The Intermediate Area is an
archaeologicalgeographical area of
the Americas that was defined in its clearest form by
Gordon R. Willey in his 1971 book An Introduction to American Archaeology, Vol. 2: South America (Prentice Hall: Englewood Cliffs, NJ). It comprises the geographical region between
Mesoamerica to the north and the Central
Andes to the south, including portions of
Honduras and
Nicaragua and most of the territory of the republics of
Costa Rica,
Panama and
Colombia. As an archaeological concept, the Intermediate Area has always been somewhat poorly defined.
Because it was not home to ancient
state societies but was predominated by early
chiefdoms at the time of the
Spanish conquest, it was sometimes regarded as a kind of cultural backwater that contributed little to the emergence of
Pre-Columbian civilization in the
New World. However, recent archaeological research has demonstrated that this part of the Americas had some of the earliest agriculture, pottery, and metallurgy in the hemisphere.[1]
Given new findings, it is likely to have played a critical role in the transmission of culture both to and between neighboring regions to the north and south. Recently, concepts such as that of the
Isthmo-Colombian Area have been offered as an alternative to the Intermediate Area with the intention of creating a neutral term.