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The archaeological site of El Coyote covers nearly .25 sq. km of high terrace land about 150 m west of the Cacaulapa River, a major southern tributary of the Chamelecon River in northwestern Honduras. Recent survey in the valley by Patricia Urban, Edward Schortman, and their colleagues as part of the Cacaulapa Valley Archaeological Project (covering an area of roughly 6 sq. km along the Quebrada Seca and the Cacaulapa River), revealed a scattered occupation of 37 sites. These sites range from artifact scatters and clusters of cobble arrangements to aggregations of stone-faced platforms of considerable size, located upon limited terrace segments overlooking the Cacaulapa River. Using these data, Urban and colleagues have proposed a three-level hierarchy of sites in the valley based on the sizes of sites. The largest settlement, El Coyote, is delimited by deep, narrow arroyos to the north and south, the steep hillside terrain of Cerro Macutalo on the west, and a precipitous descent on the east of roughly 30 m down to the lower floodplain. The site is composed of a monumental core that contains 28 platforms (1-10 m high) arranged around six contiguous plazas (the largest of which, the main plaza, covers approximately 5,450 sq. m), a ballcourt, and as many as 226 other structures. The main civic-ceremonial plaza at the site measures approximately 107 m north-to-south by 51 m east-to-west.
The buildings that delimit the main plaza can be divided into two formal categories: generally square edifices with steep flanks and very restricted summits located on the eastern side, and rectangular buildings with gradually sloping sides and broader summit areas on the west. Gaps between structures in the plaza’s northwest and northeast corners would have permitted passage into the area. While the northwest corner is not delimited by formal architecture, the northeast corner is fronted by a monumental staircase composed of five steps that descend to the terminus of a plastered causeway, which extends roughly 220 m from this point to the Quebrada La Coyota on the north.
The site of El Coyote, over ten times the size of its next largest known contemporary in the valley, represents a highly successful program of political and economic centralization during the Classic period. Less clear is how local rulers were able to attract and unite the valley’s population, how they legitimated their claims to authority, and what material and ideological elements comprised their repertoire of rulership. Recently, it has been proposed that communal feasting, characterized by collective events convoking a group larger than a household in public spaces and involving the consumption of food and/or drink with ceremonial overtones, may have been a central practice in prehispanic Southeastern polities that contributed to the development and maintenance of social hierarchies. Feasts at El Coyote would have provided local ruling paramounts with important opportunities to display their status and social affiliations with symbolically potent outside forces, thereby bolstering their claims to legitimate rulership. The effectiveness of these public displays would have been partly contingent on their ability to impress others through pomp and pageantry, effectively putting to use the exotica obtained from long-distance exchanges, possibly along lines similar to practices in the Kwakiutl potlatch or the kelo feasts of Choiseul Island.
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