Early Social Complexity in Southern Costa Rica
Amanda Suárez Calderón, PhD, Dumbarton Oaks, Pre-Columbian Studies
The archaeological region of Southern Costa Rica is well known for the beautiful gold figurines and the impressive stone sculptures that indigenous populations manufactured there during Pre-Columbian times. Hundreds of these objects are currently exhibited in museums across the world; however, most of them lack contextual information due to the history of how they were acquired and traded during modern times. This talk will be an overview of the archaeological research conducted in Southern Costa Rica over the last century, with special emphasis in the advances of the last decade. Specifically, we will explore the social organization of the indigenous societies who lived in this region between 300 and 1500 AD. Particular attention will be given to the fundamental transformation in social complexity that these societies experienced around 800 AD when the first villages appeared in the region. We will learn about the role of ceremonial activities and monumentalism in these early villages, as well as the intricate relationship between social complexity and hierarchy through times.
Dr. Amanda Suárez Calderón obtained her PhD from the University of Pittsburgh in 2023. She holds a bachelor's degree in Anthropology from the University of Costa Rica. Her research interests include the emergence of social complexity and hierarchies in Pre-Columbian Central America, warfare, ethnohistory, GIS and statistics. In addition to directing her dissertation fieldwork, partially funded by a Lewis and Clark grant from the American Philosophical Society, Amanda has participated in several fieldwork projects in Costa Rica, Panama, Colombia, and Peru. During her doctoral program at Pitt, Amanda received a Heinz fellowship for Latin American Archaeology, and she was a teaching fellow at the Department of Anthropology. Amanda is currently a Research Fellow in Pre-Columbian Studies at Dumbarton Oaks in Washington DC.
The April 2024 monthly lecture will be hosted in person as well as virtually. The meeting will be held in the lecture theatre of the Charles Sumner School Museum and Archives, located at M and 17th Streets, NW, Washington, D.C. Photo ID is required to enter the building. Doors to the in-person meeting will open around 6:30 PM and light refreshments will be available before the lecture. For those of you who cannot make it to the Sumner School in person, the lecture will be live streamed via Zoom but you must pre-register to attend virtually. Click Here to register. All monnthly lecture meetings of the Pre-Columbian Society are free and open to the public.