TITLE:
Three Gold-Bearing Prehispanic Ceramic Fragments from the Supía-Marmato Mining District, Rio Medio Cauca, Colombia
AUTHORS:
William E. Brooks, Mario Bermúdez Restrepo, Angela M. Cadena
KEYWORDS:
Gold, ICP, Prehispanic, Ceramics, Rio Medio Cauca
JOURNAL NAME:
Archaeological Discovery,
Vol.4 No.1,
December
31,
2015
ABSTRACT: The alluvial environment of the Supía-Marmato mining district, in the Rio Medio Cauca region,
Colombia, provided coarse and fine-grained gold that was used for prehispanic gold work and also
fine-grained, gold-bearing sediments that were used for ceramic production. Three ceramic fragments,
identified as Marrón Inciso—Quimbaya Clasico, were submitted for geochemical analysis in
order to determine their elemental composition—the ICP (Inductively Coupled Plasma) data indicated:
2 - 8 ppm Ag; 91 - 367 ppm Au; 1 ppm Hg; 9 - 73 ppm Pt; 10 - 47 ppm Ni; 11 - 60 ppm Pb; and
one sample contained 34,800 ppm Cu. The Rio Medio Cauca is a broad north-south zone that runs
from Cauca Dept., in the south, to Medellin, Antioquia Dept., in the north. This region also hosts
numerous mineral occurrences and mines such as Marmato (Au-Ag) and La Colosa (Au-Cu). We
conclude that this is the first study to define and establish a link between the metal content of
prehispanic ceramics and Au, Ag, Cu, and Pt occurrences in Colombia.