House Types of Central Panama

Abstract

EAN Brunhes once wrote that the house is J a "minor geographical phenomenon that is closely bound up with our everyday life."I He noted that although houses disappear and are quickly rebuilt, they nevertheless retain some permanent features. As Brunhes stated it, there is "a kind of general appearance which is transmissible (which) is undoubtedly due to a powerful tradition that influences succeeding forins; but it is also because the human dwelling depends, to an extent that we have to determine, and which is also variable, on natural conditions."2As a tangible expression of the interplay between culture and nature the rural dwclling has few peers. Rural house types are especially worthy subjects for intensive geographical investigation, for they are seldom far from the main channel of the cultural stream and, more often than not, they also reflect characteristics of a physical environment. However, they do not always reflect precisely the particular environment in which particular dwellings are situated. Nor does the cultural tradition of the builder-inhabitant necessarily parallel the cultural tradition of his house. This line of reasoning suggests tliat a study of house types is, in reality, much more than an analysis of one cultural form. A house type study is also a study of people, their origins, the cultural hearths from which they dispersed, the routes of dispersal, and the regions of ultimate settlement. Such an investigation cannot avoid those countless traits which are intimately associated with the house. Among the more important are those concerned with agricultural economics : land use, crop systems, and animal hiisbandry. A material trait such as a dwelling can often be traced in time and place, and may serve as a tool in understanding these and other things. As a tangible cultural form, fundamental to virtually every human group, a dwelling type could ~e l l be a key to defining a cultural region.Jean Brunhes, Hirmun Geogruphy (Chicago: 1952), p. 48.lhirl.Rural houses are spatially distinctive. They vary from one cultural group to another, as they do from one physical environment to another. It seems that the degree of variation is unpredictable, but there is variation and it can be observed. Though the cultural-physical inter-relationships are often subtle, it is conceivable that the distribution of a distinctive house type might be the best indicator of the areal extent of a region.The idea is not easily arrived at that rural dwellings and their related complexes display such intricate intermeshings of natural and cultural factors that the distribution of the dwellings may ultimately delimit a region. In the case presented in this study sucli a result may be fortuitous. There is no claim made that what appears to be a tool for regional delineation in Panama will suffice in any other area. But the broad implication is there, and only additional research and reevaluation of research already done will confirm or deny the role in the recognition of regionalisms which house types play on the surface...

Madera Carbonizada en Contextos Funerarios De La Jefatura De Río Grande, Panamá: Antracología en El Sitio De El Caño

“…Estos datos apuntarían a que en el área que delimita la zona de las tumbas existió una estructura conformada por varios postes, que podría corresponderse con una edificación tipo bohío (Fuson 1964) como las descritas por Fernández de Oviedo, similares a las que se conservan en la actualidad entre los Gunas de Archipiélago de Guna Yala (Figura 18) y de las que existen referencias etnohistóricas en otras áreas americanas (Langebaek 1998). Los postes de madera de estas construcciones estaban cargados de simbolismo para las comunidades de Centroamérica, Norte de América del Sur y Oceanía, existiendo numerosas referencias al respecto (Coiffier y Orliac 2000Helms 1979;Howe 1977;Kahn y Coil 2006;Kolb y Murakami 1994;Langebaek 1998).…”