Olga Linares offers a reinterpretation of the Classic rank-societies of the central Panamanian provinces based on archaeological, ecological, iconographic, ethnohistoric, and ethnographic evidence, and concludes that the art style of this area used animal motifs as a metaphor in expressing the qualities of aggression and hostility characteristic of social and political life in the central provinces.

This excellent book is a clear affirmation of the value of combining several approaches to the analysis of the archaeological record… What Linares accomplishes in this slender volume is both substantively and theoretically important for anthropologists interested in the cultural evolution of ranked societies. It is an unusual book, maximizing many of the avenues open to the archaeologist interested in cultural evolution, and opening new paths to the integration of ecology, art, ethnohistory, and archaeology.
-- American Antiquity