RELIGIOUS ORGANIZATION AND POLITICAL STRUCTURE IN PREHISPANIC SOUTHERN COSTA RICA

[摘要] Ritual and religion have received considerable attention as influential factors in the development of political complexity in anthropological theory. The present investigation evaluates the role of religion in supra-local polity formation in the Upper Térraba Basin of southern Costa Rica. Regional-scale evidence on population, soils, topography, petroglyphs, funerary features, prestige items and buffer zones was collected through an 85 km2 intensive survey. The data was used to explore the relationships between political organization and demographic changes, agricultural productivity, ritual and warfare.Following an initial demographic explosion beginning at 300 B.C., small polities rapidly emerge and limited wealth accumulation and inter-polity raiding characterize the dynamics of that period. After this, population numbers remain relatively stable during the whole sequence up to Spanish conquest, but around 1000 A.D., a regional polity emerges with the local community of Rivas as its political center.Lack of buffer zones and a dispersed population pattern evidence that warfare could not have been a prominent factor in late period political organization.A regional perspective indicates that religion and ritual were not the main forces attracting populations to nucleated centers. Burial rituals played an important role in enforcing kinship rules and the general social integration of the region. Late period petroglyphs appear associated with private and secluded rituals throughout all communities. Rivas was not excluded from these dynamics, but no evidence that it played a central role within this system was found. An agricultural emphasis in the cultivation of alluvial lands and preliminary evidence of local exchange suggest that a more productive economic system with a higher intensity of exchange between local communities, as well as craft specialization, developed during the Chiriquí period (1000-1550 A.D.).The emergence of Rivas, a larger and more powerful central community than any that had existed before, seems to be strongly related to changes in economics, on the one hand, and kinship and social relations, on the other. Important changes in the organization and technology of agricultural production, the decentralization of funerary rituals, and an increase in household size coincide with the emergence of this unprecedented community.

[发布机构] the University of Pittsburgh