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The discovery of an elite cemetery at El Caño: Traces of a mortuary pattern in Río grande valley, Coclé, Panama
Abstract
El Caño, located in the Coclé province, Panama, is known for its unique stone sculptural style and stone structures. Recently four lavish burials have been discovered. Dated between 700 and 1000 AD, they are broadly coeval with similar mortuary features at nearby Sitio Conte, a cemetery which provided the first archaeological evidence for the sumptuous wealth of Panamanian chiefdoms more than eighty years ago. The existence in Sitio Conte and El Caño of similar elements-alignments of basalt columns, causeways and rich tombs-with a similar spatial organization, indicates the possibility of the existence of a mortuary pattern in Río Grande.
... Lothrop, Mason, and later scholars like Hearne believed the builders intentionally lined burials with whole vessels and sherds, so some ceramics in proximity to the body may not be associated with that individual, but rather just part of the burial structure (Lothrop 1937(Lothrop , 1942Hearne and Sharer 1992). Julia Mayo contends that this "ceramic architecture" may even be accidental, the result of offerings above open graves partially collapsing the tomb under their own weight and sloping down to form layers of pottery (Mayo and Mayo 2013). Any perceived associations between pottery vessels and individuals would be completely unintentional. ...
... These archaeologists found evidence of architecture: stone columns, sculptures of human captives and animals, and postholes from wooden structures that once stood over the tomb pits. Mayo and her team have published a short article on four tombs: T1, T2, T5, and T6 (Mayo and Mayo 2013). T1 contained eight people total, including two adult women with no ornamentation. ...
... Julia Mayo's team at the El Caño site has excavated the remains of spiked wooden clubs studded with stingray spines, perforated shark teeth, or lithics. Mayo associates the celts and projectile points on the bottom layer of T2 at the El Caño site with weaponry and considers them explicit indicators that the 18 men surrounding the principal occupant were warriors (Mayo and Mayo 2013;Mayo 2015). Artifacts like those found with Skeleton 15 are interpreted as weapons when found with men, so it is possible that this female from Grave 26 could have had weapons as well. ...
“What is gender?” One can drop that question in certain young and spirited corners of the Internet blogosphere and watch the debate roll in like a thunderstorm. The traditionally-minded respondent will say that gender is the behaviors and expectations grafted onto biological sex. Biologically female people occupy female gender roles; biologically male people occupy male gender roles. The concept is simple until a statistics enthusiast comments that one in 1500 children with ambiguous genitalia are born in the United States each year, that the chromosomes of 1 in 1666 people are neither XX nor XY, and that biological sex is no strict binary (Blackless et al 2000). Chromosomes, genitals, hormone patterns, body hair, and body shapes do not always neatly sort themselves into male and female boxes. How does gender intersect with being intersex? And then LGBT commenters remind us that a person’s internal sense of their own gender does not always match the gender others expect of them on the basis of their biological sex. A transgender person may or may not change their body, appearance, or social role to match the gender with which they identify. Their culture may have other gender categories besides male and female, like two-spirit people in societies throughout the Americas. However, a person who does not conform to the narrow expectations of their assigned gender is not always transgender. A woman may present and behave in masculine ways, wear loose jeans and snapback hats, work in a warehouse, date women, get mistakenly called “sir” at least once a week (much to her chagrin), and still identify as female. By the most progressive contemporary understanding, one’s internal gender identity, external gender presentation, gender assigned at birth, and biological sex are all separate socially constructed categories that do not necessarily “match” each other or fall into a male-female binary. If one’s gender identity is completely internal, how can archaeologists, who almost by definition study material remains, understand the gender identities of people of the past?
... Discrete refuse lenses with significant amounts of debris at Cerro Juan Díaz demonstrated production was specialized, probably at the household level . After ca 700 CE, the most influential individuals and probable descent groups were capable of accumulating impressive quantities and varieties of fine pottery for lavish burials like the well-known cemeteries of Sitio Conte (Lothrop, 1937;Hearne and Sharer, 1992) and El Caño (Mayo and Mayo, 2013;Mayo and Carles, 2015) (Figure 3.10). ...
... Two funerary precincts in the lowlands bordering Parita Bay were recipients of particularly intensive and informative excavations-Sitio Conte and El Caño (Lothrop 1942(Lothrop , 1937Mayo and Mayo 2013). Some of the burials fulfil the criteria for being "elite", and the quality and quantity of the funerary furniture elucidate a society whose top-rank members were able to accumulate colossal wealth interred in earth-cut graves, which had very little stone architecture. ...
This research seeks to understand the hunting of the white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus) and dwarf deer (Mazama sp.) as a subsistence strategy in Pre Columbian Panama. From pre-ceramic groups to complex politicized societies located in the area of Parita Bay (Cerro Mangote [7800-4600 cal yr BP], Sitio Sierra [2200 -500 cal yr. BP] and Cerro Juan Díaz [300 BCE - 1600 CE]) and Pearl Island archipelago (Playa don Bernardo [6200-5600 cal yr BP]). In order to better understand human and deer relation across time and space, it was proposed a multiproxy study of deer samples, that includes zooarchaeology, taphonomy, mesowear, microwear, isotopes analysis and geometric morphometrics. The white-tailed deer was dietarily and culturally by far the most important mammal at Late Preceramic Cerro Mangote. By studying, the deer sample from Sitio Sierra it can be concluded that ritual activities mediated the feasts where deer meat was the principal course. The refuse feature in Operation 1/1B at Cerro Juan Díaz clearly represents the waste of a deer bone and antler workshop. In the case of Playa don Bernardo, human intervention produced heavy impacts on terrestrial mammals including insular extirpation of the dwarf deer between 5700 and 2300 cal yr BP. The white-tailed deer was an animal with restricted access because of its polysemic ritual significance at Parita Bay in particular within Greater Coclé semiotic system. The zooarchaeological record of Parita Bay evidences that human groups did not rely upon white-tailed deer, they had a broad-spectrum diet. The study of white-tailed deer in the archaeological record of this area did not evidence an intensification in deer hunting, the presence of deer is constant along the human occupation sequence and even modern times.
... This possible scenario was also partially articulated by Briggs (1993), who notes that the spatial aspects of pre-Hispanic cemeteries and their relationship to habitation sites is an area of research relatively untapped in the archaeology of Panamá. The burial of a certain subsect of society at a central ceremonial site is also clearly represented at the Late Ceramic Period elite necropoli of Sitio Conte and El Caño, where the remains of mostly adult males accompanied by hoards of sumptuary goods prevail (Briggs 1989;Mayo and Mayo 2013;Mayo Torné et al. 2016. ...
Objectives
Burial space reuse and prolonged interaction with the dead were common practices in the Isthmo-Colombian Area, dating back to at least the Early Ceramic Period in the Greater Coclé region. However, biological and social relationships of individuals interred in collective burial contexts remain unclear. Here, we explore intra-cemetery biological variation through a biological distance analysis of individuals interred in large mortuary features from the first mortuary horizon at the site of Cerro Juan Díaz in Panamá.
Materials and Methods
Individuals recovered from Features 2, 16, and 94 from Operation 3 at Cerro Juan Díaz were assessed for dental metric and nonmetric traits. Biological distances were calculated through Gower coefficients and subsequently assessed visually with PCoA plots. Differences in phenotypic variability within burial feature (n = 26), age (postpubescent individuals aged 15+ years vs. prepubescent individuals; n = 27), and sex (n = 14) groupings were evaluated statistically via permutational multivariate analysis of variance (PERMANOVA) and PERMDISP tests.
Results
The estimated distances for each individual showed broad similarities between the three burial features. Significant differences in biological distance were found only when comparing by age. Gower coefficients for prepubescent individuals differed from those of postpubescent individuals in terms of both group centroid location and data point dispersion around centroids.
Discussion
Our results are largely consistent with previous notions of Cerro Juan Díaz's function as a community burial ground. Prepubescent individuals may have been brought to the site for burial from nearby villages, perhaps following specific mortuary traditions governed by age group.
The early complex societies of Central Pacific Panama have long been recognized by anthropologists for their strong levels of social hierarchy. Such hierarchy is apparent in the ethnohistoric texts of the 16th century, and in elaborate burial assemblages of the Late Ceramic II period (AD 700-1522). Not surprisingly, those regions in which hierarchy is most apparent have been the main focus of archaeological research, while those in which inequalities were apparently weaker have received less attention. These latter regions, however, are also a vital part of understanding hierarchical development-they can bring into sharper relief the factors that gave way to hierarchical organization in some regions, as well as those factors that may have discouraged it from developing in others. Regional settlement data from the Río Parita and Río Tonosí valleys provide an opportunity to explore this issue. These data suggest that the hierarchical variability observed between these regions may have arisen as a result of differential levels of regional population growth and environmental risk, which gave way to different patterns of land use and structures of local interaction. These different interaction structures facilitated different sorts of activities and inter-household relationships, leading to markedly different forms of social organization.
The Central American land bridge has served as a passageway for animals and humans moving between North and South America. Nevertheless, after the first waves of human immigration at the end of the Pleistocene, contact between the native peoples who remained on this isthmus and other peoples living in continental areas where civilization ultimately developed, is characterized, according to the field record, by the transfer of crops, technologies, and goods, until ca.1400 BP when speakers of Mesoamerican languages occupied the northwestern edge (Gran Nicoya). The ancestors of modern-day speakers of Chibchan and Chocoan languages underwent social and cultural diversification mostly within the confines of the land bridge. Some Precolumbian residents altered vegetation immediately after first arrival at least 11,000 years ago, and began to add domesticated crops to their subsistence inventory between 9000 and 7000 BP. Maize and manioc (or cassava), domesticated outside the land bridge, were introduced in Preceramic times, early in the period between 7000 and 4500 BP, and gradually dominated regional agriculture as they became more productive, and as human populations increased and spread into virgin areas. Diversity in material culture is visible ca. 6000 BP, and becomes more apparent after the introduction of pottery ca. 4500 BP. By 2000 BP culture areas with distinctive artifact inventories are discernible. Between 2500 and 1300 BP hierarchies among regions, sites, social groups, and individuals point to the establishment of chiefdoms whose elite members came to demand large numbers of costume and sumptuary goods. A few special centers with stone sculptures and low-scale architecture served a social universe larger than the chiefdom, such as clusters of recently fissioned social groups with memories of a common heritage. Social interactions on the land bridge, endowed with productive bottomlands, highland valleys, and coastal habitats, appear always to have been strongest among neighboring groups.
En este trabajo presentamos los resultados de la aplicación de los métodos de prospección geofísica que hemos usado para la localización de estructuras prehispánicas en el yacimiento arqueológico El Caño (NA-20). En este lugar hemos realizado prospecciones magnética y eléctrica con el objeto de descubrir con precisión la organización y configuración espacial de esta ocupación y el grado de perturbación antropogénica reciente, producto de la actividad agraria y de excavaciones no profesionales. In this work we have presented the results of the application of the geophysical methods that we have used for the location of Pre-Columbian features in El Caño (NA-20) archaeological site. In this place we have made magnetic and electrical surveys with the objective of detecting accurately the organization and space configuration of this occupation and the degree of anthropogenic disturbance recent product of the agrarian activity and non-professional excavations.
Los trabajos de investigación arqueológica realizados hasta la fecha en Gran Coclé han estado enfocados siempre al estudio puntual de ciertos tipos de yacimientos, como por ejemplo abrigos rocosos, basureros o tumbas. El resultado es una visión parcial del panorama histórico-cultural de esta región, dado que todos estos estudios abordan temas específicos de forma aislada (dieta, tecnología aplicada a la piedra, costumbres funerarias, etc.). Nuestro proyecto, cuyos resultados parciales de los dos primeros años de investigación presentamos en este dossier, aglutina toda esa información teniendo en cuenta un contexto espacial más amplio, utilizando Sistemas de Información Geográfica (SIG) y considerando una mayor variedad de yacimientos arqueológicos, como es el caso de las estructuras arquitectónicas incipientes y las «minas» prehispánicas, que veremos a continuación. Archaeological researches realized up today in Gran Coclé, have always been focused, as isolated studies, on certain types of sites as for example rock shelters, shell-bearing middens sites or burials. The result is a parcial view of the historical and cultural development of this region, due that all of these studies raise specific subjects like isolated ideas (diet, lithic technology...). Our research, which parcial results of the first two years of researchs that we develop in a dossier, agglutinates all this information regarding a wide spatial context, using Geographical Information System (GIS), and considering a more diversity of sites, some of which are unpublished, like the small scale architectural features and prehispanic mines
The sixteenth-century indigenous societies who inhabited the Pacific plains of Panama have occupied an important place in discussions of social hierarchy in the Americas. Beginning with the discovery of the richly stocked tombs at Sitio Conte in the 1930s the origins of social hierarchy
and wealth accumulation has been a key theme in the Central Region of Panama. Although the most lavish burial hoards at Sitio Conte contained hundreds of sumptuary goods elaborately decorated with cosmological iconography, no other contemporary cemetery shows evidence for this degree of wealth
accumulation. The only other site with mortuary patterning suggestive of high ranking individuals is He-4, where high ranking mound burials were interred following the abandonment of the Sitio Conte cemetery. From a macroregional perspective the increase in access to prestige goods in mound
burials at He-4 contemporaneous with, or immediately after, the decline of Sitio Conte is best explained as a result of changes in political organization of the kind often associated with the growth and decline of chiefly polities.