Guanacaste Archaeological Project, Costa Rica - Institute for Field Research


Location: Costa Rica

Season: 
July 7, 2019 to August 10, 2019

Application Deadline: 
Friday, April 5, 2019

Deadline Type: 
Contact for details

Website: 
https://ifrglobal.org/program/costa-rica-guanacaste/

Flyer: PDF icon syllabus-costa-rica-guanacaste-2019.pdf

Program Type

Field school

RPA certified

no

Affiliation:

Smithsonian Institution, Red Deer College, Universidad de Costa Rica, Connecticut College, Institute for Field Research

Project Director:

Dr. Carrie Dennett, Dr. Larry Steinbrenner, Dr. Silvia Salgado González

Project Description

The Guanacaste Archaeological Project (GAP) focuses on the Palo Verde National Park on Costa Rica’s Pacific Coast, a protected Ramsar Wetland, wildlife refuge, and one of the last remaining tropical dry rainforests in the Neotropics. Situated near the mouth of the Tempisque River on the Gulf of Nicoya, the park features deep archaeological sequences dating from at least 800 BC to as late as the time of Spanish contact, with some of the earliest evidence for human activity in this culturally diverse region. This field school will begin with one week of lecture and study focusing on pre-Columbian culture at the University of Costa Rica in the capital city of San Jose in the Central Highlands (incorporating field trips to the city’s world-class museums), followed by four weeks of field survey, mapping, excavation, and laboratory training at Palo Verde. Here students will have the unique opportunity to intensively explore pre-Columbian cultural continuity and change across various archaeological contexts, potentially including open-air sites, shell mounds, caves, and developed community areas clustered within the park. Participants will assist the project in identifying and reconstructing the organization and function of individual sites, assessing community development (material culture, mortuary practices, seasonal mobility, foodways, and estuary resource exploitation strategies), and examining the relationship between sites across time in an unparalleled ecological setting.

Period(s) of Occupation: Pre-Colombian Archaeology

Project size: 
1-24 participants

Minimum Length of Stay for Volunteers: Participants must stay entire duration of the field school.

Minimum age: 
18

Experience required: 
No prior experience required.

Room and Board Arrangements

During the first week of the project in San Jose, students and non-Costa Rican staff will be housed in modest hotels (shared rooms) in San Jose. During the subsequent four weeks of the project, students and non-Costa Rican staff will stay in shared accommodations in rental housing in Bagaces, Guanacaste, the closest full-service city to the Palo Verde National Park. Housing will be maintained (cleaned and secured) by vetted, hired staff from the local community. Conditions will be basic but modern; air conditioning will likely not be available (fans will be provided).

All meals will be communal events. Meals during the first week in San Jose will comprise simple hotel restaurant and cafeteria fare. During the work week in the field, project personnel will be provided with cooked meals for both breakfast and dinner prepared by hired staff. Packed lunches (stored in coolers) will be prepared and transported daily into the field. Students will be required to arrange for their own meals on free weekends. It is unlikely that we will be able to handle very specific dietary needs; loosely vegetarian diets can probably be accommodated (though options may be limited), but vegan and/or gluten-free diets will be difficult to accommodate. For these reasons, students are required to indicate any potential dietary restrictions and/or food allergies during their application interviews with PIs.

Cost: 
Room and Board is included in the tuition. Students will have to purchase their own meals on the weekends.

Academic Credit

Name of institution offering credit: 
Connecticut College
Number of credits offered 8 Semester Credits
Tuition: 
$4,550

Location

Contact Information
Institute for Field Research
2999 Overland Ave. Suite 103
Los Angeles
California
United States
90064
info@ifrglobal.org
Telephone: 
4242091173
Recommended Bibliography: 

Creamer, Winifred 1989 Mesoamerica as a Concept: An Archaeological View from Central America. Latin American Research Review 22: 35-62.

1992 Regional Exchange along the Pacific Coast of Costa Rica during the Late Polychrome Period, A.D. 1200 1550. Journal of Field Archaeology 19(1):1-16.

Evans, Susan Toby 2013 Ancient Mexico and Central America: Archaeology and Culture History. 3rd edition. Thames and Hudson, London. (selected excerpts only).

Fladmark, Knut 1978 A Guide to Basic Archaeological Field Procedures. Department of Archaeology, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, BC.

Knappett, Carl 2005 Pottery. In The Handbook of Archaeological Methods, edited by Herbert D. G. Maschner and Christopher Chippindale, pp. 673-714. Alta Mira Press, Lanham, MD.

Lange, Frederick W. 1984 The Greater Nicoya Archaeological Subarea. In The Archaeology of Lower Central America, edited by Frederick W. Lange and Doris Z. Stone, pp.165-194. University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque.

1996a The Bay of Salinas: Coastal Crossroads of Greater Nicoya. In Paths to Central American Prehistory (Frederick W. Lange, ed.): 119-142. University Press of Colorado, Niwot.

1996b Gaps in Our Databases and Blanks in Our Syntheses: The Potential for Central American Archaeology in the Twenty-First Century. In Paths to Central American Prehistory (Frederick W. Lange, ed.): 305-326. University Press of Colorado, Niwot.

McCafferty, Geoffrey G., and Larry Steinbrenner 2005 Chronological Implications for the Santa Isabel Project, Nicaragua. Ancient Mesoamerica 16(1):131-146.

Renfrew, Colin and Paul Bahn 2015 Chapters 2-4. In Archaeology Essentials, 3rd ed., pp. 38-141. Thames and Hudson, London.

Snarskis, Michael J. 1981 The Archaeology of Costa Rica. In Between Continents/Between Seas: Precolumbian Art of Costa Rica, edited by Elizabeth P. Benson, pp. 15-84. Harry N. Abrams, Inc. Publishers, New York.

Willey, Gordon R. 1966 Excerpt from An Introduction to American Archaeology: North and Middle America, Volume 1.

Prentice-Hall, Inc., Englewood Cliffs, NJ.

Note: the following required readings will be published in the forthcoming volume, The Archaeology of Greater Nicoya: Two Decades of Research in Nicaragua and Costa Rica (Larry Steinbrenner, Alex Geurds, Geoffrey McCafferty and Silvia Salgado, eds.) which has been accepted and is in review by the University of Colorado Press.

 Steinbrenner, Larry, and Geoffrey G. McCafferty. A Critical Re-evaluation of Pacific Nicaragua’s Late Period Chronology.

 Aguilar Vega, Ana Cristina. Social Practices at La Cascabel, A Village on Culebra Bay (AD 800-1550).

 Herrera Villalobos, Anayensy, and Felipe Solís Del Vecchio. Human Bone Artifacts: Ancestor Cults and Human Sacrifice in a Community of Mesoamerican Origin in Culebra Bay, Costa Rica.

RECOMMENDED READINGS

Abel-Vidor, Suzanne 1980 The Historical Sources for the Greater Nicoya Archaeological Subarea. Vínculos: Revista de Antropología del Museo Nacional de Costa Rica 6:155-76.

Baudez, Claude F., and Michael D. Coe 1962 Archaeological Sequences in Northwestern Costa Rica. Acta, 34th International Congress of Americanists (Vienna 1960), pp. 366-73.

Benson, Elizabeth P. (editor) 1981 Between Continents/Between Seas: Precolumbian Art of Costa Rica. Harry N. Abrams, Inc. Publishers, New York, NY.

Drennan, Robert D. 1996 Betwixt and Between in the Intermediate Area. Journal of Archaeological Research 4 (2): 95-132.

Glassow, Michael 2005 Excavation. In The Handbook of Archaeological Methods, edited by Herbert D. G. Maschner and Christopher Chippindale, pp. 133-175. Alta Mira Press, Lanham, MD.

Healy, Paul F. 1980 Archaeology of the Rivas Region, Nicaragua. Wilfred Laurier University Press, Waterloo, ON.

Hoopes, John 1994 The Tronadora Complex: Early Formative Ceramics in Northwestern Costa Rica. Latin American Antiquity 5(1):3-30.

2005 The Emergence of Social Complexity in the Chibchan World of Southern Central America and Northern Colombia, AD 300-600. Journal of Archaeological Research 13(1):1-47.

Lange, Frederick W., and Doris Z. Stone (editors) 1984 The Archaeology of Lower Central America. University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque, NM. (Chapters 4, 7, and 12 only).

Lange, Frederick W., and Lynette Norr, eds. 1986 Prehistoric Settlement Patterns in Costa Rica. Journal of the Steward Anthropological Society 14(1982-83) Urbana, IL.

Sheets, Payson D. 1992 The Pervasive Pejorative in Intermediate Area Studies. In Wealth and Hierarchy in the

Intermediate Area, edited by Frederick W. Lange, pp. 15-41. Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, Washington D.C.

Stone, Doris Z. 1950 Notes on Present Day Pottery Making and Its Economy in the Ancient Chorotegan Area. Middle American Research Records 1(16):269-280.

Willey, Gordon R. 1996 Lower Central American Archaeology: Some Comments as of 1991. In Paths to Central American

Prehistory (Frederick W. Lange, ed.): 297-304. University Press of Colorado, Niwot