The earliest evidence of metallurgy found in the Isthmus of Panama can be dated between the second and third centuries CE. This technology, first mastered by goldsmiths in the Andean highlands in the second millennium BCE, slowly spread to the north, eventually reaching the Isthmo-Colombian area, which corresponds to present-day Ecuador, Colombia, Panama, Costa Rica, and pockets of Honduras and Nicaragua. The cultural process by which the art of metallurgy was disseminated throughout the region must have been complex—as well as multiethnic and multilingual—resulting in the emergence of a panoply of regional styles.
Despite the cultural differences among these ancient societies, the symbolic meaning of gold—particularly its association with cosmological and political power—was shared across communities. The metal was not conceived as currency in the Americas, and the abundance of gold nose rings found among the Tairona, Quimbaya, and Muisca cultures of ancient Colombia (1–1500 CE) suggests that its use was generalized among large segments of ancient Isthmo-Colombian societies. Within hierarchical societies, ornaments for important individuals were generally larger and flashier than others. Moreover, the subject matter and the styles associated with authority and power remained consistent among goldsmithing societies in the region over time.
Stylistic similarities reveal that ancient Panamanian goldwork was informed by Colombian prototypes. Goldsmiths from these regions shared similar techniques, design principles, and subject matter. Among these visual conventions is the principle of complementary or opposing elements, combined zoomorphic and/or anthropomorphic figures, designs that allowed multiple readings, and abbreviated references to an entity or idea by means of the graphic representation of one of its parts. Such themes were not exclusive to gold objects, appearing as well in painted designs for polychrome ceramics, one of the most sophisticated artistic manifestations of ancient Panamanians.
The earliest gold works found in Panama were created in what archaeologists refer to as the Initial Style. Its formal repertoire features small double eagles and unidentified curly-tailed animals (in some examples probably coatimundis) in single pendants or conjoined sets ; . These are similar to objects from Caribbean Colombia, such as conjoined curly-tailed animal casts from the Sinú River region and avian ornaments from the Tairona region. People of these cultures were key to the spread of Quimbaya metallurgic knowledge, from the Colombian heartland into the Isthmus of Panama via the Cauca and Magdalena Rivers and the Gulf of Urabá on the Caribbean Sea. Initial Style works found throughout Panama and Costa Rica evidence a robust and extensive panregional network of maritime trade. For example, a fourth-century CE stone sculpture of a warrior holding a trophy head, found in the Diquís region of southern Costa Rica and western Panama , prominently displays a curly-tailed animal pendant as part of his military regalia.
Ancient Panamanian gold emerged during the third and fourth centuries CE, when the Tonosí style of ceramics was increasingly popular, and gold conveyed elevated social status alongside Spondylus shell. Both types of ornaments have been found in caches of Tonosí funerary urns in Central Panama. Human remains were buried inside double-tiered globular urns featuring fine parallel lines that frame two almost identical pictorial planes. The scenes represent the burial of a chieftain carried on a litter by his subjects or the burial of the exhumed remains for which the urn was made.
The use of gold nose rings was common among the diverse cultures of the Isthmo-Colombian area, but gold artifacts in the Initial Style seem to have been reserved for high-status individuals. These objects unequivocally signaled to locals and foreigners alike exactly who was a member of the elite as well as who was a community’s principal leader. By the fifth century, the iconography of the Initial Style had developed into a mature system of visual representation that was present across the entire region. Anthropomorphic figures cast in gold were part of the formal repertoire of the International Style, so called for their wide distribution through Central America. Figurines cast in Central Panama feature stylized double-spiral ears, bracelets, and anklets . Occasionally, these figures carry lime flasks (poporos) and utensils for the administration of hallucinogenic substances like those appearing in Quimbaya works from Central Colombia.
Another common ornament in the International Style features an anthropomorphic figure wearing a prominent headdress. This motif, first found among the Sinú in Colombia, also surfaced in Central Panama among the Coclé ; . The focal point of these figures is a naturalistic human head wearing a “winged” headdress with crenellations, understood to be a stylized representation of deer antlers. Instead of human limbs, these figures have six appendages: The top four depict the wings and talons of a predatory bird, while the bottom two form the tail fins of a fish. These appendages echo and mirror each other and the headdress above, resolving the composition with elegant balance. This iconography, drawing on bird, mammal, and fish imagery, conveys the chieftain’s role in preserving the terrestrial and cosmological order and his power to access the worlds above and below. A variant of this pendant takes the form of a seahorse , which refers to the virility of the wearer, since it is the male of that species that carries and delivers offspring. Other variants feature alligators with split tails biting a decorative plaque that fans out like the antler headdress noted above.
By the eighth century, these figures had evolved into what archaeologists have called the crocodile god or the saurian (lizardlike) deity, which feature a composite of crocodile, deer, and bat attributes and are frequently represented in ceramics and gold. A large pendant with an inset emerald (Penn Museum: 40-13-27) found in a burial at Sitio Conte, Panama, not only demonstrates the skill of ancient goldsmiths but also evidences the exchange networks that existed between the ancient peoples of Panama and Colombia, where these precious stones are abundant.
Until 700 CE, cast gold objects in the International Style coexisted with local Panamanian works, such as the openwork and filigree pendants in the form of toads and other creatures found at Sitio Conte and Playa Venado, Panama (Dumbarton Oaks: P.C.B.372; Art Institute of Chicago: 1969.792), a style that probably originated in the Darién region of eastern Panama and northwestern Colombia. The objects found at Sitio Conte and El Caño, Panama, represent the peak of Isthmian metallurgy. Large smooth cuffs and disks embossed with the saurian deity demonstrate the hammering skills of local goldsmiths (Penn Museum: 40-13-29; 40-13-26). Other examples of this Panamanian tradition include gold fittings for ornaments made of stone (such as pyrite and serpentine), teeth, bone, or resin. Such ornaments include lavish ear rods and an extraordinary figurative pendant featuring the shamanic transformation of a chieftain into two pelicans (Fundación El Caño: Objeto Digital 532).
The latest wave of Isthmian metallurgy before the Spanish Conquest surfaced with the Veraguas-Gran Chiriquí Group that developed in the western part of Panama between the eleventh and sixteenth centuries. Pendants in the form of eagles ; , frogs , and sharks join embossed circular pectorals as key elements of this repertoire. The extraordinary trajectory of gold in the Isthmus of Panama is crowned by the Parita-style twin warriors . These fearsome individuals may be the precursors of the divine solar and lunar twins that were produced by the union of Noncomala and Rutbe, creator gods of the indigenous Ngäbe-Buglé people of present-day Panama. These figures—a mature expression of the Sitio Conte tradition—are the most elaborate Panamanian gold objects cast before the Spanish Conquest in the sixteenth century.
In memory of Dr. Richard Cooke.