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The trends in settlement patterns that begin in mid-Period V generally continue throughout Period Vl. Centers of population appear nearer the Pacific coast of the Nicoya Peninsula. The utilization of marine resources becomes increasingly important, while manos, metates, and similar ground-stone tools decrease dramatically. Archaeologists do not know if this indicates a drastic shift in agricultural systems and food-processing technology, if the associated tools began to be made mostly of wood (not preserved), or if they have simply not appeared in the small samples excavated so far Data on house forms and sizes are still scanty, but part of one house, dating 1000 - 1300 A.D., was recently excavated by the MNCR at La Guinea on the Tempisque River. This structure was apparently ellipsoidal or rectangular, and 30-50 square meters in area. An unusual feature was the use of fired adobe blocks at intervals along the perimeter of the house, apparently placed to chock wooden poles in much the same way that river cobbles or field stones were used in other parts of Precolumbian Costa Rica; natural stone is scarce in the Tempisque drainage around La Guinea. Along one edge of the house, a large fragment of cane-impressed fired adobe was found, showing that the house walls were made of upright canes, c. 2.5 centimeters in diameter, lashed together with vines or ropes, and covered with adobe to a height of at least 50 centimeters. In other parts of the site, compressed sandy clay floors, with post holes, were found. The stratigraphy in the trench walls illustrated many prehistoric flooding episodes and, unfortunately, our excavation was destroyed by a modern flood before it was completed
Early Period Vl corresponds to the last half of Middle Polychrome. There is an increasing emphasis on white-slipped polychrome pottery; new types like Vallejo, using blue-gray paint, and Mombacho, with underslip incising, incorporate Mexican-looking design elements. While the nature of this northern "influence" is not clear, there is reason to believe that the Postclassic Mixteca-Puebla expansion was instrumental in the dissemination of certain deity concepts and motifs. These and other white-slipped types concentrated in northern Greater Nicoya inspired somewhat inferior copies to the south, for example, Jicote Polychrome apparently manufactured along the lower reaches of the Tempisque River. Buff-orange-slipped polychrome types persist through at least the first half of Period Vl. After c. 1150-1250 A.D., Papagayo Polychrome grades into the striking black and-red-on-white pottery called Pataky. This obviously elite-associated ceramic may have been manufactured as mortuary furniture. Its intricate, lacy black-on-white panels repeat unusual stylized jaguar motifs; the best-known vessels are modeled jaguar effigies, incorporating a pear-shaped container (cat. nos. 107, 108). The jaguar replaces the alligator (or crocodile) and the bat as the key animal figure in what are almost certainly mythologically symbolic contexts. Two unusual ceramic types make their appearance rather late in Period VI. Murillo Appliqué is a glossy black or red pottery that features only modeled decoration. It has few antecedents in the region, and has been thought to indicate a late, undefined South American (or, at least, Atlantic Watershed Tropical Forest) influence. Unfortunately, it cannot be associated with antecedent pottery traditions either to the south or to the east. An even greater enigma is posed by Luna Polychrome. Its varieties of painted decoration, from "minimalist" patterns-with large, open zones of cream slip-to busy, honeycomb designs, resemble the Late Polychrome pottery made on Marajo Island, at the mouth of the Amazon River in Brazil. Luna is seen more often in southern Nicaragua, and has been found along with Spanish iron artifacts in burials. Was there a trans-Caribbean trading network that extended along the navigable San Juan River that divides Costa Rica and Nicaragua? Such a concept is not to be discarded out of hand, for Columbus described 40-man trading boats of the coastal Yucatan Maya plying the Caribbean coast of Central America in the early 16th century.
Prismatic blades of obsidian, while not numerous, are found in many Period VI sites. These are almost certainly trade articles from at least as far north as Nicaragua or Guatemala, for Costa Rican obsidian deposits are unknown. A more complex pattern of trade and technological diffusion is provided by metallurgy, which first reached Costa Rica from the south c. 500 A.D. Cast gold or tumbaga (a gold-copper alloy) artifacts are rarely found in Guanacaste-Nicoya, and it was thought that they were trade articles from Diquis or the Atlantic Watershed. Recently, however, Lange surface-collected a small, gold frog pendant, as well as a clay mold for a virtually identical, but different, piece at two different sites around Culebra Bay. Perhaps at least some gold work was produced in Nicoya. While copper artifacts were produced in the southern (Colombian-Panamanian) tradition, certain types of copper bells, occasionally found in northern and Central Costa Rica, are thought by some archaeologists to be products of the Mesoamerican trade network. One such bell (type IA3 in David Pendergast's classification) was found in the important Period VI burial at Nacascolo. Crude, basin-shaped, stone metates have been found in a few sites of this period, but the ornate varieties seem to have declined or disappeared. Much of the columnar stone sculpture known from around Lake Nicaragua apparently can be placed in this time. Supposedly, similar sculptures were removed from the site of Nacascolo many years ago. Extremely crude versions of such statuary are still to be found there, and were also recovered by Baudez at the nearby site of Papagayo. The first Spanish visitors to Greater Nicoya found large villages ordered around a kind of central plaza, which itself was bordered by residences and tombs of the ruling household. They recognized subsistence patterns (maize and beans), fragments of language, deity concepts, and even certain ritual activities (voladores, men suspended "flying" from a pole, and patolli, in which grains of maize were moved around a board according to throws of a die), similar to those previously observed to the north, in Mexico. Next »
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During Period Vl, simple primary interments and multiple
secondary burials were practiced. At Nacascolo, La Guinea, and other sites,
dental mutilation, also observed in southern Mesoamerica, has been noted. Tomb
structures may consist of a single, naturally columnar stone slab (a vertical
marker) or a group of stones placed above (or single stones within) a burial, or
may be unmarked pits. Ceramic grave goods of variable quality are usual. Long,
triangular celts of chipped or polished stone have also been found in tombs; the
chipped forms are probably tree-felling tools (almost identical versions come
from the Atlantic Watershed), but the elegant polished examples suggest a
ceremonial role. Many elaborate burials of this period have been looted; only
one has been excavated by archaeologists. It contained the primary extended
skeleton of a middle-aged male, surrounded by high-status polychrome pottery, a
copper bell at his wrist, red ochre on the pelvis, and the skulls of six people
of varying ages placed on his chest; their long bones rested nearby. 
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