Gold in the Andes

For almost 4,000 years, gold was held in high esteem by many societies that populated the Andes, and indeed, gold continues to be extracted in mines across the region. Gold has a number of important properties that have made it attractive to cultures all over the world. It is both malleable (can be easily shaped by hammering) and ductile (it can be hammered into very thin forms and is thus highly flexible and not brittle). It can be used to form alloys with other metals such as copper and silver and in so doing add bright color to the finished product, and it resists corrosion and is unaffected by moisture or air. But perhaps most importantly, its golden-red color is attractive to the eye. It reflects sunlight easily, and when polished, it is quite brilliant. Given its relative rarity and the ease with which it can be worked, gold has long served as a desired and sought after commodity no matter what shapes it has taken. Simply put, gold signals prestige, status, wealth, and social power but to varying degrees depending on the culture in which it is found. As Quilter (2011, p. 45) notes, the value of gold is a social construct, and the value it takes depends greatly on that context. The use of gold is part of an Andean tradition of metallurgy that begins deep in prehistory in the Archaic period (Table 1). As described by Heather Lechtman (2014, p. 369), three metals – gold, silver, and copper – form the basis of this tradition, and through time, larger, more complex artifacts and expanded technologies to fabricate them were developed. Beginning with simple cold hammering, metal-working technologies included annealing (exposing metals to fire to soften them for further work), soldering (the use of a metallic alloy to join metals), sweat welding (a version of soldering), smelting (the heating of ore beyond its melting point to obtain the metal in it), sintering (the fusing of small bits of metal below the melting point), and casting, including the lost wax method (liquid metal is poured into a mold to shape it). A wide range of ancillary techniques were used, including cutting, repousse (hammering or molding a metal from the reverse side), chasing (refining a surface of an artifact from its front), burnishing, and pickling. Evidence for the earliest use of gold in the Andean world is found at Jiskairumoko, a site located in the Rio Ilave drainage in the southwestern Lake Titicaca basin (Aldenderfer et al., 2008). The context in which the gold was found has been dated to 2204–1941 cal BCE, making it not only the oldest gold discovered to date in the Andes but also in the Americas. Nine gold beads were discovered in a mortuary context of mixed adult and juvenile human remains. The adult was elderly, while the juvenile was from 4 to 6 years of age. The beads were found near the base of the adult cranium in a roughly circular pattern, suggesting they had been once formed into a necklace (Fig. 1). Eleven round, disk-shaped sodalite beads were also recovered in and among the gold beads. The gold beads were formed by cold hammering and flattening quartz-vein native gold nuggets; the flattened metal was then shaped into a cylinder (Fig. 2). One of the beads was perforated and a small sodalite bead was found in the matrix near this bead, suggesting it was placed in this hole. There is no evidence of heat treatment or annealing of the metal. Aside from the early date, what is important about the gold from Jiskairumoko is the kind of society of which it was a part. The inhabitants of the site were mobile hunters and gatherers with an egalitarian social structure on the cusp of a profound social transformation that would eventually lead to greater social and