4,000-Year-Old Gold Necklace Found In Peru

[Judi Lynn]

4,000-Year-Old Gold Necklace Found In Peru
Said To Be Earliest Gold Jewelry Made In Americas; Shock Find For Scientists
WASHINGTON, April 1, 2008



This undated handout photo provided
by the Proceedings of the National
Academy of Sciences shows a recon-
struction the gold and turquoise
beads as a necklace.
(AP/National Academy of Sciences)

(AP) The earliest known gold jewelry made in the Americas has been discovered in southern Peru.

The gold necklace, made nearly 4,000 years ago, was found in a burial site near Lake Titicaca, researchers report in Tuesday's issue of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The discovery "was a complete shock," said Mark Aldenderfer, an anthropologist at the University of Arizona.

"It was not expected in the least," he said in a telephone interview. "It's always fun to find something and go, 'Wow, what is that doing here?"'

In the past, it had been assumed that a society needed to be settled to produce agricultural surpluses that can support activities such as making ornamental objects, he explained.

More:
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/04/01/tech/main3984974.shtml

[Judi Lynn]

1. From a Burial Pit in Southern Peru, a Golden Oldie

From a Burial Pit in Southern Peru, a Golden Oldie
By HENRY FOUNTAIN
Published: April 1, 2008

Archaeologists have discovered what appears to be a gold necklace from a 4,000-year-old burial pit in southern Peru. It is the oldest example of worked gold ever found in the Americas.

Mark Aldenderfer of the University of Arizona and colleagues found nine cylindrical gold beads interspersed with small green stones at the base of an adult skull in the pit at Jiskairumoko in the Lake Titicaca basin. The pit showed no signs of having been disturbed, and tests showed the burial dated from 2155 to 1936 B.C.

Spectrometry data suggest the gold was quartz-vein nuggets hammered and rolled into cylinders. In describing the find in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the researchers say the gold and stones were probably strung as a necklace, the stringing material having disintegrated over the centuries.

Gold objects are normally considered signs of a well-developed society, one with affluent elites who can support craft workers producing items of high status. The Jiskairumoko finding pokes a hole in that idea; the society in the region 4,000 years ago was hardly well developed. The researchers point out, though, that the people in the region were changing from life as hunter-gatherers to a more sedentary existence, so perhaps the society was beginning to stratify, as the presence of the gold would suggest.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/01/science/01obgold.html?_r=1&ref=world&oref=slogin