A Contribution to the Archeology of 

 Middle America 



By George Byron Gordon 



i]URING a series of explorations which I made in 1894 an d 

 again in 1896-97 in the valley of the Ulua river in Hon- 

 duras, I had the good fortune to discover a number of 

 remarkable sites that yielded rich archeological treasures 

 and proved that in ancient times the broad plain of Sula 

 was the seat of a well-developed native civilization. My full report 

 on these discoveries, published by the Peabody Museum of Harvard 

 University, furnished abundant evidence of a strongly marked local 

 culture with distinguishing characteristics that flourished in close con- 

 tact with neighboring peoples of distinct cultures and in communica- 

 tion with several more remote peoples in different parts of America. 



These points of contact between the ancient dwellers in the Ulua 

 valley and other centers of native American civilization left their 

 marks in the form of numerous importations. The collection found 

 during the excavations of 1896-97 includes objects in stone and in 

 pottery that had their origin in parts as far distant as the Valley of 

 Mexico on the one hand and Panama on the other. 



A people who were so enterprising as to establish these various 

 lines of communication and develop this far-reaching foreign trade 

 would not have been slow to benefit by the contact with foreign ideas 

 which that trade brought them, and their progress would not have 

 failed to be accelerated in consequence of their traffic. 



It is not surprising therefore to find that the purely local products 

 exhibit on the one hand a strong conservatism and on the other a 

 degree of skill in their workmanship and an artistic merit that was 

 not surpassed among any of the ancient civilized peoples of America. 

 This Ulua culture, like other ancient American cultures, is without 

 date. That it was contemporary with the ancient Maya empire as 

 well as with various cultivated peoples that flourished in Mexico, 

 Costa Rica, and Panama, is proved by the products of these civiliza- 

 tions, unearthed at great depth below the surface in the banks of the 

 Ulua; but until a sure method is found for determining the periods in 

 the history of these better-known peoples, such associations will not aid 

 us in establishing the dates of corresponding periods in the Ulua valley. 



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