NEW YORK, NY.- Alan Grinnell, author of Painting the Cosmos: Art and Iconography of the Ceramics of Ancient Panama, discusses what decades of looking at ancient Panamanian pottery have led him to see in an artistic tradition still unfamiliar to many specialists in pre-Columbian art. Drawing on more than 800 vessels, archaeological evidence, early Spanish accounts and his own background as a neuroscientist and biologist, Grinnell considers the possible meanings of hybrid animals, transformed shamans, hidden faces and recurring designs that persisted for centuries. He also addresses the difficulties created by looting and lost archaeological contexts, explains why he believes many of the vessels themselves may have been regarded as living beings, and reflects on the questions that future excavations and scientific analysis might finally answer.

Artdaily: You argue that the ceramics of ancient Panama should be understood not simply as archaeological objects but as sophisticated works of art tied to mythology, ritual and an animistic worldview. What evidence led you most strongly to this interpretation, and how do you distinguish between what can be demonstrated archaeologically and what remains speculative?

Alan Grinnell: The ceramics shown in the book almost all came from graves, so there is an immediate suspicion that the painted iconography had a role in that “sacred context.” Rich tombs often included multiple burials with as many as 10 or more individuals, many of them apparently sacrificed or taking their own lives to accompany the principal figure—a chief or other important person—to the afterlife. The grave goods, especially in such rich graves, include up to hundreds of vessels. What was the role of those pots, many covered with beautiful designs painted by master artists? Almost certainly they were there to facilitate the journey of the departed to the afterlife. In addition, of course, the wealth and prestige of the principal person being buried could be measured by the quantity and quality of the ceramics and other grave goods. The iconography on the ceramic vessels could have been used as storyboards to relate the myths and beliefs of the culture.

A second reason for interpreting the designs as relating culturally important iconography is that the designs are limited in number and evolve over time. From many different graves in different locations, undoubtedly created by different artists, the designs are basically the same, featuring imagery that reflects shamanist practices, origin and cosmological myths, pan-New World beliefs in the duality of everything in life, and emphasis on animals that can move between different levels of existence and that can assist shamans in their transformed soul flight: bats that live in caves—the underground—but also inhabit the aerial world of gods and benevolent spirits; water birds, snakes, crabs and crocodiles that inhabit both water and air; and so on.

There are no plant depictions, little emphasis on edible animals except for deer and fish, but lots of imagery of zoomorphs that combine the attributes of different potent animals: legged serpents with bird heads surrounded by coronas of rays probably representing the sun; felines—jaguars?—with antlers; anthropomorphic figures with jaguar pelage; and the like. Many images probably represent dancing shaman figures in the act of transformation or after transformation with multiple powerful emanations, or chimeric beings representing mythical Masters of Animals—or fish.

If the designs were simply a reflection of individual artists’ imaginations, one would expect much more variety and less emphasis on a few themes that themselves seem so clearly related to shamanism and animistic beliefs. Even designs that appear to be simply elegant geometric works of art can be shown to be evolved references to more figurative mythological imagery.

Artdaily: Many of the vessels combine human, animal and supernatural features in deliberately ambiguous ways. Do you believe ancient viewers would have recognized specific beings or stories in these images, or was their ambiguity itself an important part of how the objects functioned?

Grinnell: Good question, but hard to answer with any confidence. I mentioned the frequent imagery of zoomorphs with the features of multiple potent animals, such as serpents with legs and radiating bird heads, or dancing—probably—shamanic figures with antlers and multiple emanations. I think the Indigenous people would have been very familiar with all of the iconography and the myths that went with it. What we see as ambiguous was almost all part of a familiar cosmology. The design themes evolved with time, but most were quite recognizable over long stretches of time.

Artdaily: A significant challenge in studying Coclé ceramics is that many objects lack secure archaeological contexts because of looting and their movement into private collections. How has that shaped your research, and what do you think museums, collectors and scholars should do today to preserve both the objects and the knowledge surrounding them?

Grinnell: This is a major problem with any attempt, like mine, to interpret iconography from museum and private collections, most of which was collected without archaeological context. Most pieces, however, can be identified by comparison with material that has been published or is from known archaeological contexts. The number of examples in Painting the Cosmos that say “phase or style uncertain,” however, is testimony to the paucity of good archaeological excavations covering all regions and periods of the culture.

Grave looting is much to be regretted, but pieces without clear provenance should still be used for whatever information can be mined from them. In the case of a culture like that of central Panama, which had no written language and virtually no survivors, the painted iconography is probably the most important source of information about the myths and beliefs of the culture. It’s important that good examples of all types and design styles be accessible to scholars in museum collections and via books like Painting the Cosmos.

Artdaily: Panama sits between the great cultural traditions of Mesoamerica and the Andes, yet its ancient art remains far less familiar to the public. Why do you think Panamanian ceramics have been overlooked for so long, and what do we lose when we leave Panama out of the broader history of pre-Columbian art?

Grinnell: Panama had no monumental art, the Indigenous peoples had no written language, and there were almost no surviving Indigenous people within 50 years of the Spanish conquest. So while there are shelves full of popular and scholarly books on the artistic creations of the high cultures of Mesoamerica and the Andes, there is no comparable comprehensive book on central Panama illustrating a large number of pieces in full color. And since we knew so little about that culture compared with the high cultures to the north and south, students and the public at large naturally were also drawn to learning about those high cultures. In fact, the archaeological emphasis on Mesoamerican and Andean cultures has resulted in so many excavations and theses based on study of those high cultures that those areas of the field have become overcrowded, and students are finally turning to the lesser-known cultures of the “Intermediate Area.”

I personally feel that the main result of this relative neglect is the unfamiliarity of scholars and the public alike with one of the most spectacular art traditions in all of the ancient Americas. The extraordinary workmanship and the dramatic polychrome designs on Panamanian pottery are only now being recognized as one of the world’s great art traditions.

One of the main surprises that came with this discovery is the realization that the Indigenous peoples of central Panama, who occupied the main land bridge between the high cultures to the north and south, do not show evidence of artistic influences from Mesoamerica or the Andean civilizations. Moreover, while they were related to the populations of northern South America and southern Costa Rica—all speakers of different dialects of the Chibchan language group, who would have been expected to share myths and beliefs—Panamanian art expresses these beliefs entirely differently than either the cultures to the north or south.

Artdaily: You examined more than 800 vessels for Painting the Cosmos. Were there patterns or relationships that only became visible once you were able to look at such a large body of material together rather than studying individual masterpieces in isolation?

Grinnell: Definitely. That, and thinking about them off and on for 60 years. An emphasis on shamanism is fairly obvious. Some of the earliest ceramics described were pedestal plates with designs described as “dancing crocodile god.” There is a tendency whenever an anthropomorphic figure appears in the iconography to call it a god. But looking at many examples of the designs and the form they took in earlier phases of the culture strongly suggests that these are shamans in the process of transforming or after achieving transformation, with powerful emanations of helping animal spirits.

Duality—night/day, male/female, etc.—a nearly universal belief system in pre-Columbian cultures, is also obvious in the designs. But others, like a sun-headed serpent cosmological theme and a cascading meander theme, would be difficult to recognize if one didn’t see many related designs and how they evolved over time. In fact, one of the Eureka! moments for me was the discovery—which only slightly stretches the imagination—that many of the seemingly purely geometric, and very beautiful, designs in later periods are in fact abstractions of some of the oldest designs in the repertoire.

Artdaily: One of the fascinating ideas in the book is that these vessels may themselves have been regarded as living or animate objects. What features of the ceramics led you to that conclusion, and how might that change the way a modern viewer looks at one of these pots in a museum case?

Grinnell: The idea that everything is alive and has its own spirit and interacts with humans in both helpful and threatening ways is nearly universal in the ethnology of simple contemporary Indigenous societies in northern South America and elsewhere. Even the high civilizations of Mesoamerica and the Andes, with priests and a panoply of gods, retained underlying animistic beliefs. It’s no surprise that the iconography of central Panama, with iconographic emphasis on animals that have properties useful for shamans, would see pots and their designs as alive. But everything else—trees, rivers, rocks, everything else—was alive and had to be negotiated with to maintain the stability of the culture.

The most convincing evidence for this was the realization that many ceramics with seemingly straightforward designs were in fact also showing faces that weren’t apparent on first look. An unexceptional bird effigy would look like a threatening face from the back, or a simple geometric design suddenly emerges as a set of three malevolent faces around a tall-necked jar. There’s even a double-spouted vessel in the form of a king vulture effigy that has a basic design of a bicephalic dragon. Look at it from the back, a second face emerges, while from the front still a third face emerges, with eyes formed by the tongues of the dragons. These designs were clearly intentional. Many other examples exist. It’s difficult to avoid the conclusion that these ceramics were considered to be alive, inhabited by more than one entity.

The very fact that so many ceramic vessels were deposited in a tomb implies that either the piece itself or, more likely, the design painted on it, made it alive, with powers expressed in the designs, and buried to help power the transition of the buried individuals to the afterlife.



Artdaily: The book follows certain images and ideas across many centuries. When a motif survives for generations but gradually changes its appearance, what does that persistence tell us about cultural memory and the transmission of beliefs in ancient Panama?

Grinnell: Most archaeology is done at sites that are sufficiently removed in time and space from other archaeological digs that it can be difficult to recognize the same motif in its evolved form. Being able to see so many examples from different periods allows one to fill in gaps and recognize the same design motif as it evolves over time, sometimes becoming so abstract that, with less continuity, the motif would have disappeared and others taken its place.

At the same time, the persistence of the design motif as it evolves over time is eloquent testimony to the importance of that iconography to the culture. There is no question that pieces and their painted designs are more informative if excavated in archaeological context, but in the absence of adequate funding and professional motivation, we do the best we can.

Artdaily: Shamanic transformation is an important theme in your interpretation of the ceramics. What visual characteristics make you think we are looking at transformed shamans rather than simply fantastic animals, ancestors or deities—and where do you think the limits of that interpretation lie?

Grinnell: The iconography in fact is strongly reflective of shamanistic practices: dancing anthropomorphic figures with animal heads—therianthropes—wearing rattles on wrists and ankles and holding other musical instruments. These figures often have eyes that reflect a trance state and develop increasingly complex emanations ending in vicious animal heads. These I interpret as shamans undergoing transformation. These depictions are complemented by more static, front-facing figures with multiple potent emanations that are fully transformed. All are extremely beautifully executed. These are all exactly what one would expect of shamanism: dancing in a trance state and gradually undergoing transformation into a spiritually potent form, expressing powerful helping animal spirits and capable of travel through other realms of existence.

Nevertheless, the subject of shamanism turns out to be controversial. Some influential professional archaeologists and anthropologists feel that the term should be applied only to Siberian shamanism, and since New World religious practices were different from the Siberian form and from each other, the term should not be used—although no one has come up with a better term. Indeed, it can be argued that the designs depict gods or mythical heroes.

On the other hand, the accounts of two important Spanish participants in the original encounters with the Indigenous people both describe the gods communicating with the local people through a special master called a “tequina…who speaks with the devil and receives replies with him. He then tells the Indians what they should do, and he predicts the future” (Fernández de Oviedo). I know of no better general term for this than shamanism.

Artdaily: Your career as a neuroscientist and biologist is unusual for someone undertaking a major study of pre-Columbian iconography. Did your scientific training—particularly your knowledge of animal behavior and anatomy—allow you to recognize things in these images that an art historian or archaeologist might see differently?

Grinnell: I will broaden this question to address how I, a scientist, got interested in Panamanian art. One of my principal scientific interests has been the mechanisms of echolocation in bats and specifically the adaptations of the bat auditory nervous system that enable them to use echoes of emitted sounds as a substitute for vision. They use echoes not only to avoid obstacles, but to find food—even locating and capturing insects the size of mosquitoes in flight. This is an extraordinary ability, and learning how the nervous system does it tells us much about the auditory system and how sounds are analyzed. Because different species of bat have evolved quite different emitted sounds, the neural adaptations enabling echolocation differ in informative ways.

The comparative study of neural adaptations in bats took me to Panama first in 1965 and again about eight more summers during the next 20 years. While there, I became increasingly impressed and fascinated by the beauty of the pre-Columbian art that I saw. Moreover, as I studied other pre-Columbian cultures, I came to realize that Panamanian ceramics was virtually unknown and very different from other pre-Columbian art. There was little of it in museums and no books on the subject. I resolved, if the opportunity presented itself, to write that book myself.

That opportunity came during the COVID-19 pandemic, when I was forced from my lab at UCLA and had time to pursue this parallel interest. People ask me how long I worked on the book and I say about 60 years—looking at it, reading what limited primary literature there is on the subject, getting to know archaeologists working in Panama, and thinking about the iconography.

How did my scientific background influence my analysis and interpretation of the art? Probably the main result of my invading a field so far outside my professional field is that I don’t know the jargon and didn’t get involved in any of the ongoing theories and disputes in the fields of anthropology, archaeology and art history. The result, I think, is that the book is much easier for the non-professional to read.

I think my biological background has been useful because the art is so heavily concentrated on animal depictions. It helps me identify certain animals in the art and contribute ideas about how they are depicted. To a very large extent, however, the depictions are of complex zoomorphs incorporating components of different animals. The Panamanian artists were masters of their art, clearly professionals in the culture. When they wanted to depict specific animals, they could do so with no problem. Instead, they were showing zoomorphs like snakes with bird heads and legs, crocodiles with antlers, and other chimeric creatures combining key features of different animals—primarily ones that could assist shamans in traveling through the spirit worlds.

Artdaily: The artists who painted these ceramics left no written explanations and, in most cases, no names. Yet you frequently describe works of extraordinary sophistication. From studying so many vessels, can you begin to recognize individual artistic personalities, workshops or different levels of skill behind the objects?

Grinnell: The culture had no written language and there is no evidence of any kind of signature, but yes, much of the art is extraordinarily sophisticated and skillfully done. Lines are perfectly drawn, designs burst with energy, every form of symmetry is there. These artists were complete masters of color and design—clearly they devoted their lives to perfecting their skills. Almost certainly, the value of a design, whether it be in the grave for the afterlife or to be seen by the living in ceremonies associated with a burial, was proportional to the skill that went into painting the design. Creating large pots with complex polychrome designs without throwing wheels—there is general consensus that everything had to be shaped by hand—and firing them without kilns in open pits was a remarkable achievement.

Where many pieces come from the same tomb, it is sometimes possible to see personal styles that suggest they were made by the same artist; and similarly, with unprovenanced material, there certainly are distinct differences in style that are probably attributable to individual artists’ techniques. These can never be more than speculative, however. Sometimes the pot or the design on it appears crude compared with others—probably the result of beginning artists—but most painted designs are superbly made. And distinctions that define different phases characterize pottery over hundreds of years in most cases, so the chances of recognizing the same hand in multiple pieces are slim. That would be one of the great advantages of documented archaeological excavation.

Artdaily: The chapter on humor, emotion and “discovered faces” reveals a surprisingly playful and psychologically complex side of the art. What do these smiling, threatening, hidden or transforming faces tell us about the people who made and viewed these objects?

Grinnell: This chapter is one of my favorites, simply because expression of emotions is so rare, if it exists at all, in other pre-Columbian cultures. But in Panama it is quite common, if not noted before now. Anthropomorphic figures smile, jaguars smile, fish smile, human figures appear to show embarrassment or despair. You feel a much closer, direct connection to the artists than in the art of other cultures.

Of particular interest are what appear at first to be simple—if ingenious—geometric designs, but which, when you look at them more carefully, clearly represent animals or humans. There is a subset of designs that, as you look at them, suddenly can be recognized as being threatening or malevolent. That’s a feature I’m not aware of in the art of other pre-Columbian cultures. As I’ve argued before, these pots were most likely viewed as alive. The threatening faces that are hiding there may have…

Artdaily: Your interpretations sometimes differ from, or expand upon, earlier approaches to Panamanian iconography. Which established idea about this art did studying such a broad range of material cause you to reconsider most seriously?

Grinnell: There have actually been very few attempts to interpret the art, and those that do exist have been based principally on an expedition in the late 1920s and early 1930s at one location in Panama—Sitio Conte, by Samuel Lothrop from Harvard University. Although a major site with extraordinary finds, it was limited in the time period it represented. The much larger sample from the entire time period of the central Panamanian culture allowed me to recognize major design themes that persisted and evolved over hundreds of years.

Shamanism was recognized early on, and the importance of ferocious animals—crocodiles, jaguars—in the iconography, and those that could facilitate shamanic travel. However, I describe several themes that I don’t think have been recognized before. Moreover, one of these—the depiction of a serpentine zoomorph undulating around a jar, with long-legged birds in the spaces between coils, present in the earliest painted pottery—evolved over time to be expressed in highly abstract form that looks simply like graceful geometric designs unless you have a large enough sample to trace the gradual changes and abstraction. Or so I argue in the book.

Artdaily: If a new generation of archaeologists could answer one question raised by Painting the Cosmos—through new excavations, scientific analysis or discoveries of securely documented objects—what is the question you would most like them to resolve?

Grinnell: There are lots of questions that arose during my analysis of the art and writing the book. Overall, one of the interesting questions is what can be learned from residue analysis. What can that tell us about the food or other concoctions that were used in pots? Is there evidence for drug use, etc.?

The other main issue I would like to see resolved is why the art produced on the Azuero Peninsula was so distinct from that produced at the better-known sites in the rest of the central area. The two mountains located near the base of the peninsula would have been at most a minor impediment to movement. What were other isolating mechanisms?

I would also very much like to see a major excavation in the area of the Bay of Montijo. It is my impression that some of the most impressive art was produced in that area, which has not enjoyed any serious archaeology.