Monagrillo is an archaeological site

Archaeological site

An archaeological site is a place in which evidence of past activity is preserved , and which has been, or may be, investigated using the discipline of archaeology and represents a part of the archaeological record.Beyond this, the definition and geographical extent of a 'site' can vary widely,...

 in south-central Panama

Panama

Panama , officially the Republic of Panama , is the southernmost country of Central America. Situated on the isthmus connecting North and South America, it is bordered by Costa Rica to the northwest, Colombia to the southeast, the Caribbean Sea to the north and the Pacific Ocean to the south. The...

 with ceramics that have been shown by radiocarbon dating

Radiocarbon dating

Radiocarbon dating is a radiometric dating method that uses the naturally occurring radioisotope carbon-14 to estimate the age of carbon-bearing materials up to about 58,000 to 62,000 years. Raw, i.e. uncalibrated, radiocarbon ages are usually reported in radiocarbon years "Before Present" ,...

 to have an occupation range of about 2500 BCE—1200 BCE. The site is important because it provides the earliest example of ceramics in Central America along with one of the earliest examples of maize

Maize

Maize known in many English-speaking countries as corn or mielie/mealie, is a grain domesticated by indigenous peoples in Mesoamerica in prehistoric times. The leafy stalk produces ears which contain seeds called kernels. Though technically a grain, maize kernels are used in cooking as a vegetable...

 agriculture in the region. The site lies along Panama's most fruitful seacoast. and reached a maximum living area of 1.4 ha

Setting in Parita Bay

The site lies along or very near the modern shoreline of Parita Bay, on the Pacific side of Panama near the base of the Azuero Peninsula

Azuero Peninsula

Azuero Peninsula is a large peninsula in southern Panama. It is surrounded by the Pacific Ocean in the south; the Pacific and Gulf of Montijo to the west, and by the Gulf of Panama in the east...

. It is 5 km northeast of Chitre

Chitre

Chitre is a village development committee in Parbat District in the Dhawalagiri Zone of central Nepal. At the time of the 1991 Nepal census it had a population of 2229.-References:chitre vdc a Beautiful vdc of parbat district ....

, the capital of Herrera

Herrera

-Places:*Herrera de Pisuerga, a town in the province of Palencia, Spain*Herrera Province, Panama*Herrera, Spain, a municipality in the province of Sevilla*Enrique Olaya Herrera Airport*Herrera, Entre Ríos in Argentina*Herrera, Santiago del Estero in Argentina...

 province. It sits 1.5 km south of the Parita River on a strip of land that juts into what is today a salt flat.

The shallow, silt-filled Parita Bay is forms the northwest corner of the Gulf of Panama

Gulf of Panama

The Gulf of Panama is a gulf in the Pacific Ocean, near the southern coast of Panama. It has a maximum width of , a maximum depth of and the size of . The Panama Canal connects the Gulf of Panama with the Caribbean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean...

. Large populations of mollusks, crustaceans, and fish thrive in the bay’s modern mud flats and have done so for the past 7000 years, according to archaeological evidence. Mangrove

Mangrove

Mangroves are various kinds of trees up to medium height and shrubs that grow in saline coastal sediment habitats in the tropics and subtropics – mainly between latitudes N and S...

s line the shore which is backed by low-lying swamps, marshes, and salt flats. Plains then encircle much of this low area and extend inland 20 to 30 km. Major river systems with wide floodplains cut through the plains and discharge into the bay.

Nearby archaeological sites include Cerro Mangote, Cueva de los Ladrones, Aguadulce Shelter, Zapotal, and Sarigual.

Site Description

Monagrillo measures 210 m by 85 m and “consists of two low, parallel ridges separated by a central trough." The ridges contain archaeological deposits averaging 2 m in height along the main axis.

History of Research

Matthew W. Stirling discovered and tested the site in 1948, and Gordon R. Willey and Charles R. McGimsey followed with major excavations in 1952. Approximately 435 sq m were excavated during the 1948 and 1952 field seasons. In 1975, Anthony J. Ranere excavated a 1 m by 2 m cut from the site’s south ridge and a 2 m by 2 m cut from the north ridge.

Interpretation

Findings by Ranere in 1975 support conclusions of Willey and McGimsey 23 years earlier that during initial occupation, the site was situated along the active shoreline of Parita Bay. Water-worn potsherds of the lowest layers indicate that both ridges were subject to flooding during spring tides, suggesting that occupation was not initially year-round . Later, the modern coastline “was established through the buildup of an offshore bar”, and the ridges of the site became surrounded by a water-filled lagoon . Hearths, post-holes, and pits became common, and shell, bone, pottery, charcoal, and stone tools became more concentrated, suggesting a more permanent occupation once the ridges were safe from flooding . Ranere and Hansell (1978) also argue that the abandonment of the site by its occupants later coincides with the lagoon’s being silted in and its conversion into a salt flat. Placement of Monagrillo maximized access to aquatic resources; whereas terrestrial resources may have been accessed through small camp sites on the plains (such as the Aguadulce Shelter) or in the foothills (such as La Cueva de los Ladrones) .

Ceramics and Stone Tools

Emphasizing open bowls and neckless jars, Monagrillo phase pottery is simple, somewhat crude , and poorly fired . The ceramics are monochrome. Decoration, when it occurs, generally reflects ‘plastic’ techniques confined to “a rather primitive-looking meander-incising” occasionally combined with “excising in scroll patterns” . The oldest ceramics were reliably dated to around 2500 BCE . Monagrillo pottery continues to be the oldest known pottery in Panama as well as in all of Central America.

Ferdon (1955) reports that other artifacts, which all consist of stone, are also simple. Stone choppers and scrapers are crude percussion flaked specimens, while their grinding stones reveal little or no shaping before use . The heavy reliance in stone tools on naturally-shaped cobbles is a trait clearly surviving from the earlier and preceramic Cerro Mangote culture as reported on by McGimsey in 1956 . Given the presence of shell, it is surprising that there is a total absence of shell artifacts .

Faunal remains

Occupants of Monagrillo relied heavily upon aquatic food sources. Shell representing “mud flat and/or sandy, shallow-water species” was found in large quantities, but it “tended to occur in concentrated lenses rather than in an evenly distributed fashion” . Oysters were initially dominant, but when “the silt-burdened lagoon floor was formed,” surrounding conditions became favorable for the proliferation of clams. These became more common in the cultural layer . Later, the lagoon became silted in and oysters became common in the bay. The frequency of oysters again surpassed that of clams

CLaMS

CLaMS is a modular chemistry transport model system developed at Forschungszentrum Jülich, Germany. CLaMS was first described by McKenna et al. and was expanded into three dimensions by Konopka et al....

 in the diets of the occupants . Whereas only 37 fish vertebrae and 50 crab claws were reported following early excavations, fieldwork in 1975 recovered thousands of “small sardine-sized” fish vertebrae and “hundreds upon hundreds” of crab claws . It has been suggested that the site’s occupants used fine-meshed nets and watercraft . Recovered in the 1975 excavations were 97 mammal bones. White-tailed deer (Odocoileus) accounted for 70% of the mammal remains, while collared peccary

Collared Peccary

The collared peccary is a species of mammal in the family Tayassuidae that is found in North, Central, and South America. They are commonly referred to as javelina, saíno or báquiro, although these terms are also used to describe other species in the family...

 (Tayassu tajacu), agouti

Agouti

Agouti refers to a number of species of rodents as well as a number of genes affecting coat coloration in several different animals. Agouti fur contains a pattern of pigmentation in which individual hairs have several bands of light and dark pigment with black tips.* When referring to a rodent,...

 (Dasyprocta puntata), cottontail rabbit

Cottontail rabbit

The cottontail rabbits are among the 16 lagomorph species in the genus Sylvilagus, found in the Americas.In appearance, most cottontail rabbits closely resemble the wild European Rabbit...

 (Sivilagus sp.), and armadillo

Armadillo

Armadillos are New World placental mammals, known for having a leathery armor shell. Dasypodidae is the only surviving family in the order Cingulata, part of the superorder Xenarthra along with the anteaters and sloths. The word armadillo is Spanish for "little armored one"...

 (Dayspus sp.) were also present . While animal protein was mostly acquired through aquatic sources, deer also provided a significant amount .

Floral remains

Some plant remains have also been recovered from Monagrillo, resulting in an important late discovery. Large quantities of charred plant remains were found, consisting largely of wood charcoal, but also including a few fragments of palm nuts . During the 1975 excavations, Ranere’s team searched carefully for remains of maize, but none were found . However, it argued that the presence of cobbles with grinding edges suggests that occupants did process and consume plant foods. In 1998, Piperno and Holst reported that phytolith

Phytolith

Some plants can take up silica in the soil, whereupon it is deposited within different intracellular and extracellular structures of the plant. After these plants decay, silica is redeposited in the soil in the form of phytoliths , which are rigid, microscopic structures of varying sizes and shapes...

s and pollen

Pollen

Pollen is a fine to coarse powder containing the microgametophytes of seed plants, which produce the male gametes . Pollen grains have a hard coat that protects the sperm cells during the process of their movement from the stamens to the pistil of flowering plants or from the male cone to the...

 were not recovered from Monagrillo. However, an edge-ground cobble recently recovered “from just beneath the surface” contained maize and starch

Starch

Starch or amylum is a carbohydrate consisting of a large number of glucose units joined together by glycosidic bonds. This polysaccharide is produced by all green plants as an energy store...

 grains resembling manioc. A different edge-ground cobble recovered from 20–30 cm below the surface “yielded palm phytoliths and a starch grain characteristic of maize” . These admittedly limited results seem to indicate the presence of maize and possibly manioc at Monagrillo, something that had previously been elusive to researchers.