TUMACO

Living around the estuaries over a period of more than 2000 years, the people of Tumaco culture and the neighbouring Ecuadorian region of La Tolita developed an effective economic system based on fishing and maize agriculture. Their ceramics portray resplendent chiefs as well as ordinary people, sometimes normal, sometimes sick or deformed. As if in some mysterious rite, the clay heads have been struck off, adorned with characteristic Tumaco jewellery: little soldered nose and eat ornaments, golden studs and pips inserted into the skin of the cheek.

CALIMA

During the first millennium BC, in the valley of the rivers Calima and Dagua which flow into the Pacific Ocean, groups of settled farmers and excellent potters began a long process of development known as llama.

Later the populations began to expand, adapting the landscape of hills and valleys to make house platforms, raised fields and drainage canals. This Yotoco period (2^nd century BC – 9^th century AD) in Calima produced splendid gold pieces: beautiful ornaments to enhance the prestige of their wearers, accompanying them eventually to their tombs; representations of a varied fauna and men with animal characteristics, combing the real world with the mythical; dippers and lime containers, poporos, for the ritual consumption of the sacred coca leaf.

MALAGANA

In the flat plain of the middle Cauca valley, one of the most fertile regions of the country, remains have recently been found of a culture contemporary with Yotoco and the great flowering of the southwest. Archaeologists have named it after the area of the fist discovery: Malagana.

The grave goods of the lords of Malagana comprise large masks and pectorals, diadems, nose ornaments, bracelets and poporos in fine repoussé gold. A few cast charms and beads with complicated zoomorphic motifs contrast with the simplicity of most of the metalwork.

SAN AGUSTIN

In San Agustín, enclosed in the Colombian Massif where the Andes divide into two branches and the Cauca and Magdalena rivers have their sources, imposing statutes of volcanic stone recall the great days of a culture which vanished some eight centuries before the Spanish arrived.

TIERRADENTRO

The eastern foothills of Central Cordillera were named Tierradentro "land within" by the Spanish after the river Paez and its tributaries. 1000 years ago the inhabitants of these magical regions excavated monumental tombs on the submits of hills, with subterranean chambers entered by spiral staircases. Painted with geometric figures in red and black, they reproduced the interiors of dwelling houses; here, exhumed bones form earlier burials, were placed in funerary urns.

CAUCA

Around AD 1000 the age of the great gold objets had passed in the southwest, and the valley of the river Cauca was occupied by warrior groups with a different tradition. Goldwork was widely used though alloyed with copper, among the chiefs who confronted the Spanish conquistadores wearing nose ornaments like twisted nails < with gold necklaces upon them and on their chests a breastplate of gold the size of a platter, which they call patens> according to an anonymous chronicler <The Indians of this land> wrote Cieza de Leon, <use a great deal of low grade gold up to seven carats, some more and some less>.

NARIÑO

The cold high plain of the Andes on the border between Colombia and Ecuador was inhabited around the seventh century AD by a group called Capulí by archaeologists. This culture, which buried its chiefs in tombs up to 30 or 40 meters deep, had commercial dealings with the inhabitants of the Amazonian slopes and the Pacific coast and worked fine gold by hammering, using similar techniques to those of the southwest.

TOLIMA

The valley of the Magdalena river, the principal fluvial artery of Colombia, was an important interface zone in population movement and commercial exchange, reflected in the influence among the southern, central and northern cultures.

Goldwork in an abstract style, symmetrical and schematic, is typical of the art produced here form the beginning of the Christian era. A profound dualistic cosmology is expressed through a love of contrast and balance between the full and empty spaces decorating strange mythical beings with wings and jaguar teeth, or fabulous insects with the powers of bird, fish or feline.

QUIMBAYA

The goldsmiths of the Early Quimbaya period (1^st – 10^th centuries AD) created a naturalistic art form on the temperate slopes bordering the Cauca river.

Their poporos were inspired by plant forms; others are portratis with calm faces and stately postures, inside which fragments of calcined bones have been found. These masters of lost wax left its form on the inside. The gold-copper alloy tumbaga, poured into the mould, tool on the same shape as the wax model.

SINU

The tropical plains of the Caribbean in the north of Colombia are areas of lakes, estuaries and savannahs, with a varied fauna. The Zenú had been expanding since the 8^th century BC in the basins of the rivers Sinú, San Jorge, Cauca and Nechí. At their peak their territory was divided into three provinces with complementary economic functions: production of edible tubers, various manufactures and the exploitation of native gold. Their chiefs, all members of a single lineage, controlled the large-scale distribution of products.

URABA

The archaeological sites of northern Colombia, located on the coastal plains and in the mountains regions, shared metallurgical traditions with the goldworks areas of Panama and Costa Rica. Form the beginning of our era until AD 1000, techniques, ideas and forms –such as double-headed birds and animals with raised tails- were transmitted form one region to another. Casting with tumbaga alloys was the favoured technique.

TAIRONA

The Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, in the north of the country, was inhabited by the Tairona. At the height of their splendor, after AD 1000, they built many villages and cities with stone foundations, covered today with thick vegetation. Their engineering and architectural works are remarkable: terraces, sewers, bridges, roads and stairs. Their urbanism indicates a hierarchy of political management, with great cities controlling smaller settlements though an elite composed of chiefs and a powerful priestly class.

MUISCA

Toward the 7^th. Century AD the high plains of the Eastern Cordillera of Colombia were populated by the muisca, a group linguistically related to the Tairona. At the time of the Spanish conquest they had expanded over an area of 25,000 square kilometers and comprised more than a million inhabitants. Farmers cultivating maize, potatoes and other Andean tubers, they lived scattered over the slopes and valleys, subject to chefs who governed from villages. Two principal chiefs, the Zipa and the Zaque, ruled over the south and north of the territory respectively.