A MACROREGIONAL PERSPECTIVE ON CHIEFLY CYCLING IN THE CENTRAL REGION OF PANAMA DURING THE LATE CERAMIC II PERIOD (A.D. 700-1522).

The sixteenth-century indigenous societies who inhabited the Pacific plains of Panama have occupied an important place in discussions of social hierarchy in the Americas. Beginning with the discovery of the richly stocked tombs at Sitio Conté in the 1930s the origins of social hierarchy and wealth accumulation has been a key theme in the Central Region of Panama. Although the most lavish burial hoards at Sitio Conté contained hundreds of sumptuary goods elaborately decorated with cosmológica! iconography, no other contemporary cemetery shows evidence for this degree of wealth accumulation. The only other site with mortuary patterning suggestive of high ranking individuals is He-4, where high ranking mound burials were interred following the abandonment of the Sitio Conté cemetery. From a macroregional perspective the increase in access to prestige goods in mound burials at He-4 contemporaneous with, or immediately after, the decline of Sitio Conté is best explained as a result of changes in political organization of the kind often associated with the growth and decline of chiefly polities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]