Word: calima
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...miners of the Klondike, the ancient artisans obtained much of their gold by panning. They also dug shafts into the ground and even set fire to hillsides to expose the gold-bearing soil. Smelting was done in small clay crucibles. Some objects, like the breastplates made in the Calima region of southwestern Colombia, were hammered into shape on stone anvils with instruments made of iron found in meteorites. To prevent the gold from becoming brittle and breaking while it was being worked, the goldsmiths annealed it-heating it and quenching it rapidly in water. For joining different pieces, they developed...
...lying in their parallel curves, the sense of exacting formal detail at every part of the design - is formidable. Indeed, the goldworking cultures that flourished in the isolated river valleys of western Colombia from the end of the 1st millennium B.C. - Quimbaya and Tairona, Tolima and Muisca, Narino and Calima - shared, whatever their differences of society and religion, a superb instinct for the vital shape. Whether the object is a heart-shaped Calima pectoral with a fierce mask glaring from the center of its luxuriant curves, or a Muisca votive figure whose torso is compressed and flattened into a long...
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