Updates Novedades
Here we list some updates on our research and dissemination activities. To stay up to date, please consider following REVERSEACTION on social media:
Aquí recogemos algunas novedades de nuestras actividades de investigación e investigación. Para estar al día, considere seguir REVERSEACTION en las redes sociales:
Latest News
Noticias
- September, 2023
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’.

- September, 2023
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.

- Angela Maria Lucero Bernal (left) and Ana Milena Melo (right) studying ceramic vessels from the Union del Sur Rumichaca-Pasto Road Project using 3D scanning and a portable digital microscope
- September, 2023
BOGOTÁ
Museo del Oro
In June, the REVERSEACTION team visited our colleagues in Colombia on a whirlwind trip to collect data on a wide range of archaeological materials. For part of the trip, the team was based at the Museo del Oro. REVERSEACTION’s Lina Maria Campos-Quintero, who is a Curator and Archaeologist at the Museo del Oro, oversaw the work, facilitating access to the archaeological collections, and providing crucial contextual information.

Post-Doctoral Research Associate, Kate Klesner, was focused on the pXRF analysis of Nariño ceramic vessels (more information about the types of vessels analysed will be shared in an upcoming post). Helping Kate to document these ceramics was Research Assistant, Rosie Crawford, who undertook 3D scanning using an Artec Space Spider structured light scanner. These scans have since been used to create 3D models of the artefacts, which have been shared by the Museo del Oro’s social media team. Moving forward, both Rosie and Kate will be working with the models of ceramic vessels to help understand their production processes, including how they were formed and decorated.
Rosie has also generated 3D models of Muisca stone matrices, which are believed to have been used in gold-alloy (tumbaga) artefact production (Long et al., 1989). Post-Doctoral Research Associate, Agnese Benzonelli spent her first week at the Museo del Oro also looking at these matrices and analysing the tumbaga beads believed to have been made using them via pXRF, photography and optical microscopy. Both Agnese and Rosie will continue to investigate the relationship between the stone matrices and metal objects using 3D scans and photographs.

Agnese also investigated the gold votive offerings recently excavated in the Muisca cemetery site, Divino Niño, in the Sopó valley, which are currently stored in the Museo del Oro. Agnese analysed tumbaga artefacts and emeralds beads using pXRF and digital optical microscopy to assess their chemical composition, provenance, and manufacturing processes.
Post-Doctoral Research Associate, Anne Kwaspen, spent her time at the Museo del Oro analysing Muisca and Guane textiles with optical microscopy. Anne worked closely with REVERSEACTION colleague, Adriana Escobar, who is a textiles Restauradora at the Museo del Oro. Anne remained in Colombia, working together with Adriana for a further three weeks. A full recount of Anne’s time in Colombia will follow soon.

Weekend Trip to Meet Traditional Weavers
Organised by Lina, REVERSEACTION took a weekend excursion north towards Boyacá, to visit some traditional weavers and learn about the weaving process. For our first stop, before entering Boyacá, REVERSEACTION visited the town of Cucunubá, an area that was once part of the Muisca Confederation. The team were given weaving demonstrations by @tejiendo_tradicion in their workshop and heard stories of what it was like to grow up weaving in the town. The following day, REVERSEACTION continued on to Nobsa to visit another workshop, @miviejotelarnobsa. We were given demonstrations of each step of the weaving process, before visiting their adjacent shop for a toast and, of course, ruanas.

INGETEC
During the second week of the trip, Agnese, Anne and Rosie were welcomed to INGETEC by Joaquin Otero Santillan, for the analyses of artefacts from the Nueva Esperanza archaeological site. The key focus of this visit was to undertake digital optical microscopy of the vast collection of the spindle-whorls from the site. Moreover, Agnese was given access to a collection of lost-wax-cast gold-alloy artefacts. She wanted to assess their potential for carbon dating in the future (possible due to the presence of charcoal on the objects, remaining from the casting process).

REVERSEACTION would like to say a special thank you to everyone who made this trip and the analyses we undertook possible. Thank you to the Museo del Oro and INGETEC for welcoming us, overseeing our work and allowing us access to the facilities and artefacts.
Of course, we would also like to thank @tejiendo_tradicion and @miviejotelarnobsa for welcoming us into their workshops; the experience was invaluable.
- July, 2023
Lina María Campos-Quintero traveled from Bogotá to Cambridge for two months, between March and April, to carry out the analysis of gold and iron artifacts excavated at sites in the Colombian Caribbean. She used the laboratories at the University of Cambridge for sample preparation, microscopic, metallographic, and compositional analysis of these materials. This is the first time iron artifacts from Colombia have been analysed with archaeometric techniques!
Although goldsmithing was an art with a long pre-Hispanic tradition in the Americas, iron smelting was only carried out in Eurasia and Africa up until the conquest, when it was brought to the Americas. This research seeks to examine, on the one hand, how the social value of these metals was transformed in indigenous funerary contexts. On the other, it studies the possible coexistence of different goldsmithing and blacksmithing techniques, and the circulation of objects, metals, and minerals in the late occupations of the Montes de María (sites of San Felipe and La Pasión in the department of Sucre).
Lina worked long hours in the labs with colleagues from the Reverseaction team and other members of the archaeology department. She also presented her research as an invited speaker at a seminar coordinated by the Americas Archeology Group and at the Pitt-Rivers laboratory meetings. Lina not only collected data and engaged in valuable discussions that enriched the research, but she also enjoyed the academic and cultural environment of Cambridge. This is yet another research front that arises from the collaboration between the Gold Museum and the Reverseaction project. In her words: “I will miss my friends, making polish blocks, the Keyence, the laboratories, the green fields of Cambridge, and the ducks on the rivers”.
- April, 2023
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.

- January, 2023
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.

- September, 2022
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!

- From left to right, Jan Driessen, Borja Legarra and Marcos Martinón-Torres at Sissi.
- April, 2022
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

- February, 2022
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!

- July, 2023
Lina María Campos-Quintero viajó desde Bogotá hasta Cambridge por dos meses, entre marzo y abril, para llevar a cabo el análisis de artefactos orfebres y de hierro excavados en sitios del Caribe colombiano. Lina usó los laboratorios de la Universidad de Cambridge para la preparación de muestras, el análisis microscópico, metalográfico y de composición química de estos materiales. ¡Esta es la primera vez que se hacen análisis arqueométricos de artefactos de hierro en Colombia!
Aunque la orfebrería fue un arte de larga tradición prehispánica en el territorio americano, la reducción de hierro solo se llevó a cabo en Eurasia y Áfricy fue llevado a América con la conquista. Esta investigación busca examinar, por un lado, la transformación en los estándares de valor de estos metales que fueron hallados en contextos funerarios indígenas. Por otro, estudia la posible coexistencia de diferentes técnicas orfebres y de herrería y la circulación de objetos, metales y minerales en estas ocupaciones tardías de los Montes de María (sitios de San Felipe y la Pasión, en el departamento de Sucre).
Lina trabajó por largas jornadas con otros integrantes del equipo de Reverseaction y otros colegas arqueólogos del departamento, en los laboratorios. De igual forma participó como conferencista en el seminario coordinado por el Americas Archaeology Group y en las reuniones de los laboratorios del Pitt-Rivers. Gracias a este plan de trabajo Lina no solo recolectó datos y tuvo valiosas discusiones que enriquecieron la investigación, sino que también disfrutó del ambiente académico y cultural de Cambridge. Este es otro frente más investigativo que surge de la colaboración entre el Museo del Oro y el proyecto Reverseaction.
En sus palabras: “extrañaré a los amigos, hacer probetas, el Keyence, los laboratorios, los campos verdes de Cambridge y a los patos de los ríos”.
- April, 2023
Recientemente, Kate Klesner y Marcos Martinón-Torres tuvieron la oportunidad de viajar a Nariño de la mano de Lina Campos-Quintero – arqueóloga del Museo del Oro e integrante del equipo REVERSEACTION – para aprender más de la arqueología, el ambiente y las tradiciones indígenas, y para comenzar a explorar las diversas y complejas cerámicas de la región. Durante su estancia pudieron participar en una reunión sobre arqueología nariñense en el Museo del Oro Nariño, y pudieron reunirse con varios arqueólogos que lideran nuevas y prometedoras excavaciones en la región. Además de visitar museos y yacimientos arqueológicos (gracias a la ayuda del gran Carlos Guillermo López López), el equipo también visitó comunidades indígenas y artesanos locales, de los cuales pudieron aprender más de las tecnologías en esta región de los andes. Entre otros, visitaron artistas cerámicos, talladores de madera, y especialistas en “barniz de Pasto”, que usan la resina del árbol de mopa mopa para decorar un amplio abanico de materiales. ¡Nuestra primera visita a Nariño fue todo un éxito! En nuestras redes sociales pueden encontrarse más detalles de la gente y los lugares que encontramos.

- January, 2023
¡Nuestro trabajo en el sitio Muisca de Nueva Esperanza ha comenzado! Ubicado en una terraza cercana al Salto de Tequendama en Cundinamarca, Nueva Esperanza es uno de los descubrimientos arqueológicos más importantes de los últimos tiempos. Este pueblo excavado en extensión arroja evidencia sobre las condiciones de vida y muerte a lo largo de 2000 años, hasta la llegada de los Europeos, lo cual permite investigar dinámicas sociales a largo plazo. Agnese Benzonelli y Marcos Martinón-Torres viajaron recientemente a Colombia para encontrarse con los colaboradores de REVERSEACTION Sebastián Rivas, Joaquín XXX, Gabriel XXX y Lina Campos Quintero. Juntos, llevaron a cabo análisis químicos y microscópicos de cientos de artefactos de metal y piedra, y seleccionaron muestras para obtener más dataciones y otros análisis de laboratorio. Su trabajo se integrará con estudios sinérgicos sobre otra cultura material, osteoarqueología, arqueología biomolecular y estudios ambientales. Por primera vez podremos estudiar cambios en materias primas y tecnología a lo largo del tiempo, la distribución espacial de distintas labores artesanales, y las asociaciones contextuales entre diferentes individuos y sus ajuares funerarios. Este trabajo nos ayudará a saber más sobre Nueva Esperanza, pero también ofrecerá un punto de referencia sólido para otras investigaciones sobre colecciones de museos. Nuestro agradecimiento más sincero a los excelentes equipos en el Agroparque Sabio Mutis, el Museo Arqueológico Nueva Esperanza, Corporación Universitaria Minuto de Dios UNIMINUTO, Ingetec, y el Museo del Oro, por compartir generosamente sus recursos y sus conocimientos con nosotros.

- September, 2022
Marcos Martinón-Torres viajó recientemente a Creta con Borja Legarra Herrero, especialista en arqueología del Mediterráneo y miembro del Consejo Asesor de REVERSEACTION. Allí tuvieron la oportunidad de extender su investigación sobre la orfebrería de la Edad del Bronce. Sus trabajos previos (publicados en el 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), sugieren que, durante los Períodos Minoico Temprano y Medio, el oro puede haber sido una forma de “lujo compartido”, ya que se importaba de fuera de la isla, implicaba a múltiples personas no especializadas en su manufactura, se usaba intensamente, y después se fragmentaba para depositar partes de objetos en multiples tumbas. Marcos y Borja también presentaron algunas de sus ideas en la conferencia Connected Pasts (Heraklion 2022 | Connected Past), que se centró sobre redes en el Egeo. Su propuesta fue relizar un análisis de redes entre las tumbas que contienen objetos fabricados en la misma remesa, o fragmentos de un mismo objeto. Su trabajo en curso está ampliando la investigación a otros yacimientos y cronologías, gracias a colaboraciones con el Museo Fitzwilliam (The Fitzwilliam Museum) el Museo Ahmolean (Ashmolean Museum), y el Proyecto Arqueolgógico de Sissi (The Sissi Archaeological Project | Sarpedon). La red REVERSEACTION sigue creciendo!

- De izquierda a derecha, Jan Driessen, Borja Legarra y Marcos Martinón-Torres en el yacimiento de Sissi.
- April, 2022
Marcos Martinón-Torres viajó a la República Dominicana, a estudiar colecciones arqueológicas de lugares indígenas en el Centro León y el Museo del Hombre Dominicano, junto con Roberto Valcárcel Rojas y otros colaboradores. La investigación se centró en la adaptación de materiales europeos a materialidades indígenas. Durante su estancia en el Centro León, Marcos también ofreció una charla pública en la que trató de presentar una perspectiva indígena sobre la balsa muisca y la leyenda de El Dorado.

- February, 2022
Agnese Benzonelli, Marcos Martinón-Torres y Jasmine Vieri pasaron varias semanas en Colombia realizando una evaluación inicial de las colecciones y archivos del Museo del Oro, así como un buen número de análisis de FRX, junto con María Alicia Uribe, Lina Campos Quintero, Juanita Sáenz Samper y otros colegas en el Museo. También tuvimos la oportunidad de establecer colaboraciones con varias instituciones y proyectos en curso, buscando sinergias con el proyecto Reverseaction. ¡Un primer viaje muy fructífero!


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