Olga Francesca Linares (November 10, 1936 – December 2, 2014; formerly Olga Linares de Sapir) was a Panamanian–American academic anthropologist and archaeologist, and senior staff scientist (emerita) at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI) in Panama, who supported much of her research throughout her career.

She is well known for her work on the cultural ecology of Panama, and more recently in the Casamance region of Southern Senegal.

She is also concerned with the social organization of agrarian systems as well as the relationship between "ecology, political economy, migration and the changing dynamics of food production among rural peoples living in tropical regions".

[1] Olga Linares was born November 10, 1936, in the city of David, Panama,[2] the daughter of Francisco (Frank) Esteban Linares and Olga Tribaldos de Linares.,[3] She married her second husband Martin Moynihan, founding director of the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI) and animal behaviorist, in 1973.

After having been widowed for many years, Linares married Fenwick “Fen” C. Riley in 2006 and lived in Panama until their deaths a few months apart in 2014.

Linares worked as a fellow at the Center for Advanced Study at Stanford University in California, from 1979 to 1980 and as a visiting professor in 1982.

Linares retired in 2008, as senior research scientist at STRI, after an association at the institute lasting some 35 years.

[6] Linares began her career as an archaeologist mainly focused on studying lower Central America, in particular Panama.

In part, her research was an effort to bring to light the validity or invalidity of popular assumptions that this region served solely as a corridor between Mesoamerica and South America.

[7] One of Linares' earliest ventures was exploring occupation sequences in the Gulf of Chiriqui in central Panama from AD 300 to the 'Classic' Chiriquí Province culture.

She did this by studying changing ceramic techniques of four excavation sites in the region which presented a sequence of occupation which she then related to other central Panamanian provinces and in Costa Rica.

To do this, she looked at the archaeological evidence of two differing environments present at the same time, one humid while the other was more seasonal, to explain the divergence of a people with a single origin.

By looking at what may have happened when an ancient population migrated and colonized a new territory, Linares is essentially developing theories of patterns of the peopling of the Americas.

During this research she studied the culture and art of ancient populations of the central provinces of Panama.

Much of her research was done at Sitio Conte where she collected artifacts in order to better understand the 'meaning and function' of the arts.

This included a study of trade practices and social structures of power during the 16th century of the Cocle and Cuna cultures.

More specifically, this research focused on social organizations and food production of the Jola people (also spelled Diola.)

She looks at the varying techniques of wet rice production and compares them with different modes of cultivation in the region.

[12] In addition to rural food cultivation practices, Linares explores a new form that she refers to as "urban farming" that has developed in the age of post-colonialism.

With much migration to larger cities, traditional practices of subsistence growing have led to backyard farming in urban areas, providing not only another source of food, but also a way to maintain and strengthen friendship, "inter-ethnic" cooperation, as well as to enrich the environment.

[13] Furthermore, she discusses the role the government has played in agricultural failures due to drought in the Basse Casamance region.

According to Linares, drought and other uncontrollable factors are not the sole reason for subpar agricultural performance, but also the state's inability to respond effectively and appropriately to these environmental stresses.

Panamá: Cien años de República (in Spanish) (online revised and repaginated version, with corrections and addition of bibliography to original 1st print ed.).

Cultural Chronology of the Gulf of Chiriquí, Panama (PDF online reproduction by publisher).

Ecology and the Arts in Ancient Panama: On the Development of Social Rank and Symbolism in the Central Provinces.

"From Tidal Swamp to Inland Valley: On the Social Organisation of Wet Rice Cultivation among the Diola of Senegal".