Revealing Ancestral Central America, Part 1

This symposium, presented by the Smithsonian Latino Center and the National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI), celebrates the landmark exhibition Cerámica de los Ancestros: Central America's Past Revealed, as well as the Smithsonian publication, Revealing Ancestral Central America, edited by Rosemary A. Joyce. This program features leading voices in the interpretation and recovery of the region's rich indigenous heritage.

In Part 1, Rosemary A. Joyce (University of California, Berkeley) gives a presentation entitled What Archaeology Reveals about Central America's Past.

The symposium, exhibition, and book have their genesis in the Central American Ceramics Research Project, an initiative launched when visiting researchers from the Smithsonian Latino Center realized that the NMAI was quietly caring for one of the largest and most significant collections of Central American archaeology in existence, with approximately 17,000 objects from the region. Astonishingly, this includes more than 10,000 intact vessels, embodying countless untold stories. From figurines depicting powerful women in the Greater Nicoya region to finely decorated vessels of wealthy farming hamlets of the Ulúa Valley and the fantastical designs on Coclé, we can see that the peoples of pre-Hispanic Central America developed uniquely local identities and cultural traditions while also engaging in vital exchanges of ideas, goods, and technologies with their neighbors in all directions.

Ranald Woodaman, Exhibitions and Public Programs Director, Smithsonian Latino Center introduces and moderates the symposium.

This program was webcast from the National Museum of the American Indian Rasmuson Theater on September 8, 2013.

[uselut]

as a Nicaraguan Canadian I am thankful for any dissemination of central American history. I hope to help this movement some day soon.

[citrusblast]

Always wondered about that area between the yucatan and south america, the area between the maya and inca :)

[TonyfromTO]

I hate these terms. Latino is french propaganda and hispanic is 70s-80s united statian propaganda.

Nicaragua, pre dates 1492.