A gold object in El Molino, Hualfin Valley (Catamarca, Argentina) in Inka times
In El Molino, a site located in the Hualfin Valley (Catamarca Province, Argentina) dated to the 15th century, a gold bar-shaped object was recovered within a funerary context. The finding is significant not only because of the low occurrence of gold artefacts in Late/Inka times in Northwest Argentin...
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| Autores principales: | , , , , |
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| Formato: | Artículo publishedVersion |
| Lenguaje: | Español |
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Instituto de Arqueología, Facultad de Filosofía y Letras, Universidad de Buenos Aires
2024
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| Materias: | |
| Acceso en línea: | https://revistascientificas.filo.uba.ar/index.php/Arqueologia/article/view/13310 https://repositoriouba.sisbi.uba.ar/gsdl/cgi-bin/library.cgi?a=d&c=arqueo&d=13310_oai |
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| Sumario: | In El Molino, a site located in the Hualfin Valley (Catamarca Province, Argentina) dated to the 15th century, a gold bar-shaped object was recovered within a funerary context. The finding is significant not only because of the low occurrence of gold artefacts in Late/Inka times in Northwest Argentina, and even rarer in documented and dated contexts such as the one presented here, but also for its exceptional morphological and compositional characteristics, and its context of association. In this paper we analyze the contextual information of the object, its morphology, and composition. The bar is characterized as an object made by smelting and casting in a prismatic mold that, after casting, would have been hammered and cut. The bar is made of native gold with low percentages of silver and copper, an uncommon composition compared to what we know about the corpus of gold objects found in NW Argentina from this period. According to the characteristics of the object and of the gold metallurgy of NW Argentina’s late periods, we interpret the bar as a metal reservoir, and its production is discussed in the context of negotiations between elites of the valley and the State during the expansion process. |
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