IOT!E 
UNIVERSITY   PRESS 
The American Society for Ethnohistory 
Ancient Panama: Chiefs in Search of Power   by Mary Helms 
Review by: Richard G. Cooke 
Ethnohistory, Vol. 31, No. 2 (Spring,  1984), pp. 115-116 
Published by: Duke University Press 
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/482059 
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BOOK REVIEWS 
Ancient Panama: Chiefs in Search of Power. By Mary Helms. (Austin: University of 
Texas Press, 1979. xiv + 228 pp., illustrations, maps, tables, appendix, notes, 
bibliography, index. $16.95 cloth.) 
This carefully produced and fluently written book analyzes Panamanian 
Precolumbian chiefdoms by collating ethnohistorical, archaeological and 
ethnographic data. Though one can sympathize with the author's efforts to 
make sense of "disparate bits of data" (p. 24), and though her observations are 
often sound, she uses documentary and archaeological evidence unevenly, and 
resorts to risky extrapolations from the ethnographic record. These deficiencies 
make it difficult to accept her major assumptions (concerning symbols of 
power, esoteric knowledge and long-distance trade). 
The first two chapters describe Panama in the sixteenth century, with special 
emphasis on the "fields of influence" of the different chiefdoms. Accuracy is 
important in brief syntheses.  Helms states (p. 9) that "Panama gives little 
evidence   of ceremonial   structures,"   whereas   El   Cano   (Code)   and 
Barriles (Chiriqui) were obviously used for ceremonial purposes (R. Torres de 
Arauz and O. Velarde, Patrimonio Historico (Panama), 2(1): 201-224, 1978; 
and O. Linares and P. D. Sheets, Adaptive Radiations in Prehistoric Panama, 
Peabody Mus. Mono. 5: 44-55, 1980). Citrus fruits were not cultivated in 
Precolumbian America, nor did the Panamanian Indians dine upon "pork" or 
"pheasants" (p. 11). 
Helms attempts to fit Panamanian chiefdoms into Polynesian typologies. 
She concludes that they were moderately stratified, and that elites fought 
constantly over rank. Linares reached a similar conclusion: warfare, trade and 
ritual games enabled budding big men to jockey for rank, resource redundancy 
put constraints on conquest; and proximity to trade routes consolidated chiefly 
influence (Ecology and the Arts in Ancient Panama, Studies in Precolumbian 
Art and Archaeology, Dumbarton Oaks, 1977). 
The author could have bolstered these ideas with more references (e.g. J. T. 
Medina, El Descubrimiento del Oceano Pacifico, Tomo 2: 287-317, 445 ff., 
Santiago de Chile, 1913). Three important problems deserved elaboration: (1) 
"buffer-zones" between chiefdoms, (2) cross-cordillera contacts, and (3) the 
role of restricted alluvial zones (see Medina 1913: 201; O. Linares, P. D. 
Sheets and E. J. Rosenthal, Science, 187 (4172): 137-145, 1975; and R. G. 
Cooke, Adas IV Symp. Inter, de Ecologia Tropical, Panama, pp. 919-973, 
1979). The maps are too schematic. Helms shows Comogre's territory abutting 
onto the River Bayano (p. 41), whereas his prestige depended upon control of 
the valley itself. 
In Chapter 3, Helms proposes that the "Panamanian political order was 
linked by sacred as well as secular expressions of power." Though her idea 
that saurians depicted on goldwork and pottery are lizards, rather than 
crocodilians, might be partially correct, she belabours her argument, and her 
zoology needs polishing (the borriguero, pp. 98-100, is Ameiva ameiva, a very 
mundane commensal). 
115 
116 BOOK REVIEWS 
More serious is the author's insistence (Chapters 4-5) that Colombia was the 
heartland of Panamanian knowledge: cast gold pieces were imported thence, 
while Panamanian chiefs acquired prestige by imbuing themselves with esoteric 
information imparted by Colombian savants. 
Panamanian gold and pottery styles share so many iconographic elements 
(S. K. Lothrop, Code, Memoirs Peabody Mus. of Arch, and Eth., vols. 7 and 
8, 1937 and 1942) that it is quite illogical to assume that Isthmian cast gold is 
Colombian and the polychrome ceramics local (see O. F. Linares, 1977). (real 
trade pieces are identifiable because they look different!) Gold mining was a 
very important activity in early Colonial Panama (A. Castillero C, Estructuras 
Sociales y Economicas de Veragua desde sus Origenes Historicos. Panama, 
1967), the Museo del Hombre Panameho possesses two exploded lost-wax 
moulds from Veraguas, and Mexican-Mayan traders came to the Isthmus to 
barter for gold pieces (Leon Fernandez, Documentos Especiales sobre los 
limites entre Costa Rica y Colombia, vol. 5, Paris, 1886; and S. K. Lothrop, 
The Sigua: Southernmost Aztec Outpost, Proc. 8th. American Scient. Cong., 
Vol. II, 1942). 
It is true that, archaeologically, Panama east of the Bayano and northern- 
most Colombia were indisputably linked, while the Kuna were once more 
widely dispersed over the area. But there is an important difference between an 
ancestral Kuna chief visiting a shaman kinsman on the other side of the 
mountain (hardly a long-distance journey), and a big man from Nata crossing 
Panama Bay into a linguistically and culturally distinct zone. One simply 
cannot use modern Kuna ethnography and Oviedo's comments on Darien 
uncritically to interpret the archaeology of central Panama, and one should be 
circumspect when using Panamanian Central Region ceramics and gold dated 
to a thousand years before the Conquest, to analyze Kuna myths. 
Richard G. Cooke Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute 
Persistence and Exchange: A Symposium. By Roland W. Force and Brenda Bishop 
(eds.). (Ecological Problems of the Traditional Societies of the Pacific Region). 
(Honolulu: Pacific Science Association, 1981. ix + 155 pp., papers, abstracts, 
commentaries, maps, tables, photographs, notes, references cited. $10.00 paper.) 
The ten papers in this volume are among a larger set from a symposium 
entitled "The Persistence of Exchange Systems as Adaptive Mechanisms in 
Ecological Change," organized by Roland Force. Five deal with Micronesia, 
two each with Polynesia and Melanesia, and one with resource management. 
Included also are four papers headed "Commentaries" as well as the twenty- 
three abstracts submitted by prospective participants in the symposium. The 
order of presentation is alphabetical by author's surname, following a preface 
by Brenda Bishop and an introduction by Force. 
Six papers describe how systems of exchange and resource utilization have 
been modified or have persisted in the face of other economic, political, and 
environmental changes in Yap (W. H. Alkire), New Britain (D. R. Counts), 
Ponape (J. L. Fischer), Palau (M. T. and R. W. Force), the Gilbert Islands (K. 
E. Knudson), and Fiji (S. Koojman). The point is made that students of 
persistence and change must distinguish what happens under conditions of