- Project Id:
- LS-3
- Project Name:
- Cerro Juan Diaz Project
- Project Name (Abbreviation):
- CJD
- Project Description:
- A multi-annual archaeological project (1992-2001) documented human occupation from about 2200 to 400 years BP or 200 BCE-1600 CE. A human presence in the vicinity (at La Mula-Sarigua and Vampiros-1) goes back to early Paleoindian (Clovis) times (ca. 13,000 ya). Most of the fieldwork conducted at LS-3 between 1992 and 2000 concentrated on the southern (Los Santos) bank of the La Villa River around a hill called Cerro Juan Diaz, which rises 42 m above the riverine plain, and is a prominent local landmark. For this reason, the archaeological site is best known in the literature as 'Cerro Juan Diaz'. The closest modern towns are Los Santos and Chitre. Most of the site's occupation corresponds to the Precolumbian period, which formally ended in Panama in 1502 CE when Columbus established a settlement at the mouth of the Belen River on the Caribbean coast. A small area around the central hill, however, contains scant remains of an early historic occupation, which archaeologists attribute to the ephemeral 'pueblo de Indios' of Cubita (active around 1575 CE). The locality is well known to local looters, called 'huaqueros', who targeted the site in search of polychrome pottery and gold-work to sell. Consequently, it has been severely damaged by random illegal digging. Since the archaeological project terminated in 2001, these activities appear to have ceased. The site was visited by French archaeologist during his research project in the southern Azuero Peninsula (1968-1972). Ichon designated designated it LS-3. In 1980 a Chilean archaeologist, Carlos Thomas Winter, conducted a field school here financed by the Organization of American States. The whereabouts of the materials collected is unknown. In 1991, Cooke contacted Oscar Fonseca, then a professor in archaeology at the University of Costa Rica, with a view to identifying Costa Rican licenciatura thesis candidates who would be interested in initiating survey and testing. Consequently, Luis Alberto Sanchez and Adrian Badilla opened test excavations in the dry season of 1992, supported by the Short-term Felllowship program of the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute. They began by using the walls exposed by looter pits to identify buried features, including the floors of dwellings and burials that penetrated well into the basal rock. The first mortuary feature contained human remains buried in secondary manner in "packets" cut through bedrock. Two burial features produced examples of gold-work that, stylistically, pointed towards a date of 400-700 CE, in addition to pottery and human and animal remains. These finds stimulated the search for additional funds from the Smithsonian Institution's Scholarly Studies Program and the National Geographic Society.
- Project Data Access and Use Constraints:
- In 1991, Marcela Camargo Rios, then director of Panama's National Heritage Department at the Institute of Culture (Direccion Nacional de Patrmonio Historico del Instituto de Cultura) asked Smithsonian Tropical Research Archaeologist Richard Cooke, to organize a research project with two complementary goals: 1) conduct a program of excavations with a view to stopping looting and publicizing the how-and-why of modern field techniques in the local community, and 2) determine the antiquity, range of activities, and continuity of Native American occupation at Cerro Juan Diaz.
- Project Design:
- A field procedure was established based on the concept of the "operation", i.e., an area of archaeological potential signaled out for stratigraphic excavations. A total of 10 operations were laid down: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 21-22, and 31. The potential of all these operations for analysis was suggested by materials observed in the walls of looter pits. Operations 21-22 and 31 were so named because they were opened alongside looter pits that had already been numbered. Expansion of each operation progressed in accordance with the importance of the materials for resolving research questions deemed to be high priority by Cooke and his team. Another conditioning factor in the development of the project was the potential of the site for providing interesting data on which Latin American and other students could build research theses or projects at the licenciatura and doctoral level. Five theses used specific data sets obtained during the 1991-2001 project: 1) Luis Alberto Sanchez Herrera (licenciatura, University of Costa Rica, 1995 [culture history and pottery analysis]), 2) Diana Carvajal (licenciatura, Universidad Nacional de Colombia, 1998 [human use of molluscs in Operation 31]), 3) Claudia Patricia Diaz (licenciatura, Universidad de los Andes, Colombia, 1999 [physical anthropology in Operation 4]), 4) Maximo Jimenez Acosta (licenciatura, Universidad de Panama, 1999 [human exploitation of vertebrates]), 5) Julia Mayo Torno (doctorado, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, 2004 [shell artifact production in Operation 8]). After the Cerro Juan Diaz project closed down, Ilean Isaza (Boston University) conducted a survey of the lower valley of the La Villa river, which dissects the site. She determined that occupation extended to the Herrera side of the river, and that the total area occupied at LS-3 in Precolumbian time was about 150 ha. She located other sites of greater and larger area along the river, summarizing her data in her PhD thesis ("The Ancestors of Parita: Pre-Columbian Settlement Patterns in the lower La Villa River Valley, Azuero Peninsula, Panama", 2007. Excavations at Cerro Juan Diaz concentrated on identifying natural strata based on macroscopic evaluations of soil texture, color and content in the field. On very few occasions did these strata build up horizontally. Rather, strata proved to be generally irregular in area and thickness, frequently cutting into each other. This is typical of a site where human occupation spanned at least 1800 years, and where a single locality on the site would contain evidence for a great variety of activities, such as: dwellings, refuse lenses and dumps, burials, and intentional fills. If strata were deep and seemingly uniform, they were subdivided into arbitrary "levels", usually of 5 cm thickness. In complex situations Harris matrices were used to track the sequences of strata. The concept of the "feature" (F.) was widely used in the Operations ("rasgo" in Spanish, hence the initial R.). A 'feature' was taken to be any observable anomaly that could be defined spatially but was not portable. Logically, features varied greatly with regard to size, space, integrity, cultural content, antiquity, and relations with other features. Some were mortuary. But many had other functions, i.e., floors, post-holes, pits, and aggregations of stones, bones, shells or other materials that defined a discrete space. The functions of some features could be ascertained objectively. Others, however, could not be interpreted.
- Project Owner:
- Richard Cooke
- Contributor:
- Luis Alberto Sanchez
- Contributor:
- Adrian Badilla
- Begin Date:
- 1992
- End Date:
- 2001
- Project Location:
- Near north-east coast of the Azuero Peninsula, Herrera and Los Santos provinces, Republic of Panama
- Region:
- Central Pacific Panama and cultural region of Gran Cocle
- Country Code:
- Panama
- Latitude:
- 0
- Longitude:
- 0
| PID | Type | Title | Metadata | URL |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| si_803 | General Location Map |
| Download | |
| si_804 | Cerro Juan Diaz Map |
| Download | |
| si_805 | Archaeological sites identified by Isaza in the lower La Villa |
| Download |