| 493 |
|
Full Year Range of Early Greater Coclé is assumed.
[200, 700] |
absent
|
For the considerably later precontact period, Helms has argued that 'Although the ethnohistoric data are very scanty, some degree of "internal" administrative associations and responsibilities surely existed between the commoner population of a given territory or "province" and the elite cabras, sacos and/or quevis of that territory, who at the very least accepted generalized stewardship of the overall well-being, socially and ideologically, of the population of a given ancestral territory'. [Helms_Brumfiel_Fox 1994, p. 56] She believes cabras, the lowest-ranked elites, would have served as 'local administrators', [Helms_Brumfiel_Fox 1994, p. 56] but does not speculate on whether they were full-time. The evidence is therefore not strong enough to justify coding full-time specialist bureaucrats present for the precontact period, and we know even less about this early period of Greater Coclé development (200-700 CE). Panamanian societies before Spanish contact produced no written records, [Mendizábal_Archibold 2004, p. 14] so it is not clear how such administrators would perform their duties. |
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