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Creating and Perpetuating Social Memory across the Ancient Cost Rican LandscapeFor most of the time that Native Americans lived in ancient Costa Rica, their travel across the landscape was task-oriented and thus sufficiently randomized to leave no detectable trace. That changed about 500 BC in the Arenal area when people separated their cemeteries from their villages, and travel between them was ritually mediated by travel along the same path, in single file, in as straight a line as possible. The inadvertent erosion over centuries of use entrenched paths 2 or more meters deep, and we believe the cultural standard developed that the preferred way of entering a special place was by an entrenched path. People created and perpetuated social memory across their landscapes with generation after generation of use. The construction of meaning developed as the paths entrenched, ultimately embedding that meaning deep in people s belief systems as well as literally embedding it in the landscape. the Arenal area, a series of chiefdoms did develop east of the area at about AD 1000. To satisfy their need for monumentality, we suggest here that chiefs chose the proper entrenched entryway as exemplified in the Arenal area, for elaboration. On the rocky slopes of the volcanoes monumental entryways were built of stone, and on the fine alluvial plains they were of earthen construction. For instance, the radiating entrenched roads entering Cutris are about 4 km long and as wide as 50 meters, and many meters deep.
Document ID
20040139301
Acquisition Source
Marshall Space Flight Center
Document Type
Preprint (Draft being sent to journal)
Authors
Sheets, Payson
(Colorado Univ. Boulder, CO, United States)
Sever, Tom
(NASA Marshall Space Flight Center Huntsville, AL, United States)
Date Acquired
August 22, 2013
Publication Date
January 1, 2004
Subject Category
Geophysics
Distribution Limits
Public
Copyright
Work of the US Gov. Public Use Permitted.

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