The Role of Kinship Networks and the Lowland Ecology in the Interpretation of the Caribbean Archaeology of Greater Chiriquí

Summary

Archaeological investigations in the Caribbean region of Greater Chiriquí conducted over the last two decades have documented occupations dating to the second millennium BCE. Similarities in material culture suggest local and trans-isthmic cultural relationships within Greater Chiriquí and a pattern of scattered hamlets associated with the exploitation of marine and lowland ecosystems. In order to provide a model for this settlement pattern, we offer a theoretical model based on ethnohistorical accounts, ethnographic information and current biodemographic research based on living indigenous populations of southern Central America. Kin-based population structure is the result of a migratory behavior of a familial group in which fragmentation, movement and relocation occurs among populations of high mobility such as hunter-gathers and mobile agriculturalists. The information provided by these lines of research suggests that ecological conditions and kin-based population structure may be responsible for the population aggregation along the Caribbean coast of Central America and can explain similar behavior seen in the archaeological record of the Caribbean lowlands of Greater Chiriquí.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 83rd Annual Meeting, Washington, DC (2018)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 22554