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

Discussion and Conclusion

We now know that Archaic period occupation is a large part of the available sequence at the El Gigante site. We also know that, for the most part, it is intact and that looting has mainly damaged the upper (Formative) remains.

Up until this point, foraging peoples’ behavior in the Highlands of Mesoamerica has been assumed to parallel that of Highland México and the Great Basin of North America. Filling in gaps concerning the specifics and subtle differences in material culture and development between El Gigante and other early Highland sites in Mesoamerica paints a more vibrant and dynamic picture of this a large region. This is not a trivial accomplishment, as there are so few sites that speak to this remote past.

The results from the combined field seasons are overwhelmingly positive. Reported preliminary finds and claims regarding "the oldest site in Central America" (Hasemann, 1996) have not been disproved. The single 39,000 B.P. date has been refuted. We confirmed the presence of stratified, unquestionably cultural material below the dated 9,000 B.C. strata. A more complete radiocarbon series clarified the chronology of the site. Though initial exuberance over potentially early maize has faded, the reality of the late arrival of corn and the full-blown tripartite agro-economy to this area presents new questions.

We have yet to determine if changes in subsistence through the Archaic and Formative correlate with changes in environment. Correlating changes in ecology with changes in subsistence seems a straightforward task. However, a good independent paleoenvironmental record does not exist for the area. We plan to make the most of what we can piece together from Rue’s (1989) pollen core (which unfortunately only extends back to about 5000 B.C.) and other available climatological data.

We conclude that morphological changes in corn leading to its domestication were not effected in Highland Honduras. However, this peripheral region of Mesoamerica may have played a part in succeeding regional differentiation of corn varieties. We hope to explore in the future the rate of change and direction of selection that is evident in the large assemblage of cobs that we have. Even if no direct selective forces can be distinguished in the assemblage, we will be able to pinpoint when certain varieties came into common usage there, and in this manner establish cultural connections to other parts of Mesoamerica.

The landscape surrounding El Gigante is a cultivated one today, and we believe it was one in the past. Though perhaps grain and legume crops were not adopted early on, it seems clear that certain useful trees (ciruela, avocado, and zapote at least) and perhaps succulent plants (maguey) were, though most were never domesticated. Naturally occurring fauna plus ciruela, maguey, tree fruits and avocado sustained populations for millennia. Subsistence in the Estanzuela Valley, previous to the adoption of agriculture can be called an "era of incipient cultivation" (Smith, 1997) though as chance may have it the cultivated plants were not destined to be domesticated and thus did not propel the populations to further levels of sociocultural integration until the arrival from outside of those agricultural forces.

The adoption of the tripartite subsistence formula (corn, beans, squash) in the peripheries was comparatively late in this region. We hypothesize that population levels were low enough that its efficient integration into existing hunting-collecting economies was not feasible until pressure (in terms of expanding peoples) was exerted from exterior sources. One such source could have been the Comayagua Valley to the north, where complex formative chiefdoms existed and grew, such as those that built the site of Yarumela.

Lastly, Paleoindian occupation of El Gigante is evident on multiple grounds. These first Hondurans were not clovis-toting mammoth hunters. Instead, based on our preliminary studies, it is more likely that they hunted available game (deer, mostly) and gathered extensively from the local environment, a more generalized than specialized mode of life. It is this mode of adaptation that I believe enabled the peopling of the New World in the first place.

The Proyecto El Gigante is still in its infancy as far as the research that has to be done. Many more specialist collaborators are necessary to pursue all the available lines of evidence that was left behind.

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