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More than half a century ago a poor farm
laborer from the town of Rivas in southern Costa Rica (fig.1) reportedly
rose before dawn and walked to a neighboring town in search of rumored work.
Work was not available. Disappointed, the man trudged homeward in the mid-day
heat, passing a fabled gold-filled cemetery, where a group of men were digging
without success for treasure amid the graves. The laborer asked if he might
try, received permission, and in his first hole struck a treasure t hat instantly
made him the richest man in the valley. He went home, bought a large ranch
and his family attained high prominence in the community.
That is one of the oft-told tales of fact,
myth and legend swirling around the fabled Panteón de La Reina, a
ridge top burial ground considered to be one of the richest in southern Costa
Rica. Fig.1: Map of Central America, showing location
of Rivas site (after Quilter 2004).
In 1992, archaeologist Jeffrey Quilter
launched research on an ancient ruin at the Panteón's base in an attempt
to unearth and answer basic questions such as "when and for how long the
site was occupied." He also hoped to determine what activities took place
there, and the site's possible relationship to the storied necropolis.
Additionally, he sought to put the site, found in the 1980s and the subject
of research prior to Quilter's project, into a regional context with
similar-period sites.
His first-person account examines the seven-year
project, and includes the above paraphrased tale as well as others relating
to the Panteón. The study concludes with Quilter's determination that
the site, known as Rivas (fig.1) was occupied from AD 900 to 1300; and it
was indeed a ceremonial center and graveyard linked with the Panteón.
Sprightly and informative, the tale balances
informal language with academic theory and practice. Students of archaeological
method, theory, and technique will find the book useful, as it focuses heavily
on the way Quilter carried out his research; laced with the escapades of
paupers, princes, and archaeologists, the report also should appeal to a
general readership. Additionally, the book is a modest tale within a tale
- one chapter in the modern-day evolving struggle of a country to better
understand and protect its past.
Quilter is the director of Pre-Columbian
Studies and curator of the Pre-Columbian Collection at Dumbarton Oaks Research
Library and Collection in Washington, D.C. His book is considered to be the
only one in English on a single site in Costa Rica, a country known for
eco-tourism, which includes showcasing its cultural heritage.
The author provides personal insight into
the day-to-day complexities of managing and conducting international
archaeological projects - the necessity to juggle family commitments,
fundraising, personal and community relations, for example. The narrative
flows seamlessly from a colorful portrait of "getting there" by bus from
downtown San Jose; it moves through an overview of the history of Costa Rican
archaeology, into discoveries of ancient artifacts and unique cobble
architecture, and standing stones as they are found. There is also a detailed
section covering the analysis of recovered ceramics and stone tools, and
how this site at the foot of the Talamanca Mountain range fits into a larger
regional archaeological
scheme.
More than a hundred years of archaeological
work has shown that human occupation in Costa Rica stretches back some 10,000
years, Quilter explains. By 1,000 BC, small sedentary communities were probably
developing, based around a maize agriculture. Population growth and social
complexity followed, with an increasing emphasis on ceremony and the collection
of high-status goods such as jade and gold that often found its way into
elite burials. But overall, archaeological research has been limited,
particularly in southern Costa Rica. Late period sites, such as Rivas, developed
at about the time the Maya world in Guatemala to the north was collapsing.
 A typical example of Costa Rica's archaeology,
as Quilter notes, is displayed at Guayabo de Turrialba (fig.2), which contains
features similar to some of those found at Rivas. The country's only site
developed for tourism, and regarded as the nation's most important, Guayabo
housed about 10,000 people from 1,000 BC until the Spanish arrived in AD
1520. Although overlapping Classic Maya prominence to the north, Guayabo
- and other Costa Rican ruins - lack the spectacular cloud-touching temple
complex architecture of Mayan city-state centers such as Tikal or Copán.
Fig.2: View of Guyaba National Monument from the site's "Mirador,"
or observation point, showing walled mounds and cobbled features with the causeway in the background (photo: George Wisner).
Nestled in a cloud forest valley about
two hours east of San Jose, the 50-acre, partially excavated and reconstructed
Guayabo features an elaborate array of engineered aqueducts, plus a 21-foot-wide
cobbled roadway (fig.2). Along with these are stone water tanks, stone
sculptures, and raised earthen mounds surrounded by low stone walls that
researchers believe were covered by conical thatched roofs and used as dwellings,
and for ceremonial purposes. Such centers, Quilter suggests: "were designed
to impress the humble with the power and might of the elite and sometimes
included stone sculptures of warriors with weapons or trophy heads."
Other ambitious pre-Columbian stone artifacts
described by Quilter include a mysterious assemblage of large stone balls
(fig.3) (some weighing 30 tons), scattered throughout the country, often
on private land, primarily in the Diquís Delta area of southern Costa
Rica. While the purpose of the balls remains unknown, many were associated
with sacred places, commonly cemeteries. According to Francisco Corrales
U., Director General of the Museo de Nacional in San Jose (and a consultant
to Quilter on the Rivas project), a repatriation program is currently underway
to consolidate and properly display these enigmatic stone
balls.
Rivas attracted Quilter for a variety
of reasons. It was an outgrowth of his prior research in Peru on non-state
societies - and Costa Rica was not thought to have achieved a city-state
level of social development akin to that of the Maya. Many of the artifacts
and features examined at Rivas mirror those at Guayabo, but on a more modest
scale. Previous research at Rivas ha d shown that it was occupied by an
archaeological culture known as the Chiriqui. As such, it appeared to Quilter
to represent a good comparative match with other Chiriqui sites stretching
through southwest Costa Rica.
Fig.3: The author next to a stone ball at El Silencio, in
the Diquís Delta of southern Costa Rica (Reprinted from Cobble
Circles and Standing Stones by Jeffrey Quilter, University
of Iowa Press).
Quilter moves systematically through the
details of each field season from 1992 through the project's closure in 1998.
For each excavation discussed, he provides maps and diagrams, (fig.4), showing
the location of artifacts and cobble or soil features, and discusses how
they might have been made and deposited, along with possible interpretations.
All this material may surpass the attention span of casual readers, but should
prove of real interest to students of Central American archaeology.
Sampling during three months of fieldwork
in 1992 yielded domestic structures, a cemetery, some unusual stone architecture,
areas of cobble construction, and paved terraces, plus soil-related radiocarbon
dates fixing the site's age range. 1992 finds included cobble rings (possibly
associated with houses), petroglyphs, miniature stone barrel carvings,
animal-shaped figurines (fig.5), and ceramic pots under stone-capped graves.
Yet no gold or elaborate objects such as those found in other Chiriqui sites
were unearthed at Rivas, to suggest "high status" people were buried there.
More cobble features were uncovered in
1993. Then came a 1994 season beset with "gold fever." Although Quilter's
archaeological focus was not on gold, its specter floated in the background.
Finding a variety of gold artifacts could have, for example, more clearly
delineated the status of people buried at Rivas, besides better defining
local styles of gold jewelry, and helping to identify pieces imported from
Panama or the Mayan region. But gold, whose possibility was anticipated in
an excavation area marked by stone pillars suggestive of a cemetery on a
terrace near the Pantéon, failed to surface. Pre-excavation "gold
fever" was high; the crew focused on "loot day" - excavation day for the
suspected burials and recovery of golden "loot." The target
area apparently
was not a cemetery at all. An apparent misreading of archaeological clues
at Rivas, such as the unique cobble features and standing stones elsewhere
often associated with burials or sacred spaces, stimulated re-evaluation
of the site by Quilter and his associates, and led in later seasons to more
clearly determining its ceremonial significance. In other cases, a cobble
 feature thought to be part of a causeway, turned out to be part of a patio, says Quilter. Failure to find gold did provide some stress relief, even though it left the crew depressed. "At least we didn't have the headaches that come
with finding gold, such as getting people upset and greedy" Quilter notes.
Fig.4: Aerial view of the Rivas site at Operation
E. Deep excavations explored the oval structure near the bottom.
Trenches cutting across the oval and its walls, and excavations on
the southern wall are visible (Reprinted from Cobble Circles and
Standing Stones by Jeffrey Quilter, University of Iowa
Press)].
From 1995-1997, Quilter refined his knowledge
of the site. All the evidence gathered to that time pointed him - - "literally
and figuratively" to the Pantéon, known since the 19th century as
a source of gold, and repeatedly looted. However, its pockmarked surface
had not been studied by archaeologists, Quilter writes, and he felt the necessity
of extending research onto it. Deciding for altruistic and practical community
relations reasons against digging into the Pantéon burials, Quilter
in 1998 conducted limited mapping, ground survey, and looting-pattern inspection
mixed with shovel testing on the site. The Pantéon was something out
of an Indiana Jones movie, Quilter notes, with thick jungle vines, exotic
flowers, and "nasty plants." Crew members even encounterd a large snake more
than "two meters long and thick as a man's thigh....It surely was the guardian
of the tombs." Crew members found no gold, but did record nine basalt stone
pillars that would have required enormous labor to move onto the site.
Additionally, they found a pot sherd embossed with a fabric pattern, the
only evidence of textiles found during the project. The fabric may have been
pressed on the clay pottery during manufacture. While he can say little about
the Pantéon, itself, Quilter's research indicates that features below
it at Rivas were oriented toward the ridge top cemetery and rituals there
probably were conducted in harmony with it.
After fieldwork ended, analysis began
in earnest on a phenomenal amount of data. For example, more than 600,000
ceramic sherds alone were recovered and required processing, only a fraction
of which were diagnostically useful. Quilter's research left him reasonably
certain about some things: The site was populated by the Chiriqui sometime
around AD 900. After about 300 years of occupation, it underwent an undetermined
"radical transformation" from village to ceremonial center sometime between
AD 1250 and 1400. At that point, as Quilter observes, the "political/religious"
system that sustained Rivas and the Panteón as a ceremonial center
"was transformed into something else,'' and eventually collapsed (for reasons
still unknown). Both artifact analysis an d comparative ethnographic data
suggest that ritual eating and drinking were common at Rivas, possibly lasting
for days or weeks. Items traditionally found in fixed or permanent villages
such as metates or grinding slabs, are also absent from the site - suggesting
to Quilter that Rivas was not a fixed or subsistence-based
village.
Rivas functioned rather as a kind of elaborate
mortuary center, which according to Quilter, "grew out of earlier traditions
and humbler means of disposing of the mortal remains of the honored dead".
Overall, he views Rivas as "a powerful magnet for people to come to and engage
in displays and feasting to emphasize their lineage and their other claims
to power" - particularly when tied so closely to the Panteon. But lots of
questions remain for other archaeologists to answer, he concedes.
Fig.5: Chiriqui pottery, including incised Black Ware at top,
and painted alligator ware below (Holmes 1888). While Quilter's work there has ended,
the work of others is just beginning. Archaeologists from the National Museum
and the University of Costa Rica (UCR) have embarked on a major study that
could redefine the nature of ancient Costa Rican culture as outlined by Quilter.
In February 2004, a one-year remote sensing and field project was initiated
by UCR archaeologists and National Museum archaeologist, Ricardo Vazquez.
This is aimed at determining if the approximately 150 kilometers of intricately
engineered cobble roads, which form a rough arc of known sites on the country's
eastern side, actually comprise an extensive interconnecting road system
around the region, as some have speculated. Guayabo sits at the southern
end of the arc of sites being studied.
Making that connection, Ricardo Vazquez
said in an interview, could mean the culture that built those roads "is much
more complex than we thought." How complex that might be, remains speculative.
At the very least, it could restructure archaeological inquiry toward a wider
range of possibilities, Vazquez suggested, including the existence of an
ancient regional city-state complex linked by roads oriented toward far flung
trade. "It's a very exciting possibility," he said.
This project also begins as museum director
Corrales continues efforts to protect the country's heritage from being destroyed
by rapid industrial and tourism development. According to Corrales, in 1999,
the government eliminated more than a decade of laws requiring archaeological
impact studies before launching development projects. The law changes came
after developers claimed the studies were too expensive. Considerable concern
about site destruction and possible mishandling of construction projects
forced an appeal, Corrales said. As a compromise solution, developers must
check to see if there are any known sites near proposed development, and
can volunteer to undertake an impact study if they choose. If developers
damage a site, they may face criminal charges with penalties of up to three
years in jail.
Since archaeological sites often are difficult
to see, sometimes found only through subtle differences in soil types, protection
falls short of what Corrales would like. Yet, he sees the compromise as a
step in the right direction.
"This (the compromise) is very, very
positive," said Corrales, who will continue to seek firmer protection for
the country's past.
Reviewed by George Wisner
This article appears on pages 110-112 in Vol.4 No.2 of Athena
Review.
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