Honduras Exhibit

Relics of Guanaja Island

The ancient artifacts in this exhibit were found by Christopher Lockhart on a beach on the northern edge of Guanaja Island in the Bay Islands of Honduras. Mr. Lockhart’s family donated the artifacts to Miami University. Forty years later Mr. Lockhart worked with the Department of Anthropology to identify the find site, providing our students with an opportunity to study this ceramic collection and its relation to modern Honduran people
 
This exhibit is organized into three parts. Like archaeological strata, the most recent events are found at the top of the case, the oldest at the bottom. The artifacts have also been arranged chronologically, youngest at the top. We suggest you begin at the bottom with Level III (archaeological layers are labeled from the top down)
 
Level III – Real Archaeology
Eastern Honduras was on the edge of the region known as Mesoamerica. Interconnected economically with the famous Maya, the people of the Bay Islands and the Mosquitia charted their own course prior to the Spanish invasions of the 16th Century
 
Level II – Colonial Fantasies
The upheavals of Spanish colonialism and later American hegemony turned Central America into not only a region to be economically exploited, but a conceptual “blank slate” to outsiders. They filled it with fantasies of lost cities, crystal skulls, and Atlantis
 
Level I – Modern Controversy
Today eastern Honduras and its archaeological heritage is in the throes of struggles over science, economic development, and the rights of the indigenous people