Despite occupying a key geographic position between the Mesoamerican and Lower Central American cultural worlds during pre-Hispanic times, Nicaragua is arguably the region's least understood country archaeologically, with most data limited to the country's Pacific side.

NGS/Waitt grantee Alexander Geurds hopes to rectify this with his Central Nicaragua Archaeological Project.

In March 2009, Geurds spent a month recording archaeological sites and studying monumental statuary in the mountainous area northwest of Lake Nicaragua, the largest freshwater lake in Central America. Twelve sites were registered, including an extensive settlement called San Isidro with some 500 mounds, more than any other site in Nicaragua.

At another site, called Nawawasito, 44 intact and fragmented Chontales-style stelae and monoliths were discovered, the first time such artifacts have been recorded outside of museum collections and in their original settings.

Compared with about a hundred statues known before Geurds's discovery, the statues at Nawawasito represent an extraordinarily large quantity in one area. Geurds's examination of Nawawasito led him to propose that Chontales-style statuary likely exists across a much wider area of Nicaragua than previously assumed, extending beyond the watershed line into the Caribbean lowlands to the east.

A second phase of the project, funded by an NGS/Waitt grant, is planned for January 2010. It will continue the search for monumental sculpture in Central Nicaragua to increase understanding of the region's pre-Hispanic cultures.