Abrigo Capacho
- Folder Type:
- Archaeology Site
- Primary Title:
- Abrigo Capacho
- Summary Description:
- Abrigo Capacho is a small rock-shelter used by Pre-Columbian people for burying their dead around the time of the Spanish conquest in central Panama (1516-1530 CE). It is located in the low Caribbean cordillera of Coclé province, in the District of Toabré (UTM: 570853W-967477N). Its site designation is Pn-62. The cultural deposit was discovered in 2003 by John Griggs during the archaeological survey for the Western Canal Watershed project. The area around the shelter was selected by the Panama Canal Authority for dam construction and permanent flooding, but this development project has been placed in abeyance until further notice. The importance of Abrigo Capacho lies in its contemporaneity with the conquest when native society was battling to re-adjust after the extreme initial violence of the invasion. The hill and mountain country to the north of Penonomé, Coclé--a Hispanicized Native American town—was home to dispersed hamlets, whose residents spoke a dialect of the Ngäbere language of Chibchan lineage in 1972 CE and probably did before Spanish contact. It is argued that some Pre-Columbian traditions survived in this region for a generation or two after contact, while new traditions were appearing. This change is exemplified by finds in Abrigo Capacho of both potteries painted in the tradition of the Mendoza style of the Greater Coclé semiotic tradition, and vessels of the Limón Ware, which appears to be of non-local origin, and introduced by native people from the further east. Abrigo Capacho is one of the many niches and shelters formed by large rocks that extend along a ridge emanating from Cerro Escuera in a protected forested area near the small town of Lurá Centro. A preliminary sounding came across a pottery burial urn closed by an upturned bowl with a flattened and everted rim. This find stimulated the enlargement of the test pit and led to the finding of more than 40 pottery vessels. Some potential lids to the urns were stored together in a small pit approximately 2 m wide and 0.6 m deep. Consequently, Abrigo Capacho was declared maximum priority for salvage (“capacho” is the regional name for a nightjar). Contract archaeologists John Griggs and Luís Alberto Sánchez removed the cultural remains, which are currently stored in the archaeology laboratory at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, Calzada de Amador, Panama City. If the Autoridad de Canal de Panamá executes its plan to build a facility for a permanent exhibit on this interesting site, all the vessels will be transferred there. Aureliano Valencia has cleaned a restored some of the complete vessels. The archaeologists identified three stratigraphic zones in the Capacho shelter. The first consisted of a group of burial urns along with their pottery lids. Typologically, they belong to the Cortezo Red-Buff group. The upturned vessels used as lids included bowls with in-sloping and out-sloping rims, with or without short pedestals. This pottery style is particularly abundant at sites around the Pre-Columbian and early Colonial town of Natá in the Pacific lowlands of Coclé. The second stratigraphic zone formed a pavement stuffed full of human bones in pieces, charcoal, and sherds from Cortezo and Mendoza type vessels. The third zone was a layer of soft clay-rich earth in the least accessible área of the shelter, in which was found a group of vessels, which included a shape profile that is common in the Cortezo Ware: a bowl with an everted and flattened rim. In this case, the rim was painted with a circumferential motif consisting of a geometricized crocodile head pattern, which under “design variety C” is frequently reported in the Mendoza pottery style. A damaged urn of Griggs’ Limón type in association points to the contemporaneity of the two very different styles of pottery. When the urns were micro-excavated in the laboratory, they were found to contain secondary human burials in variable states of preservation although the teeth were well preserved. Claudia Díaz estimated, on the basis of the teeth, that the mortuary sample consists of at least five individuals comprising infant, sub-adult and adult developmental stages. The only surviving presumed mortuary arts other than pottery were: 1) a small shell ornament shaped like a frog; 2) a small cowrie shell (Cypraea); 3) a shell pendant probably depicting a long-tailed mammal; 4) a circular shell bead;5) a probable shell animal pendant; 6) a large fragment of Spondylus shell, apparently S. calcifer; 7) a smaller shell fragment perhaps pearl oyster (Pinctada mazatlanica). These articles were found in the compacted third layer of Abrigo Capacho and vouch for exchange between the Caribbean slopes of the Coclé cordillera and the Pacific coast. The shell frog is very similar in shape to an example from a grave in Operation 4 at Cerro Juan Díaz, Los Santos province, which belongs to the same general time period. Ceramic typology and contextualization at individual sites indicate that the Cortezo and Mendoza style ceramic vessels of the Gran Coclé tradition represent the final Pre-Columbian centuries and a few generations beyond contact. This assessment is in disharmony, however, with a collagen date of 850 ± 60 BP (1σ calibration: AD 1160-1260), which was run on a human tooth found inside Vessel #5 assigned to Cortezo Red-Buff. There is ample evidence in central Panama for discrepancies among the dates for skeletons buried in the same feature. If these discrepancies are not due to technical inconsistencies in carbon dating with collagen, it pints to the keeping of the remains of ancestors long after their date of death.
- Identifier: Site ID
- PN-62
| PID | Type | Title | Metadata | URL |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| si_1244259 | Capacho.jp2 |
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