Ecology and the Arts in Ancient Panama: On the Development of Social Rank and Symbolism in the Central Provinces

Olga Linares offers a reinterpretation of the Classic rank-societies of the central Panamanian provinces based on archaeological, ecological, iconographic, ethnohistoric, and ethnographic evidence, and concludes that the art style of this area used animal motifs as a metaphor in expressing the qualities of aggression and hostility characteristic of social and political life in the central provinces.