Contributions of the Proyecto Santa Maria (PSM) to the Prehistory of Central Pacific Panama and Beyond

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Unraveling the Mysteries of the Isthmo-Colombian Area’s Past: A Symposium in Honor of Archaeologist Richard Cooke and His Contributions" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

The PSM was a multidisciplinary project in Central Pacific Panama with the major fieldwork carried out during the years 1981 through 1986. The goals of the proposed research were to identify the relationships between settlement types and subsistence strategies in the range of environmental zones found in the Rio Santa Maria watershed from the first entry of humans into the region until the appearance of permanent large agricultural villages. In order to record a representative sample of sites, random transects (500 m wide) were selected for survey in each of the five environmental regions in the watershed stretching from the coast to the continental divide. Additional purposive surveys were made along coastal shorelines, around lakes and in rockshelters. 430 of the 510 sites documented during the course of the project were found in the transects. The results have challenged traditional views about the peopling of the region, and shed light on the early development of agriculture and complex societies in the Americas. This paper focuses on the impacts that PSM research has made on the prehistory of Central Pacific Panama, the Isthmo-Colombian region and the American tropics in general.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Unraveling the Mysteries of the Isthmo-Colombian Area’s Past: A Symposium in Honor of Archaeologist Richard Cooke and His Contributions   •
• Society for American Archaeology 89th Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA (2024)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 38497.0