Prestige economy and leadership in southwestern Colombia (400 BC-800 AD)

Summary

The capacity of the leaders in the Intermediate Area of the Americas to amass power before 1000 AD has been usually explained as a result of the manipulation of a religious ideology or through the creation of social debts in the context of feasting. My dissertation research in the Malagana site, in southwestern Colombia, has provided evidence indicating that these were not the only factors involved in the development of social inequalities in the region. I discuss the importance of prestige goods in the creation of social and political differentiation in the Malagana community during the Early El Bolo period (400 BC-800 AD), the role of the elite in their production and distribution, and the social context which made their control possible by the elite.

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This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 80th Annual Meeting, San Francisco, CA (2015)   •
• Recent Doctoral Research on Colombian Archaeology

Keywords

Spatial Coverage