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In certain publications and textbooks, especially within Costa Rica, Guanacaste-Nicoya is referred to as the "Chorotega" cultural area, the Central Highlands and the Atlantic Watershed as "Huetar," and Diquis as "Brunka." The use of these names stems from a misunderstanding of the Spanish chroniclers. The names were those of individual chieftains or of larger socio-cultural groups that dominated part (but not all) of the three respective archaeological zones of Costa Rica around the time of the Spanish arrival, or, in the case of the Chorotega, some centuries before. To use the names as descriptive of the whole prehistoric cultural tradition of a zone is as misleading as referring to all the occupants of Manhattan Island during the last 10,000 years as New Yorkers. Although the actual names of many different peoples occupying Costa Rica when the Spanish came are known, we do not know, and probably never will know, what more ancient cultures called themselves. Costa Rica, unlike parts of Mesoamerica, has produced no evidence of a written, or hieroglyphic record from Precolumbian times. The Europeans who arrived in Costa Rica at the beginning of the 16th century observed indigenous cultures which in most cases have since been characterized by anthropologists as "chiefdoms," organized around a centralized, hereditary-status hierarchy with a theocratic orientation, but lacking the rigid social stratification and institutionalized means of forceful repression that are the products of civil law in a formal political state. The monumental architecture, writing systems, and calendrics that often characterize the state, or "civilization," are usually absent in the chiefdom. Instead, we see a succession of richly diverse styles in pottery, stone carving, lapidary work, and metallurgy, the preferred media changing through time. Craft traditions and religious symbolism are almost always highly developed, a result of the status-reinforcing needs of a "warrior-priest" chief and his coterie. Next »
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