[Aztlan] PENN MUSEUM EXHIBIT ANNOUNCED

[michael ruggeri]

Penn Museum, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

SEPTEMBER 23-DECEMBER 16

RIVER OF GOLD; PRE-COLUMBIAN TREASURES FROM SITIO CONTE; PANAMA

About the Exhibit

In 1940, a Penn Museum expedition excavated rich and remarkable  
evidence of a thriving, Precolumbian civilization that had inhabited  
the region more than a thousand years before. River of Gold:  
Precolumbian Treasures from Sitio Conte features artifacts from the  
excavation and includes more than 120 extraordinary Precolumbian gold  
artifacts -- large-scale, hammered repoussé plaques, nose ornaments,  
gold-sheathed ear rods, pendants, bells, bangles and beads -- as well  
as detail-rich painted ceramics, and objects of precious and semi- 
precious stone, of ivory and of bone.
River of Gold tells the story of Penn Museum's 1940s excavations at  
the Precolumbian cemetery of Sitio Conte, Panama -- a site about 100  
miles west of Panama City -- overlooked by gold-seeking Spaniards in  
the 16th century and centuries later exposed by the change in course  
of the Rio Grande de Coclé.



When burials in Sitio Conte's ancient cemeteries began to be exposed  
by the shift of the river's course, the Conte family, owners of the  
land, recognized the importance of the site and invited scientific  
excavation. The Peabody Museum of Harvard University carried out the  
first investigations in the 1930s. In the spring of 1940,  
archaeologist J. Alden Mason, then curator in Penn Museu's American  
Section, led a Museum team to carry out three months of excavations.


While several burials were excavated, one multi-grave burial --  
highlighted in the exhibition -- proved most spectacular, with great  
quantities of gold artifacts placed on and around the grave's chief  
occupant, a high status individual laid out on the middle level of  
the burial pit. Ethnohistoric information about life in 16th century  
Panama, as observed and recorded by Spanish conquistadors, is used to  
help understand the ancestral Panamanian peoples who used the Sitio  
Conte cemetery from about AD 700 to 900. At the time of the Spanish  
Conquest, Spaniards recorded the presence of numerous chiefdoms,  
ruled by a quevi, or high chief, and organized into two basic social  
levels -- an elite group controlling most of the power and wealth,  
and a far more numerous commoner group.

Archaeological evidence from the ancient Sitio Conte cemetery  
reflects a two-tiered society like that described in Spanish accounts  
some 600 to 800 years later, and suggests that events and rituals  
surrounding the burial of the grave's chief occupant were similar to  
those observed for the quevi in the late 16th century. Goldsmiths of  
the New World were consummate artisans, and those who created the  
gold objects found in the Sitio Conte cemetery were no exceptions.  
The plaques and cuffs were crafted from hammered gold sheet.  
Exquisitely detailed pendants were one-of-a-kind items, formed by the  
lost-wax casting method.

In the 1980s, scientists in Penn Museum's Applied Science Center for  
Archaeology (MASCA) analyzed the materials to learn more about them.  
All of the plaques, beadwork and castings were made of a gold/copper  
alloy, called tumbaga by metallurgists, some with a copper content of  
25% or more; goldsmiths employed a complex depletion gilding process  
which dissolved away the copper on the surface, leaving a bright,  
pure gold color and a composition which entirely masked the reddish- 
hued alloy beneath. Both the goldwork and the polychrome painted  
pottery found with it were usually decorated with animal motifs  
reflective of the great diversity of species in central Panama.



Animals and humans often appear as composite forms. Two motifs in  
particular are embossed on thirteen gold plaques found in the largest  
burial at the cemetery: a reptilian-human figure, and a bird-human  
figure with some reptilian features. Long assumed that animal-human  
motifs depicted gods, more recent interpretations of these designs,  
based on analogies with myths of indigenous people living in the  
region today and identification of animal species, suggest that  
warriors selected animals for use as family or warfare insignias.

http://www.museum.upenn.edu/new/exhibits/rog/index.shtml






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