Isla Butler
- Folder Type:
- Archaeology Site
- Primary Title:
- Isla Butler
- Summary Description:
- Isla Butler, like Isla Carranza, is an island that forms in Lake Alhajuela in central Panama during the dry season from any time in December or January to any time in April or May. (This lake was formerly known as Lake “Madden”). The lake is a human-made impoundment that formed after the damming of the River Chagres in the early 1930s in order to regulate fresh water flow for the Panama Canal. As the water level drops in the lake, islands appear and continue to multiply and grow in size until the rains return. Little by little, wide areas of yellow-red clay and rocks appear. Artifacts and archaeological features are exposed continually. When the lake level drops unusually low, as in El Niño years, the areas of cultural debris become larger and raise the possibilities that new materials will be found. Since the lake’s creation in 1934, Panama Canal employees and casual visitors have collected pre-Columbian and Colonial artifacts. The Isthmian Anthropology Association of Florida State University, and, before them, the Panama Archaeological Society, used to keep log books of archaeological operations and assigned individual sites a number. But most of these data appear now to be lost. Butler Island, as it was known in Canal Zone days, was one of the localities where Paleoindian fluted points were found by vocational archaeologists in the 1950s. The basal section of a fish-tail fluted point was recovered on this island by Dan Sander who was instrumental in alerting academic archaeologists about early human sites around the lake. When Junius Bird from the American Museum of Naural History in New York came to Panama in 1972 and established a camp at Lake Madden, he would go out with employees, friends and anthropology society members to the lake in search of additional localities. This endeavor resulted in the find of another fish-tail point on Isla Butler by Elmer Díaz in 1975. This point preserved a complete but probably re-sharpened blade. It was left in the Museo Reina Torres de Araúz by Junius Bird but appears to have been mislaid or lost. Fortunately, a plaster cast was made of it. On a field trip with students from the Canal Zone Branch of Florida State University in 1976, Richard Cooke happened upon a circular archeological feature exposed in the clay and, with the students removed, its contents. The pit contained four clay vessels, of which two used plastic decoration that combined incised fillets appliqués and incised areas, whilst one was a jar with black-painted decoration. Carbon residues scraped off one of the vessels was dated to 1990 ±40 BP, δ13C: -17.5, calibrated at 2σ to BC 60-90 CE. Forms and decorations similar to the vessels from Isla Butler were reported by Matthew and Marion Stirling on Taboguilla Island in the 1950s. In 1988, Anthony Ranere, Richard Cooke, and Colombian archaeologist Gonzalo Correal, well-known for his First America research at El Abra, Tequendama, and Tibitó, visited Lake Alhajuela. They found a large scatter of stone flakes, several of which bore the characteristic features of bifacial point reduction (Butler-West End). One large biface represents a medial stage in point preparation. Ranere argues that it is not clear whether the points being made at this workshop would have finished as Clovis or Fish-tail.
| PID | Type | Title | Metadata | URL |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| si_1259762 | Butler 1 |
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| si_1259763 | Butler & Carranza rims |
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| si_1259764 | Butler 3 |
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| si_1259766 | Butler final |
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