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In the popular mind, a pre-Columbian tomb with golden artifacts is a far more valuable archaelogical site than a place that's less than 100 years old. But to archaeologists, the value of a site depends more on the extent to which it's a source of new information about how people lived, and by that measure the old townsites where the West Indian laborers who did most of the work of building the Panama Canal may be more important than the much older sites that lie below or nearby. Shown above is a canal construction worker's ID badge, or as they called it in those days, "metal check." These stars, which were needed as identification on payday or to shop at commissaries, were made with sharp points, but people filed these down so that they wouldn't damage their clothing.

Despite the ACP's denials

Important archaeological sites in the path of third locks project

photos by John Griggs, captions and text by Eric Jackson

In Panama and many other places, there is this long-running and low-intensity war between developers and archaeologists. When a site that would allow scientists to expand humanity's knowledge of its past is encountered by construction crews, there is a tendency to deny and quickly destroy the evidence.

It was that when pre-Columbian trash dumps, which would have told us what Panamanians ate before the white people arrived, were discovered in the Parque Natural Metropolitano, along the route of the Corredor Norte. The president of Panama at the time, Ernesto Pérez Balladares, purged INAC and the Patrimonio Historico of their archaeologists and ordered the site immediately bulldozed, which his fly-by-night Mexican developer friend Máximo Haddad of the infamous PYCSA construction consortium promptly did.

It was that way when one of Martín Torrijos's friends decided that it would be a good idea to build a subdivision in a wooded part of the former Fort Clayton, over the route of the colonial-era Camino de Cruces. The president, the director of the National Environmental Authority (ANAM) and the folks who ran the now lapsed Interoceanic Regional Authority (ARI) saw no reason why a developer shouldn't trash such a landmark, but an alliance of environmentalists and historic preservationists have so far blocked that move in court.

And now Toro, Martín and Panama Canal Authority (ACP) administrator Alberto Alemán Zubieta --- the latter who came to the canal administration from his old job as CEO of his family's large construction company, Constructora Urbana, SA (CUSA) --- are promoting a proposal for the biggest development project that the Republic of Panama will have ever undertaken, the expansion of the Panama Canal via the building of a third set of locks that can accomodate ships of sizes too large to fit through the current locks.

We are seeing a massive propaganda campaign at public expense to secure a referendum to be held at a date to be announced, probably later this year. One of the claims that the ACP has repeatedly made in the course of this publicity binge is found, among other places, on page 56 of the 88-page tabloid summary that was delivered to the president with such ceremony and expense at ATLAPA this past April 24:

Archaeological and paleontological digs have been done at the sites of the new locks and channels and it has been determined that there probably are no archaeological, cultural or scientific finds of importance in these areas.

And you know what? This is a lie. An archaeological study commissioned by the ACP itself, but hidden on its website by way of a cryptic indexing system and its publication in a format that takes 40 minutes to download even if one has a broadband Internet connection and a fast computer, says otherwise. In fact, page 28 of chapter 8 of the ACP's "Master Plan" document admits to the finding of two sites with "pre-Columbian remains considered relevant from the archaeological point of view."

(The master plan, however, does not include a budget for the study of these sites or the preservation of what is found there. This is but one more of a growing list of points by which critics of the project claim that the Torrijos administration's and ACP's $5.25 billion pricetag is a lowball bid.)

The study was done by archaeologist John Griggs with help in its Spanish translation by Carlos Fitzgerald. Fitzgerald was one of the people whom Toro fired for wanting to study those finds on the route of the Corredor Norte. Griggs has his PhD from the University of Texas, his dissertation work here having added much to our knowledge of the pre-Columbian Atlantic side. The team led by Griggs found a number of archaeological sites right in the path of the proposed Pacific side locks, adjacent to Miraflores Lake in the Cocoli area. Their survey only encompasses a relatively small part of the area to be excavated.

Map of archaeological finds from a report commissioned by the ACP itself

The digs that Griggs led uncovered both pre-Columbian and canal construction era artifacts of interest to archaeologists and historians. Griggs protested the misrepresentation to the ACP and demanded a correction, but was told that factual errors in the centerpiece of the publicity campaign for the Torrijos-Alemán Zubieta Canal Expansion Plan can not be corrected. The ACP went on to repeat the lie in statements by its safety director Juan Héctor Díaz, which were published May 17 in El Panama America; and in the May 26 - June 8 edition of the ACP's tabloid "El Faro," which is distributed to the public as an insert in some of the daily newspapers.

Front and back view of a gold pendant found in a pre-Columbian tomb found during the archaeological survey by Griggs and his team. Very typically of a certain anti-scientific way of thinking prevalent among Panama's dominant economic elites, the presence of gold makes a site worth mentioning, as it was in the Master Plan, even if this has been denied in statements for public consumption --- while knowledge of how people lived is of no importance.

Griggs told The Panama News that from his perspective the pre-Columbian sites are important but what has been found so far in the small part of the area to be unearthed for the canal expansion project (if it is approved) does not particularly revolutionize our knowledge of the cultures that existed in this country before its conquest by Europeans. The much later artifacts, of the West Indian canal workers and their way of life, on the other hand, he believes are the most important things that were found because they shed light on aspects of Panama's history that are not well known and in many cases completely undocumented.

Life's small pleasures for canal construction workers: above, part of an accordion. In the graphic below the larger pipe was found in the archaeological dig near Cocoli, while the smaller one is included for comparison purposes but was not found in the digs.

One bit of Panama's cultural history is the gradual assimilation of waves of West Indian immigrants into Panamanian society. Here is an old photo of a pottery vendor, who happened to be selling the same sort of items that were found in the Cocoli area archaeological digs. That style of pottery, by the way, goes back to pre-Columbian times.

A bottle (above) and a comb (below) from construction times

Here we have remains of an earthen tray found at one of the pre-Columbian sites in the path of the proposed third locks construction.

Above, we have a set of stone tools found in an ancient tomb in the proposed construction zone. Below, we have a pair of axe butts made of volcanic rock. Items like these can tell scientists many things. For one example, they help to discern the sorts of activities that people engaged in as part of their daily working lives. For another example, the probable sources of the materials that were used can say a lot about the areas with which ancient peoples traded.

Also in this section:
Panama Canal expansion would go through archaeological sites
Smithsonian's annual science seminar
Olympus shows off its new cameras