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The real El Dorado? Muisca gold artefacts and Lake Guatavita – With Dr Marcos Martinón-Torres -Context S2E5
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The myth of El Dorado played a significant role in driving the European conquistadors to explore and conquer large parts South America starting in the sixteenth century CE. But did this El Dorado actually exist, and where was it, or better who was it? In this episode of archaeological context, we will cover the source of the El Dorado legend, as it originates from specific rituals performed by the Muisca, indigenous peoples in nowadays Colombia, specifically at a small mountain lake called Guatavita. In addition, Dr Marcos Martinón-Torres, Professor at the University of Cambridge shares results of his research project examining Muisca gold artefacts.
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Transcript
Introduction to the Archaeology Podcast Network
00:00:00
Speaker
You're listening to the Archaeology Podcast Network.
00:00:18
Speaker
The myth
The Myth of El Dorado and European Exploration
00:00:19
Speaker
of El Dorado played a significant role in driving the European conquistadors to explore and conquer South America starting in the 16th century CE. But did this El Dorado actually exist and where was it? Or better, who was it?
00:00:36
Speaker
In
Muisca Rituals and Lake Guatavita Insights
00:00:37
Speaker
this episode of archaeological context we will cover the source of the El Dorado legends, as it originates from specific rituals performed by the Muisca, indigenous peoples in nowadays Colombia, specifically at the small mountain lake called Guatavita.
00:00:55
Speaker
And I am very happy that Dr. Marcos Martínon Torres, professor of archaeological science at the University of Cambridge, joined this episode to give us more insights about the rituals performed at the lake and his ongoing research project analyzing the famous Muska gold artifacts.
Significance of the Muisca Landscape
00:01:15
Speaker
Here's already an extract of our conversation.
00:01:19
Speaker
If you forget for a moment about European references, there is nothing that makes that lake, or very lethal, more special than other lakes around Colombia, as well as other sacred locations, caves, etc., where we have similar evidence of
00:01:37
Speaker
ritual festivities, people sharing food and drink, people making offerings to the deities. The whole landscape was ritualized. The Muisca saw themselves as part of a very ritualized nature that they were a part of. And so it is possible that
00:01:54
Speaker
The story of the Whatabita Lake has also been aggrandized because the Europeans happened to hear about it and they loved it for obvious reasons.
Colombia's Archaeological Gold Heritage
00:02:04
Speaker
And it's not to say that this is not an important lake, but rather that the whole of the region is important and ritualized.
Muisca Economy and Society in the 16th Century
00:02:32
Speaker
Some of the most spectacular archaeological gold work from the pre-Columbian Americas in quality and quantity have been recovered in present-day Colombia. However, the archaeology of Colombia is practically absent in grand narratives about world history.
00:02:50
Speaker
Somewhat sandwiched between the territories of well-known Inca or Aztec societies, Colombia seems a bit of an archaeological quote no man's land. But I hope with this episode I can change that a bit.
00:03:05
Speaker
The eastern highlands of Colombia, the present-day departments of Cundinamarca and Boyaca, constitute a geographically and economically diverse area composed of plateaus and valleys. When the European conquistadors arrived in 1536 CE, this region was inhabited by the Muisca peoples.
00:03:28
Speaker
At this time, by the 16th century, the mouska were divided into configurations formed by chieftains. Economic activities comprised of agriculture, pottery, metalwork and textile production, as well as salt and emerald mining.
Muisca Goldsmithing and Guatavita Sanctuaries
00:03:46
Speaker
But importantly also trade, which ensured the supply of gold for their famous metalwork, as we will cover in this episode later.
00:03:55
Speaker
One of the major chiefs of the Muisca was the so-called Tsipa, who also held power over the Guatavita chieftain, which was located east of the Savannah of Bogota. The Guatavita chieftain's territory likely encompassed several valleys, and it retained its power because of two factors. First, it was a renowned goldsmithing center in the Muisca territory,
00:04:22
Speaker
to which indigenous people traveled from all over to commission votive figures for offerings. And second, the domains of the chieftain housed some of the most famous indigenous sanctuaries, especially Lake Guatavita itself, the most important Muisca shrine.
El Dorado Ceremony and Rituals
00:04:42
Speaker
Most of our knowledge about Muisca rituals comes from the Spanish chronicles of the 16th and 17th centuries.
00:04:50
Speaker
These rituals, like rites of passage, political festivities, or religious celebrations, commonly shared two activities that seemed essential to their performance. The consumption of chicha, an alcoholic beverage made of fermented corn, and the making of offerings.
00:05:10
Speaker
and this leads us to the main topic of this episode as in 1638 a colonial chronicle from Juan Rodriguez Frele describes the inauguration ritual for the successor of the Guatavita chieftain known as the El Dorado ceremony. He wrote, quote,
00:05:31
Speaker
It was customary among these natives that he who was to be the successor and heir of the lordship had to fast for six years in a cave they had dedicated and designated for this, and that during this time he had to take no part with women, nor did he eat meat, salt, or chili, and other things that were prohibited to him.
00:05:54
Speaker
During the fasting they could not see the sun, only at night were they allowed to leave the cave to see the moon and the stars. When the fasting and ceremonies were fulfilled, they entered into the possession of the chieftain, and on the first day they had to go to the great Lake Guatavita to offer and sacrifice to the demon who they had for their god.
00:06:18
Speaker
At
Attempts to Drain Lake Guatavita
00:06:19
Speaker
this time they stripped the air in live flesh and anointed it with a sticky earth, and sprinkled it with powdered and ground gold, in such a way that he was all covered with this metal. They put him in the raft, on which he was standing, and at his feet they put a large pile of gold and emeralds to offer to their god.
00:06:43
Speaker
four chiefs entered with him onto the raft. The golden Indian made his offer by throwing all the gold he had at his feet in the middle of the lake, and the other chiefs who accompanied him did the same. From this ceremony they took the celebrated name of El Dorado."
00:07:04
Speaker
So, let's focus on this Lake Guatavita. Well, it's a small mountain lake northeast of Bogota, located at an altitude of over 3000 meters in the mountains of Cundinamarca. It measures approximately 400 by 300 meters, and its depth today does not exceed 12 meters.
00:07:27
Speaker
And due to the rapid spreading of the myth of El Dorado, there were numerous attempts to drain this lake since the 16th century. Among them, for example, already in 1545, conquistadors tried to siphon off the water, and apparently in some free months the water levels had dropped by three meters, revealing some gold objects.
00:07:52
Speaker
A few decades later, a Spanish merchant ordered hundreds of locals to cut open the shore of the lake to drain the water. But after the water level had dropped by several meters, the walls of this ditch they had dug collapsed, killing many workers and blocking this drainage channel.
00:08:14
Speaker
In the 1820s, a friend of Simone Bolivar tried to drain the lake in a similar way, but this endeavor failed again. However, almost one century later, British engineer Hartley Knowles managed to drain the water with underground pipes, revealing some gold objects and precious stones, according to an article of the New York Times from 1912.
00:08:41
Speaker
but the exposed lake bed was covered in a very thick layer of mud that could not be walked upon. Attempts were made to remove the mud with shovels, but the sun had already hardened the muddy ground to almost concrete.
00:08:57
Speaker
Shortly afterwards, the lake filled with water again.
Artistic and Technical Aspects of Muisca Gold
00:09:01
Speaker
And finally, in 1965, the Colombian government declared Lake Guatavita a national heritage site, putting an end to all these attempts to drain the lake. I personally find it fascinating how all of these attempts, over almost 500 years, failed and so the lake could preserve its mysteries.
00:09:24
Speaker
But now, let us focus on what the European conquistadors and later raiders were searching for. Muisca gold artifacts, as their artistic beauty and technical sophistication were already well known centuries ago.
00:09:40
Speaker
Particularly famous are the so-called tunjos, miniature anthropomorphic figures made in a very distinctive style, which can be characterized as follows. On a small flat, elongated plate, human figures are outlined with thin threads that represent arms, legs, as well as facial and other body attributes.
El Dorado Raft and its Significance
00:10:04
Speaker
From a technical viewpoint, Muska gold artifacts are all very similar as the vast majority of them appear to have not undergone any work following casting. Many of them still hold casting sprues or feeding channels. Also, casting errors such as metal lumps or holes are never repaired and the surfaces are generally unpolished.
00:10:31
Speaker
These observations already set the Muisca apart from other metallurgical traditions of pre-Columbian peoples, as these artifacts were clearly not made with much regard for brilliance or sheen. Much more work was invested in the creation of very intricate models with extremely thin gold threads than in the actual metal casting or finishing.
00:10:56
Speaker
Probably the most famous and striking of these Muisca gold artifacts is the so-called Eldorado raft, an iconic manifestation of the technical and aesthetic skill of their metalwork. The raft was part of a votive offering that were placed in a cave in the municipality of Pasca, some 130 kilometers south of Lake Guatavita.
00:11:22
Speaker
It was found in 1969 by a farmer, apparently while searching for his dog.
00:11:29
Speaker
The gold raft is almost 20 cm long and 10 cm wide and most likely dates to the 13th century CE. Placed on the raft were 11 human figures, a large central seated figure representing the chief surrounded by 10 smaller figures. The manufacturing process of this object must have been very intensive, likely requiring hundreds of hours of work.
00:11:58
Speaker
This gold raft, with its figurines, seems to depict the El Dorado ceremony at Lake Guatavita, as described by the sighted chronicle. So, taken altogether, El Dorado, Spanish for the golden one, is actually not referring to a place or city of gold, but the Muisca ceremony of covering their new leader in gold dust.
Research on Muisca Gold Artifacts
00:12:24
Speaker
who then went out on a raft to Lake Guatavita and offering lots of gold objects and other precious artifacts into the waters of the lake. And with that, I am happy to present you my conversation with Dr. Marcos Martínon Torres, professor of archaeological science at the University of Cambridge and currently leading a research project focusing on the analysis of Musca gold artifacts.
00:13:01
Speaker
Marcos, thank you very much for taking the time to have a chat with me. And maybe for the listeners not too familiar with the different analytical methods, can you maybe give us a simplified summary of the different ways you and your team analyze these Muska Gold artifacts and what you aim to find out?
00:13:23
Speaker
Sure, happily. And thank you for having me. So, as you know, we tried to apply a variety of scientific techniques to understanding mostly technological aspects of archaeological artifacts.
00:13:39
Speaker
But these can be boiled down to a few techniques. On the one hand, we do a lot of chemical analysis of the gold objects, elemental analysis, that tell us which chemical elements are present in the objects and in what proportions. So even though we call these artifacts gold, the vast majority of them are what we call practice tumbaga, which is a mixture or an alloy of gold, copper, and silver.
00:14:07
Speaker
that also has trace elements, impurities that are determined just by geology. So in determining the chemical composition,
00:14:17
Speaker
On the one hand, we can see what kinds of alloys, what kinds of mixtures the Muiska chose to select for their artifacts. And in these, what we find is a remarkable array of mixtures of gold and copper from very gold-rich artifacts to very copper-rich artifacts. Clearly, they wanted to create a spectrum of alloys or a spectrum of colors and properties, et cetera.
00:14:47
Speaker
And also the elemental composition is very useful for us in helping us determine where the goal came from.
00:14:54
Speaker
something that is quite significant about the Muisca is that we have a lot of archaeological gold artifacts but the area where the Muisca lived is one of the few areas of Colombia where we have no geological gold. So all of that gold must have come from somewhere and through the analysis of the geochemical fingerprint of this gold we can begin to approach the possible sources that they were obtaining these gold from.
Muisca Gold Sources and Adaptability
00:15:21
Speaker
So that's one area of scientific analysis. The other one is that which involves a variety of microscopic analysis. So we look at these artifacts under a range of optical and electron microscopes, and this is what allows us to identify how they were made, how the artifacts were shaped, where there are joints, how different parts may have been joined together, if there are traces of use in
00:15:50
Speaker
bits of jewelry, for example, where they were made just to be deposited or whether they were worn by people during their lifetime. If there are repairs in artifacts, we sometimes identify technical gestures that we can assign to a particular artisan. So we can, in the way art historians do connoisseurship, we can do similar things with archaeological artifacts. And so in essence and summarizing, we use scientific techniques to understand, on the one hand,
00:16:20
Speaker
where the raw materials are coming from, then how these metals are being mixed and in what proportions, and then how these metals are being turned into finished artifacts. You said from where the raw materials come from, do they always use throughout the time the same resources or do you see a change or a shift in trade routes that they used?
00:16:43
Speaker
That's a very interesting question, and one that we are only beginning to shed some light on for the first time. Because for this, we need quite sensitive high-resolution trace element analysis, which we are beginning to do now as part of the reverse action project.
00:17:00
Speaker
And what we are finding is a diversity of gold sources. We can't yet in all cases say where the source of that gold is because from the artifacts we extract the fingerprint, but then we need to find the fingerprint match. And so that requires a lot more data, but we can certainly say, okay, this group of artifacts has one fingerprint and this group has a different one.
00:17:28
Speaker
And sometimes we find these in the very same sites. So this is already indicating that, as we suspected, the Muiska made their supply of raw materials resilient by having a variety of gold sources and not just one.
Lost Wax Casting Technique
00:17:46
Speaker
OK. And yeah, thank you very much.
00:17:49
Speaker
Maybe as a practical example, together with colleagues from the Museo de Loro in Bogota, you were able to extensively analyze this famous Muska gold raft that was found in Pasca. What was the most surprising discovery for you? Well, yeah, studying the Muska raft was an enormous privilege because, as you know, it's arguably the most important heritage object in the whole of Colombia.
00:18:18
Speaker
And we found a couple of interesting things, I suppose, or three. One is the fact that complex as this artifact is, because as you know, it depicts a raft made of reeds, but there is a number of individual characters standing on it from the chief in the middle, a couple of people wearing masks in front of him, and then a diverse entourage and other items.
00:18:45
Speaker
All of these was made in a single shot, in a single event. It was made by a technique that we know as the lost wax casting technique, whereby you first model your artefact using beeswax.
00:19:00
Speaker
which is, of course, something like plasticine that is easier to model. Then around the wax model, you create a clay and charcoal mold. So you mix charcoal dust with clay to create a mold around the subject so that it adopts the shape, which in the case of the Mwiska raft is in itself very complicated because it's got lots of crevices and intricacies and you have to get your clay all around it.
00:19:25
Speaker
What you then do is melt the wax out so you create a void with the shape of the desired object, and you then pour the metal in. And once it solidifies, of course, you break the mold and you have your object.
00:19:40
Speaker
So one of the peculiar things is that it's all being made with the lost wax casting technique and in one single event. So all of the different figurines were poured in one shot. If somebody today wanted to make something like that, an object like that, normally you would cast each individual character separately and then solder them onto the raft because that minimizes the risk of error. Because if something goes wrong with one object, you only have to repeat that part.
00:20:09
Speaker
But in the raft, there's clearly a form of ritual constraint, which we've seen in other artifacts, that dictates that the whole artifact has to be modeled with wax in one shot.
Cultural Values in Muisca Metalwork
00:20:23
Speaker
The other thing that we see that is connected with it is that after the investment of an enormous amount of time and labor in creating the wax model and then casting it in gold,
00:20:36
Speaker
there is virtually no attempt at adding any finishing touches. So after you cast an object in the mold, naturally you will have traces of the mold still stuck to the surface of the gold object, you know, bits of charcoal dust, clay, etc. You will also have
00:20:59
Speaker
what we call figures that are basically channels that you created in your mode either to pour the metal in or to degas for the metal to go for the air to go out of the mode and sometimes these are filled with metal so after you catch the object and that's still done today by jewelers you will
00:21:18
Speaker
Trim those off, you cut them off and you recycle that metal and you will polish the surface to make it shiny and clean so that it shows off those properties of gold that we assume are universally sought after. The sheen of gold, the color etc.
00:21:36
Speaker
And what we find in the whisker raft, an object that was undoubtedly very important culturally, is that there is none of that. There's loads of feeders still left in the mold. There is a lot of charcoal left in lots of nooks and crevices, which has been great for us because we could extract a sample and then radiocarbon date the raft. But it's quite significant that it shows very clearly
00:22:01
Speaker
on the one hand that there is a lot of constraints, ritually, as to how the object has to be made and then not finished in the way we would expect, but also that the expectations of
00:22:15
Speaker
what we might deem a good object, a well-finished object, or what a gold object should look like, are very different between us and the Muisca. In fact, and that's the third perhaps point to highlight, there are a number of features on the raft that you and I would call casting errors.
00:22:38
Speaker
So places where the mold cracked, where it shouldn't have cracked, and so the metal went in the wrong place and filled a space that should have been a gap in the raft, for example. And so in other contexts, again, these could have been deemed a failed object, one that you have to throw back into the melting pot and try again.
Ritual Role of Muisca Gold Objects
00:23:00
Speaker
But this is not the case among the buiska. So it's even probably
00:23:05
Speaker
inappropriate to call these errors. They are just intrinsic features of the artifact that was deposited as it was created.
00:23:14
Speaker
Yeah, that's very interesting. I read also from the publications that the Moiska didn't really, yeah, like you said, repolish or shine the objects. Do you think that has some ritualistic reason or maybe that the lost wax, the wax model itself was, I was just thinking, was like the object actually, and then how it is casted, that they did not really retouch these objects.
00:23:39
Speaker
Yes, so we have to understand that all of these objects were parts of offerings, votive offerings or religious offerings, that we understand were made at special occasions and in special places to seek divine favour.
00:23:56
Speaker
in various moments, it could be a harvest, it could be a rite of passage, it could be perhaps war, a new chief. So at those various moments of life, we know the Muisca made loads of offerings, some with gold, some with other materials.
00:24:11
Speaker
And clearly we think the making of the object was part of the ritual itself. The manipulation of wax clearly was very important for the Moiska. We have some ethnohistorical references or even ethnographic references today about indigenous communities still living in the eastern highlands of Colombia.
00:24:32
Speaker
where bees and wax and honey, all of the bee's products, are ritually very important. These are considered an example of a highly organized society. They are featured in loads of foundational myths. They chew honey and wax as part of several rituals. And so it may not be far-fetched to think that the use of wax was already part of the offering and part of the ritual.
00:25:00
Speaker
And then, yes, they cast them in gold to make them more permanent with another material that was, of course, ritually important, as gold was. And then they offer it immediately after making it. So these are not offerings that are made out of heirlooms collected over several generations.
00:25:17
Speaker
But we see quite clearly that something is commissioned, it is made, and immediately offered. So they are not objects that are meant to be pretty and shiny in the way we see them today. They are not meant to be shown off. They are not objects for display. They are not made for the eyes of this world.
00:25:36
Speaker
And so it's a very different conception and value of gold that is not about beauty, is not about wealth, is not about showing off.
Contrasting Views of El Dorado
00:25:44
Speaker
It is largely about something else.
00:25:47
Speaker
Yes, so this Muska gold draft from Pascal, it appears to depict this El Dorado ceremony as described by Juan Rodriguez Frele. Do you agree more or less with this assessment? And do we have any other archaeological evidence maybe for these rituals as described in these chronicles to have taken place?
00:26:13
Speaker
Well, that's another very interesting question because, as you know, the raft is supposed to represent the materialization of the ritual of El Dorado, and perhaps it's worth
00:26:29
Speaker
outlining, I don't know if you would like me to do it, what the El Dorado descriptions say, as described by Europeans, all of whom are describing it secondhand. We don't know of any European ever witnessing the El Dorado ceremony, but we have the historical accounts on the one hand, and then on the other hand, the broader ethnohistorical and archaeological evidence. So what the Europeans describe is
00:26:56
Speaker
a particular important moment in the ritual calendar, potentially, though that's not clear, a new chief. There is a ceremony whereby this important person embarks on a raft made of reeds. Prior to that, that person has been covered in a sticky, oily substance and then covered with gold dust.
00:27:19
Speaker
therefore becoming the golden man, and El Dorado, which is what it means. So El Dorado was initially not a place, but a person. And that person, together with other people, as well as some other gold, embarks on this raft, goes to the middle of a lake, and then throws all of this gold into the middle of the lake. So those are the facts, if you like.
00:27:43
Speaker
and the raft as found archaeologically is consistent with that ceremony. So it throws a very important person in the middle of a raft, potentially about to embark on this ceremony. The problem then comes with how we interpret this.
00:27:58
Speaker
So the Europeans hear this story and they repeat it and then re-repeat it. It appears in various sources until the present day. And the summary is there is somebody very powerful who can accumulate a lot of gold and then goes and throws all of these gold in the middle of a lake.
00:28:17
Speaker
And therefore there is a place in the depth of the Colombian wilderness where there is a lake that must be full of gold. And that's how El Dorado is transposed from the person to the place. And it fuels the obsession that reaches pretty much the present day that we have to find El Dorado because El Dorado represents wealth and salvation from all of the life mysteries because if you find El Dorado, you are sorted. So that's
Rituals and Technology in Muisca Society
00:28:45
Speaker
where it becomes
00:28:47
Speaker
of course a very Eurocentric perspective on the ambition for gold as a material that will bring you wealth and individual power. So that's their European reading. But of course you can read this differently, also consistent with the facts, to say there is a person who is no doubt important,
00:29:08
Speaker
We call them the chief, but knows what it would have been called. But somebody important who is acting as a mediator to collect gold that's been brought by various people and to lead on a ritual that is done as an offering to the deities for the benefit of the community.
00:29:28
Speaker
So that person is not accumulating individual wealth but actually being a mediator for the community to lead together with other religious specialists on a ritual that will hopefully bring benefit to the community as a whole. So there's nothing here about individual wealth or coercive power necessarily and in fact what we know is that person in order to earn
00:29:56
Speaker
the responsibility not the power but the privilege or the responsibility to lead on this ritual they must have undergone years of sacrifice and fasting and loads of endurance and so being the person who leads on that doesn't make you individually rich or powerful so it's the same facts but very different readings of it.
00:30:17
Speaker
Okay, interesting. And also staying with rituals. Your current research project, it has the interesting hypothesis that rituals help to sustain complex technologies. Can you maybe elaborate on what you mean by this and maybe share also already some results?
00:30:37
Speaker
Sure, very happily. So the project that I'm working on now with a range of colleagues in Colombia and here in Cambridge, but also in other countries and institutions, it's called reverse action. And it's focused on luxury or complex technologies in societies without states. And basically, I suppose the starting point is when archaeologists or
00:31:07
Speaker
members of the public find an archaeological gold object or anything else that's luxurious and spectacular say precious stones brought from thousands of kilometers away or very elaborate textiles or very ornate ceramics.
00:31:24
Speaker
We immediately, explicitly or implicitly, tend to think of those as individual possessions that convey the power and wealth of an individual. So we find them and we immediately think, oh, who was the powerful person that owned this object?
00:31:44
Speaker
The reality, however, is that there are plenty of archaeological examples of societies that have these very rich and complex artifacts, but where we have no evidence of those coercive authorities in the form of a state or in the form of an emperor or a pharaoh,
00:32:06
Speaker
And therefore, in those societies there must have been another system to justify and then sustain the production of these materials, these commodities that are very difficult to make, where you require a lot of investment in the training of artisans, perhaps a lot of investment in the logistics of bringing exotic or rare raw materials.
00:32:31
Speaker
and where ultimately you are creating something that's ultimately not geared towards subsistence or towards the more immediate practical utilitarian problems.
00:32:42
Speaker
And so I've always thought that that's really interesting. First to visualize the fact that artistic sensitivity and technological complexity, et cetera, are not correlated with state hierarchies. And that we have perhaps conflated civilization and sophistication with
00:33:05
Speaker
centralized power, but that's not necessarily the case because of course in Colombia, as the case in point, we have no doubt a complex sophisticated society. It's one that on the ground in terms of the material culture and technology that we see is as spectacular as their neighboring
00:33:24
Speaker
Aztecs or Maya or Inca that we always talk about, but they are simply less well known because they didn't have these state authorities. And so from these, and sorry that I elaborate on this, but so from these backgrounds,
00:33:39
Speaker
We've been trying to investigate not just the fact that this existed, but how did that operate in practice?
Technological Resilience through Raw Material Sourcing
00:33:45
Speaker
How do you manage to sustain these technologies when ultimately you don't have somebody at the top saying, you shall do this because I say so, or otherwise I will punish you? When you don't have somebody to do that, how do these societies manage? The short answer, we believe, is collective action, is cooperation.
00:34:04
Speaker
for people to decide to invest in these technologies, they must have agreed to do it. They must have been an element of persuasion or voluntary contribution, because there's no other way. It's either that or coercion or somewhere in between. But I suppose that's the other end of the spectrum. In practice, in terms of the logistics,
00:34:25
Speaker
we think it is true that to a significant extent where you don't have a, I mean we're not the only ones to think of this, where you don't have a state control, where you don't have a stable coercive political authority,
00:34:40
Speaker
the demand is replaced by ritual. It is a lot of the luxurious materials that are created among the Muska, but also among other communities, are destined to ritual. And then in practice, how this is sustained, for example, we are investigating hypotheses, and we were just talking about this earlier, to make these sustainable. One of the things that we think they did was to diversify the supply of raw materials.
00:35:09
Speaker
because if you are a pharaoh you can dictate that all of your gold is going to come from this mine and you do organize all of the systems in place so that this is the case.
00:35:19
Speaker
If you're a smaller scale society without such power, you may be initially more sensitive to fluctuations in supply because of climate disasters or because of war or something else. And so if you diversify your sources of raw materials, you may be more resilient.
00:35:40
Speaker
And this is something, because if there's failure in one provisional line, you have the other one in place. And so this is something we are beginning to see now with the geochemical analysis that appear to agree, the initial results appear to agree with our predictions, in that they are consistent with the diversity of raw material sources.
00:36:02
Speaker
And they are of course consistent with the Muska way of life in that we know they were very mobile and following ritual calendars they moved around the landscape, deorganized markets where
00:36:17
Speaker
you know, there was the economic transaction but a lot of ritual action because of course we don't need to separate those in ritual economies. And so the whole picture is consistent with a ritual economy that diversified raw material supply and therefore was more resilient.
00:36:33
Speaker
there is
Muisca Societal Stability
00:36:34
Speaker
another hypothesis that we're also investigating that is to do with how knowledge was retained and sustained over generations, these specialist knowledge that requiring a lot of apprenticeship, etc. And our hypothesis is that the workshops or the workspaces
00:36:54
Speaker
were probably more informally structured and shared spaces where people working on different materials may have shared knowledge, techniques and ideas. So rather than having a specialist goldsmith attached to a palace, as you would see, I don't know, in the ancient Mediterranean states.
00:37:15
Speaker
Here we expect to see a lot more of technological transference sharing among those working say on ceramics and gold and lithics. And so we expect to see these by patterns of shared motifs between different technologies or the use of tools and technical gestures
00:37:35
Speaker
we expect to see and we are beginning to see different skill levels. So perhaps evidence of the involvement of people with less skills, possibly children or not, of course, hard to tell, involved progressively in the manufacture of these special objects. And in this way, the technology is integrated in the ritual functioning of the society and the sustainability of the community itself. And that's how
00:38:00
Speaker
we have it lasting for millennia. Because let's not forget that, and it's something that irritates me specially, that we often call these intermediate societies. And in the case of Colombia, as you know, we also call it the intermediate region. It's as if we are in no man or woman's land and at an intermediate stage of evolution towards civilization that we equate with state.
00:38:30
Speaker
But they were actually what we should be wondering is not why they didn't quite make it to be states as if that was the culmination of evolution, but rather they are stable as far as we can see society is lasting for millennia. So how, you know, we should study them in their own merit as a form of organization that for all we can see worked.
Continuation of Muisca Traditions Post-Contact
00:38:51
Speaker
Yeah, that's a very interesting way to look at it. Yes. Maybe a bit more of a specific question, and you already mentioned it. So I read that the lack of dateable cultural materials, maybe like ceramic objects in specific styles, that this makes it very difficult for the Muscat Gold artifacts to order them chronologically.
00:39:17
Speaker
However, and I worked a lot in my research projects with radiocarbon dating. So however, that radiocarbon dating of these charcoal fragments that you were able to recover from casting ores in some metal objects have yielded dates ranging from the 7th up until the 19th centuries. So I just wondered to myself, did the production of these gold objects really continue up until the 1800s?
00:39:46
Speaker
It seems so. So the evidence is certainly we have several instances of evidence of the production of gold and other ritual objects well after the contact period. It's hard to say how much because even though we now as part of this project, we're also trying to acquire more dates. They are at present maybe
00:40:07
Speaker
about 200 radiocarbon dates for Colombian gold work, which is a lot, but not enough to talk about relative abundances over time. But yes, to answer more directly your question, there are clear instances of the survival of indigenous ritual practices after European contact in the form of mummified bodies with offerings associated to them.
00:40:32
Speaker
but also gold offerings very similar to the kind that you would see with the Miska raft or others, but that either we can date through radiocarbon to after European contact, or in a few couple of cases I can think of now, one with glass, one with ceramic, where we have European materials incorporated into those offerings,
00:40:55
Speaker
So in one of them, in Pocanitipa, we have mixed with the Colombian emeralds a few fragments of European green glass. And so that is showing us on the one hand, the adaptation of the exogenous material to the indigenous value systems. But at the same time, it's showing some form of resistance and the survival of those indigenous traditions into the 17th and 18th centuries in some cases.
Curiosity and Protection of Lake Guatavita
00:41:22
Speaker
Thank you very much. That's super interesting.
00:41:25
Speaker
Maybe as a final question, I covered the many failed attempts that took place over the centuries, over 500 years, to drain Lake Guatavita. And it's very good that the lake now is under protection to stop these actions taking place. But are you not also a bit curious and could speculate on what objects maybe lie below the seabed?
00:41:52
Speaker
Yeah, of course, we're all curious in that there has been, you know, there have been so many attempts, as you know, draining the Watavita Lake where supposedly all of this El Dorado ceremony took place, that we understand quite well what was or isn't there.
00:42:07
Speaker
And there are indeed a good number of gold objects have been found there. But I find it more interesting from an archaeological perspective. There was an article published earlier this year by Juan Pablo Quintero from the Gold Museum that did a very good job at also summarizing the archaeology of the broader Guatavita region.
00:42:29
Speaker
So there is a lot of evidence in the forms of fragments of offering vessels, but also food and drink consumption ceramics, that it's quite plausible that there were banquets or some form of compensality that are taking place around the lake. And so there is no doubt there were ritual ceremonies there. However, and this is a very important point, there is nothing
00:42:56
Speaker
If you forget for a moment about European references, there is nothing that makes that lake, or very lethal, more special than other lakes around Colombia, as well as other sacred locations, caves, etc., where we have similar evidence of
00:43:14
Speaker
ritual festivities people sharing food and drink people making offerings to date is the whole landscape was ritualized the whiskers saw themselves as part of a very ritualized nature that they were since the part of and so it is possible that.
00:43:32
Speaker
The story of the Whatabita Lake has also been aggrandized because the Europeans happened to hear about it and they loved it for obvious reasons. And it's not to say that this is not an important lake, but rather that the whole of the region is important and ritualized.
Conclusion and Podcast Subscription Information
00:43:50
Speaker
Yes. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you very much for these insights and hopefully see you soon at the conference or some other event. You need no very nice talking to you and thank you for your thank you very much.
00:44:11
Speaker
All right, that's it for this episode. Ever since visiting Colombia some months ago and exploring a few Musca sites and seeing their amazing gold artifacts in the Museo del Oro in Bogota, I wanted to cover this topic in my podcast.
00:44:29
Speaker
Thanks again to Dr. Marcos Martinez Torres for giving us his interesting insights, and if you enjoyed it as well, please follow and subscribe to this podcast. You can even support it over on Patreon. I hope you will tune in in about two weeks for another edition of Archaeological Context with Dr. Noah.
00:45:09
Speaker
This has been a presentation of the Archaeology Podcast Network. Visit us on the web for show notes and other podcasts at www.archpodnet.com. Contact us at chrisatarchaeologypodcastnetwork.com.