, 1962). However, the current predominance of pine may be an artifact of human action. A goal of the project is to evaluate the changes in the ecology of the area around El Gigante through the Holocene. Many of the prehistoric patterns we seek to understand hinge on the changing availability and reliability of resources. What is known about the Archaic period in Mesoamerica has largely been drawn from MacNeish’s work in the Tehuacán Valley and from Flannery’s work around the Mitla Valley (Guila Naquitz). These two environmental contexts are somewhat similar to one another but not anything like that of the Estanzuela Valley where El Gigante lies. The former areas are arid, broad, flat-bottomed valleys with rocky upper slopes. El Gigante lies atop the narrow continental divide, a highly dissected volcanic plateau with narrow and steep valley topography. Though forming relatively open forest with patchily distributed maguey, the dominant plant form of the region is the pine-oak, not the cardon or saguaro cacti so prominent around Tehuacán and Mitla.

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