Precolombian goldworking of the Chibchan Area

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The Chibchan area, Intermediate area, the Isthmo-Colombian area, are all names for the lower part of Central America, including the southern parts of Nicaragua, all of Costa Rica and Panama, and the northern parts of Colombia. While this area has different culture areas, like the greater Nicoya area in north west Costa Rica, there is a uniformity that implies that while all of these unique groups were different linguistically and culturally it is their similar methods of working gold, as well as other materials throughout their prehistory, and the recurrent themes and images found throughout this area that indicate a similar cultural thread. This area has an old history that began during the population of the Americas. It is generally understood that the Chibchan area was populated around the same time as the rest of the Americas between 18,000-12,000 years ago. There are many theories about how the Americas were populated; however, the most common one postulates that people moved through the modern Siberia from other parts of the old world, Europe, Asia, and possibly Africa, to North America through the bearing land bridge which was created between Asia and Alaska during the last glacial maximum. However there is another theory which states that people came directly from Europe to the Americas because of the similar style of pressure flaking used on both continents, this theory is called the Solutrean Solution. These people are generally referred to Paleoindians and further subdivided by the type of projectile points that are found at individual sites: pre-Clovis, Clovis, Folsom, and fishtail points are the main types defined throughout the Americas. These people were highly mobile hunter-gather groups who hunted large game such as mastodons. One significant site is Taima-Taima in western Venezuela. This is a mastodon kill and butcher site that dates back to 13,000 B.P., before present, and has the only example of a projectile point preserved within the body of an animal within both Central and South America. The Paleoindians time period ended around 10,000 B.P. with the beginning of the Archaic period which lasted between 10,000 and 6,000 B.P. The archaic period saw the development of pottery and such early pottery is found at sites like Taperinha in the Amazon basin dating to 5671 B.C. and San Jacinto located in Colombia dating to 4530 B.C. However, pottery technology did not reach Central America until about 2000 B.C. The next important material object used within the Chibchan area is jade. Jade was also used by other cultures such as the Olmec’s of Mesoamerica. Jade was widely used from about 500 B.C. to 500 A.D. These objects range from celt form beings to tublar beads, and were hightly valued by these prehistoric people because of the amount of work that was needed shape jade because its hardness on the mohs scale is seven, where a diamond is 10 and a human fingure nail has a hardness of about 2.5. Finally and perhaps most famously the Chibchan area moved from working jade to gold and other metals as early as 1200- 500 B.C. for the Chavín culture of modern Peru. In fact a primary reason why conquistadores like Christopher Columbus came back to the Americas was to find and obtain gold from the native inhabitants. It is important to note that many of the reasons why gold is valuable today is why Chibchan peoples choose to work with gold hundreds of years ago. The incorruptibility of gold is perhaps is a unique and vastly important quality for both prehistoric Chibchan and contemporary people. Gold is considered to be incorruptible because it does not oxidize and its chemical nature can not be changed without human manipulation. Another characteristic of gold is that in comparison with other metals, and certainly with jade, it is malleable meaning it can be shaped easily. Its color, brilliance, and its aural qualities were also important for Chibchan people. For some cultures gold is considered to have curative properties and while this may not be directly documented for Chibchan cultures there is no evidence suggest otherwise. There are however some indications that gold had curative properties for Chibchan peoples. For example, groups who lived in Colombia would use gold to make poporos that held their lime and held great religious significance for their mamas who are spiritual and political leaders for the community. The Chibchan peoples were to adapt at working with gold that they invented a technique of working gold that is still used today—lost wax casting. Before they used lost wax casting, they used cold working techniques like hammering and annealing. Hammering is just what it sounds like, a piece of gold would be hammered until it formed a sheet; however, gold, much like other metals, becomes work hardened. That occurs when a metal becomes brittle due to small cracks. These cracks must be fused together in order to keep working the metal and to keep the entire piece form breaking. Annealing is used then to fuse those cracks. Annealing is a technique where the metal is heated at a relatively mild temperature to reestablish the previous malleability of the gold. When making sheet gold orginments, like masks and pectorals (objects worn as large necklaces on the chest) the designs were created taking a soft wood or other soft material and pushing or pressing into the sheet to create a type of drawing, this technique is called repoussé. Each side was worked using repussé creating lower and higher spaces which together would making an image, like a three dimensional drawing. Other cold techniques used would be punching which created holes in the gold sheet so the object could be hung or attached to fabric. The invention of lost wax casting allowed the Chibchan people to create highly decorative and complex objects in a completely three dimensional form. First a piece of charcoal was covered by wax then manipulated to create any form. Then the wax image was covered by clay which was subsequently fired melting the wax and creating a negative area where the gold was then pored into in its liquid state. After the gold had become hard the clay mold was broken away and the exact replica of the wax object is now made into gold. This technique, according to Ana María Falchetti in the edited book by Jeffery Quilter and John W. Hoopes Gold and Power in Ancient Costa Rica, Panama, and Colombia, “recalls the mythology of the Bribri communities of Costa Rica that compares the “soul” of the human individual before birth to a fighter modeled by the creator deity: “Before birth, a small soul enters the body. This small figure is made by the maker suLá, as if he were making clay figurines” ” (in text quote of Bozzoli 1986: 152). Furthermore, with the use of lost wax casting the Chibchan people where no longer using pure gold, but a gold and copper alloy called tumbaga. Using both gold, which is associated with maleness, the sun and immortality, and copper, associated with femaleness as well as mortality, was possibly understood as a spiritual mixing of men and women (Falchetti 347-348). Tumbaga, when compared to pure gold, is harder, making it harder to break without heating it metal, tumbaga also has a lower melting point making it easier to work with, and finally tumbaga has a redder color which is comparable to the rising or setting sun. Although creating the alloy also created new physical properties that distinguish it from gold it is the ritual importance of the mixing of the two metals that illustrates cultural beliefs of the Chibchan people. It is the combination of gold and copper that symbolizes the union of a man and a woman and during social events like marriages where such gifts are exchanged in the Chibchan area (Falchetti 361). In conclusion, while the extent of the history of the Chibchan area is unknown it is through looking at the value and importance of objects, either metal, jade, or clay, that indicates how these people lived and viewed the world before contact with Europeans.