Tairona Metalwork and Entropy by Eric Mazariegos, PhD candidate, Columbia University and Junior Fellow, Dumbarton Oaks
Tairona artist(s), labrets in the form of serpent heads without (top) and with (bottom) corrosion, ca. 1000-1500 CE. Tumbaga (copper-gold alloy). Museo del Oro, Bogotá CO12567 (top); CO11993 (bottom). Photographs: author, 2023
NOTE: This meeting will be held the second Friday of April instead of the first
Tairona artists from ancient Caribbean Colombia (ca. 1000-1500 CE) developed one of the most sophisticated—yet little understood—metallurgical traditions in the ancient Americas. Cast from copper-laden metallic alloys, these body adornments quickly corroded as a response to the oxygen-rich humidity of the Caribbean atmosphere. Current research on Tairona metalwork presents valuable interpretations on what those metalworks symbolically represent, as well as how goldworking technologies influenced the development of Tairona society. But what has been lost in these studies is the central question of the artworks themselves: why do they look the way they do (See image above)?
In this talk, adapted from the author’s dissertation project, the presenter centers the coastal ecologies within which Tairona metalworks were made, worn, and circulated to frame Tairona metallurgy as a site of ongoing negotiation between makers, materials, and entropic environments. Tairona metalwork is characterized by its high copper content: though seemingly paradoxical (as copper was a volatile, corrosion-prone element), it resulted in lighter, more wearable body adornments, as high-carat gold was incredibly dense and heavy. As an elemental reaction to corrosive humidity, sea spray, and a wearer’s bodily fluids (sweat, saliva, or blood), Tairona metalworks were in constant processes of material and elemental change. Early modern accounts attest to another unique Tairona practice: after being cast or corroding, Tairona metallurgists would wash, pickle, and “clean” their metalworks in acidic herbal purées. Through this form of relational making, Tairona metalworks entered a process of continual becoming as their surfaces were made—and repeatedly remade—in response to fluids, ecologies, and bodies. Though Tairona metalworks have long been framed as stable surfaces which can be “read” and interpreted, this research suggests the opposite: that Tairona material values were founded on principles of instability and volatility, thereby shifting established perspectives on “gold” as a stable, enduring medium. By more properly attending to Indigenous concepts of form and making, this talk makes methodological contributions to decolonial art history and visual studies. And, in rethinking the relationships between metal and ecology, the presenter’s overall project positions ancient art as central to emerging global debates around landscape histories, materials studies, and the Blue Humanities,
Eric Mazariegos is a specialist in the art, architecture, and archaeology of the ancient Americas with a research focus in Caribbean South America. His dissertation analyzes Tairona metalworks from ancient Colombia (ca. 1000-1500 CE) through the lens of eco-criticism. Eric holds a BA in Art History and Spanish from UCLA (2019), and is currently completing his doctoral dissertation (Art History and Archaeology; Columbia University) as a Junior Fellow in Pre-Columbian Studies at Dumbarton Oaks.
This lecture will be presented virtually on the Society’s Zoon platform. You must preregister to attend. A registration link will be published here in March.