Chemical analyses of residues extracted from pottery vessels from Puerto Escondido in what is now Honduras show that cacao beverages were being made there before 1000 B.C., extending the confirmed use of cacao back at least 500 years. The famous chocolate beverage served on special occasions in later times in Mesoamerica, especially by elites, was made from cacao seeds. The earliest cacao beverages consumed at Puerto Escondido were likely produced by fermenting the sweet pulp surrounding the seeds.archaeology ͉ chemistry ͉ Honduras ͉ Mesoamerica

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Research at the site of Puerto Escondido in northern Honduras produced evidence of foodways in one of the earliest known villages in Central America. Much of the material recovered is related directly or indirectly to the production, preparation, and consumption of food. In everyday practice, the organization of food consumption in villages like this would have been central to the reproduction of social relations. In other early villages in Central America, the use of food for political ends has been given a causal role in the development of social stratification. Drawing on evidence for one particular food practice, the preparation and consumption of fermented and unfermented cacao beverages, we argue that it is through the elaboration of cuisine—regimes of taste and presentation—that food production, serving, and consumption played both of these roles.

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Practices and features that many researchers have identified as "Olmec," even when found outside of the Gulf Coast of Mexico, supposed by some to be the heartland of an Olmec culture, are often a minority within local assemblages with vast differences in style and form. This is the case in Honduras, where objects identified as "Olmec" were clearly locally made. Thus they cannot be explained simply in terms of the import to Honduras of "Olmec" objects made elsewhere. This paper seeks to address the question, "what did it mean to the inhabitants of Formative period Mesoamerican villages to make and use objects whose stylistic features made them stand out as different from others in their own communities?" Drawing on data from original fieldwork at multiple sites in Honduras and reanalysis of museum collections, this paper proposes a model for understanding this phenomenon rooted in social theories of materiality, the phenomenological experience of personhood, and the creation of identity through entanglement with things.

Paleoethnobotanical analyses of samples excavated at Los Naranjos, Honduras, provide an unprecedented record of the diversity of plants used at an early center with monumental architecture and sculpture dating between 1000 and 500 B.C. and contribute to understandings of early village life in Mesoamerica. Los Naranjos is the major site adjacent to Lake Yojoa, where analysis of an important pollen core suggests very early clearing of the landscape and shifts in the relative prevalence of certain plants over time, including increases in maize. Our results from starch grain, phytolith, and macrobotanical analysis complicate interpretation of previous pollen core dates, suggesting that maize was not as central as expected to the early inhabitants of the settlement. Moreover, with identification of macrobotanical remains recovered from flotation of sediments and extraction of microbotanical remains from adhering sediments and the surfaces of obsidian tools, we can compare the potential of each analysis in interpretations of plant use. No single method would have allowed recovery and identification of all the plants documented across sample types. The presence of botanical residues on the obsidian tools provides direct evidence of processing. Even in the small sample analyzed, we can recognize tools used exclusively for culinary processing, tools used only for non-culinary tasks, and multi-purpose tools.

Cornell University investigations in the Valle de Naco, NW Honduras, are producing new insights into cultural relationships in the eastern Maya frontier zone. Since 1975, survey, mapping, and excavation have produced new data which modify the traditional view of the valley's culture history. By the Late Preclassic period, the Valle de Naco had at least one centerSanto Domingo -with sizable public architecture. During the Late Classic period, La Sierra, a large Maya center, dominated the valley. Naco was the largest Late Post classic settlement in the region and one of the major conquestperiod centers in NW Honduras. Both La Sierra and Naco maintained extensive economic relationships with distant regions. External connections included interaction with other sectors of the Maya area as well as strong ties with non-Maya Central America.

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