Pilgrimages and Persistent Social Memory in Spite of Volcanic Disasters in the Arenal Area, Costa Rica

Ancient Costa Ricans in the Arenal area exhibited extraordinary persistence in landscape use and social memory, in spite of repeated catastrophes caused by explosive volcanic eruptions. The Cañales village on the south shore of Lake Arenal was struck by two large explosive eruptions during the Arenal phase (500 b.c.–a.d. 600). Following ecological recovery, the village was reoccupied after each of these eruptions. I argue that the people who reoccupied the village were direct descendants of pre-disaster villagers due to the fact that they reinstated use of the same path to the village cemetery. While previous interpretations emphasized ecological reasons for village reoccupation, I suggest that a dominating reason for reoccupation was to re-establish contact with the spirits of deceased ancestors in the cemetery. The living and the spirits of the deceased constituted the functioning community. The refugees re-established processional access to their cemetery as soon as possible, perhaps even before the village was reoccupied. Archaeologists rarely discover evidence of ancient pilgrimages. However, the combination of remote sensing and detailed stratigraphic analyses allow them to be detected in the Arenal area. Villagers created and perpetuated social memory by regular linear ritual processions along precisely the same path, in spite of challenging topography and occasional regional disasters obscuring the path. This recognition has implications for the arguments of sedentism versus residential mobility during the Arenal phase. The exploration of ancient landscapes and memory has challenged and excited archaeologists in recent years. Layton and Ucko (1999) summarize the range of conceptualization of landscape from the phenomenological emphasis on natural setting to the ideational emphasis on perception, meaning, and belief. Likewise, Ashmore and Knapp (1999) explore the conceptualized and constructed aspects of ancient landscapes. I view the range of landscape conceptualization as encompassing scientific (physical and social science) through humanistic approaches, although archaeological emphasis has shifted recently from the former more toward the latter (Ashmore and Knapp 1999). It is this upsurge of humanistic approaches in archaeology that emphasizes the affective, perceptual, and experiential dimensions of landscape. Yet I agree with Layton and Ucko (1999) that employing the full range of scholarship from science to humanism can be very useful. Thus we can see the landscape as environment, and paying attention to topography, rainforest resources, soils, water, and sources for stone tools, while seeing the landscape as social space, paying attention to repeated activities that become deeply embedded in social memory. Humanistic insights, ideas, and speculations can generate controversy, often leading to testable hypotheses and further research. Connerton (1989) explored how traditional societies incorporate practices over many generations. Ritual performances such as linear processions to access ancestral spirits provide a good example. Archaeologists have rarely encountered evidence of pilgrimages, as occasional pilgrimages would leave little in the way of physical remains. However, in this case our use of remote sensing instrument systems and detailed stratigraphic recording and interpretation has detected centuries of pilgrimages across almost two millennia. The recent book El Pueblo del Señor: Las Fiestas y Peregrinaciones de Chalma (Shadow and Rodriguez-Shadow 2000) could provide an ethnographic inspiration for future explorations of ancient pilgrimages. Ethnographic accounts of funerary practices and beliefs among traditional Native people in lower Central America provide possible clues to ancient behavior and perceptions in a symbolically charged environment. In this article I explore how ancient Costa Rican cemeteries were first established about 2,500 years ago as special places at considerable distances from villages, breaking dramatically from the past tradition of burial adjacent to each individual household. That separation represented a new formulation of social memory, which persisted for well over a millennium, as recorded in entrenched ritual pathways. The cultural prescription of single-file procession along precisely the same path began literally entrenching the path into the landscape as well as into social memory. As people walked the same path, that path surface compacted into a linear hollow, which began eroding and entrenching where it traversed sloping surfaces. I use the ancient Cañales village as an example of what was likely happening regionally. I begin by reviewing the work of the Arenal Research Project that I have directed since the 1980s in northwestern Costa Rica. This project found that secondary burial practices within households occurred for approximately 1,500 years before a switch to primary burials in distant village cemeteries, which lasted for approximately the same duration. The Cañales village was occupied during both of 425 E-mail correspondence to: [email protected] Ancient Mesoamerica, 22 (2011), 425–435 Copyright © Cambridge University Press, 2011 doi:10.1017/S0956536111000265 those periods. Detailed study of the Cañales site has provided new insights into human behavior and social memory in the area. I originally interpreted the repeated reoccupation of the Cañales village after natural disasters caused by explosive eruptions of Arenal Volcano as contingent upon ecological recovery during the earlier stages of our research (Sheets 1994). While those are still important factors and should not be subordinated or ignored, I believe that a primary motivation for reoccupation of the village was to reinstate path use to the cemetery to reconnect with the spirits of deceased ancestors. The chronological phases used in this article include the Tronadora phase (2000–500 b.c.), the Arenal phase (500 b.c.– a.d. 600), and the Silencio phase (a.d. 600–1300) (Sheets 1994). Radiocarbon dating, comparative analyses of artifacts, and especially ceramics (Hoopes 1994a, 1994b) are the bases for identifying and dating the phases. Based on recent work by Juan Vicente Guerrero, the Arenal-Silencio boundary may have to be moved to a.d. 300, and the Silencio phase may have ended about a.d. 900 (Sheets 2003). THE ARENAL RESEARCH PROJECT The Lake Arenal area (Figure 1) was occupied in Paleoindian times, as evidenced by the Clovis-style projectile point found during survey of the southern shore (Sheets 1994). It was also occupied during the Archaic, as indicated by radiocarbon-dated campsites and associated artifacts. Not surprisingly, we find no evidence of sedentary or semi-sedentary habitations in either of these early time periods. It is likely that “membership” in a mobile band was flexible, and presumably people had some sense of place regarding loci useful in collecting, hunting, and gathering of non-domesticated food sources, as well as a short-term sense of place in the campsite with its temporary hearth and activity areas. As Ashmore and Knapp (1999:10) state, “mobile human groups create their landscapes by projecting ideas and emotions onto the world as they find it—on trails, views, campsites or other special places. Sedentary people, on the other hand, structure their landscapes more obtrusively, physically constructing gardens, houses and villages on the land....” Although we have no direct evidence, a few cultigens probably were part of the diet at least toward the end of the Archaic. We have definitive evidence of cultigens for all later phases, but it appears they remained a small fraction of the diet during pre-Columbian times. Burial practices related to settlements form key elements to this article. Project researchers have excavated fairly extensively in three Arenal phase cemeteries and one Silencio phase cemetery.