Pre-Columbian Burial Site Context

Part of the researcher’s Fishing Traditions in Coiba (Tradiciones pesqueras en Coiba) project, involved with the COIBA AIP

 research station. The goal of the project has been to discover the long history Jicarita, an incredibly remote island, as a centre of fishing and trade before Spanish Conquest.

Archaeological context “means the place where an artefact is found. Not just the place, but the soil, the site type, the layer the artefact came from, what else was in that layer. The importance of where an artefact is found is profound.” This information is captured by a multitude of research methods, from record-keeping, photography, soil sampling, carbon dating, molecular analyses of organic remains and much, much more.

And while photographs and archaeologists’ sketches do a great job of capturing context for later verification, they are often not created with an audience of laypeople in mind, thus reducing their ability to communicate the stories an archaeological site may reveal about people in the past.

 Dr Isaza asked our team to help visualise how the human and cultural materials would have been laid out at the time of the original burial. She requested that we create this scientific spot illustration from the point-of-view of a person performing the ritual. In here, we are seeing the relative positions of the two subjects, the artefacts found in the burial site, and the position of the bodies from the point of view of the person who had just laid the human remains to rest.

 Two versions of the spot illustration were delivered, as certain spaces for science communication may not be open to showing even illustrations of cadavers.

 This project was delivered by our Affiliate Artist Scott Devantier.