Dissertation Research: Prehispanic Settlement Patterns of the Sogamoso Valley

University Of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh PA

Investigators

Abstract

Under the supervision of Dr. Robert D. Drennan, doctoral candidate Sebastian Fajardo will conduct a settlement pattern study in the Sogamoso Valley of the eastern highlands of Colombia. The Muisca chiefs in this part of Colombia were broadly described by the Spanish conquerors who arrived in the sixteenth century as among the richest and most powerful rulers of indigenous northern South America. The archaeological record of these societies suggests considerable variability from one Muisca chiefdom to another in the nature and extent of their development. In particular, it has suggested that chiefs in the southern part of Muisca territory began to consolidate power over regional polities before 1000 AD, and that this power was founded on control of basic resources for intensive food production. This scenario fits with the idea that control of economic resources provides for the development of especially large-scale political integration under powerful leaders. In contrast, archaeologically known chiefdoms in the northern part of Muisca territory, seem to emerge later, and remained small in scale and generally less developed than those of the south. It has been argued that this demonstrates the developmental limitations of power based largely on feasting, social obligations, and religious authority, since the northern Muisca area lacks readily intensifiable and controllable agricultural resources. Although the focus is on one past society the potential relevance is significant in a present day context. The underlying goal of the research is to gain insight into the factors which guide the development and maintenance of complex traditional societies which are characteristic in many regions of the world today. The principal chiefly center in the northernmost Muisca area was at Sogamoso, and Spanish colonial accounts describe it as in important center indeed, focused on a grand Temple of the Sun presided over by a chief whose power derived from religious authority over a confederation of smaller polities. If accurate, these accounts suggest considerable scope for a rather different pathway to the development of chiefly power than that imagined for southern Muisca chiefdoms - a pathway based more on religious belief than on economic control. Except for excavations in and around the location of the Temple of the Sun itself, little archaeological research has been carried out in the Sogamoso region. The settlement study to be carried out by Mr. Fajardo will document the scale and nature of the human community surrounding the Temple of the Sun, at both local and regional scales. It will assess the extent to which a large-scale consolidated regional polity with a major central place emerged. This will make it possible to compare the largest and most impressive chiefly central communities and regional polities of the northern and southern parts of Muisca territory and assess more effectively their degrees of development. The project will also have broader impacts. As dissertation research, it is vital to the training of the doctoral candidate. At the same time it will provide experience and training in field and laboratory methods to undergraduate archaeology students from several Colombian universities. It will present new archaeological information to school students and the general public by presenting preliminary results of the study in the Museo Parque Arqueológico de Sogamoso, a regional landmark for synergistic relations between academic research and contemporary communities.