Notes on Nicaraguan Archeology

Abstract

The practice of Archeology in Nicaragua has had a somewhat slow trajectory compared to neighboring countries, however, this reality is due to multiple geopolitical and historical factors, in many cases the causes may seem obvious to us, and even justifiable. On the one hand, the multiple civil wars that the country has suffered throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, did not allow epistemological development, on the other, it was said that in the national territory there were no "great civilizations" that built superstructures, as in other regions of Central America, this did not favor interest in the archaeological discipline.

Despite the historical antecedents and the apparent lack of historical integration, Nicaraguan archeology has implicit and explicit theoretical elements that keep a high social and cultural coherence of the national idiosyncrasy. However, archaeological research has never featured prominently in the headlines of specialized publications. However, after 161 years of Archeology in Nicaragua, we can affirm that the conceptual development and scientific practice is coherent and has its own objectives throughout history. Since the United States Charge d'Affaires for the Republics of Central America E.G. Squier arrived in Nicaragua in 1850, he started a tradition of archaeological work in the Pacific region, where he incorporated new merely empirical and descriptive elements, up to the current development of archaeological science. In the years of practice in this scientific field, it has given rise to a widely consolidated and coherent tradition, despite its own internal and external contradictions.