Thesis
Comprehensive Exam

      In assessing the three seasons (1994-1996) of fieldwork by the Talgua Archaeological Project, it is clear that the investigations have produced a number of important discoveries that have significantly changed archaeology's understanding of this poorly known area of Honduras.

      First, the discovery of the ossuary chamber in the Cueva del Rio Talgua (Cave of the Glowing Skulls) was, in itself, extremely important because it was, at the time, only the third such ossuary cave known in all of Honduras. While early ceramics were found in both of the other caves, the Talgua Cave was the only one to definitively date the burials with a series of C14 assessments. These dates place the formation of the ossuary to the period from 800 - 1400 B.C., much earlier than I had initially expected.

     During the 1995 season, another ossuary cave, Piedra Blanca, was discovered which indicated that ossuary caves might be a more common form than previously suspected. Preservation of the bone from Piedra Blanca, however, was so poor that our attempts to date the ossuary failed. In 1996, yet another ossuary cave, Cueva de las Arañas (Cave of the Spiders), was investigated which indicated that there were probably a huge number of ossuary caves in Honduras. The cave was dated to 915 B.C. indicating that its use was contemporaneous with that of the Talgua Cave. We have tentatively concluded that cave ossuary burial is a very early form that appears to disappear by 400 B.C. or even earlier.

      Interestingly, the evidence suggests that Las Arañas was looted in antiquity. Most of the once neatly stacked piles of bones were scattered about and many of the bones became cemented with calcite to the floor after this occurred. Almost all the offerings had been stolen but a fragment of a marble vase hinted at the riches that had originally been left. The looting helped to explain the placement of the burial chambers. The Talgua chamber is reached through a small opening at the top of a 30' shaft. The opening is so difficult to see that it escaped the notice of decades of casual visitors and a team of experienced cavers who mapped the site in the 1980s. The Piedra Blanca ossuary is located at the very end of a set of small, muddy labyrinthine passages. Las Arañas forced the archaeologists to negotiate a series of extremely tight squeezes to reach the burial chambers. Clearly the ancient Talguans chose the deepest and most inaccessible chambers in their caves in an attempt to protect the resting places of their loved ones.

     At the same time that the radiocarbon dating was being done, analysis of the stable isotopes from the bone protein indicated that the people were not eating large quantities of maize (corn). This was unexpected because archaeologists generally see the rise of complex civilization in Mesoamerica at this time as being tied to the spread of maize cultivation. Although the calcite cover prevented the close examination of many bones, the measurement of one set indicated that the individual was exceptionally tall (5'9") and the general impression is that they were healthier than later populations.

      The early dates from the Talgua Cave ossuary caused us to reassess the surface archaeology in the area and focus attention on a site called the Talgua Village. If this site, located three kilometers below the cave, were contemporaneous with the ossuary it would have been the largest Formative Period site in Honduras. The late Dr. George Hasemann of the Instituto Hondureño de Antropología e Historia mapped the village and began excavation in 1995. Dr. Donald Stierman of the Department of Geology at the University of Toledo initiated a program of archaeological prospection using electrical resistivity and a magnatometer. An anomaly detected by both methods was selected for "ground truth" excavations. Although the anomaly was thought to be buried several meters below the surface, excavation was stopped at a half meter when "sterile soil" was encountered.

     During the off-season, two radiocarbon dates from the village were run which indicated that the site actually dated to between A.D. 700-900. Dr. Hasemann and I wondered if the deeply buried anomalies detected by Stierman might not be the remains of the earlier occupation that had been buried by violent flooding of the Talgua River. In 1996, Stierman and Dr. Barbara Luke from the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, returned to expand their coverage of the site using a broad array of techniques and all excavations were guided by the anomalies which they detected. Since Hasemann was working on another project, the investigation of the village was directed by Dr. Christopher Begley.

     Guided by the archaeological prospection, Begley's excavations profoundly changed our view of the village site and the culture that produced it. An anomaly near the top of the tallest (slightly more than two meters high) mound at the site led to the discovery of a stone monument. This piece is noteworthy in being one of the few monuments from eastern Honduras for which there are solid contextual data. The monument, recovered from the southeast corner of the excavation, is a fine-grained, green stone, measuring 56 by 83 cm and weighing about 250 lbs. The rock is probably a hydrothermally altered volcanic rock and the primary green mineral appears to be epidote. Given the symbolic significance of green stone throughout Mesoamerica and lower Central America, one must suspect that the stone had been selected for its green color. This boulder is rounded to well rounded and was probably carried from the nearby Talgua River, where a cobble of similar composition was collected in 1996. One end was broken off, forming a flat side, and chisel marks visible along that edge show that this modification was deliberate. A crude face has been formed by the grinding of three cupuals and augmented by several pecked valutes. This monument appears to have stood vertically, as a sort of stela, adorning the tallest structure and possibly facing into the central plaza.

     Excavations associated with the discovery of this monument also revealed a layer of river cobbles. These cobbles seem to be remains of a veneer which originally surfaced at least part of the mound. The soil overlaying the cobbles is probably mound fill washed from the summit. Three additional test units found cobble pavements. This pavement may be part of a more extensive facing and appears to suggest that tons of river cobbles were hauled onto the site for this architectural finishing.

     The most interesting find was associated with the deep anomaly located by Stierman in 1995 as well as several others located in 1996. The first indication that our entire thinking about the site might be flawed came with the discovery of a probable hearth accompanied by sherds at a depth of nearly a meter and a half deep in what was suppose to be sterile soil. It became clear that this mixture of sand, silt and rocks was not naturally deposited but rather represented imported fill. The anomalous readings in the plaza represented the contrast between electrically resistive stone fill and the less resistive natural soils marking the original ground surface. The entire plaza, an area at least 1000 square meters and probably much larger, had been filled to a depth of over two meters with stones carried from river. This huge construction effort appears to have been designed to create a vast, level platform on which to build the site. Once constructed, the platform raised the site dramatically above the level of the river and provided protection from periodic floods. It certainly stood as a testimony to the Talguans' organizational and engineering abilities.

     Of all the information gathered during the 1996 excavations, this is by far the most significant, with important ramifications for our identification of labor input at a site. One of the primary correlates for the identification of complex social organization is public or monumental construction, general defined as "organized productive activities which transcend the basic household group...One is the construction of monuments which, because of their size and complexity, require both planning and a large labor force." In Mesoamerica and its periphery, this is normally thought of in terms of visible architecture. At the Talgua Village, a great input of labor was expended on an activity that left no surface trace, and which would have been missed without excavation. In fact, had the decision not been made to excavate to the depth of the anomaly, in this case over two meters, it is unlikely that the artificial nature of the plaza would have been discovered and we would have continued to badly underestimate the political and social complexity of this group. Clearly, in their ability to organize and direct large labor forces, the Talguans exhibit far greater political development than we had suspected.

     In summary, the discoveries made by the Talgua Archaeological Project have presented us with a picture of a precocious early civilization that produced works of great craftmanship as exemplified by two large but thin walled marble vases from the Talgua ossuary. Several of the burials from that ossuary also contained jewelry and sea shell indicating that, from the beginning, the Talguans were trading with the Maya area as well as the coasts. Clearly this was not the cultural backwater that it had always been pictured to be.

     What happened to these people is still a mystery. Despite an intensive survey by Dr. Boyd Dixon, no evidence of Formative settlement was found. If those early villages had been placed near the river they may have been buried or washed away by the occasional fury of the Río Talgua. This was dramatically demonstrated by the huge sections of river bank that were ripped away during Hurricane Mitch.

     The developments during the Classic Period were no less surprising. The seemingly small and inconsequential Talgua Village was revealed to be built on an extensive platform constructed from river mud and pebbles. The village itself was paved with river cobbles and adorned with crudely caved monuments. In addition, X-ray fluorescence has determined that some of the obsidian (volcanic glass) used for tools was imported from a source in Guatemala controlled by the Maya. Once again, the picture that emerges is of a far more sophisticated and connected people that previously realized.