Updates Novedades

From the 29th August – 3rd September 2023, REVERSEACTION presented in three sessions at the EAA 2023 conference in Belfast, Northern Ireland. Agnese Benzonelli gave a summary of her ongoing investigations into Muisca goldwork at Nueva Esperanza, in Session 437, ‘Current Research in the Americas’. In Session 150, ‘The Archaeology of Luxury: Craftsmenship, Consumption, and Desirability in Archaeological Perspective’, Marcos Martinón-Torres introduced the REVERSEACTION project and its aims to grapple with the concepts of shared luxury, collective action, and complex technologies in stateless societies. Finally, Anne Kwaspen gave two mini-talks on her textile research within the REVERSEACTION project and co-hosted a workshop on the archaeology, museology and conservation of textiles, during Session 44, ‘Textiles in Archaeology, Conservation and Museology: Finding a Way Forward Through Collaboration’.

Following REVERSEACTION’s team trip to Colombia in June, Kate Klesner travelled on to Nariño to study some recently excavated ceramic vessels! Working together with a group of local students and archaeologists (including David Alejandro Perez Fernandez, Ana Milena Melo, Angela Maria Lucero Bernal, Felipe Cárdenas, Camila Maya, and Paula Murillo), Kate and the team were able to collect chemical and morphological information on a series of decorated copa vessels, which are large footed cups, recovered from four different archaeological sites in the region. There are three decorated ceramic styles made by pre-Hispanic Colombians in Nariño: Tuza, which has positive painted red and/or brown decoration over a cream slip, Piartal, which has negative black decoration over cream slip with added positive red decoration, and Capulí, which has negative black decoration over a red slip. Little is known about how these complex ceramics were made and decorated, especially how the negative painted decoration was achieved. Kate and the team were able to study copas from the three decorative styles. The compositional and morphologic data will now be used to reconstruct the chaîne opératoire employed in the manufacture of negative painted ceramics to assess the level of standardisation, specialisation, labour, and skill involved in the production of these negative painted wares.

Many thanks to the excellent researchers and supportive teams at the Union del Sur Rumichaca-Pasto Road Project, CESMAG, and the Museo del Oro for sharing their resources, knowledge, and generous hospitality with the REVERSEACTION Project.  

Kate Klesner and Marcos Martinón-Torres recently travelled to Nariño with Lina Campos-Quintero – an archaeologist with the Museo del Oro and REVERSEACTION team member – to learn more about archaeology, environment, and indigenous traditions, and to begin to explore the beautiful and complex decorated ceramics found in the region.  While there, they participated in a conference on Nariño archaeology hosted by the Museo del Oro Nariño, and met with several archaeologists who are conducting new and exciting excavations in the region. In addition to visiting museums and archaeological sites (facilitated by the great Carlos Guillermo López López) the team also visited indigenous communities and several local artisans to learn more about craft production in this area of the Andes.  These included visits with ceramic artists, woodcarvers, and craftspeople who work in “Barniz de Pasto” which uses a native resin from the mopa mopa plant to decorate a wide range of materials. It was a very successful first trip to Nariño! Our social media posts show more details of some of the people and places we encountered.

Our work at the Muisca site of Nueva Esperanza has begun! Located at a terrace by the Tequendama Falls in Cundinamarca, Nueva Esperanza is widely recognised as one of the most important archaeological discoveries of Colombia. This extensively excavated village shows evidence of life and death over a span of 2000 years until the time of European arrival, allowing unprecedented insight into long-term dynamics. Agnese Benzonelli and Marcos Martinón-Torres recently travelled to Colombia to meet REVERSEACTION collaborators Sebastian Rivas, Joaquin Otero Santillan, Gabriel Armando Calderon Rodriguez and Lina Campos Quintero. Together, they conducted chemical and microscopic analyses of hundreds of metal and stone artefacts, and selected samples for additional dating and further analyses at the laboratory. Their work will be integrated with synergic studies on other material culture, osteoarchaeology, biomolecular and environmental archaeology. For the first time we will be able to study diachronic changes in raw materials and technology, the spatial distribution of crafts, and the contextual associations between different individuals and burial goods. This work will not only enhance our understanding of Nueva Esperanza, but it will provide a solid reference point for research on other materials on museum collections where contexts are less clear. We are very grateful to the excellent teams at Agroparque Sabio Mutis, Museo Arqueologico Nueva Esperanza, Corporacion Universitaria Minuto de Dios UNIMINUTO, Ingetec, and Museo del Oro, for sharing their extensive knowledge and resources with us.

Marcos Martinón-Torres recently travelled to Crete with Borja Legarra Herrero – a Mediterranean archaeologist specialist, and REVERSEACTION Advisory Board member. They extended their previous research on Bronze Age goldwork. Their previous work (published in the American Journal of Archaeology – Heterogeneous Production and Enchained Consumption: Minoan Gold in a Changing World (ca. 2000 BCE) | July 2021 (125.3) | American Journal of Archaeology (ajaonline.org)) suggested that, during the Early to Middle Minoan period, gold may have been a form ‘shared luxury’, as it was imported from outside the island, manufactured by multiple non-specialists, used extensively, and then broken so that it could be deposited in multiple tombs. Marcos and Borja also presented some of their ideas at the Connected Pasts conference (Heraklion 2022 | Connected Past), which focused on Aegean networks. They proposed that network analyses could be carried out among tombs containing objects made in the same batch, and matching fragments of the same objects. Their ongoing work is extending their research to other sites and chronologies, thanks to ongoing collaborations with the Fitzwilliam Museum (The Fitzwilliam Museum), the Ashmolean Museum (Ashmolean Museum), and the Sissi Archaeological Project (The Sissi Archaeological Project | Sarpedon). The REVERSEACTION network keeps expanding!

Marcos Martinón-Torres travelled to the Dominican Republic, to study archaeological collections from indigenous sites at the Centro León and the Museo del Hombre Dominicano, together with Roberto Valcárcel Rojas and other colleagues. Their analyses focused on the adaptation of European materials to indigenous materialities. While at the Centro León, Marcos presented a public talk where attempted to present an indigenous perspective on the Muisca raft and the legend of El Dorado

Agnese Benzonelli, Marcos Martinón-Torres and PhD student Jasmine Vieri spent a few weeks in Colombia conducting an initial evaluation of the research collections and archives, as well as a good number XRF analyses, at the Gold Museum, together with María Alicia Uribe, Lina Campos Quintero, Juanita Sáenz Samper and other colleagues at the Museum. We also had the opportunity to discuss collaborations with several institutions and ongoing projects in Colombia that will synergise with the Reverseaction project. A very successful first trip!