Key Events

• ca. 1000

  Metalworkers in the Chiriquí region of southern Costa Rica and adjacent western Panama produce large numbers of spectacular gold ornaments, primarily pendants, among them frog and turtle depictions, as well as bat- and crocodile-headed figures.

• ca. 1000

  Figurative motifs that decorate earlier polychrome ceramics in Panama are replaced by increasingly abstract and geometric designs.

• ca. 1050

  Ornately carved ceremonial metates, important ritual/funerary objects in northern and central Costa Rica for at least the past thousand years, are produced only in limited numbers. Those made in the Atlantic Watershed are often round and feature atlantean figures.

• ca. 1100

  Sitio Conte, a major burial ground in central Panama for about 700 years, is no longer used as an elite cemetery.

• ca. 1150

  A new, technically accomplished ceramic ware, known as Tarragó Biscuit, is made in the Diquís region of southern Costa Rica. The thin-walled, buff-colored vessels of simple yet elegant shape or various animal forms have smooth, unpolished surfaces.

• ca. 1200

  Ceramic vessels of the Guanacaste-Nicoya region that earlier had Maya-style images now have white-slipped surfaces with Mexican design elements outlined in black.

• ca. 1250

  Highly stylized, almost two-dimensional stone figures from the Diquís area show strong affinities to Colombian forms in South America.

• ca. 1300

  The Taíno of the Greater Antilles islands in the Caribbean make ritual objects of wood, stone, and shell for use in ceremonies that include the taking of hallucinogenic snuff, or cohoba. Plazas and ballcourts are built and used in communal ritual activities.

• ca. 1350

  At Palmar Sur in the Diquís region, an important chief is entombed with eighty-eight gold ornaments; some appear to have been specifically made for burial.

• ca. 1400

  In central and eastern Costa Rica, thousands of small, seated human figures, known as sukias, are produced. Typically holding tubes, perhaps flutes, to their mouths, they may have been used in domestic contexts.