The Guanacaste-Nicoya culture of Costa Rica and Nicaragua has been divided into six main periods that follow a standard periodization valid for all Central America.
Guanacaste-Nicoya Timeline
- Period I (12,000-6,000 BC): Paleoindian-Archaic period. In the Guanacaste-Nicoya region, evidence of this periods is scarce. An isolated Clovis point was found in the Guanacaste province of Costa Rica at the end of the 19th century.
- Period II (6000-4000 BC): For this period too, data are scarce. The site of Acahualinca, located in the metropolitan area of the Nicaraguan capital of Managua, dates to this period. The site includes a series of human and animal footprints impressed into volcanic ashes and lava. In this period coastlines became more stable and suitable for human exploitation. However, traces of human population along the pacific coasts of Costa Rica and Nicaragua are almost absent.
- Period III ( 4000-1000 BC): Little evidence is available for this period in the Greater Nicoya area. By the end of this phase, however, there is evidence of sedentism and the use of pottery. The earliest ceramics of the area dates to about 2,500 BC.
- Period IV (1000 BC-AD 500): This period saw an increase of sites and population, along with the first evidence of wealth and social ranking, especially in the second half of this long period. Some experts believe that this was possible thanks to the diffusion of maize agriculture associated with more productive techniques. Most of the available evidence come from the cemetery sites of Nacascolo, on the Nicoya peninsula, Las Huacas, and Bolson, all in Costa Rica. The site of Las Huacas shows evidence of high-status burials such as jade pendants, decorated metates, stone mace heads. The other sites produced more domestic materials. This period in Guanacaste-Nicoya is also known as “Zoned Bichrome” based on the type of ceramic decoration. Archaeologists agree that this was also the period in which contacts with Mesoamerica began to be more intense.
- Period V (AD 500-1000): This is probably the best known period of the chronology. Major changes marked this period: a return to marine resources exploitation, a higher number of domestic features have been found both on coastal and inland locations, along with the spread of the renowned Nicoya Polychrome ceramics. The most famous of this ceramic tradition is the Papagayo style: a white-slipped ceramic with polychrome motifs, widespread after ~AD 700. Important sites for this period are: Las Marias, a coastal shell midden site on the Bay of Salinas, at the border between Costa Rica and Nicaragua; and Ayala on the Pacific coast of Nicaragua where obsidian tools show evidence of trade with Honduras and Guatemala. In the sites of Los Angeles and Omotepe in the Omotepe island of lake Nicaragua, large stone statues depicting human and animal figures were found and some burial goods seem to suggest the existence of ritual specialists with shamanistic power.
- Period VI (AD 1000-1520): This period marks a increase in the aspects already mentioned for Period V: higher differentiation in site size and number, and reliance on marine resources. Nacascolo continues to be an important burial site and a different Polychrome tradition replaces the Papagayo style by AD 1200. When the Spanish arrived in the mid 1500s, they encountered large settlement, with central plazas surrounded by households. Greater Nicoya in this period was socially organized in what anthropologists and archaeologists call a chiefdom.
Sources
Lange, Frederick W. (editor) 1996 Paths to Central American Prehistory. University of Colorado Press.
Lange, Frederick W. and Juan Vincente Guerrero. 2001. Nicoya, Greater, and Guanacaste Region. pp. 517-522 in Archaeology of Ancient Mexico and Central America: an Encyclopedia, edited by Susan Toby Evans and David Webster. Garland Publishing, New York