226 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BuU. 193 



COMPARISONS WITH REGIONS BEYOND PANAMA 



Among the earlier pottery phases of the Code region, the Mona- 

 grillo Phase (WiUey and McGimsey, 1954) is that most often cited as 

 having interareal similarities and possible contact with other "forma- 

 tive" phases in both South and Middle America, especially the 

 former. ^^ In a temporal sense, Monagrillo, dated at about 2000 B.C., 

 certainly belongs in such a general period. However, when the term 

 "formative" is used in a developmental sense, Monagrillo, except for 

 its ceramics, lacks the typical arts, crafts, accomplishments, and 

 implied agricultural subsistence base of the formative cultures of either 

 Middle America or the Andean areas. 



The Monagrillo Phase as it is now known represents an apparently 

 simple culture despite the sophistication of its incised designs on 

 pottery and stone. Basically, the material culture preserved is un- 

 complicated. Pottery shapes (primarily bowls and beakers) are 

 simple, and decorative techniques are limited to incising and suiiple 

 red paint designs on plain ware. It is true that excised areas are 

 combined with incision and that the latter is often terminated in a 

 dot or punctation, but neither excision nor punctation are used as 

 major techniques in their own right. No worked bone was recovered 

 in definite association with Monagrillo artifacts, and the stone in- 

 ventory, with one exception, more closely resembles that of Cerro 

 Mangote than anything else. The exception to the characteristic 

 assemblage of pebble choppers, grinders, a few crude boulder metates, 

 and chipped stone scrapers, is a fragment of a stone bowl with finely 

 executed incised designs identical to those on the pottery. It is in 

 these designs, with their relatively complex swirls, scrolls, interlocking 

 elements, and excised areas, that the only indications of aesthetic 

 development lie. The painted designs are restricted to weU-executed 

 but simple bands, rectangles, pendent triangles, and semicircles. 

 Paint combinations (bichromes or polychromes) are absent as are 

 such forms of plastic decoration as applique, rocker stamping, zoned 

 punctation, reed punctation, adornos, handles, or supports. Rims 

 are simply treated without any apparent attempt at consistent modi- 

 fication. Pottery figurines are lacking. Articles of personal adorn- 

 ment must have been limited to easily worked organic material since 

 no stone, bone, or shell jewelry was found, although the stone bowl 

 fragment mentioned above suggests that this absence may be fortui- 

 tous rather than due to a lack of technical competence. Thus, the 

 general impression is that of a culture considerably simpler than those 



" At a preceramlc level the similarities between the pebble or edge grinders of Cerro Mangote in Panama, 

 Pedro Garcia, Cabo Blanco and El Heneal on the Venezuelan coast, and Loiza Cave in Puerto Rico, are 

 noteworthy, while the few examples of fluting and lanceolate-shaped points from Madden Lake indicate 

 general afllnitles to Paleo-Indlan material in both North and South America. 



