Ancient pottery of the middle Cauca Valley, Colombia

Abstract

The ancient remains of the central Cauca drainage, an area today formed by the departments of Caldas, Risaralda, Quindío, southern Antioquia and northern Valle, are commonly referred to as Quimbaya, after a small tribe which inhabited the area of Cartago at the time of the Spanish Conquest. There is little doubt that some of these antiquities must pertain to the historic Quimbaya and still less doubt that the majority of them do not. In 1966, as a doctoral thesis project at the University of California, Berkeley, I began a stylistic study of the Quimbaya ceramics in an attempt to define the several different cultural completes which make up this heterogeneous group. This study was based only on already existing collections, both museum and private, and hence was made doubly difficult. First because there were few if any archeological associations preserved, the majority of pieces not even having sure provenience and second because any collection made for aesthetic reasons will be skewed in the direction of the more elaborate pieces. Although I was able to define five major styles (or completes, a complex being the full range of vessel types in use at one time) I had very little information about distributions or interrelationship of these groups. In 1970 I led an archaeological survey project in the Depts. of Quindío and Valle. Over 60 sites were discovered and studied, and a number of tombs were excavated. This project confirmed the reality of the original stylistic groupings and amplified the range of ceramic types in the several completes. Sampies of organie material from the tombs were submitted for radiocarbon testing and, for the first time, absolute dates for the «Quimbaya culture» were obtained.

The ancient remains of the central Cauca drainage, an area today formed by the departments of Caldas, Risaralda, Quindío, southern Antioquia and northern Valle, are commonly referred to as Quimbaya, after a small tribe which inhabited the area of Cartago at the time of the Spanish Conquest. There is little doubt that some of these antiquities must pertain to the historic Quimbaya and still less doubt that the majority of them do not. In 1966, as a doctoral thesis project at the University of California, Berkeley, I began a stylistic study of the Quimbaya ceramics in an attempt to define the several different cultural completes which make up this heterogeneous group. This study was based only on already existing collections, both museum and private, and hence was made doubly difficult. First because there were few if any archeological associations preserved, the majority of pieces not even having sure provenience and second because any collection made for aesthetic reasons will be skewed in the direction of the more elaborate pieces. Although I was able to define five major styles (or completes, a complex being the full range of vessel types in use at one time) I had very little information about distributions or interrelationship of these groups. In 1970 I led an archaeological survey project in the Depts. of Quindío and Valle. Over 60 sites were discovered and studied, and a number of tombs were excavated. This project confirmed the reality of the original stylistic groupings and amplified the range of ceramic types in the several completes. Sampies of organie material from the tombs were submitted for radiocarbon testing and, for the first time, absolute dates for the «Quimbaya culture» were obtained.