CALIMA

The core of the Calima zone (Figure 21.1) occupies an area of some 50 km2 north of the city of Cali in the Western Cordillera at elevations up to some 2,500 masl and running down to the edge of the Cauca river valley below 1,000 m. Sedentary agricultural occupation, as in so much of southwestern Colombia, began within a few centuries after 1000 BC with the Ilama Period. At least by the end of the first millennium BC, settlements, although quite small, were fairly numerous and widely scattered through the well-watered slopes of the Western Cordillera and adjacent portions of the lower, warmer, and drier Cauca Valley (Cardale 1992, 2005; Rodriguez 2002). Extremely well made pottery vessels and figures are known from tombs (Cardale 1992, 2005; Rodriguez 2002). Gold work probably began in the latter part of the Ilama Period. It is scarce by comparison with later periods in Calima (Cardale 2005), although it seems rather more abundant than in any period in the Alto Magdalena or Tierradentro. Shaft and chamber tombs apparently left no permanent monuments visible on the surface. Those excavated by archaeologists have been shallow, but looters report much deeper and larger tombs with considerably richer offerings (Cardale 1992, 2005; Rodriguez 2002). The artifactual and burial evidence for social hierarchy seems broadly comparable to that for Tumaco-La Tolita, with which it may well be roughly contemporaneous if it dates to the latter part of the Ilama Period. No evidence is yet reported, however, of settlement hierarchy or regional-scale population concentration (Cardale 2005) of the sort that has been used to argue for some degree of political centralization in other parts of southwestern Colombia at this, or later, times.

The Ilama Period transforms itself into the Yotoco Period in the first century AD (Bray 1992, 2005). Substantial forest clearance indicates much higher population levels, drainage ditches were dug through field systems (reminiscent of those found in the Alto Magdalena in the Recent Period), and extensive cultivation of maize, beans, squash, and other crops was supplemented by more intensive cultivation of some local areas of raised fields. Small farmsteads were widely scattered across the landscape, but more nucleated communities may have existed as well, especially in the Cauca Valley (Bray 1992, 2005; Rodriguez 2002). Yotoco tombs, like those of Tumaco-La Tolita and llama, were subterranean, rather than surface monuments, and some of them had extremely rich offerings of very finely made gold pieces, including items of personal adornment, weapons, and other regalia. These strongly recall sixteenth century descriptions of chiefly finery, and suggest much richer and more powerful chiefs than existed in llama times (Bray 1992, 2005; Rodriguez 2002).

Gold work seems finer and far more abundant than for any period or place discussed thus far in this paper (Rodriguez 2002). The site of Malagana lies in the Cauca Valley just south of the Calima core zone. Famously plundered following its accidental discovery in 1992, Malagana is variously assigned to Yotoco or denominated a closely related neighboring culture (Herrera, Cardale, and Bray 1994; Rodriguez 2002; Bray et al. 2005). Estimates of the amount of gold removed by looters in a period of weeks from the tombs of this one site alone range up to over 200 kgs, or thousands and thousands of pieces, including exceptionally spectacular and finely made ones—an amount probably far in excess of the total of all gold work recovered by looters or anyone else from all sites of all periods in the Alto Magdalena. It is, at the same time, important to remember that many gold and gold-alloy objects were utilitarian, and many others were representations of supernatural themes (as in Figure 21.6), including some of the same ones represented in the sculpture of the Alto Magdalena. These objects were clearly not just items of wealth, but also had substantial religious or ideological importance (Bray 2005). Ceramic vessels were common offerings in more ordinary burials. The richest tombs in the Western Cordillera did not contain especially large numbers of pottery objects or particularly finely made ones, although this may not be true down in the Cauca Valley (Bray 1992, 2005; Rodriguez 2002).

The period between AD 500 and 800 is seen as one of cultural dislocation in Calima, with the appearance of new styles of pottery and gold work (Bray 1992, 2005). The ceramics and goldwork of the Sonso Period, which gradually replaced Yotoco somewhere during

Figure 21.6. Elaborate goldwork from Calima. (photo courtesy of Carl Langebaek)

Or soon after this interval, have far less iconographic content and lack the abundance of very finely made examples seen during Yotoco times (Gahwiler 1992, 2005; Rodriguez 2002). Use of gold for personal adornment may have become less restricted to elites (Rodriguez 2002; Herrera 2005), and there are fewer reports of extremely rich burials than was the case in Yotoco times. Interment of multiple individuals in the same tomb, often as secondary burials consisting of bone bundles, became common (Gahwiler 1992, 2005; Rodriguez 2002). While this may sound superficially like a decline in complexity, Sonso social organization may well have been characterized by greater differentiation of a larger number of roles than existed in Yotoco times, and gold work, in particular, suggests a higher degree of specialized production. The principal feature of social organization that becomes less conspicuous in the archaeological record is a monolithic system of social ranking. Sonso population densities were probably even higher than those of Yotoco, and these substantial populations persisted right up to the Spanish Conquest, as was generally the case along the Cauca river valley (Herrera 2005). Rural residence continued to consist of dispersed farmsteads, often visible in the form of small house terraces, as had been the case earlier as well (Salgado, Rodriguez, and Bashilov 1993). Very large artificially leveled spaces, of various shapes and up to around 1 ha in area, now join the small house terraces as conspicuous features on the landscape. It is not entirely clear to what use these were put; they are sometimes, but not always, associated with abundant occupational debris or monuments (Herrera 1992, 2005; Rodriguez 2002). Many of the ridged field areas of the Yotoco period apparently went out of use (Herrera 1992, 2005), but modification of the landscape for agricultural purposes continued. Wooden weapons, fortuitously preserved in waterlogged tombs, provide at least some archaeological support for sixteenth century accounts that focus heavily on warfare for the Cauca Valley in general (Herrera 1992, 2005).