Remote Sensing, Ancient Footpaths, and Regional Integration in the Arenal Area, Costa Rica

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With National Science Foundation support Dr. Payson Sheets and his colleagues will conduct two field seasons of archaeological research in the Arenal area of northwestern Costa Rica. His project extensively utilizes remote sensing imagery, image processing, and data analysis is assisted by Dr. Tom Sever and his colleagues at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville. Sheets and Sever have discovered that they can detect something that was previously not believed to be possible: small footpaths created by people walking from their ancient villages to a cemetery on the continental divide, and from the cemetery to a spring and to sources of stone used for tomb construction. Satellite technology has recently progressed to a level that it should provide imagery that can detect the continuation of these footpaths to a village or villages that was using the cemetery. Excavations of linear anomalies will provide data to verify or negate anomalies as footpaths. Previous research by Dr. Sheets has found evidence of extensive post-interment ritual and feasting in the cemetery, that date to about 1200 years ago. If the rituals and feasting were conducted by only one village, then they functioned to reinforce community or lineage/household solidarity. However, if more than one village was conducting feasting, then the rituals could have functioned as a regional integrative mechanism. If the latter is true, with communities on both sides of the continental divide participating, then this could explain the extraordinary cultural resilience of eastern villages to massive explosive eruptions of Arenal volcano. Previous research by Sheets and colleagues has documented ten great explosive eruptions of Arenal volcano over the past 4000 years, and discovered a cultural resilience during reoccupation greater than any other ancient Latin American culture studied to date. The research team includes natural scientists and social scientists from the US and Costa Rica. Publications will first appear in Spanish in Vinculos, the anthropological journal from the Costa Rican Museo Nacional, prior to publications appearing in English in US journals. A bilingual website will present all relevant imagery, trenching profiles and photography, artifacts, and literature for scholars and interested others.