Richard Cooke

Richard G. Cooke (28 October 1946 – 22 February 2023) was an archaeologist who specialized in the archaeology of Panama and, more generally, the Isthmo-Colombian Area. Cooke was born in Guildford, Surrey, southern England. He studied at Bristol and got his doctorate from the University of London in 1972. Among his areas of concentration were zooarchaeology and the “Greater Coclé semiotic tradition" of central Panama. He did extensive research on ancient fishing He was also interested in Panamanian paleo-ecology, the original settlement of the tropical-forest region of the Americas, the development of agriculture, and general social development in the area. For some ten years, he led an archaeological project in Cerro Juan Díaz. His contributions to Central American archaeology were celebrated in a conference held in San José, Costa Rica in 2017: “Tras una Herencia Cultural Milenaria: Contribuciones de Richard Cooke a la Arqueología del Área Istmo- Colombiana.” Cooke established a modern reference collection of fauna species of tropical America, for use by archaeologists and others. A Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute staff scientist for the Smithsonian Institution, he spent most of his career working in Panama.