National Museum of the American Indian Search this
Type:
Conversations and talks
YouTube Videos
Uploaded:
2017-06-30T03:12:13.000Z
Views:
2,493
Video Title:
Cerámica de los Ancestros: Central America's Past Revealed
Description:
In this video, Central American scholars and students talk about the experiences that drew them to anthropology and archaeology and what they hope to contribute through their research. The video—in Spanish and English, with Spanish and English subtitles—is featured in the exhibition "Cerámica de los Ancestros: Central America's Past Revealed," a pioneering effort by the Smithsonian Institution to promote better understanding of the creative pre-Contact cultures of Central America while engaging a new Latinx audience. Organized by the National Museum of the American Indian and the Smithsonian Latino Center, the exhibition is on view at the National Museum of the American Indian in New York through October 2018. Drawing from more than 17,000 Central American objects in the museum's collections, "Cerámica de los Ancestros" celebrates the region's diverse and dynamic ancestral heritage. For thousands of years, Central America has been home to vibrant civilizations with unique, sophisticated ways of life, value systems, and arts. The ceramics these peoples left behind, combined with recent archaeological discoveries, help tell the stories of these dynamic cultures and their achievements. The exhibition looks at seven distinct Central American cultural areas that are today part of Belize, Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, and Panama. The early histories of these areas follow similar paths. By 1500 BC, people had settled in large villages. As maize agriculture supported growing populations, distinct forms of status, leadership, belief systems, and arts emerged regionally. Social and trade networks connected Central American communities to peoples in South America, Mesoamerica, and the Caribbean, sharing knowledge, technology, artworks, and systems of status and political organization. The arrival of Europeans brought further changes. Native peoples have often struggled to maintain distinct identities and lifeways, or have merged with dominant cultures. Yet despite these changes, the legacy of Central America's civilizations continues to resonate in the lives of their descendants and other Central Americans. For further information on the exhibition, see http://www.nmai.si.edu/explore/exhibitions/item/?id=946
Video Duration:
6 min 11 sec
YouTube Keywords:
Native American Indian Museum Smithsonian "Indigenous Peoples" "Smithsonian Institution" "Smithsonian NMAI" "National Museum of the American Indian"
