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Anthropology

Theses and Dissertations

Name:James Hawken
Degree:M.A.
Professor:Wells
Year:2007
Title:I Socio-Natural Landscapes in the Palmarejo Valley, Honduras.
  
Abstract:

Communities have traditionally been viewed as spatially bounded social units composed of multiple households whose inhabitants are integrated by shared resources and a common sense of identity. While investigating resources and identity is useful for archaeological study because of their material correlates, such views of community ultimately fail to acknowledge the dynamic interaction between cultural and environmental forces in shaping and shifting those arrangements over time. This study examines settlement, excavation, and geoarchaeological data from the Palmarejo Valley in northwestern Honduras with the aim of modeling the process of community formation at the intersection of social and natural landscapes in both the past and present.