Christopher Beekman

Preliminary abstract: The organizers propose four linked workshops on the art and archaeology of Pacific coastal Mexico through Ecuador, to be held from January to August, 2018 at the facilities of the National Museum of the American Indian in Washington DC, the Museo de Colima in Colima (Mexico), the Museo Nacional in San JosÌ© (Costa Rica), and the Museos de Arqueolog’_a e Arte Contemporaneo in Guayaquil (Ecuador). The longstanding question of coastal interaction has defied anthropological analysis partly because entrenched culture areas discourage scholarship across those boundaries. We are therefore assembling leading regional and international scholars whose contributions and discussions will identify and contextualize relationships between artifacts located in different regions along the Pacific coast. The primary goals are to develop a cadre of experts in the broader Pacific coastal littoral, to develop updated social approaches to a topic that has often relied on isolated trait comparisons, to develop a better chronological framework for comparisons, and to break down the culture areas that obscure rather than recognize links between regions. By holding three workshops in the countries of origin, we aim to facilitate the attendance and participation of more local scholars than if we brought them to a USA based workshop.