Hostname: page-component-669899f699-rg895 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-04-25T02:30:02.863Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Empire and hinterland in lower Central America

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2015

Mary W. Helms
Mary W. Helms*
Affiliation:
Department of Anthropology, University of North Carolina, Greensboro NC 27412, USA
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

The European discovery of a separate and distinctive ‘new’ world was an event of cosmic proportion not only because of the enormous social, political and economic expansion potential for the developing nation-states of the European peninsula; discovery of this distant realm also required significant reconstruction of basic European cosmography. In the centuries prior to the Age of Discovery, Europe, focussing on Rome and Byzantium, had balanced its own geo-political centricity with cosmological interpretations of mystically paradisiacal or demonic distant lands generally situated to the East, places filled with exotic creatures and things, some dangerous while others constituted kingly riches. A new era began when the ocean to the west, long regarded as a restrictive barrier, became a possible route, a direction, which could lead to the exotica of the East. Realization that this western direction led instead to distinctive new western lands, new places, re-ordered the European cosmological paradigm (Helms 1988: chapter 6).

Type
Special section
Information
Antiquity , Volume 66 , Issue 250 , March 1992 , pp. 191 - 203
Copyright
Copyright © Antiquity Publications Ltd 1992

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

Abel-Vidor, S. 1981. Ethnohistorical approaches to the archaeology of Greater Nicoya, in Between continents between seas: 85–92.Google Scholar
Between continents/between seas: PrecoJumbian art of Costa Rica. 1981. New York (NY): Harry N. Abrams.Google Scholar
Bray, W. 1977. Maya metalwork and its external connections, in Hammond, N. (ed.), Social process in Maya prehistory: 365–403. New York (NY): Academic Press.Google Scholar
Bray, W. 1981. Gold work, in Between continents/between seas: 153–66.Google Scholar
Bray, W. 1984. Across the Darien gap: a Colombian view of isthmian archaeology, in Lange, & Stone, (ed.): 305–338.Google Scholar
Cooke, R. 1984. Archaeological research in Central and Eastern Panama, in Lange, & Stone, , (ed.): 263–302.Google Scholar
Easby, E.K. 1981. Jade, , in Between continents/ between seas: 135–51.Google Scholar
Fernandez Guardia, R. 1913. History of the discovery and conquest of Costa Rica. New York (NY): Thomas Y. Crowell.Google Scholar
Ferrerò, A., L. 1981. Ethnohistory and ethnography in the Central Highlands – Atlantic Watershed and Diquis, in Between continents/between seas: 93–103.Google Scholar
Floyd, T.S. 1967. The Anglo-Spanish struggle for Mosquitia. Albuquerque (NM); University of New Mexico Press.Google Scholar
Haberland, W. 1984. The archaeology of Greater Chiriqui, in Lange, & Stone, (ed.): 233–62.Google Scholar
Helms, M.W. 1971. Asang: adaptations to culture contact in a Miskito community. Gainesville (FL): University of Florida Press.Google Scholar
Helms, M.W. 1978. Coastal adaptations as contact phenomena among the Miskito and Cuna Indians of lower Central America, in Stark, & Voorhies, (ed.): 121–49. New York (NY): Academic Press.Google Scholar
Helms, M.W. 1979. Ancient Panama. Austin (TX): University of Texas Press.Google Scholar
Helms, M.W. 1981. Precious metals and politics: style and ideology in the intermediate area and Peru, Journal of Latin American Lore 7: 215–38.Google Scholar
Helms, M.W. 1983. Miskito slaving and culture contact: ethnicity and opportunity in an expanding population, Journal of Anthropological Research 39:179–97.Google Scholar
Helms, M.W. 1988. Ulysses’ sail. Princeton (NJ): Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Helms, M.W. In press. Thoughts on public symbols and distant domains relevant to the chiefdoms of lower Central America, in Lange, F.W. (ed.), Wealth and hierarchy in the intermediate area. Washington (DC): Dumbarton Oaks.Google Scholar
Howarth, D. 1966. Panama: four hundred years of dreams and cruelty. New York (NY): McGraw-Hill.Google Scholar
Ibarra, R., E. 1984. Los cacicazgos indígenas de Ja vertiente Atlántica y Vaile Centrai de Costa Rica: un intento de reconstrucción etnohistórica. Thesis. Universidad de Costa Rica.Google Scholar
Lange, F.W. 1984a. Cultural geography of pre-Columbian lower Central America, in Lange, & Stone, (ed.): 233–62.Google Scholar
Lange, F.W. 1984b. The Greater Nicoya archaeological subarea, in Lange, & Stone, (ed.): 165–94.Google Scholar
Lange, F.W., Bishop, R.L. & Van Zelst, L.. 1981. Perspectives on Costa Rican jade: compositional analyses and cultural implications, in Between continents/between seas: 167–75.Google Scholar
Lange, F.W. & Stone, D.Z. (ed.). 1984. The archaeology of lower Central America. Albuquerque (NM): University of New Mexico Press.Google Scholar
Lechtman, H. 1975. Style in technology – some early thoughts, in Lechtman, H. & Merrill, R. (ed.), Material culture: styles, organization, and dynamics of technology. St Paul (MN): West Publishing. Proceedings of the American Ethnological Society.Google Scholar
Lechtman, H. 1979. Issues in Andean metallurgy, in Benson, E. (ed.), Pre-Columbian metallurgy of South America: 1–40. Washington (DC): Dumbarton Oaks.Google Scholar
Linares, O.F. & Ranere, A.J. (ed.). 1980. Adaptive radiations in prehistoric Panama. Cambridge (MA): Peabody Museum, Harvard University.Google Scholar
Macleod, MJ. 1973. Spanish Central America. Berkeley (CA): University of California Press.Google Scholar
Magnus, R.W. 1978. The prehistoric and modern subsistence patterns of the Atlantic Coast of Nicaragua: a comparison, in Stark, & Voorhies, (ed.): 61–80.Google Scholar
Minelli, L.L. 1976. Mesoamerican influences among Talamanca and Western Guaymi Indians, in Helms, M. & Loveland, F. (ed.), Frontier adaptations in lower Central America: 55–65. Philadelphia (PA): Institute for the Study of Human Issues.Google Scholar
Newson, L.A. 1987. Indian survival in colonial Nicaragua. Norman (OK): University of Oklahoma Press.Google Scholar
Nietschmann, B. 1973. Between land and water. New York (NY): Seminar Press.Google Scholar
Sauer, C.O. 1966. The early Spanish main. Berkeley (CA): University of California Press.Google Scholar
Sharer, R.J. 1984. Lower Central America as seen from Mesoamerica, in Lange, & Stone, (ed.): 63–84.Google Scholar
Sherman, W.L. 1979. Forced native labor in sixteenth-century Central America. Lincoln (NE): University of Nebraska Press.Google Scholar
Snarskis, M.J. 1981. The archaeology of Costa Rica, in Between continents/between seas: 15–84.Google Scholar
Snarskis, M.J. 1984. Central America: the lower Caribbean, in Lange, & Stone, (ed.): 195–232.Google Scholar
Stark, B. & Voorhies, B. (ed.). 1978. Prehistoric coastal adaptations. New York (NY): Academic Press.Google Scholar